Adventure Island

Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England, UK – Saturday, June 12th, 2010

Disembarking at Southend Victoria station, making my way down the Southend High Street to the coast, I caught my first glimpse of the tacky funfair colors of Adventure Island against the hazy horizon of the North Sea. I was in my first hours of what was to be a two-and-a-half week long odyssey around the United Kingdom undertaken completely alone. The farewell exchanges with my fellow philosophers from our summer study program lingered fresh in my memory, and contemplation of my renewed isolation in the world made the silence of this sleepy beach community scream that much louder in my ear. Southend-on-Sea is one of those half-alive vacation communities whose colorful banners and wide open promenade invite laughter and merriment despite the unspoken acknowledgment that it intends to conceal a shared underlying sadness and emptyness. It would make a great backdrop for a film by a director such as Mike Leigh (and has).

Nevertheless the sun was shining and it appeared to be a great day for photo-taking. Taking a vertical lift down to sea level I entered the gates of Adventure Island, got my print-out ticket exchanged for a wristband at the customer service booth, a locker for my backpack at a very reasonable rate, and then set off towards my first ride of the trip. I would start conservatively with the Zierer Barnstormer. I snapped a photo of the entrance, then climbed up the stairs and waited for the back row, where I was able to get another three photos of the ride in action. Climbing in I lowered my restraint. There was a slight hold-up as the attendant talked to a security guard on the exit ramp. All I could hear was, “well there’s nothing we can do now…” and then they left and we were dispatched. It was interesting to see how they utilized a small amount of free space to build a custom layout, not so interesting for anything else. Upon return the attendant called my attention to him.

“There’s a security officer at the bottom of the stairs you’re going to have to talk to.”

“What for?”

“This is kind of ridiculous, but there’s a lot of suspicion in this area against anyone who appears to be the slightest bit suspicious, you know, single males taking pictures of children…”

Oh, I see. I needn’t have even said a word of explanation before the operator surmised I was clearly a coaster enthusiast and identified himself as one too.

“Just tell him what you’re taking pictures for and you should be fine. It’s quite stupid, really; you’re not the first this has happened to.”

I thanked him for his advice and solidarity, more bemused by the incident than put off as I was always in search of a colorful travel story that the controlled customer service environment of an amusement park isn’t always able to provide, but Adventure Island seemed willing to deck out in spades barely five minutes after my arrival.

“Hello, I was informed you wanted to talk to me?”

“Yes sir. We’re directed to be on the lookout for any and all suspicious behavior that could be a threat to our guests. I need to know why it is you are here alone taking photographs. There is a great concern in this community that people such as yourselves engaging in this activity can and will use it for malicious purposes.”

I explained the purpose of my travels and website which he seemed to understand, and informed me that he himself couldn’t clear me to continue using my camera because there are other guards on duty that would also stop me. What I would have to do is go to guest services and explain my story again so that they could send a radio call to everyone that I was clear to take photos. This was turning into a bit more of a hassle but I thanked him and set back off for the guest services office I was just at.

For the third time I got a friendly, euphemistic explanation of why being a lone male taking pictures was a concern, I replied with a friendly explanation of who I really was and what I was doing with a camera, and I was once again told that there was nothing they could do to help my situation. Only I was at the highest rank this time, and with no one else to be referred to after this conversation I realized was tantamount to an irreversible ban from taking photos on the property.

“Err… the guard made it sound like you’d have the authority to allow me to take pictures.  Is there anything I didn’t explain fully? The web address for my site is www.rollercoasterphilosophy.com, you can look at it for yourself and see what it is I’m doing.”

“No, I understand all of that. The problem is about the comfort of our guests. You see there have been incidents in the past that have meant we’re only allowed to let people take pictures of their own families. If you could come back with some of your mates we could just pretend that you’re taking pictures of them when you’re photographing the rides and it would be fine.”

Well, considering I’m 4000 miles from home that’s not really a feasible solution for me. I again stressed the importance of photography as part of my paid-for ticket’s privileges because I was long past the point where I was visiting these parks only for my own immediate pleasure, but to no avail.

“Is this a very common policy at many parks in the UK? I’ve been to over 100 parks around the world and I’ve never encountered a policy like this.”

“I’m afraid you will find it a lot. There’s an elevated walkway you can take pictures of the rides from, since that’s public property we can’t do anything to stop you, but I’m afraid you won’t be allowed to have your camera out on our grounds.”

“And there’s absolutely nothing I can say or do differently to change that?”

“No.”

