Why do people go to amusement parks like Six Flags or Disneyworld?
A little girl, five years old, hurls herself into the arms of a giant tiger. As her parents fumble with the Minolta, she giggles and jokes with her new friend. The very next day, the same girl buries her head in her mother’s shoulder when they pass the tiger’s cage at the zoo. Her reaction at the zoo was considerably different from her previous encounter. Enjoying the company of a tiger is a pasttime set aside for animal trainers, National Geographic photojournalists, and the thousands of people who visit Disneyland each day. Amusement parks like Disneyland and Six Flags fulfill the need for fantasy and inconsequence like nothing else does. We all wake up in the real world with fear, consequence, and monotony penciled into our daily schedules. There are ways to avoid and ignore these facts of life, but generally these “alternatives to reality” wind up being either illegal, ineffective or both! A day at Six Flags allows us excitement without the fear and the consequences that accompany
