As the Bungee Gets Boring, Fairs Pull Out the Stops

She was the 10th person in the metal basket Sunday, dangling nearly eight stories above the Orange County Fair’s main gate. She was supposed to plummet into two blue nets that would gently break her fall.

Only something went wrong. The net system failed on the high-intensity Adrenaline Drop, and 30-year-old Aidyl Sofia-Gonzalez landed hard on the ground, suffering unspecified injuries that put her in the hospital overnight.

The incident illustrates the challenges that county fairs face when they put cutting-edge “extreme” rides on midways that for decades offered nothing scarier than the Ferris wheel.

Showy and spectacular, they draw crowds -- particularly young people accustomed to adventurous sports and the sophisticated rides of big amusement parks. But the rides are less time-tested than the Tilt-A-Whirl. They require special expertise to run. They cost more to insure. And, as evidenced by Sunday’s accident, their thrills can come with a price.

So fairs walk a delicate balance: They want a clean safety record, but they don’t want a reputation as wimpy or passe. “No one wants to buy a video of themselves on the merry-go-round,” said Stephen Chambers, executive director of the Sacramento-based Western Fairs Assn.

The result: “It’s been like this arms race” among fairs, said James Zoltak, a L.A.-based senior editor of the trade publication Amusement Business.

Extreme rides invaded midways about a decade ago, when the bungee craze bounced through the gates, some fair managers and industry experts say. Though there’s no hard evidence these rides are especially dangerous, they’ve gotten bigger, badder and more prevalent every year.

Most large fairs in the country have one or two, managed by a handful of companies that specialize in running them. Riders pay $20 to $35, in addition to the cost of a videotape of their experience, for rides like the Ejection Seat, which can launch a person 200 feet in the air.

Orange County’s Adrenaline Drop lifted riders near the top of its 130-foot tower, then let them go. “You lose your breath so much that you don’t have time to scream,” said Anaheim veterinarian Gary Tateyama, 33, who took the plunge at last year’s fair.

These rides are popular with a demographic that isn’t drawn to fairs for the livestock: Generation X, Chambers said, is considered the “lost generation” among fair managers.

Rick Delano, marketing director for Virginia-based LifeCourse Associates, said extreme rides appeal to the younger among those born between 1961 and 1980 -- and even older Gen-Xers don’t mind risks for their kids, if the rides seem safe. His firm helped develop a marketing strategy for the 2002 Kern County Fair in Bakersfield, a 12-day fall event that draws about 430,000 visitors.

Included in last year’s advertising was its Gen X-friendly bungee jump, which returns this year. Before the bungee jump was the Ejection Seat. Before that was the Skyscraper, which looks like a giant propeller. It rotates like a Ferris wheel, but faster -- up to 70 mph.

The Skyscraper turned for several years before its thrill was gone. “It just got passe, because there were so many around,” said Mike Treacy, the fair’s chief executive.

Most fairs in the region change their extreme rides every year or two. “You can only market bungee so many times before people say, ‘Been there, done that,’ ” said Brian May, assistant general manager of the California Exposition and State Fair.

The Sacramento fair, the state’s third-largest last year, uses thrill rides as “magnets,” May said. Hundreds of people crowd to gaze at stunts they wouldn’t dare try. “It’s an element that takes the carnival to a whole new level,” he said. “In a way, we’re competing with theme parks, and theme parks have those big, high-intensity rides.”

And like the competition among amusement parks to have the tallest, fastest roller coasters, fairs keep upping the ante on their midways. “It’s kind of crazy,” said Zoltak of the trade journal Amusement Business.

Since 1996, near the height of the bungee frenzy, the state Department of Occupational Safety and Health has recorded five to seven incidents a year on all carnival rides, spokesman Dean Fryer said. Two from 1996-2001 involved extreme rides: bungee rides Skycoaster and Trampoline Thing. The state did not provide detailed accounts of incidents from the last year and a half.

Though state officials say they have no data showing that extreme rides are more dangerous, insurance companies consider them riskier -- in part because of their limited track record.

At Florida-based Allied Specialty Insurance, which deals solely in amusement industry policies, extreme ride operators pay at least $10,000 a year for coverage, said Rick D’Aprile, a vice president. By contrast, rides such as Ferris wheels cost $1,000 to $3,000 a year.

And some rides, like the Adrenaline Drop, the company won’t insure, D’Aprile said. “That free-fall ride; we don’t touch that one,” he said.

By their nature, extreme rides morph rapidly. Within a decade, bungee rides went higher and then backward, and free falls offered the bungee thrill without the bungee cord.

The more intense the ride, the more intensely its operators should be trained, said Ken Martin, a ride safety consultant based in Richmond, Va.

Usually, he said, amusement injuries result from rider error. On extreme rides, however, more responsibility falls on the operator to strap in riders properly, to let them fall or jump only after safety mechanisms are in place.

His fear, echoed by other safety experts, is that fairs will feel pressure to put the popular extreme ride from their neighbor’s fair on their midway, without maximum safety training for its operators. Or worse, that the popular rides will get even more extreme.

“Someone would have to set a precedent by not keeping up with the Joneses,” Martin said.

More likely, experts say, is that the future will bring more envelope-pushing ideas.

The U.S. Patent Office has issued at least one patent for a “human free-flight catapult,” according to its Web site. The ride would shoot its rider “into the air in much the same fashion as ancient armies would hurl large boulders over the walls of castles.” The rider would glide to the ground with a parachute.