Keeping your screams silent on a roller coaster
Visitors take a ride on a rollercoaster at the Toshimaen amusement park in Tokyo on Monday.
It might be the unlikeliest instructional video ever, but footage of two Japanese amusement park executives showing how to “scream inside your heart” to avoid spreading COVID-19 while on a roller coaster has been a roaring success.
“Now our customers stay silent while riding on roller coasters,” a spokeswoman for amusement park operator Fujikyuko said, after the video on riding etiquette for the coronavirus era went viral.
The video features the executives, one in a full suit and tie, the other in a shirt and bowtie, sitting stiffbacked and straightfaced in silence, with the only sounds coming from the whipping of the wind and the grinding of the roller coaster.
As they plunge downwards, one executive serenely readjusts his hair, and his face mask, but both otherwise remain stoically silent, even as they sway violently in the coaster car.
At the end of the ride, one man lifts his hands off the seat handles, trembling. A black screen follows featuring advice that some social media users have dubbed a slogan for 2020: “scream inside your heart.”
The video was first posted last month, as coronavirus restrictions eased and theme parks asked visitors to avoid screaming and keep social distance.
“Even though the park association’s guidelines ask you to ‘refrain from speaking loudly’ we have received complaints it is ‘difficult’ or ‘impossible,’ so Fujikyu Highland offers a good example,” the operator said on its website with the video.
