Customer Reviews

Wild & Extreme Rides Box Set [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Thrill Rides Box Set includes an excellent variety of coverage of some of today's most adrenalin-inducing rides and attractions. For any thrillseeker and/or pure fun-lover, these videos can serve as a remedy for amusement park off-season "down time." Highlights include a few extremely entertaining experiments on one of the world's tallest freefall rides (Pitfall at Kennywood in West Mifflin, PA) (one involves strapping heart-rate monitors to four riders who have never been on the giant freefall), interesting historical film clips of old rides in action, and a bunch of point of view shots of new rides. (I agree, however, with the reviewer below, that there is not enough uninterrupted POV shots on many of the rides.) One of the most entertaining segments involves an absolutely terrified Busch Gardens employee that decides to ride one of the roller coasters for one of the segments on "Fear." (Sickly enough, I love to feel sorry for her and love to watch her reaction each time I view her few minutes of fame. She rides Alpengeist, the worlds largest inverted coaster.) Please take note that this box set includes Wild Rides, Wild Rides 2, *and* Extreme Rides. Enjoy the rides and trivia!

Coaster fans-- you,ve come to the right place! These three inter-related videos are chock-full of great ride footage (off-ride and on-board POV's),interviews with designers, park owners and air-time addicts like us! From the Coney Island Cyclone to the Texas Giant--from the Magnum XL-200 to Alpengeist and Riddler's Revenge-- they're all here! My only nit to pick is a bit too much time spent on non-coaster (i.e. bungee-type "sky coaster") attractions, etc. and not quite enough uninterrupted on-board POV footage (For more of that check out the excellent series of tapes from Goldhil Video 'America's Greatest Roller Coaster Thrills in 3D' vols.1&2 and 'World's Greatest Roller Coaster Thrills in 3D'). But, hey-- it's not a bad trade-off considering the high overall quality of these productions. Naturally, everyone has their favorite "pet" coasters, and they can't all be represented here, but from hard-core "G-Monsters" to the casual coaster fan , I think there's something here for everyone. I particularly enjoyed--and I must confess to a bit of sadistic hard-core coaster glee here--seeing one poor young woman screaming in pure terror in the relentless grip of Alpengeist! "You lied! You lied!" she shouts at the girlfriend who assured her it was just going to be a nice, fun ride! My score: two arms up!

Straight from the Discovery Channel come Wild Rides, Wild Rides 2, and Extreme Rides, all of which contain some amazing footage of one of America's growing industries. If you enjoy going to amusement parks for not only the thrills but the visual environment, the Thrill Rides box set is a great eye-fill. Some of the highlights of the videos are the point-of-view perspectives on the rides themselves, as well as rapid-fire editing from shot to shot that actually enhances the excitement of the subjects even more. The "heartbeat experiment" on one of the world's highest freefall rides is entertaining after watching it more than a few times. For the price of one day at an amusement park, take home the best attractions from amusement parks around the U.S., and experience them again and again.

It is a pitty that it is of no use ordering this video's since it is only ment for US and Canada video recorders. It would be nice if the video's could also be made available for Europe without the need of special equipment. Therefor I rate this video box with zero stars. However that is not possible in the rating system, so I gave it one star By the way: the same is valid for a number of other video's and DVD's. I would order more if this problem could be solved