King Arthur Goes to Disneyland!

There's the amusement park that has the ride that has the cars that go through the house that is filled with the ghosts that are shot by the guns that are on the cars that go through the haunted house. It's a great idea for an amusement park ride--a ride where you don't just sit back, but rather have to do something. And try to remember where things jump out at you so whomever you're on the ride with doesn't laugh at you too horribly. But it's a wonderful conglomeration of two enjoyable parts of an amusement park: the rides and the games.

Each rider is given a gun that is used to shoot the ghosts. Each ghost you shoot gives you points, and the car keeps track of who has how many points (my best was around 700 points, the best of the group I was in was closer to 2500). It adds an element of competition to the ride, either against others in your group or simply against yourself. Or you can ignore the shooting part and just ride through the haunted house. Which is really silly to do, as it's pretty lame for a haunted house.

Competition would make any amusement park ride better, though. Finding the proper way to compete on these is the difficult part. Obviously, taken to a more extreme variation, roller-coasters could be improved by the same method. But they'd require more skill as they move more quickly, and to make things even more interesting the targets could also be moving. Ghosts are apparently rather sedentary. Parrots eat nuts and fruit. Then, of course, it'd be even better if there were multiple roller-coaster cars going at the same time, and you had to shoot the passengers in the other car. You know, extra competition. Sure, there was a laser-tag course there too, but you don't get the roller-coaster with that!

But, really, any ride could be made better with competition. Since you don't /have/ to compete to ride the ride, it doesn't even detract from those that prefer not to compete. So you got a low score? So what, you got to /enjoy/ the view!

Sadly, laser-tag-type competition doesn't work well for every ride. Take the ski-lift ride, you know, those really slow-moving things? Guns wouldn't improve that much. But it seems a great way to practice your jousting.