The Old Town Slingshot - would you pay $50 to do this?
 

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I'll make this last one large so you can actually see them, lol. This is 365 feet in the air.
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Would you do this?
I have to admit it fascinates me. But it also terrifies me. I imagine that the feeling of soaring is incredible. But the spinning, so high up in the air, when you are coming down might give me cardiac arrest, lol. I cannot decide whether I have the balls to do it.

Have you done this?
If you've ridden one of these things before, tell me what it was like. How powerful is the jerk when you've hit the maximum extension? How much did you pay, lol? $50 (for two people) is a lot for an experience that lasts under 5 minutes. Is it worth it?

On one hand, I think $50 is too much, on the other hand, I wouldn't want to try that with a crew working on a shoestring budget.

The old guy is clearly getting a bonus by staring at the woman's chest.

I enjoyed it when I did it a few years ago. Honestly, I didn't find it really all that "scary". Bungee jumping was much more intimidating, basically because you actually have to do something (make the concious decision to jump). On these, you basically sit down and the workers do the rest.

$50 seems about right. And I think we pulled about 3 G's on the way up, but that's just an estimate and only based on a faded recollection. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it was more or less.

I like crazy rides so I try them all. There is a variation of that in Ocean City MD...I'll probably go on it again in a couple weeks since my younger son loves it but my older son won't go on it with him so I do that. I think it's about $20/person. A cool but pricey thrill.

Here's a vid of the one in OCM...though it's not me on it. The one in OCM has a camera pointing at the riders so you can watch their faces on monitors as they scream and freak out.

Well, I have a love/hate relationship with heights.

I think I have a phobia about them, but I love to challenge it. Always been that way.

That pretty well sums it up for me. I'd gladly pay $20. Of course if that meant that the crew was skimping on safety though, which it most likely would at that price point, then I'd pass. But $50 for just a couple minutes of potential fun is just too rich for my blood.

I am somewhat acrophobic. So...no, I certainly would not pay $50 for that. Frankly, they couldn't even pay me $50 to do that. Although, truth be told, I have done far stupider for far less.

I saw it live two years ago at Wisconsin Dells and I got sick just from watching.

When i opened the page, and saw the people sitting down I thought, "How cool you sit on a gondola and then you get to fire your slingshot at all the buildings that you pass. MSD would love it!"

alas, it was not.

I'd still do it. I've done the skydiver drop before, and one time with Skogafoss as we were going rollercoaster adventuring. After that she was like,"Okay done with roller coasters today, nothing will top that."

Skydiving interests me. Bungee jumping off of a bridge interests me. This does not. I wouldn't pay $50 dollars for it. I wouldn't do it for free.

Why not? It it was free and safe enough, I'd totally do it.

Bungee jumping and skydiving seem simpler and both seem like in doing them, you have greater control (likely an illusion). The slingshot doesn't interest me. I don't have a good reason.

I've always had a mild fear of heights. As a youth, I could work past it to visit carnivals and theme parks. As the years passed, though, I seemingly lost that courage.

A few years back, I went on a giant swinging thing with my daughter. It swung until one was nearly upside down, feeling weightless, as if free-falling. It repeated the swing about a dozen times. I had nightmares for weeks.

No, I'll be leaving this adventure to those who truly enjoy it. Have fun!

i used to live right next to old town. i used to ride free, all the time.

same with the sky coaster.

its nice to know people.

Oh! Then you might enjoy this thread, SSJTWIZTA. :)

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/tilted-...-old-town.html

I did that in Pamplona, Spain in 2002, during the Running of the Bulls festival there... it was a crazy town in a crazy mood, so I decided to do it. It was not nearly as high as that one, though... maybe half as high, and half as cheap? lol. But it was fantastic... really a huge rush, and I thoroughly enjoyed all parts of it.

I don't know if I would pay $50 to go on a bigger one, though. I'm starting to outgrow my "thrills and chills" years...

This kinda reminds me of the (aptly named) vomitron. A few years ago a bunch of ex footy players/now commentators went on this ride as part of their show, with gut wrenching results:



Anyway, to answer the question - I like rollercoasters, but I don't think I'd want to do that.

They used to have one of those at Paramount's Great America in Santa Clara. I don't remember it being $50, but I do remember having a blast.

I'd pay $50.

I just realized I should clarify. It is $50 for two people. Therefore $25 for each.

It never occurred to me to try it alone or with someone I didn't know...weird that.

I believe that was the price at Great America. If Anyone likes Tower of Terror, Drop Zone, bungee, skydiving, etc., they should enjoy this.

