Ninety-four seconds I will never forget, by Marcus Abbatt

An original contemporary online review.

Let me be honest from the start: I do not like rollercoasters. I do not like ladders. I once had to be talked down from a stepladder in a hardware shop. So when my editor asked me to ride the Leviathan, the new £16 million coaster at Harrowdale Adventure Park, on its opening weekend, I said yes for the same reason people say yes to dentists. I assumed it would be over quickly.

It is over quickly. Ninety-four seconds, to be precise. They are the longest ninety-four seconds of my life.

You see the Leviathan long before you reach the park. It rises out of the flat Lincolnshire fields like the skeleton of some enormous creature, a tangle of red steel that peaks at 61 metres. The first drop is angled at 92 degrees, which, as a helpful teenager in the queue explained to me, means it actually curves back underneath itself. I thanked him. I did not mean it.

The queue took an hour and ten minutes, which is exactly enough time to read every warning sign twice. Then, suddenly, I was being strapped into the front row by a cheerful attendant who checked my harness, patted it twice, and said ‘Enjoy!’ in the tone of someone who knew something I didn’t.

The climb is the worst part. The train clanks upwards, slowly, slowly, tilting you onto your back until all you can see is sky. The fields shrink. The cars in the car park become sweets. At the very top, the train stops. Nobody tells you it is going to stop. It simply hangs there, your feet dangling over nothing, for three full seconds, while the person beside you whispers something that is probably a prayer.

Then the floor of the world falls away.

I would like to describe the seconds that followed in detail, but I had my eyes shut for most of them. I remember a scream that I am told was mine. I remember being pressed into my seat as if by a giant hand, then lifted out of it so violently that my harness was the only thing between me and Lincolnshire. I remember two loops, a sideways twist that turned my stomach inside out, and a tunnel so dark and so sudden that I was briefly certain I had died.

And then it was over. The train glided into the station, the harness lifted, and I discovered that my legs had been replaced with something like wet string. The teenager from the queue gave me a thumbs up.

Here is the strange thing. As I walked unsteadily towards the exit, past the booth where a photograph of my face, frozen in pure horror, was on sale for £12, I found myself looking back at that red steel tangle. My heart was still hammering. My hands were still shaking. And somewhere, very quietly, a voice in my head was saying: again.

Riding the Leviathan is described as a terrifying experience. How does the writer try to show this?

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