Tsunami now a sensative word?

Coastaplaya, don't be a troll.

If my uncle was shot, I wouldn't be furious at people for riding Silver Bullet and I wouldn't demand a name change, that's for sure. I wouldn't even think about it.
*** Edited 1/6/2005 10:04:51 PM UTC by Den***

Jeremy: Who makes Silver Bullets, anyway? Aren't they used to kill vampires, werewolves and other make-believe creatures?

If they had named it Flying Bloods or something, that would be different, wouldn't it?

For all you Dorito-munching keymashers following along at home, try this: Get up from your comfy chair and walk the streets of Manhattan wearing a T-shirt with the Twin Towers and the words GET OVER IT. See how long you live. Go on, do it. Talk is cheap.

Now considering the Tsunami killed oh 45-50 times MORE people than that incident, perhaps it should be taken seriously. When the entire population of North Las Vegas, NV or Naperville, IL or Warren, MI--every single person--dies of snakebite or bear attack, then and only then can your pathetic little comparisons forward.

-CO

I agree with Gonch, don't get me started as well.

WTF? What are they going to change the Tsunami coaster's name as well?

Why just they just go the whole nine yards and change ALL coasters' names to Coaster 1, Coaster 2, that way NOBODY would be *offended*.

There is nothing more annoying than political correctness, at least at this insane level.

We are all affected by what happened and all the lives that were lost, but let's get real.

Tsunami's (as in the mother nature's wrath) isn't exactly *pleasant* nor are Hurricanes, Tornados, Tidal Waves, Lightning, or Storms for that matter.

Hell, even a "Demon" and a "Rebel Yell" created BS at one time.

But THEY are just COASTERS! Please. This is SO wrong.

This is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard since saying "Merry Christmas" was considered "offensive".

-Tina

*** Edited 1/6/2005 10:22:33 PM UTC by coasterqueenTRN***

We're all affected? How?

We open a paper and say, "Wow, that's a lotta dead people! Now pass the hot coffee brewed from the plentiful, clean water supply I still have."

The truly intelligent among us are the ones humbled by the realization of what they DON'T know.

I realize I have no idea what ten dead people look like, much less a hundred or a thousand. I certainly don't know what it's like to watch them die or fight for my own life while others lose theirs. But I do know losing one of my own is one too many.

-CO

Before I begin, I'm using the quote as a jumping off place for my thoughts. I'm not directly responding to you, Playa.

"Get up from your comfy chair and walk the streets of Manhattan wearing a T-shirt with the Twin Towers and the words GET OVER IT. See how long you live. Go on, do it. Talk is cheap."

Of course doing that would be a terrible and stupid thing to do. I doubt you'll find anyone who disagrees with you. But I don't think that's what parks with rides named after tsunamis, earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, etc., are doing.

I think at some point you have to draw the line as to what is offensive and what is not. And yes I realize that line will be different for everyone. But at some point it gets out of hand. Should people stop naming their kids "Jeffrey" because someone named Jeffrey Dahmer killed a lot of people?

Sure, perhaps building a new ride and calling it Tsunami might not be the best idea, and even worse would be building that ride near or in the area affected by the recent natural disaster. But I don't think rides with existing names should have to change unless the park feels it would be in their best interest to do so.

I don't think any park is intentionally naming their rides to inflict emotional pain and I think any rational person can understand it.

YMMV.

There were thousands of Jeffreys before there was a Dahmer just as there were plenty of Adolphs before Hitler. Irrelevant at best.

But just in the context of good marketing sense, it's not too bright to name things that create an unwanted mental image.

Remember Ayds diet candy before scientists gave the end-stage disease caused by HIV infection a name? Exactly.

I think many perfectly rational park owners and folks interested in making a buck will change the names...and mainly, because they ARE rational. And wanna make a buck.

-'Playa

While I think it's a bit much, I CAN see the park's (and Playa's) point.