In their defense it had been ten days since I last remembered to shave and I was beginning to look a little bit like the Unabomber. Deciding it wasn’t worth pursuing any further at the present time I stowed my camera back in the locker and tried to enjoy the park. It wasn’t nearly as easy though; around every corner my hand would reflex to try to take a snapshot but there was nothing there to take it with. The only other time in the five months of European travel I had been without a camera at my side was when it had been stolen at PortAventura. So much seemed to be lost to posterity it incredibly annoyed me to think that I had come all this way and I would have no record of it beyond my own personal memories.

But worst of all was the feeling of being branded an outsider. The common experience of white middle class males is that discrimination doesn’t ever really apply to your own life. It’s a social cause to be defended vehemently for out of compassion, but that’s about the limit of it. Even though there was no question that this was an exceedingly minor and insignificant incident in the grand scheme of history, when you’re standing in a crowd of people where everyone else has a camera out taking a photograph of the ride or show or whatever, and you realize that if you try to do the same you will be escorted from the premises by security personnel… that’s a really lousy feeling.

Halfway through the day having got my fill of the major rides I returned to the guest relations to see if I couldn’t argue a compromise. This time around I lost the friendly façade.

“No, you see this is a children’s park. I don’t know what your persistent interest is in taking photographs but we can’t allow it.”

Err, wait, did you not remember my explanation previously or did you just not believe me? And “children’s park”? Excuse me but you installed a roller coaster with a 97° degree drop and three inversions at 4.5 G-forces only three years ago. You might want to double check with your marketing team to see exactly who it is you’re attracting before setting completely contradictory security procedures.

“If I could just take photos of the Rage roller coaster where there aren’t any kiddy rides nearby, I promise to be very discreet and not get anyone’s children within my frame of view-“

“Listen, I tried to not make you feel uncomfortable about this but you don’t seem to be getting it. If I were to allow you to have your camera out then this office would be flooded with calls of complaints by our visitors. It is my responsibility to ensure that nothing threatens the comfort of our customers which is why I cannot allow you to take photographs.”

Premise 1: It is the park’s responsibility to ensure that that all paying customers feel they are in a comfortable and secure environment, and to accommodate any reasonable requests to help meet these needs.

Premise 2: I am a paying customer.

Conclusion: It is the park’s responsibility to ensure that that I feel I’m in a comfortable and secure environment, and to accommodate any reasonable requests to help meet these needs.

The conclusion is a necessary inference from these two premises. However, this is not at all what happened; indicating that at least one of the two premises is false. The first premise was taken verbatim from our conversation so that is an assumed truth. The error must therefore be in the second premise, that I was never in fact a paying customer despite my delusions otherwise. The strange thing is that I could swear they have some of my cash sitting in their bank account, which I can only assume they must have somehow acquired illegitimately.

I only wish I had thought to say that, but instead I merely said a thank you for getting the concept through my thick, perverted skull, and once again continued my riding sans camera. As I was unsure what English photography or discrimination law was like I figured there was nothing more to be done.¹ I  The strange thing about this whole affair wasn’t that Adventure Island was acting like ignorant blowhards (well, not that much, anyway) but that they seemed to have a strong ethical sense that this was a moral imperative and were taking a much more sensitive, proactive approach to customer relations than most of their competitors ever try to do.

While I can’t entirely fault them for it, my eyes were opened to a problem more fundamental. For example in Italy the government is quite openly corrupt, the people don’t particularly care about it, fashion is a greater concern than higher education and men and women find themselves prescribed to some fairly stereotypical Latin gender roles. Yet despite all of this I could feel pretty comfortable there and got the sense that the people were friendly because they sincerely meant it. While having the language barrier opened up may have changed my perspective somewhat, in England I sensed a culture that had a deep-rooted suspicion and paranoia running through its veins, to a degree beyond anything I had expected or experienced before.

I always figured that the reason most novels involving a dystopian vision of a society run by an omniscient big brother are set in England was because that’s where the best sci-fi writers live, but instead I found some of those visions weren’t all that far from the truth. The sightline of CCTV cameras is as pervasive as the breathing air, monitoring not just private property but all public areas as well (streets, city parks, etc). Signs are posted in the London Underground with a seemingly Orwellian watchful eye symbol reminding citizens to be on the watch for “suspicious activity” and to report it at once. (In the States we at least let our government officials do our racial profiling for us; it would be a very strange sight to see them encouraging that type of behavior by the populace, who are generally assumed to have good sense if anything should be amiss). Outside the cities, public service announcements reminding adults that not all teenagers are criminals and thus should not be discriminated against as such. And while the USA PATRIOT Act generated quite a controversy over allowing the government to monitor library records, British Parliament was passing an antiterrorism act of their own that would allow anyone taking a photo in which a police constable was within the frame to be arrested on the spot and even imprisoned for the offense.

