Sweating Out the Southland Thrill Rides : Some Seat-of-the-Pants Ratings, From Disneyland to Knott’s to Magic Mountain

The Scariest Ride in the World (ECH-wise; see box, lower right) has been dismantled, its parts corroding in a Normandy barn. Only a forensic expert can distinguish deep rust from dried blood.

The Scariest Ride in the World was neither long nor steep nor fast. A dinky little roller-coaster sort of thing, it would travel from fair to fete, hamlet to village in rural France. Friday afternoons, it would be indifferently erected by a pick-up crew of Beaujolais-breathed buffoons who wouldn’t know a bolt from a screw.

No safety belts, no shoulder harnesses, no Allstate.

By Monday mornings it would be gone, leaving behind only a body count in the local Gazette. The Scariest Ride in the World (BOO-wise) was in a dugout canoe up the Congo River out of Kinshasa, paddled by a drift of manic sub-Equatorial gondoliers.

Unspeakably slithy toves would slurp over the sides of the low-slung craft into the hold, where they would flap against the shin bone to the vast amusement of sunning crocs on the bank beyond. . . .

What made these rides scary was the possibility, real or imagined, that you were going to die. On the rides of semi-civilized Southern California, you are not going to die. You may think you are--half the fun--but you’re not.

In these parts, the roller coasters are pretested, both by computer and body bag. The crocs are animatronic, if somewhat alarming. The rides are controlled, the riders cosseted, the fear factor tempered.

And if you don’t think you still can be scared out of your gourd in Southern California, you’ve got to have the nervous system of an eggplant.

You are not going to die, but you are going to sweat and scream; shake, rattle and roll. For in Southern California is clustered the best collection of scary rides yet devised by man’s febrile mind.

DISNEYLAND, daily 8 a.m.-1 a.m.; $20 adult, $15 ages 3-11; free under 3.

Of the L.A. area’s three major ride merchants, Disneyland ranks lowest on the flinchometer. Everyone goes there, of course, sprouts to oldsters, which is precisely the point. Terrifying tots or Grandma is not Disney’s bag.

Jason Burt, 3, of Oceanside pretty much sums up the scene. At dusk, after a long day of sightseeing, Jason is asked what scared him most. Jason never hesitates. “Him!” he says, pointing at a uniformed young man bearing down on him, the sounds of hell burping from underneath a motorized trash gobbler.

Still, among the passive, antiseptic rides, Disney still manages to sneak in a couple of ECH-rated lulus.

Matterhorn (ECH 4) is not one of them. Scariest thing about the landmark white mountain is the team of teen-agers hired to scale its prefab heights. Inside, it is dark for a stretch, with a Yeti or two popping out from a safe distance. Little wheeled boats rattle around curves and such, a journey that culminates in a rather stately sweep into two inches of water. Nobody gets wet; discomfort is not Disney.

Jungle Cruise (BOO 3) and Pirates of the Caribbean (BOO 5) are likewise sanitized but satisfying, with the odd grace note of reality: In “Cruise,” the water actually stinks , while the set piece of “Pirates”--an entire town in flames--is eerily impressive. Both are marred, though, by guides whose memorized one-liners squash any suspension of disbelief.

Space Mountain (ECH 8) trundles the putative astronaut up, up, up toward a red star rimmed in silver, then hurtles him into the cosmos with all the velocity of a mid-town RTD bus. The trick here is that stars, meteors, entire galaxies are projected against a pitch-dark interior in a direction opposite to that of the traveler, giving the illusion of vast speed. Unseen and thus unexpected, swoops and banked turns inevitably catch the rider tilting the wrong way. Passengers sit two abreast with an occasional implied third presence: Throughout one voyage, a fellow traveler, Victor Salas of Costa Rica, addressed an unseen friend, conversationally at first, then with some urgency. “Dio,” Salas said. “Dio! DIO!”

Haunted Mansion (BOO 9) is indisputably the spookiest trip since completion of the Holland Tunnel. In the bowels of a creaky antebellum house, a conveyor track insinuates the unwary into a netherworld where see-through ghosts waltz and banquet, where hosts of hants escape their tombs, where the dismembered head of a gorgeous ghoul preaches the black arts from within a crystal ball, where innumerable vignettes lure the necrophiliac back for a second, third, fourth look. In a “graveyard” outside the mansion, a repeat visitor, conditioned to the legendary Disney ingenuity, pauses to admire the lifelike crows cawing and swooping through a dark row of facsimile pines--until one of the “fake” crows performs a decidedly unDisneylike function. Dio!