Remember, folks, we live in a world where people were protesting the second Lord of the Rings title ("The Two Towers"), which had NOTHING to do with 9/11. Meanwhile, water rides named "Tsunami" are a bit more relevant to the disaster.

(As for the "Get over it" shirt, while I wasn't in Manhattan at the time I would personally take great offense to it on behalf of my S.O., who not only lives in Manhattan but had rubble raining down on her when the towers came down. I'm grateful every day that on that particular morning she didn't have to go just a few more blocks south...)

Playa - not having a go at you but what affected me was reading on the bbc website on boxing day morning that a few hundred people had been killed by an earthquake of around 9.0 causing a tsunami and the sense of foreboding that brought. I hoped against hope all the time knowing pretty much what was coming.

It is the scale of this that makes it pretty unique, the way I feel now is that I appreciate the things I take for granted even more. I am glad to be living in a country where the weather/environment is pretty crappy but at least it does not have the extremes that places hit here have. Hell, I'll even be grateful for M&Ds park and their tsunami inverted Pinfari. Well maybe not.

I am glad that I can make a mug of hot chocolate and appreciate the ease of that compared to those affected. Still doesn't make me feel happy though. I'm doing what I can to help.

-Jim

I agree with Moosh and others in the sense that a pre-existing ride with a name such as Tsunami shouldn't be changed, especially if it's a non-water roller coaster ride. Nobody's going to go around naming a new water slide "GIANT TSUNAMI OF DEATH TO MANY!!"...it's just stupid, agreed!

But if you, Playa, notice our examples, many of them are based on either natural disasters or folklore, and have no pre-existing basis in disasters or stuff like that. It's a "thrill" ride, not a "let's offend people" ride. Besides, they've been there for a while, or were named before the disaster happened, so I don't think they should be affected by this "political correctness" crap.

Oh and I think, Playa, that your example of "GET OVER IT"...is completely ridiculous and stupid...way above the contexts of what we're talking about here, we're talking about the names of amusement park rides...nobody's gone and named a ride "9/11: THE TOWER FALLS" or anything hideously awful like that. And yes we all feel like crap about what happened over there with the tsunami and flooding and deaths, we wish that on nobody...you're just making this naming of coasters thing into a much bigger deal than what it should be!

Ok end of my rant...

Equally annoying is knowing that the people who will lead the letter writing/ public awareness campaign to have the titles of a few amusement park rides changed will congratulate themselves for their great service to all of mankind. And that's about all they'll do.

And those who would refuse to go on a ride with such a title, I say "big deal"-- it does nothing to alleviate anyone's suffering or helpthe survivors get their lives back. Now THAT kind of action is as cheap as talk.

I've already heard reference to a "tsunami of generosity" asking people to contribute to relief efforts. Is that in bad taste as well? It's the same word isn't it? And when it comes down to it, they're all just words. If we got rid of every word that could someone somewhere could equate with suffering or sadness, we'd probably have few words left. What a blah sanitized world we'd have then.

OK, getting off my soapbox now. It's just that I can't stand phony misplaced indignance.

P.S. My father and 1 grandfather had black lung disease. Please join me in my campaign to eliminate "mine rides" from all parks.

But you'd agree the scale to which we're affected is significantly less than those on the same continent, no?

9/9/01 found me at DP and I spent 9/10 driving home--but that hardly means 9/11 affected me the same as my little girls who happened to be watching television with Playette as it happened or my friends who watched fragments falling from the towers across the Hudson...only to realize those weren't pieces of the building.

Both the WTC tragedy and the recent tsunami cost too much in human lives to wave my hand at it and mumble about political correctness. But that's just me.

-'Playa

Please check the lists in this link and this link and then explain to me why it is perfectly acceptible to name a ride after the same types of natural disasters that appear on those lists and yet 'tsunami' is unacceptible.

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Mamoosh said:

Sure, perhaps building a new ride and calling it Tsunami might not be the best idea, and even worse would be building that ride near or in the area affected by the recent natural disaster. But I don't think rides with existing names should have to change unless the park feels it would be in their best interest to do so.