Yeah, I've done something like this. $15 one person chair at the Oregon state fair several years ago. Would I do it again, yes. Would I pay to do it again, no. Just over too quickly, don't even really remember much of it.

Well, I don't know about bungee and skydiving, but this is a much dearer commitment to thrill than is needed for Tower of Terror and other free-fall rides. I mean when you look at these people they are spinning around head over heels with no sort of enclosure around them 365 feet in the air. That's pretty intense.

Well $25/person makes it a lot more reasonable.

To me it seems like a lot, it's over really quickly. To me rides like this, the drop ones i.e. Tower of Terror types, just don't do that much in the rush department. At a lot of DZ's you can get a jump for that. In sky diving, for me, there's a rush just in the ride up, thinking about what's about to happen etc... Then jumping out of the plane. That's a rush every time, not a jarring rush, a different kind of rush. To me a better kind of rush.

No. I would not pay 50$ to do this. You could not pay me 50$ to do this.

I'm not a fan of heights. I can still hike on tight spots and look down carefully from a cliff, but not something as superfluous as this :p.

It's too bad because I love views of towns/landscapes from the sky, and skydiving for instance would be an awesome way to get such views. But I don't think I can do it.

I saw some people do that in New Zealand. And I might be ok with the going straight up part, but my body doesn't like the feeling of falling. The spinning around at the same time would probably make me sick.

I like the ride at the space and rocket museum in Huntsville, AL that doesn't go up that high and only goes up and down.

I would do it if I had the money.

I would much rather be shot into the air than dropped. Being drop, you have to look down to see how high you are and anticipate the plunge. Being shot into the air, you are way up high before you know what is going on.

I'd be scared shitless sitting in the chair waiting, but I love those adrenaline rushes!

I still can't decide....man, it is really, really high. You don't get a true sense of it from the picture.

Still, there's that soaring feeling that I love.

And, I'm with you shesus, I would much rather soar upwards than plummet downwards.

Of course, with this thing, you get both....along with spinning and tumbling on your way down. :)

Maybe everyone who's done this before missed my question in the OP but, what is it like when you reach the top? Is there a really powerful jerk that snaps you back? I'm asking, for the most part, to find out what sort of impact it might have on my neck...which has been bothering me.

I wanted to go skydiving, but was told that at my height and weight, the combined weight of the instructor and me would be too much for the parachute to keep at a safe speed and I'd break both legs on landing. I would probably throw this thing off balance and end up with it wrapping the cord around my neck and strangling me.

Too bad, it looks like fun.
I'd pop the guy next to me when he pulled out his cell phone.

Reaching the top, you feel a surreal sense of weightlessness for what seems like a long time--really just a second, maybe less--and then begins the freefall down. I don't remember any powerful jerks--just a bouncy feeling during the turn at the bottom, like you might feel on a bungee cord, I guess? But I didn't have any neck problems at the time--if you do, then you might want to ask a doctor or something beforehand.

Yeah, no powerful jerks here either. I was expecting more of a jolt upon release, not really.
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You might try to do an accelerated free fall course, if you really want to do it. 15-20 yrs. ago no one was doing tandem as far as I know. I think blahblah454 is doing this course right now. It's completely possible for someone 300lbs to hop-n-pop solo.

And unless your doing a static line deploy the "things" going to come off your back once the rips pulled, it would be almost impossible to get it tangled around your neck. I've seen students land with marks on their necks because the static line caught them wrong. That only happens when you don't "belly down" as instructed.

That comment was talking about the slingshot, but I'm interested in this accelerated freefall course, thanks for pointing me to it.

Sorry I misunderstood you.

As for free falling, other then being a decent Petty song, it's a blast. I highly recommend trying it at least once. It's a rush and yet peaceful all at the same time.

Find a good school and a good instructor, it can make all the difference.

This is a good source for info:

Dropzone.com - The single best source for skydiving information

(Again not trying to site plug, have no interest in this site, just trying to point someone to good info.)

Wow, that looks like fun! I've been bungee jumping, once, off a crane at the Oregon State Fair. I think we paid $50. Loved it. Made my sister go first, though :D

Thanks abaya and Tully, that's good to know.

weightlessness? oh my.....:)
that sounds nice

Jump out of a plane, yep. Get lunched into the air in a somewhat caged padded seat, sure. But bungee and BASE jumping I'm a little less likely to go for. They look fun. But with bungee if something goes wrong it really goes wrong. In BASE jumping you don't have enough time to correct a mistake. I actual thought about base jumping until I had a problem with my main chute deploying once, had mess around with it a bit. Wasn't anything major but I remember thinking "if I'd have been BASE jumping that would have be it."