High Rollers

For 18-year-old Jeff Tolotti, coasters are not life itself. "I also enjoy free falls," he says of rides like the Cedar Point Power Tower, in which human cargo is hoisted in a harness up a 24-story obelisk, then dropped to earth in 2.3 seconds.

"And I like really big, really fast spinning rides," says Breymier.

"These are known in the industry," says Kennywood's Rosemeyer, "as Spin-'n'-Barfs."

To barf, on the serious-hardcore coaster circuit, is to lose it, and nearly everyone loses it eventually. "It takes me a lot of rides," says Marks, "like 27 consecutive at Six Flags St. Louis." When a Los Angeles helicopter pilot—a Vietnam combat pilot turned traffic reporter—loses it on Viper at Magic Mountain, as happened a couple of years ago on the world's tallest looping coaster, what chance do the rest of us have?

While marathon champion Rodriguez was living in the sixth car of the Big Dipper in Blackpool last summer, a press photographer joined him to take his portrait with the coaster in motion. As Rodriguez said "Cheese," the photographer lost it. Says Rodriguez, who has an almost courtly way of speaking, "I've also had regular passengers get ill near me."

"I lost it on Akbar yesterday," Breymier said in Orlando last January, referring to Akbar's Adventure Tours, a "simulator ride" at Busch Gardens in Tampa. "There's one scene where you're riding on a camel, up and down, up and down on a tour through Egypt, and I just lost it." He said this in the manner of a fullback facing the press after a fumble. Then Breymier boarded the Hulk for a 10th straight time, before his ERT expired.

What, exactly, is the appeal? Several enthusiasts told me that riding a coaster is better than sex. In some cases, this was clearly a matter of conjecture. In others, evidently, it is sex. "The back car is for your heavy-metal S&M crowd, people who like a lot of whip action," says Ruben, to which we can only say that, in addition to ERT, there is something called TMI: Too Much Information.

Gerald Menditto practices abstinence. He has operated the Coney Island Cyclone for 25 years but has, astonishingly, ridden the infernal thing only twice. Menditto is what is known in the trade as a chicken. Ask coaster architect Toomer, whose 80 rides include the superlative Magnum XL-200 at Cedar Point, to name his favorite machine, and he responds with a good, long chuckle. "You mean to ride?" says the 69-year-old former mechanical engineer. "Oh, I don't ride 'em. Oh, no. Haven't for years. I get motion sickness real bad. The bigger ones, I get sick as a dog on those."

These coasterphobes play a vital role in the amusement-park ecosystem. "They're a good thing," says Ruben, who has ridden more than 4,000 miles on 525 coasters. "Someone has to hold our change." "We don't laugh at people who are afraid of snakes," says Brian Newmark, a Harvard-trained psychologist in suburban Boston, "but we laugh at people who are afraid of roller coasters." We should not. Newmark, who has treated coasterphobia, cites the case of a 55-year-old man married for several years to a rollerweenie whose passion he desperately wanted to share. "It was an obstacle in his life," says Newmark. "The question with a phobia is, Does it interfere with daily function? When parents are fearful, children sense that and become habitually fearful of the world around them."

Coasterphobia has not always been an irrational fear. When the infamous Crystal Beach (Ont.) Cyclone opened in 1927, a full-time nurse was employed at the unloading platform. The coaster had a 97-foot first drop into an 85-degree right turn. "Hats, purses, combs and false teeth all flew out on that turn," says Ruben, 62, who grew up in nearby Niagara falls, N.Y. "Riders were thrown into their seatmates and cracked their ribs." By the end of the Cyclone's run, in 1946, more people were watching this ghoulish spectacle than participating in it.