Stuff Fat Guys Can't Do #1 - Ride Rollercoasters

Want to strike fear into the heart of a fat man?  Buy him a ticket to an amusement park.  I guarantee that he'll claim that he doesn't like rides anymore.  An amusement park is the #1 most embarrassing place to go.  We've gotten to a point that there are actually test seats in front of the queues so you can see if you'll fit.  It's a size-wise for your ass.  But you'll almost never see a big dude try one.  Most of the time the seats are occupied by children who are too short or scared for the ride posing for pictures.  The fat man knows that if he scares off the kids to test the seat out that everyone nearby has cameras and once he sits, he's there for all to see.  He's featured front-and-center, right below the big "ENTER HERE (estimated wait 120 minutes)" sign.  So he'll make a choice:  Lie to his friends about a newly acquired motion sickness, or wait the two hours and pray that he'll make it on without being publicly and (un-?)ceremoniously ejected from the ride as hundreds of onlookers gawk and point.

Depending on how fat you are and where you carry that weight, you might not be excluded from every ride.  How will you explain your sudden fear of coasters after you've made it onto the steel looper, but don't want to try the old wooden out-n-back racer?  Who'll believe your affinity for the sea lion show as you skulk away from the inverted coaster?  You see, there are a small number of restraint types each with different body restrictions.  Just ask your sumo-sized buddies - none of the seats are comfortable and all of them are embarrassing.

Take the classic wooden racer - Cyclone (Coney Island), Rolling Thunder (Six Flags Great Adventure), Comet (Hersheypark) or any other wooden coaster made by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company.  They all use the same seat.  It's 15" wide, pad-to-pad.  Even for the newly obese this is tough to fit in.  Assuming you can squeeze your posterior into the compartment, you've still got the nipple-high lap bar to contend with.  And speaking of lap bars, they're almost always set with 1 bar for 2 people.  Two of us fatties can't fit in the same car shoulder-to-shoulder.  That means our svelte companion rides without adequate restraints.

(Dutch Wonderland - August 2012)
My daughter and I in a PTC train car.
I'm not sitting sideways for the picture - it's the only way my dumper fits.

(Also, I had to actually lift my belly over the lap bar so it would
close below my nipples and my daughter's head.)

Then there are the over-the-shoulder (OTS) restraints.  For a fat guy the bottom doesn't reach his belly button.  It looks and feels more like a horizontal, horseshoe-shaped dog collar.  With the inverted coasters, the OTS restraints need to be buckled between your legs.  The first time I experienced theme park anxiety is when the belt didn't reach.  It took 2 grown men to bounce into the restraint as I exhaled to get the belt clipped in.

And once you experience that, the entire park becomes off-limits.  Too fat for the coasters.  Too ashamed to even try the carnival rides.  But hey, the concession stand is always open.  You guys go ride.  I'm too motion sick from the carousel.  Is that the Manfred Mann Earth Band tribute band I hear playing?  I'll check them out and go get us some funnel cakes for when you're off the ride.  No really, I don't mind waiting a couple hours while you have fun.  Go on, get going.  I'll hold your stuff!