Vicarious Planetary Thrill Rides in Planetarium

It's been years since I've ridden a roller coaster, or any other theme park ride for that matter.  I miss those experiences, but not the lengthy travel times to and from the parks, not to mention the tedious, long lines for different rides once I manage to finally get inside a park.  But earlier this afternoon, I managed to get back at least of little of those old thrills without the long travel, long lines...or even the expense.  How? I paid a visit to my local Santa Fe College planetarium, where they were presenting a show titled SpacePark360: Geodesium Edition. It consisted of a set of nine imaginary thrill rides, one on each of the major planets (or one of their moons) starting with Mercury and going further out, with an extra one on "the way back" on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io.  Some of the rides were swinging rides, other were "twisters",  and the best were roller coasters.  Nine pretty cool rides set on exotic worlds.  Most of the planets and moons depicted as sites for the rides were interesting, although Venus and Jupiter were mostly a bunch of clouds...while Earth's rocket launch pad setting, coupled with the limited ride, wasn't very impressive.  But the scenes depicted for Mercury, Mars, Saturn (from Titan), Uranus (from its ring system), Neptune, (from Triton), and that finale on Io were vivid and memorable.  James Albury was there at the planetarium again, narrating the show...and he took my money at the entrance as well, automatically giving me the "senior" discount.  Oh well. 

I suppose that this vicarious thrill ride experience is probably going to be the way to go for me in the foreseeable future. The roller coaster on Neptune's moon Triton was a hanging coaster very similar to Montu at Busch Gardens, which incidentally is my favorite roller coaster ride of all time (I've ridden it 26 times, I believe). The others were more like that same park's Kumba coaster, also an old favorite.  I wasn't as happy with the non-coaster rides, although the opening one on Mercury reminded me of Pharaoh's Fury at Valdosta's Wild Adventures (I've ridden that one 27 times).  At the close of the show, Mr. Albury hinted that the company that produced this show is soon coming out with a sequel: I can hardly wait!!!