Take a Mountain Coaster Ride, All the Thrills You Can Stand

Let me start by saying this, just so you know - when it comes to thrill rides, I am pretty much of a wimp.

It's only been in about the ten years that I worked up the nerve to ride a Ferris Wheel. Yeah, I know, for most people, that would hardly qualify as a thrill ride.

Then there's the roller coaster. The closest I've come to riding a coaster was in the early days of Six Flags, when they ran a movie called The Chevy Show, and I would get queasy just watching what we would now call a virtual ride.

Now, roller coasters have been around for a long time, and now they've gone to another level. While most coasters have a number of cars joined together so a couple of dozen people can ride at once, there's now something called a "mountain coaster."

Remember watching the Winter Olympics, specifically the luge event? Basically, one person on a sled, careening down a winding course at about a jillion miles an hour. Upgrade the sled (a little), put it on a winding track through the Ozarks and you have a mountain coaster.

The Copperhead Mountain Coaster opened earlier this year at Shepherd of the Hills in Branson, Missouri.

If you look at the promotional video, it looks harmless enough.

And then there's this.

I will admit, it looks interesting, and if I had a grandkid who begged me to ride it with them, I would probably go, but I would do my best not to enjoy it.