Even though the CYOA series tended to go downhill, this book holds its own with what to me are the best books in the series. Not only are you at a theme park, but there is a golden key worth $9,000 hidden somewhere in the park that you might be able to find as a prize. So you can have various adventures, but there is also one winning ending, that is, finding the key.
Maybe this topic of scary dangerous amusement parks (like the old "Action Park" which closed 1 year after the copyright of this book) just happens to resonate with me. Interestingly, the History Channel Write-up on "Action Park" contains this prescient passage:
It wasn’t just the thrill of the dangerous rides that kept kids coming back, summer after summer. It was also the park’s “anything goes,” choose-your-own-adventure mentality.
The best think about this book was that you really did get the sense you were in several dangerous situations, that you knew were dangerous, but a combination of peer pressure, a trust in institutions, and curiosity kept propelling you forward. If you are interested in amusement parks at all, I think you would appreciate this book. I should also mention the illustrations are OUTSTANDING, and clearly demonstrate, not only the dangerous situations you are in, but the high quality of your parents wooden dining room table.
ALL THAT BEING SAID, there are some problems.
(1) As another reviewer noted, there is a typo on page 22, which should send you to page 52, not 57. The mistake is obvious, but it is disconcerting to have to hunt through the book for the right connecting page.
(2) Sorry to say this, but the descriptions of the roller coaster accident make no sense. Every roller coaster has a "track" with some kind of "train" or "cars" that travel along the track. When they are describing the "coaster" I couldn't tell what the author was talking about, and maybe he didn't either. The illustrations did show you that you were in a dangerous situation, stranded high up on a broken roller coaster, which I guess was enough.
(3) . In a lot of these books, it will loop you around, and if you choose to go on on the Moon Rocket instead of the Castle, you will later get to pick going to the one you skipped. However, in this book especially, waiting in line for the first ride WOULD NOT seem the same as waiting in the line for the second, after you ALMOST DIED on the first ride, and BARELY ESCAPED WITH YOUR LIFE. So, I understand the "CYOA loop" but it didn't work here for that reason.
(4) . The park owners here have gone ALL OUT and seemingly spared no expense to make this park fancy. They (1) have a mechanical minotaur that seems very lifelike and is powerful enough to gore you to death; (2) developed a very complicated "Rocket to the Moon" ride with fake malfunctioning computers, and a terrific display of a fake moon halfway through the ride; (3) they hid $9000 worth of gold in the park, which is not advertised, you only hear about it once inside; (4) they hired actors to be witches and learn complicated clues deep into a scary cave; and like, much much more.
So given all of this effort, learning in some other endings that the owners don't care about safety, which would certainly threaten their investment in the park, doesn't really make sense. In one ending, you accept a bribe to keep quiet about the safety problems (not to mention that police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances keep showing up) and then realize you are now OWNED by the bad guys -- which was an ending I really enjoyed. However, it's just not in keeping with the other things in the park, a lot of which could be fixed by barriers sophisticated than "DO NOT ENTER" signs (entry into an unlocked electrical room, an unlocked revolving door that strands you into a stone castle from which there is no chance of escape).
In fairness, you could find more logical problems with almost any TV show. This is a worthy CYOA book for sure!
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