Ride/ Attraction Fear Factors

Walt Disney World Attractions
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We recently completed a visit to all four Disney World Parks, Blizzard Beach and both Universal parks, with two very different 10-year-olds who each had their own " fear factors" that needed to be considered when selecting rides.

I found this a bit tricky to manage I needed to use my own judgment to try to select rides accordingly, sometimes with success and sometimes with unfortunate mistakes.

One child was afraid of darkness, violence, creepy monsters, and jump scares. She managed through on many rides that had some level of these, but some put her off just from what was visible while in the line and pre-ride material, and we bailed. One child was afraid of heights and “roller coasters”; this turned out to really be a fear of actual drops/ inverts and heights. She was okay with all the simulation-type rides of this nature, but not everyone might be.

To assess whether they might consider a ride, we watched PoV videos on YouTube in advance.
For some rides, they quickly agreed that they would not like them. Others, such as the Star Tours ride and the Pandora Ride, they watched the preview and said they looked really interesting (and thrilling) and wanted to try the rides. When we did, they really enjoyed them, and they became some of their favorites.

I thought it would be beneficial if the touring guides could have fear factor scale ratings on each ride and I thought it would make an interesting discussion here. Clearly, this comes down to each individual’s preferences, and you never know what might change, but having more information can only help.

Fear factors that might be beneficial to have a scale of 1-5: darkness, jump scares, horror/violence (this was more relevant at Universal but Pirates arguably has a low level score with guns, swords and skeletons), peril, creepy monsters/ characters, large drops, heights, extreme motion.

If you have this scale rating, you could compare one ride to another, especially if you have already been on one.

What is your experience with this? How would you score some rides? Do you think these would be effective measures, or is it so unique to each person that it would be rendered useless?

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IIRC, the book has codes for potential scary factors.

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DW is sensitive to 1) spins, 2) simulator/screens, and 3) extreme motion.

Ride she avoids bc of this include:
Coded 1/2/3 per her sensitivity factors.

EP

  • Remy 12
  • GotG 13
  • TT 13
  • Mission Space 123

MK

  • Tron 3
  • Buzz 1

HS

  • ToT 3
  • SDD 3
  • Saucers 1
  • RnRC 3
  • ST 23

AK

  • FoP 2
  • EE 3

I usually research a ride ahead of time and/or watch videos to estimate if she can handle it.

Reminds me of when DD was 4 and I took her on ToT. She was scared of the dark, and creepy images. So she held my hand. During the drops, I was scared, so I held her hand. After she said “Again, again!” I was like, no way am I feeling my stomach drop out again! She is 23 now. I’ll go on ToT if she asks. Once.

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From my experience with DD9 and DS7 so much of this stuff is individual kid dependent.

DS7 loves ToT, GotG, Space Mountain, BTMRR and SDD, but is scared of:

Remy (he finds the chef scary),
PotC (he says the combination of water, dark and pirates scare him),
7DMT (he is scared of the evil queen in disguise at the end despite us telling him it is easy to avoid seeing her), and
TBA (the visual of seeing the long drop at the front with people screaming makes it scary).

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