Star Tours (BOO and ECH 9 1/2) is the only five-minute “ride” worth a 90-minute wait. Appropriate to a George Lucas production, one files into a 40-person theater and faces a screen. A “captain” (an ewok or kojak or whatever they call them) announces departure. From a cockpit vantage point, the screen displays a large hangar, the edge of which the “spacecraft” just misses. Ditto a glacial meteor. A twisting, dodging fire fight with an enemy ship. An escape between skyscrapers. A swoop to the heavens and a mad, Mach-2 plunge into the canyons of a crowded city. Ho-hum? Not quite. All the while, the “theater” is bucking, leaning, tilting in perfect synchronism with the adventure ahead. One exits by the opposite door. The head says that the room has never left the earth. The soul has another opinion.

Knotts Berry Farm, starting July 3, weekdays and Sundays 9 a.m.-midnight, Saturdays 9-1 (through July 2, call park); $15.95 adult, $11.95 children 3 to 11.

Knotts has never quite made up its mind whether to be Disneyland or Magic Mountain, family fare or teen challenge. A useless schizophrenia it is, too, since a good part of the park retains that unique, laid-back Western flavor that has long made the place an area favorite for strolling, sipping, savoring.

That said, can Knotts’ rides scare a visitor? Right out of your hand-tooled boots, Billy-Bob!

Knotts’ two BOO-type rides--Calico Mine and the new Kingdom of the Dinosaurs--while hardly without merit, barely jiggle the needle. Except, of course, from the perspective of the very young:

Overheard while clunking through “Dinos,” a chronological trip back to the beasts of yore: Daddy to 2-year-old, while passing a tableau of giant coyote about to rip the lips off a grizzly: “Look at the doggie, Jimmy”; cheek by growl with a drooling saber-tooth: “Nice pussycat”; eyeball to eyeball with a rampaging mammoth: “Oh boy, there’s Dumbo!” By the advent of the really nasty critters, Jimmy is into his own prehistoric howls, drowning out Daddy’s presumed comfort: “See the pretty tyrannosaurus rex? Of course he doesn’t bite.” Not any more he doesn’t.

Sky Jump (ECH 6) is Knotts’ landmark, ostensibly reminiscent of the “Parachute Jump” that wormed the Big Apple for a generation. Resemblance ceases at the summit. Rather than tripping the static line for an unfettered drop, Sky Jump’s mechanism maintains an open chute throughout. No gulp, just a whoosh. Still, rising about 20 stories in an open cage can addle the orientation. (Even more fun, ride the slow, stable Sky Cabin at the center and watch the faces of the chutists as they lose control of gravity for a fleeting moment.)

Timber Mountain Log Ride (ECH 4), in keeping with Knotts’ indecision, is neither as dry as Disney nor as moist as Magic Mountain, but is more gently amusing than either as it floats through authentic logging scenes complete with grubby lumberjacks, (which is redundant).

Slingshot (ECH 5), a new entry, is manna for those who’ve never kicked the swing habit, and the only ride in town where you risk losing your shoes. Individual swings are whirled centrifugally up to about 65 degrees, but “the scariest thing for us ,” says attendant Katie, “is telling people they look more than the 230-pound weight limit. If they insist, we let ‘em on anyway. You want to see them trying to fit those little seats.”

Loop Trainer (ECH 7 1/2)--capsules that clunk you on the noggin before taking off like P-38s; Propeller Spin (ECH 7)--a depraved stand-up spin that jams ribs into backbone--and Gran Slammer(ECH 5 1/2)--three tiers of allegedly rational riders rocking like a pendulum--are suitable warm-ups for Knotts’ real crunchberries, two of the best in town:

Corkscrew (ECH 8 1/2), billed in 1975 as “the world’s first 360-degree roller coaster,” remains the definitive twister. A misleadingly mild drop, a casual flip, and in an instant, equilibrium is but a memory. Righted--wronged?--after two successive spirals, one can only guess at one’s bearing, and agrees with the assessment of Janice Leffler, a first-time rider from Victorville: “We’re not in Kansas any more.” Ride twice and you’ll be able to open a bottle of Pouilly with a forefinger.

Montezooma’s Revenge (ECH 9 1/2) cannonballs the car with sufficient force to achieve immortality, or at least a soaring 360-degree loop, whence you rocket off into the wild blue. The thing stops, of course, hangs there for an ungodly second, then reverses with more than enough momentum to describe the first loop-de-loop again, only backwards ! “Gurk!” says Chris Meunscher, 13, of Bellingham, Wash. “I’m not even dizzy. How can I be? I left my head up there.”

