NC investigators looking into shoot-out stunt accident

Am I the only one who finds this kind of show to be sort of an archaic thing to show at a family theme park?

The main street shootout/show at Ghost Town was one of the most entertaining, unique theme park shows I've ever had the pleasure of enjoying. My kids even wanted to mingle about after and meet and take photos with the actors.

I'd like to see more of this sort of thing.

Kids should never be allowed to ever see a gun ever.

LOL.

Oh, I find it archaic as well as ridiculous. Shoot out shows like that send a strange message. I'm not sure what they're trying to be, but they're more of a Hollywood stunt show than a recreation of something historic, that's for sure. Yesteryear, parks had something like that usually associated with the train ride or something. Most of them have gone away now, and I think for good reason. SDC, for instance, features a train stop that includes actors in a comedy about hapless mountain guys engaging in a harmless holdup with no shooting and no "dead" participants.

I feel like I'm reading joke CoasterBuzz.

Seriously? We're hating on 'Old West' style live entertainment?

Also wondering how many have actually seen the show in question & how it's presented and integrated into the park.

Ghost Town itself is archaic. That's the point.

Yeah, I thought this kind of stuff was the whole point of a Ghost Town visit. It'd sort of be like people choosing to attend a pirate dinner and then complaining about the sword fight.

If it's a niche that one doesn't agree with, then they shouldn't go. There are plenty of other family parks that are completely free of violence.

Lord Gonchar said:

I feel like I'm reading joke CoasterBuzz.

Seriously? We're hating on 'Old West' style live entertainment?

I WAS joking.

Lord Gonchar said:

Ghost Town itself is archaic. That's the point.

And I was going to say this exact same thing but I thought deadpanning it would be better.

I mean, you have to take a ski lift just to get up to the park! How's that for capacity in the 21st century?

Hmmm...

I'm not hating on old west style entertainment. It works just fine at SDC. It's a convention of the old west, I suppose, to believe that there were mid-street shoot outs everyday complete with guys falling from tops of buildings and lawmen always winning. And I'll concede it's still a likely fit for a place like Ghost Town.

Alright, go ahead and have your shoot-em-up show, just don't aim that flying shrapnel at me, please.

IIRC, the train at Silverwood also has a show mid-cycle that contains no shooting. But, yeah, I see no issue with this at all. If you want to get rid of this, you might as well ban television, movies and music too.

I don't mind violent movies, but live action gun violence just doesn't seem like entertainment to me. If that's just me, that's ok.

I like the dancing girls in the video on the Black Mountain News site. They should have more of that in theme parks.

I have never seen the show in question. But to me, a live action gun show in an Old West venue is no worse than much of the violent, demented, twisted, etc. stuff on TV and in movie theaters. Though with the memory of watching Captain America filming outside my office with actors playing cops firing thousands of rounds of ammo into an SUV over and over fresh in my mind, maybe I am desensitized to the idea of a few actors with 6 shooters staging an old west gun fight.

I'm going to surprise some people by saying that I have ZERO issues with the staged gunfight. However, I am going to wonder aloud (on this forum) how it is that someone got injured in a *fake* gunfight. Clearly I need an education on "blanks" and how one could be injured by someone firing a weapon without ammunition....

Yeah even discounting violence on screen, this isn't nearly as 'bad' as any park's Halloween event.

I love the one at Knott's. Humorous and quite loud. They don't actually aim at each other though. They either shoot at feet or towards the pincer that the blacksmith uses to "catch" bullets.

But wow what a mess up on that hill! No water? Are you kidding me?

rollergator said:

Clearly I need an education on "blanks" and how one could be injured by someone firing a weapon without ammunition....

http://io9.com/5972313/why-a-gun-loaded-with-blanks-can-still-kill-you

That article explains about the concussion that can be deadly but doesn't explain where the shrapnel came from. I also wonder where the flying metal came from.

Jason Hammond said:

http://io9.com/5972313/why-a-gun-loaded-with-blanks-can-still-kill-you

I was confused about how someone could be injured by a blank too, and this article did not help. The person hit with shrapnel was likely not shot with the gun in direct contact with his body....