How big is too big?
-
hobie16
- Permanent Fixture
- Posts: 10546
- Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2004 4:45 pm
- Park: DLR
- Department: Fruity Drink Land
- Position: Mai Tai Face Plant
- Location: 717 Miles NNW Of DLR
How big is too big?
Don't be fooled by appearances. In Hawaii, some of the most powerful people look like bums and stuntmen.
--- Matt King
Stay low and run in a zigzag pattern.
Re: How big is too big?
Not to deny that people now are both taller and heavier than people in the 1960s, which they certainly are, I wonder if part of it is that older people are now more likely to ride roller coasters and other rides than they were in the '60s. I was a kid in the '60s, and I didn't know any dads who'd ride the rides; they took their kids to the theme park but didn't go on the rides, or they'd drive kids and a babysitter to the park, pay to get them in, and then go off and do something else. Ditto the moms. People still talk about others being "too old" for this or that activity at Disney (characters more often than rides, though), but in my experience that was a much bigger thing even into the seventies and early eighties than it is now.
People have always gotten heavier as they've gotten older, and if a much larger percentage of people riding the rides are older, then there are going to be more issues with heavy people. And if adults as a group were less likely to ride the rides in the 1960s, then people who were heavier would be doubly motivated to just avoid the issue by not going on the rides. But maybe it's just that my parents and their relatives and neighbors were much less likely to go to theme parks than myself and my contemporaries are? I was that babysitter who had to be the "adult" a short kid rode with a time or two, and I sure don't remember many adults in the roller coaster lines, but I wasn't consciously counting, either.
People have always gotten heavier as they've gotten older, and if a much larger percentage of people riding the rides are older, then there are going to be more issues with heavy people. And if adults as a group were less likely to ride the rides in the 1960s, then people who were heavier would be doubly motivated to just avoid the issue by not going on the rides. But maybe it's just that my parents and their relatives and neighbors were much less likely to go to theme parks than myself and my contemporaries are? I was that babysitter who had to be the "adult" a short kid rode with a time or two, and I sure don't remember many adults in the roller coaster lines, but I wasn't consciously counting, either.
Re: How big is too big?
It's not just older folks that are getting heavier; it's kids and teens too. When I was growing up in the 60s, you rarely saw a fat kid or teen; we were doing a lot more moving and eating way less junk food. Kids today don't move around as much, and they're eating junk food like there's no tomorrow.
When my family took my siblings and I to a theme park, it was mostly us kids that rode; it was, after all, for the kids. The reason, I think, that more adults are riding is that they want to recapture the thrill of riding when they were kids.
When my family took my siblings and I to a theme park, it was mostly us kids that rode; it was, after all, for the kids. The reason, I think, that more adults are riding is that they want to recapture the thrill of riding when they were kids.