Pennsylvania's state parks include free admission. Some say that advantage encourages attendance, leading to maintenance and cleanliness issues along with overcrowding.

In contrast, amusement and theme parks also are fun places to take the family, but come with steep price tags.One mother who took her family to an amusement park posted an interesting statement online. She says her family enjoyed a total of five minutes of fun at $40 per minute.Here's how she explains it: "We took our four kids … during the last school holidays. It cost us $204 entry. The queues for everything were a mile long - at least 45 minutes' wait for each ride.We had a total of five rides in five hours - each ride lasted about a minute - so we calculated our costs to be $40 per minute since we had five minutes of fun."While that statement might take the situation to the extreme, a quick check at local facilities shows that a family trip to the amusement park isn't cheap.For example, a family of four with two children, ages 9 and 11, on a trip to Hershey Park will pay $251.80 just to walk in the gates. That fee is for tickets only; it doesn't cover parking or food.It's easy to see that a Hershey Park one-day visit might cost $500 or more for a family. That's an expensive day for most family budgets.The same family going to Dorney Park will have to cough up $188 to walk through the door. And again, that fee doesn't include food for the day.For that reason, many are drawn to Knoebel's Amusement Park in Elysburg, which offers free parking and free admission.But even that enticement doesn't guarantee an inexpensive day. The same family at Knoebel's will pay $188 to ride all day, including the wooden coasters.But "ride all day" is a bit misleading because, due to long lines and long waits at each of the rides, it's unclear how many rides are actually attainable on a single-day visit. Plus the family would need to fork out additional money for food. So even a trip to Knoebel's, it appears, might strain the budget.What becomes clear is that prices at local amusement parks aren't so amusing. The cost of fun is steep, part of an industry trend nationwide.Some local residents returning from Florida, for example, have complained that Disney tickets are pricey and food there expensive.Of course, amusement parks offer sensational and daring coasters and other exotic, chilling rides that are expensive to install and maintain.Parks also must shoulder high costs of daily operation, including staffing, security, safety and insurance.And so the spiraling price of amusement park tickets might be unavoidable.For certain, amusement parks are filled with surprise, but that surprise starts with the shock of the admission fee.If you want to defy gravity, you pay the price.It's one detail about the law of gravity that Sir Isaac Newton forgot to tell us.By Donald R. Serfass |

dserfass@tnonline.com