I'm scared of rollercoasters. Can I get over my fear?

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♪ ("In the Hall of the Mountain King") I've wanted to get over my phobia of rollercoasters for a very, very long time. This seemed like such a good idea six months ago, when we planned it. Like... actually being here... actually being at Alton Towers... That was a problem for future me, and now I am future me, and this sucks. To be clear, this is an actual phobia. I am irrationally afraid of this. And if you're thinking, "Oh, he's done all the elements before, he's gonna be fine"... It's the rollercoaster. It's the click-click-click up the hill. It's the being strapped in. It's all the elements of that I'm afraid of. The team here are giving me backstage access. They're letting me see behind the scenes. For the infrastructure nerd in me, this is great. I'm gonna get to see how it all works. (laughs) And I really appreciate it. I love that I'm gonna get to see this. I am so thankful to them. But... it's not gonna help. (anguished chuckling) This is gonna suck...! No, it's not. I need to remember that it's not— It's gonna be fine. It's gonna be fine. I just need to breathe through it. It's gonna be fine. (music swells) (crowd screaming) (nervous chatter) (crowd shrieks) ♪♪ Good morning, Tom. Morning, Jordan. How are you? (chuckles) Nervous, but I think less nervous than I would be at a bigger ride. Like, Runaway Mine Train is... it's all-ages, right? Yeah, all ages, mate. Don't worry. I got you, mate. (exhales shakily) Nice and steady, let's go. (both chuckling) So Tom, the first thing we do, mate... we isolate the electricity just at this point. Just so we can make it safe to work on. Yeah. There's no electric shocks. This is a powered ride, right? Yeah, yeah. There's no freefall drop. Nope. It's— It's fine. It's like... You're not even harnessed in here, right? You've got a lap bar, but you're not full-on. Yeah, you've got a lap bar. You're not strapped in from the shoulders. Alright. And then what we do is we check the operators' log. We check that previously, the day before. Yeah. We've had no problems, just in here. Yeah. So everyone signs in, signs out. Anything even minor gets logged here, and... Safe as houses, mate. Right. It's not the safety I'm worried about. (laughs) It's the drop. It's just the drop. There's no drops here. No, there's not. This is a powered coaster. It's gonna be fine. Alright, Jordan. (sighs) This is fine. It's a powered coaster. It's fine. It doesn't do a freefall drop. It's just— This is a rollercoaster. This is just a normal powered coaster. (inhales sharply) Let's do it. Let's do it. This is fine. This is a kids' thing. It's a— That's locked in place now. Alright, cool. It's a kids' ride. It's fine. It's a kids' ride. It's not gonna do anything dramatic. You've done so much more than this before. You're gonna be okay. You're gonna be absolutely fine. Please secure any loose items, keeping your arms and legs inside the train at all times. Sit back, hold on tight, and enjoy the ride. Choo-choo. (laughs) I feel like the "choo-choo" was patronising! Oh, here we go, okay. Yeah, this is fine. It's fine. It's fine. I can do this. A-yup. Yep. Now, how's this drop? Yes, this is fine. Okay, as long as... What happens if I try and panic? Whoa, okay. Heh. I can control the panic feeling. Breathe through it, and you're fine. This is a kids' ride. This is absolutely fine. This is... ...you're fine. This is okay. This is, unfortunately... ...what I would call my limit. That little run through there... ...that's about all I want to do. And that's not where we're gonna stop. ♪ (uplifting adventure music) So I've got good news and bad news. The good news is, I am absolutely fine with this ride, Jordan. That's fine. Thank you very much. The bad news is... that... ...that feels like it's my limit. That feels like that's about as much as I like having my nerves wracked. And I know we're not gonna stop there. ♪ (hollow atmospheric music) Oh, that is steep. (sighs) (crow cawing) You can shut up. (chuckles weakly) (exhales, groans) I'm aware that this is a lot of people's dream. Like, closed theme park, behind the scenes, I'm aware how lucky I am. They're doing maintenance and testing. Every time there's a little "pssht" noise, (music intensifies) my heart jumps a bit. That is so much bigger... and so much faster... and it drops so much more steeply. (music climaxes, ends) Franklin. Hello. Hi Tom. How do you feel? Welcome to Wicker Man. That's really big. That's a lot... Runaway Mine Train... (stammers) This is... (stammers) I don't have words! I don't have words. You'll be fine. Come with me. (half-hearted laugh) So, this is the track. What we're gonna do this morning, we are checking, all along the track, all of the sensors and the electrical parts. I saw the team out there, doing the walkaround. Yeah, so we'll go there, and up to the top. We are? Yeah, we are. Oh! Okay, this I love. This is great. This does not involve being strapped in. Let's do it. Yeah okay, let's go. Awh. So see, we're making sure that the sensors are fixed. So, is that sensor checking the train position? Yeah, that flags the train, all along the track, to know where