Replies

As I said in another post, I attend theme parks dozens of times a year, throughout the country. I’ve been at theme parks in minority cities, during various special events, and I’ve never felt in any way threatened or otherwise in fear for my life. I would never suggest that it was necessary to stay away from such things (If you were buying a one-day ticket, I’d tell you to ignore a special event unless it was a concert, because of the extra crowds, but that’s another thing altogether).

The National Zoo incident didn’t actually occur IN the park, it was just outside the park. But you should know the National Zoo isn’t a “park”, it has no gate, you just walk in and come and go as you please (it’s free to the public). I’m a member of the zoo (in order to support the park, and I get free parking). I’ve never seen any indication of danger at the park, or even walking outside the park as I’ve occasionally done.

There are places I wouldn’t walk in the city.

There are of course occasional things that happen at a theme park, just like there are occasional things that happen everywhere. In college I worked for a defense contractor, and we had a small “riot” at a ball game because someone slid too hard into home. My involvement was to carefully grab a bat out of the hands of one team member who was about to hit someone over the head with it. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t ever play softball again.

Which was my point. You can find examples of bad things happening, but that’s almost the opposite of showing that something bad is necessarily going to happen. We had a space shuttle blow up twice, but that didn’t mean we should never fly them. We had kids occasionally shoot up schools, but schools are safer than most places.