Since the attraction was announced a little over two weeks ago, the virtual-reality experience had been promoted as “FearVR: 5150,” as part of the theme park’s “Knott’s Scary Farm” season.
It takes place in a mental hospital where a possessed patient “unleashes chaos throughout the hospital,” according to an LA Times preview article. “5150” refers to a section of California law used to hold someone for 72 hours at a psychiatric facility if he or she is considered a danger to themselves or others.
Local mental health advocates emailed a strongly-worded letter to Knott’s parent company Wednesday objecting to using mental illness as scary entertainment.
The attraction “adds to the hurtful, dehumanizing, discriminatory, prejudicial, insensitive, offensive and stigmatizing of mental illness,” wrote John Leyerle, president of the Orange County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), in his letter to Cedar Fair Entertainment President and CEO Mathew Quimet.
Read the rest at VoiceofOC
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