the train is. Like an old railway. It just checks there's one in each section. Yeah. It feels so wrong to be walking on a rollercoaster track. On the way up, we're checking all the cables. On the way down, all of the sensors. Yep. You're carefully inspecting. I don't know what you're looking for. I'm just inspecting the cable, to be sure that— You need to check every link, everything like that. Yeah. Everything's fine up to there. Yep. So... long chain up... into a sorta steady, slow drop here? I was expecting this to be a — (grunt) — immediately, but this is— this is a steady first descent. I might be okay with this? You'll be fine, yeah, no problem. You have more confidence than I do. So you've checked the lift hill. Yes. Team's checked the rest of the track. Sure. We're good to go. Yeah, good to go. Everything's fine. Alright. We're going to leave terrified earlier-me in limbo just for a minute, while I pay the bills. I just saved more than €500 on a week's car rental by using NordVPN. I'm in France as I record this. I was booking a car, and it seemed really expensive, far more than I usually pay. So on a hunch, I clicked NordVPN's magic button that made it look like I was still in the UK, and I tried a new booking enquiry. The price was suddenly less than half: €465 instead of more than €1000. Same company, same type of car, every single detail was the same. I went all the way to the credit card form for both, just to check. The only difference was that the company thought I was in the UK, and for some reason, that made it much, much cheaper. I haven't done a comprehensive survey of the 60 countries that NordVPN could've let me pretend to be in. Maybe there was an even cheaper option that I missed. There are other uses for VPNs, like accessing content that's geoblocked from you, or hiding the names of the sites you're visiting from whoever runs your internet connection. NordVPN had a whole list of talking points about their password manager, encrypted cloud storage, and threat protection that they wanted me to talk about. But I have just thrown those out in favour of the personal testimonial that using NordVPN has just saved me more than six times the cost of a two-year subscription. I can't guarantee it'll always be that good, of course, but if it doesn't work for you, then NordVPN have a 30-day money-back guarantee, so nothing lost. If you head to nordvpn.com/tomscottplus or click the link in the description, you'll find the best deal they're currently offering. Right, I think when we left off, I was having a very stressful morning. ♪ (horror-themed music) Full fear has just kicked in. Like... pit-of-the-stomach dread. Are you okay, Tom? No. Do you want me to come on with you? Are you sure? I can come on with you and hold your hand. That's not helpful. You sure? I've done so much more than this before. I've done— This is so much less than aerobatics. This is so much less than so many things I've done before. I'm just... just... absolutely terrified. I don't wanna do this. Do you want me to come on? Don't ask. Don't. You sure? (roars) Do it. Do it. (growls) (groans) 'Kay, 'kay, 'kay. No, you're calm, you're calm, you're calm, you're calm, you're calm, you're calm. (track clicking) No. (shouts angrily) No. You're not calm. You're not getting calm through this. You're gonna yell, you're gonna shout. You're gonna use noise. 'Cause there's no way you're gonna be able to breathe through this. (yells angrily) I can't feel my hands. I can't feel my hands. I can't feel my hands. I can't feel my hands. Argh... come on! Come on! Come on! Come on! Here we go! (grunts) (growls) (roars) Waaah! Waa-haa! This is fine. Gaaaaaah! This is fine, this is fine. I can do this. (squeals) I can do this. ...I can do this. I can... (laughs ecstatically) Woohoo! Yes! Yes! Yes! Come on! I can do this! (laughs) Yes! Have it! (groans) (sighs) Yus! (grunts) ♪ (music on speakers) (wheezes exhaustedly) I can't— I can't feel my hands. Please exit to your left. There is no escape to the right. Anyone who's scared of rollercoasters, Anyone— Like, if you hate that stomach-drop feeling of going over a hill, something like that... That's fear. I thought it was a physical thing. I thought it was your stomach, your internal organs detecting— It's not. It's just fear. 'Cause I went over the first hill, the first descent, and I felt that, and I was like, "I'm gonna hate this", and then it wasn't there. And then that was one of the best things I've ever done. Can we... Can we do that again? ♪ (dramatic music) My heart rate just spiked, just looking at the sign and hearing noise off in the distance. (sighs into groaning) I don't wanna do this, I don't wanna do this, I don't wanna do this. (inhales sharply) I blatantly do want to do this, but... (sighs) (distant coaster rolling) That's so much more! That is so much more, and your legs are dangling and... Mmmph! Gonna be honest, it's 50-50 whether I'm getting on this. Even after Wicker Man, it's 50-50. That's... Ohhh, I don't like that. I am extremely lucky and extremely privileged to be standing here out-of-hours. And I hate it. (wheezes) Oh! Oh, I just saw that! (laughs uproariously) You must be Andy. I am, yes Tom. Good to meet you. Welcome to Nemesis. This is your final stop. We've done the ride checks. We've done the walkaround. Checked it's all safe for you. It's not designed to be friendly. It's designed to scare the hell out of you. Yeah, that's part of the thing, getting your adrenaline going. It's part of the experience, you know. It's 700 metres long, 250 tons of steel. 