A ride at a Six Flags Great Adventure theme park in New Jersey malfunctioned, which resulted in five people reportedly being hospitalized. The El Toro roller coaster apparently malfunctioned at the end of its run, resulting in a “minor accident” on Thursday evening, according to park officials. Five guests were taken to a hospital nearby with minor injuries; several other riders reported having back pains from the incident. The El Toro coaster was shut down afterward, which was just shortly before the park’s normal 8p.m. closing time. The incident is now under investigation and the ride remains closed.
While it’s good that no one was seriously injured in this incident, the ideas of roller coaters malfunctioning and causing bodily injury is still the stuff of nightmares and horror movies. The most famous vision of a roller coaster disaster is no doubt Final Destination 3, which opens with the horrific sequence of a roller coaster in a Pennsylvania amusement park derailing and killing an entire run of riders. Clearly that sequence was chosen (and still resonates) because of how it plays on real-life incidents just like this.
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Amusement park ride malfunctions have become big points of fascination in the media over the last few years. That’s because guests are now able to capture any broken rides or other incidents on camera and put the footage on the Internet, where it almost always goes viral. Disney World tends to be the king of infamous incidents because it is the king of amusement parks, in general; just this year Disney has had to deal with a fire breaking out on the Under the Sea – Journey of the Little Mermaid ride at the magic kingdom. Disney World parks Hollywood Studios and EPCOT saw flooding down their streets in the wake of a long storm cycle, back in March. In January, the “Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin” ride went viral on TikTok after an avid Disney fan on the platform shared footage of getting on the ride at a particularly creepy point. In December of last year, Cinderella’s Royal Table in the Magic Kingdom caught fire and went viral when emergency vehicles had to intervene. If all that wasn’t enough of a headache, Disney’s Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance ride broke down on the first day it opened in 2019.
If that’s Disney, imagine what kind of problems second-tier parks like Six Flags – or all those local parks – go through… Still want to ride that coaster?
Source: NBC New York
