School Trips

I have been thinking about "School Trips" a lot lately as many of my children are now taking part in these. A couple things have come to mind. The first one is how many of the students as young as 7 & 8 years old are allow to have free run of our small local amusement parks. Usually the grade ones have chaperons with them but after that, some have meeting spots and times and others are on their own for the whole day. I think that this is kind of funny because as Mothers, not many of us, would allow our young children to go there with a friend and no parents any other time of the year. Why do we okay it now. I was lucky to have had my husband there with my younger boys. I wonder why we feel some sort of safety in doing this. Any ideas?

My second thought is the amount of end of the year trips for grade sixes. Where I live grade six is the last grade in elementary school and therefore the student's last year in that school. Since the students will be moving on, the school and some parents believe that the end of the year school trip should be big. My son, who is in grade six this year is going on his trips over two days as it won't all fit into one. The first day takes him to park in the morning with all sorts of different things about Anne of Green Gables and than to Subway for lunch and than to an amusement park for the afternoon. He gets back two and a half hours after school is out. The second trip day takes him to a movie theater to watch "Up" and than to a pizza party and than for an afternoon of swimming. The cost to parents $60.00. ( I think) Now we did have an opportunity to fundraise by selling raffle tickets but since our family doesn't believe in gambling we could not take part in the fundraising.
M questions is, is this a little over board. When I take my children somewhere in the summer for a fun day, will it pale in comparision to what they have already experienced. Don't get me wrong, I like all of the places they are going, I just wonder if it is really necessary to go to all of them in one week. Ahhh... parenting, it is always full of questions and thoughts.