Outraged, From Barnes

I love theme parks, so last week when I took a trip to Thorpe Park I was so excited that I didn't care it was raining and had to pee the moment we arrived.

Because it was a week day, queues were not too bad, but I asked what it had been like at the weekend: "120 minutes for SAW."

SAW is the latest addition to the roller coaster thrills of Thorpe Park. Based on the "popular blood, gore and suspense horror film series 'Saw' this ride has been advertised to death, with suspense filled radio ads filtering into my ears as I ate my cornflakes.

I'm a huge horror film fan and I was impressed with the first SAW movie. The concept was the most gruesome aspect and helped the film stand out from most of the other gore-filled scream-fests vomited up by Hollywood.

But as the sequels drew on - part 2, 3, 4 and then 5 - it quickly became gore for gore's sake. Now I ain't no horror prude; my movie collection features some of the best (and worst) zombie horrors, surely one of the most gore-filled of film genres? But the SAW films contain a very different kind of violence, human on human, and pushes the boundaries of how much torture one person can inflict on another.

So when I heard the ads for the new SAW themed ride on breakfast radio I commented to my work colleagues that I thought it was a bit inappropriate to advertise something so closely aligned with such a film outside the watershed.

Most people dismissed me as having Daily Mail Syndrome and being overly sensitive, but my point is that children are not stupid, and the concern we used to have over their access to video nasties seems to have been long forgotten.

That said, I didn't disapprove so much as to boycott Thorpe Park, and of course when I was there, have a go on the ride myself.

And I loved it! It was great fun. But it is utterly inappropriate for a family theme park. Riders queue in a fenced area topped with mock barbed wire whilst all along the queue are rusty 'torture' machines helping to set the scene and create the atmosphere.

All reasonably inoffensive so far as imagery for children as it's not that obvious, so nothing to really get my knickers in a twist over. But then you go inside where you see a man with a naked torso suspended from the ceiling, tangled-up in razor wire which is cutting into his flesh and making it bulge like a bloodied brie being sliced in two.

There are height restrictions on the ride, you have to be over 1.4 metres to ride, meaning really young children will never see that disturbing mannequin. But 1.4 metres is the average height of a 10 year old.

Am I just a prude, or am I the only person left (who doesn't read the Daily Mail) that thinks children should not be exposed to this sort of imagery, and that theme parks, and indeed any company working on a co-branding project with a horror film, need to be more responsible in how they execute it?