This Is What Theme Parks Look Like During a Pandemic

Lockdown has robbed the world of many simple pleasures: mindlessly browsing high street shops for makeup; the joy of smoking too many cigarettes while drinking too many pints in a noisy pub garden; the absolute freedom to worry about pointless stuff without constant reminders that, really, there are much more important things to be fretting about, namely: a global pandemic.

What I personally hadn't given much thought to – and my apologies in advance to the "coaster geek" community – are people who fucking love rollercoasters. What a thrill it must have been for them to hear that theme parks in England were reopening this past weekend, albeit following government guidelines aimed at blocking the spread of COVID-19.

On Sunday, photographer Chris Bethell went to Alton Towers, the largest English theme park of them all, to document what exactly that looks like.

@christopherbethell