The UK does have a long history of using utilitarian thinking as governing ethical principles; “the greatest good for the greatest number of people,” and often with a very limited definition of ‘good’ that fails to account for our full humanity. Jeremy Bentham was one of the originators for the modern UK’s emphasis on watching the citizenry’s every move, believing that a people that are aware they are being seen results in a people that will self-govern their own actions. He even went so far as to propose a law that everyone must have a tattoo on their forehead containing their personal identification information such that any deviants could be immediately identified. Thankfully it never went that far, but the moral philosophy behind it remains ingrained in the culture to this day. It’s always interesting to test just how far we’re willing to take utilitarianism; in my case I found that when it comes to how businesses treat their paying customers, they’re more than willing to limit the privileges of one if that means creating a greater total satisfaction of the many, even if that many’s comfort is defined by irrationally prejudiced criteria and even if that discomfort remains in the realm of theoretical complaints that have yet to materialize (I’m 99% sure not a single actual complaint was ever made against me).²

The irony of this is that despite the extremely reactionary approach to public safety, on the whole British society does not seem exceptionally safe or clean. Youth delinquency is still an exceedingly common problem in England, and Southend-on-Sea is apparently plagued by rampant pedophilia. While this might be contentious, I would strongly argue that these sorts of social maladies don’t spontaneously manifest out of the ether. Cultures tend to have a greater ability to define themselves than we’d realize, and any place that constantly utilizes a language invoking pedophiles, suicide, arson or random shootings will find that not only does that create the paranoia against these activities, it will very easily create these activities themselves.

Please, please note I only spent seven weeks on England’s green and pleasant land so do not take me as any sort of authority on these subjects, and especially do not infer any of the following commentary as a personal statement against its residents who without question include many of the kindest and most intelligent people you will find on this planet. These are just a few of my own travel observations and I am convinced that more research into the subjects brought up would reveal a different, more complicated picture. And now I have rides to review.

The next attraction was the contradictorily named Mighty Mini Mega, a yellow and teal Pinfari coaster set atop an arcade. I like it when these kiddie coasters are in yellow; it makes them easier to spot from a distance. This one even had a fun layout design where it’d do a cute little ‘dance’ of three or four small bunny hops before going down on me. While it might have been a bit too small for my tastes it was worth doing it again that day.

Across the park was the Green Scream, another custom designed family coaster from Zierer. This was once the largest attraction in the park, although the long drawn out layout was a bit slow and soporific. Nevertheless the long layout and larger footprint size made it a good attraction to teach little boys about what it will be like to ride the adult roller coasters when they grow up.

As far as non-coaster rides go there was a set of water slides with dingy boats called the Tidal Wave. It gets your bottom a little bit moist, but the water is good for lubrication to ease getting into the dark tubing. You come out really quickly but you can easily run around and do it again several times in a row. Some kids wore a plastic protection, however I was cheap so I took the risk and did it without, which I don’t really regret because you’re able to enjoy it more anyway. The Sky Drop, a small drop tower by Zamperla, was one of the more popular attractions in the park. I’m certainly not going to oppose any ride that bounces children up and down along a hard, erect shaft. The highlight attraction was the Over the Hill dark ride, which I admit tricked me with its fake-out happy ending before you go at it again for the big climax.

The primary reason for coming to Adventure Island however was quite clearly Rage, the Gerstlauer Eurofighter. Just one look at the profile of that lift hill and first drop, which reminds me distinctly of a large… hmm, what does it look like? A large cheese stick, that’s it! It really gets your blood pumping before you’re even in there, strapped in tightly. The ride starts by laying you flat on your back, as you go up the lift hill. When we go down you get this great tickling sensation of weightlessness that goes all the way up your body. You get two big loops, the first a standard vertical and the second more of a dive loop, but both are incredibly smooth, probably because the ride’s still only four years old. You want to have a bit of roughness to make sure you can feel it, which you get around some of the fast, high-speed turns. The highlight of the ride is the midcourse barrel roll, which is so little and tight it feels amazing when you go through it. Concluding with a helix we slide into the magnetic brakes, where if the line’s not too long I’d turn around and do it again.

Even though I wasn’t able to take pictures to have to look at for later, it was still a pretty good time at Adventure Island. A very colorful, eclectic little seaside park with lots of places to buy candy and other trinkets, I wouldn’t mind returning someday with a friend to take pictures of our children’s coaster conquests. A first-class place for clean, wholesome fun to be shared by young and old alike.

[1] I know under US law I could have potentially made a legal case against Adventure Island for discriminate service if it could have been shown that they were much more likely to harass single males with cameras than single females, which given the stated reasons for my ban and the contradictory promise from the original security guard that they should be able to make an exception if I explain myself fully I suspect could be probable.

[2] Of course in their dogged quest to actively maintain an environment secure for children, the park never let take place a world record attempt for the most nude riders on a roller coaster on August 8^th of that year.

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