Six Flags Magic Mountain, Monday-Thursday and Sunday 10 a.m.-10 p.m., Saturday 10-midnight; adults $17, children under 48 inches $10.50, under 2 free.

If Magic Mountain were a baseball player, it would be Dusty Rhodes; if a boxer, Rocky Graziano. Never mind the frangipani; just bang, baby.

There are gentle rides for toddlers, to be sure, and a nice nod to arts and crafts in “Spillikin Corners,” but not a creepy-crawly in sight (unless you want to count certain visiting rock bands). For BOOsters, MM is a bust.

In all three parks, incidentally, there are signs forbidding certain rides to those suffering backache, heart trouble, or pregnant. Magic Mountain means it.

Revolution (ECH 8), back in ‘76, was MM’s scariest ride. Now it is only a prelim for the newer horrors ahead. Smooth and quiet as a London underground and mounted on tempered steel, it is a well-mannered ride, almost tranquil. Considering a pull of five G-forces, 90-degree banks only six feet from gaping sidewalk crowds and a vertical loop peaking upside-down 90 feet in the air, Revolution’s whispering stability is a tribute to its engineers. Germans, of course

Colossus (ECH 9 1/2) is a course of another color, the longest (nearly a mile), fastest (62 m.p.h.) and noisiest roller coaster in the Southland. A beast of no subtlety whatever, Colossus has few curves and fewer peers. To the death rattle of a Gatling gun gone berserk, she lures you to the heights and shoves you down the wooden precipice, side by side with a twin car in a race with Beelzebub. For those who remember the classics (Coney’s Cyclone, Hershey’s Comet. Mexico City’s Racer), this is a moment to savor--at least a moment. “Ooof!” says James Brady of San Diego, dismounting unsteadily. “I just spent three years of my life up there.”

Shock Wave (ECH 9 1/2) incorporates the latest in coaster evolution: the stand-up syndrome. No matter how hairy the ride, there is something comforting about a fanny on a soft spot. (When’s the last time you heard, “I have terrible news for you; you’d better stand up”?) And Schock Wave is hairy! Passengers are immediately thrust into a 360-degree loop, then an even more hackle-raising series of 135-degree (!) banks, like a fighter plane turning for the kill. Encountered in line was Miel Sahgal, 19, of Bombay. “First ride?” “Second.” “You must love this thing.” “No, I hate it. I can’t stand it. I just want to see what it is I hate. I had my eyes closed the first time.”

Log Jammer (ECH 4), Jet Stream (ECH 5) and Roaring Rapids (ECH yuk) are Magic Mountain’s three water rides, pretty, pleasant and porous. (Rapids is the worst: 12 people in a rubber raft bumping, rebounding, making waves and getting thoroughly drenched in the process.) Wet, however, is preferable to clammy:

Z Force (ECH 9), the park’s newest endeavor, is the pendulum’s pendulum. A 50-passenger boat sways faster, higher, faster, higher until at length the whole tsimmes “stalls,” 100 feet in the air, for fully 10 seconds before resuming its maniacal rotation. The fear engendered by Z Force is diluted only by a deep sense of loss: $3.35 in change gone forever while dangling from a bootstrap. Another gentleman, it is said, was even less lucky: Opening his mouth to scream, he was relieved by gravity of his bridgework.

Among all these instruments of torture, is there a device worthy of the Inquisition itself, a Perfect 10, as it were? There is indeed, a simple ride best described simply:

Free Fall (ECH 10) is a space-age gantry rising more than 10 stories. Inside, a four-man capsule rises to the top and stops for a second or two. From behind, a deus ex machina shoves the capsule forward. Unrestrained, the capsule drops. Ten stories. The rest is silence.

The screams come later, sometimes a good deal later. “I can’t talk right now,” says Jeannine Beibel of San Francisco. “I have to sit down.” She sits. She asks her friend, Candy, for a cigarette. “But you don’t smoke ,” says Candy. “I know,” says Jeannine.

“Oh,” says L.A.’s Jim Harris, on the other end of the bench. “That--that thing ! That is the main most ride of any where!”

Well, not quite.

Randy, the “tour guide” of Disney’s Jungle Cruise, puts it all in perspective.

“I hope you’ve enjoyed your cruise,” he tells his wards, “and now for the scariest ride of all--your trip home on the freeway.”