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Mamoosh, you seem like a perfectly reasonable person outside of your disappointment with Cyclops ;) , doesn't it seem reasonable that a park would not want to name their wave pool, an attraction already associated with some accidental drownings, after one of the largest mass drownings in history?

I really don't think this is about being sensitive; it's about business and what you don't want your park's image to be associated with.

Oh, and I was in Manhattan when the planes crashed and I think that shirt would be funny. But that's just me.

There has been billions of people throughout time killed by many natural disasters, animals, and even automobiles. This tsunami disaster just happened in a time where people take things like a coaster name WAY too seriously, when the coaster has nothing to do with it.

Playa, I certianly haven't seen thousands of people die (in person) either, but I don't take things like death for granted. It's just NOT going to change things by going so far as renaming a coaster just because a minority of people actually find the name "offensive". I don't find it offensive. That doesn't mean I am insensitive to what happened.

-Tina

<----who still can't figure out why "Banshee" was offensive.

*** Edited 1/6/2005 11:22:47 PM UTC by coasterqueenTRN***

Look at the end of what you quoted from my post: "unless the park feels it would be in their best interest to do so."

I have absolutely no problem with a park changing a ride's name if they feel compelled to do so. My questions were "where do we draw the line?" and "why is it acceptible for some words [hurricane, tornado, etc] and not others?"

I'm asking this for discussion purposes only.

Considering the amount of people that were affected by the recent hurricanes, that is a great question.

-Tina

Everyone draws the line somewhere different in the sand, I am aware of this and just wanted to make it clear before I continue. One man's 'acceptable' is another's 'horrifying' - that cannot be denied.

Now the opinion piece starts :)

The line has moved WAY too far.

Playa's examples all seem compare preventable acts of violence and horror to natural things that just occur. Bottom line: Sh*t happens.

Calling a ride "The Baby Murderer" would be not only poor taste but offensive to just about anyone with a conscious as well. (poor taste and offensive are two entirely seperate things, BTW) As would be bumper cars named "DUI Frenzy, or Drive-By" - there's a million example, but you see where I'm going with it.

As sad as it is, the world is not a safe place. This has nothing to do with the morons that inhabit the planet, but rather the planet itself is not safe. Earthquakes, hurricanes, blizzards, avalanches, tornados, tropical storms, landslides, plagues of locusts, whatever. We as human have to accept and deal with it.

One great way to deal with it is to name harmless amusement rides after such occurances as a way of 'challenging' and 'defeating' such danger.

Seems to me like a good place to draw the line. Do what you can with what you can't change (natural distaster type scenarios) and stay away from what you can (murder, terrorism, hate, war).

Not sure why the line has to move because of one event. Tsunami meant the same thing 2 weeks ago, 2 years ago and 2 lifetimes ago as it does today. The connotations of naming a ride such is exactly the same.

I understand the sheer number of lives lost make this a tagedy, but it's still not even in the same game as something like the WTC - something that was done of anger and malevolence. This was one of those things that as terrible as it is... just happens.

Now this may be my twisted thinking, but to me keeping with the Tsnami name seems like a better idea. It givesus a chance to challenge such threats in a safe manner (as I described above) in a timely fashion and maybe even have to "think about it" a little in the process.

But for some reason the continued wussification of the populous goes unchalleneged and rather than deal with life and face the problems, we just change names and forget tragedy.

Sure beats renaming every roller coaster "The happy funtime sparkle coaster" and decorating it with clouds, angels and unicorns - then I'd be forced to kill someone and that would end all chance of a coaster named "Gonchar"...

...and that sucks. :)

Thank you, Gonch, for explaining how I feel better than I was able to do.

Sparklers and Unicorns can be dangerous, I prefer "Coaster 1, Coaster 2". ;-)

-Tina

Unicorns are only dangerous if you piss them off. Otherwise they're quite timid.

In fantasy worlds, rural kids go Unicorn Tipping instead of Cow Tipping. :)