81 kilometres an hour, top speed. Don't wanna frighten you any more, but you know. This is the leg-dangly one, right? It's the leg-dangly one, yeah. Left, right, up, down. You'll be okay. It's fine. (growls) You can stop laughing behind the camera! (machinery whirring) Just gonna take you through some of the checks we do on a daily basis. This is the Nemesis "pod", we call them. We have to undo the pod, lift it up, check the wheel bogie assembly underneath. Oh wow! Yeah, so... What we're doing in here, we're checking for free movement of the wheel bogie. So it moves freely, as it should. That's got a lot more movement than I thought it would have. So what it is, in the garage, the track's actually a lot thinner. Oh, okay! So we can actually check these things, for free movement, the wheels spin. When you're out on the track, it's a lot bigger. So everything's tighter and doing as it should. So everything here gets checked every morning? Yeah, everything. Every wheel, every train. Everywhere on park. All the chassis, everything. Everything you're looking at gets checked every day. Right. Then obviously, weekly, monthly, we go a bit more in-depth. So yeah, that's me done. Let's go power it up. (rasps) Okay. (track clicks on) (sighs) I was really into this. I forgot that I'm getting on this thing. I was really into— "Oh, this is really cool! I'm gonna get to—" You've gotta get on it now. "I get to see all the behind the scenes!" Yeah, then I realised what we're setting up here. (hydraulic brake hisses) That noise! I don't like that noise! So this whole track is gonna move over now? This whole track's gonna go. Yeah, I'll get out of the way. (locking pins clicking) Wow! (piston hisses, lock clicks) Wow. If you notice, when the track comes over, the locking pins come in. And we have to have that gap in the track, because when it heats up— I mean, it's like five millimetres. Yeah, the track expands. Oh, of course it does! Too close, they'd end up touching. That's one thing you gotta think about. Huh. (door creaking open) One step closer to you riding. Oh, that control panel! Ancient, isn't it? Oh, that's lovely! Right, shall we bring it in? Yeah, let's do it. So these two buttons here. I'm just bringing it in now. Oh, so it's two buttons. You can't accidentally hit anything. No. And it's a two-person operation. So what we've got here is a maintenance key for engineers, so we can bring it on around. But the ride stuff, when they're sending it, they can only do a two-person operation. Right, so one person here, and one person— And one person over there. Okay, shall we bring it in? Yeah, alright. (sighs) (mechanical grinding, hissing) (train clattering) It's the noise! It's always the noise! It's a pretty iconic noise, isn't it? Yeah... (exhales slowly) You ready? (mouths "No") (chuckles) But I never will be, so yeah. Let's get it over with. ♪ (tense pulsing music) (roars) (music intensifies) You good? No. But... (growls) I don't wanna do this. I— I— I do want to do this, but I really, really don't wanna do this. That doesn't go down any further, does it? (pained shout) (wails) (track clattering) Ohh! Oh, I don't like this! I don't like this. This is much more. This is much more. Oh no! Oh come on, be tighter! It doesn't— Oh! This is much worse than Wicker Man. (wails) Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe. Shout into it, shout into it, shout into it, shout into it! Here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go! Oh boy! (roars) Come on! Gah! Gaaaaahh! Yes! (groans) Yes! Have it! (laughs triumphantly) Woo! Yes! Come on! (giggles) Woo! (giggles and cackles) (cries with laughter) I like rollercoasters. I love rollercoasters! That's— That's all I needed to do. Anyone... anyone... To anyone who's scared of rollercoasters, you just... (cries, pants) Thank you! All the years... All the years that... I could've been going on that. All the years of my life... that I spent... ...not going on things like that, 'cause I was scared. I could've gone on that when I was, what, twelve, thirteen? I've been to Alton Towers enough times. I have spent so many years being scared. And... I'm not anymore. I wanna do that again. I wanna do every rollercoaster in this park. Thank you. Thank you so much. Andy, all the team here, thank you! (crew cheering and applauding) That's one of the best things I've ever done. I've... I've wasted so many opportunities to do cool stuff like that, just because I was... I was too scared. Stupid thing to cry about. (breathes slowly) Genuinely. Genuinely, actually emotional about that. I can't... Alright, let's go on every rollercoaster. [Caption+ by JS* caption.plus | @caption_plus]

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Channel: Tom Scott plus

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Length: 21min 42sec (1302 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 11 2022