Few rides can compare to this masterpiece of awfulness. Its sheer presence is one of a giant buzzsaw ready to inflict suffering upon anyone daring enough to ride. Its combination of broken lights and long crusty light tubes are simply sickening to ones sight. Its tiny caged cars are like little prison cells with the sole purpose of making you nauseous over the next two or more minutes. Yes…that perfectly describes our number one White Trash Carnie Ride…enter the Sky Diver.

The Sky Diver is a Chance Rides monstrosity that was seen virtually everywhere back in its heyday and up until 1994 or so when they went through a mass extinction of sorts. For all intents and purposes the Sky Diver is a ferris wheel…a ferris wheel thats design may have been outsourced to Satan by Chance Rides that is. The Skydiver sports small caged cars that are able to rotate horizontally while the wheel turns vertically. The ride has copious amounts of lighting; unfortunately the original color scheme is the equivalent of a rainbow from the 1970s puking. The small caged cars that riders are squeezed into are able to roll upsidedown; the cars were even equipped with a steering wheel that allowed riders to rotate the cars as they wish! Sounds like fun, huh?

NO!!!!!

According to some riders, the steering wheel was very tough to move. If you couple this with the fact that the cars are a bit top heavy, riders may find that the cars will remain upsidedown for much longer than any normal human being can stand. The riders might be able to flip their car right side up, but it’s likely that this will occur seconds before blacking out after they, due to an endorphin rush, manage to muster superhuman strength to flip the car.

As far as appearance, other than the retchid tube lights, a Sky Diver looks kind of like a surgeon’s instrument. The two supports on either side of the wheel are extendable, hinged X supports which look very cheap and machine like. As mentioned before, the wheel itself looks like a saw blade which completes its baneful appearance.

The Ride

I have never been on this ride, but I will ride a Sky Diver…one day. Instead of a commentary on how the ride is, here is a comment from DoD3 reader Brooke G. about her experience with the Skydiver’s diabolical restraint system.

“The way up isn’t bad, you’re laying on your back (kind of like a Toboggan [Note: a Chance made 'Toboggan' ride] lift hill). It would have been a lot more fun if the way down wasn’t so uncomfortable — Your car is pointed straight down, so you are literally hanging over the lap bar on your stomach. No matter how much flipping around you do (my friend and I tried), you can’t make it any more comfortable. Plus, you get stopped on the way down while they unload and load everything, so you are constantly stopped hanging over the bar. When I went to Lakemont and realized that they had one, I stayed away from it as much as I could.”

For now I can only wonder what this horrid machine can dish out. The problem is, as I noted in the first section, you just can’t find these things anymore! The last time I saw one was back in 1996 maybe. Most companies seem to have gotten rid of their Skydivers, probably because they look scary in a dangerous sort of way.

Video

Here’s a nice on-ride video by JamminJay1986. It’s about what I assumed a SkyDiver to be like, right down to the screams of “oh shit”, “ow that hurts”, and “oh my nuts.”

Back to WTCR