Inside the Very Expensive, Extremely Overwhelming, Engineered Fun of Theme Parks

Hyper-coasters, giga-coasters, strata-coasters, exa-coasters; we’ve come a long way from Coney Island’s Cyclone. With theme park prices soaring and IP-based areas sparing no expense, places like Disney World and Epic Universe are pushing the limits of physics in the name of thrills. For The Atlantic, Bianca Bosker takes you past the hourslong line and into the maelstrom.

Roller coasters were once limited by technology, but now it’s our bodies that are holding them back. Coasters can subject riders to g-forces more powerful than those typically experienced by astronauts—people on Stardust Racers will experience more than 4 g’s of force, compared with the 3 g’s typical during a space-shuttle launch—though industry guidelines limit how long riders should be made to endure such strong accelerations. At upwards of 4 g’s, the human heart struggles to pump blood; you should experience this for no more than two seconds, per the standards for rides in the U.S. “The time is very important here because you don’t want people graying out or maybe even blacking out,” Daniel Schoppen, a roller-coaster designer with the firm Intamin, which has built attractions for Universal’s parks, told me. “This is not enjoyment. This is not fun.”