Superman Heart Attack

For a few years I took my younger brother, Jeff, to Six Flags Magic Mountain for his birthday. Last year (May of 2007) Jeff, Tyaan, my dad and I all went. While there we went on Superman. If you're not familiar with this ride you can see the details here, or check out this video.

The car is LAUNCHED. Once they hit the button you take off and there's no going back. It's extremely fast and goes extremely high. You are held in by a lap bar, and that's it. The whole ride only lasts a minute, if even that long.

So, we decided to go on Superman. It's not one of their newer rides, and it's not easy to get to, so it's usually not very busy. We hiked up to it and got on pretty quickly. After riding, before letting us out of the car, the guy running the ride asked if we wanted to go again. Apparently there wasn't anyone else waiting. Of course we all jumped at the chance to ride it again without even having to get out.




So we all put our lap bars back down, put our heads back in the seat, braced ourselves for take-off and the guy counts us down.

3...

2...

1...

All of a sudden my lap bar popped up. Of course my heart stops beating as I'm trying to get my brain to tell my lungs to let out a scream of "SSSSTTOOOOOOOOOPPP!!!!!!!" because I'm absolutely certain that I'm about to be thrown from this ride and end up a mile or two away. Dead.

As I realize the cars not moving yet, and my heart thuds back into action, and I'm desperately grabbing for my lap bar to yank it back down, or hold on for as long as I can, I realize that everyone around me is acting about the same way. I looked around and everyone looks completely panicked, the guy standing at the launch button is grinning from ear to ear, and every other employee in the place is doubled over laughing at us. I really would have liked to punch the guy for scaring me almost to death, but seeing my daughter, brother, and especially father as scared and stunned as I felt was hysterical. We all busted up laughing. I mean laughing so hard that your stomach hurts and it's hard to breathe. After a couple of minutes we had gathered our composure enough that we got another count down, this time followed with another trip down the track.

Good times...