Nothing says "Family Entertainment" like animal cruelty: Atlantic City to revive "diving Horse" act

Atlantic City's Steel Pier claims it is reviving the Diving Horse attraction that saw it's heyday back in the 20's. For those of you not familiar with The Diving Horse......it's a 40 ft platform with a hinged "diving" board. A horse & rider are perched on the board......the board it dropped...and the horse & human rider plunge 40 feet into a pool of water.

Here's the link: Source

Of ALL the things Atlantic City could try to help the struggling resort town.......they come up with dropping a horse off a platform? Disgusted? Just wait...it gets better:

Because.......when I think of family entertainment......I think "Let's scare the shit out of some animals in a REALLY cruel manner".

I'm partially suspicious that it's a marketing ploy....the ol' "no press is bad press" game. HOW could even the most unscrupulous business person think this would end well?

To be fair, what HAS Sarah Jessica Parker done lately?

It's an old "stunt" that was a big thing in Atlantic City from the late 19th Century to the 40s/50s.

This is the most famous "rider", Sonora Carver, who was blinded in the the thirties and continued the act for another 10 years. There's a terrible movie about her.

this is horrible

This is fun? People like to watch this? Somewhere on their list is "watch a horse jump into the water?" Seriously?

It's a horse.....dropped off a platform at 40 feet....purely for the "amusement" of the spectators. There is zero redeeming quality about it.

On my life list it is between hammering my balls flat and licking the floor of a NYC subway car.

While I take a dim view of this, I have to point out that it's incredibly unlikely that the animal is afraid at all during the act. If it were, it would let its rider know through means that, given its situation, would range from lethal to horrendously lethal to both its rider and itself.

During training... I imagine it would be frequently afraid, but probably not for long and probably not very much so. If nothing else, horses are expensive and training is expensive, so they'd want to avoid the sort of injuries (again, to both itself and its handlers) that panicking a half-ton animal with iron feet can entail.

No. People used to like watching this. A few people. And much fewer than watch horse racing. And horse racing is vastly more dangerous and deadly to horses.

Errr... Not sure where you're basing your info on. Horses aren't super expensive. Also , I'm not sure why it matters if the horse is " scared" or not. Plenty of animals are abused every day. Many of them are never "scared".
If I beat my dog, why does it matter if my dog is scared? I seriously doubt you have much experience with animals. Would you say the same about a beaten dog that never bites it's owner?

One more thing to add to my list of things I hate about Jersey.

Why don't they make it interesting by making a giraffe or something.

You know what, I'd like to see a bunch of skycranes lift and drop a full-grown, blue whale on the Jersey Shore. Now that would be interesting.

How could you tell if they did?

Whales aren't generally colored like traffic cones.

This is considered "amusement" these days? "Family Entertainment"? Seriously?
O tempora, o mores!

i was born and raised in NJ and in all my years living in the garden state (about 30) i've been to Atlantic City exactly one time. And that was enough.

Have you ever been around horses? They spook pretty easily. I've owned one. He would get scared before jumping over things. I'm pretty sure he'd be scared free falling 40 ft.

This video shows the horse diving off the platform under its own power, seemingly willingly, after advancing up the ramp on its own. Is that not how the new act is being done?

I don't see a way the initial training would have been done without cruelty. But by the time this video was filmed the horse seems to be fully aware what it was in for each time.

What about a hippo? Hippo's already like water.

Like any kind of training (animal or human) I'd say the way is to start small and gradually work up to the bigger jumps. With a skilled rider and trainer the likelihood of injury to the animal should be just about as low as the likelihood of the stunt being a draw for significant enough numbers of people to make all that hard work worthwhile.

What the fuck?! I really don't understand people these days...

and this made me snicker.

I did work experience at a zoo, and the man who ran the seal show was a DICK. If the seals didn't perform to his standard, they would be kept in isolation for a day. So they learned to just do what they were told or they'd be punished- likely the same deal with the horses. They knew what was coming, but maybe the alternative was worse.