August, as usual, will be the busiest month for Britain’s amusement parks — which is odd when you consider that this will mean thousands of people who have been sitting indoors trying to avoid sickness now lining up for seats expressly designed to induce nausea.
There are amusement parks and there are theme parks. The latter often have rides named after movie franchises — or perhaps Peppa Pig — and can charge more for merchandise. Otherwise, the g-force and junk food experiences are similar and there’s one common theme: waiting.
I took my teenage daughter to Surrey’s Thorpe Park shortly after its recent re-opening in the stupid belief that the cap on visitor numbers would easily compensate for socially distanced seating formations. After lining up for 70 minutes for the 15-second, 84 mph experience on Stealth, the UK’s fastest rollercoaster, I offered myself some parental guidance: never again.
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