Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Disney shuts down thrill ride after teen's heart stops beating

Ok, so I was all for shutting down Mission Space after that poor little kid died on it, because that ride sucks. But Tower of Terror is one of my favorite rides, So I don't think that they should shut that one down. I know that's a double standard, but it works for me.

Seriously though, I guess they have to shut the ride down at least temporarily, but I can't see any way the ride could malfunction to cause someone's heart to stop. All it does is drop you, that's not too complicated, it seems to me as long as it's able to stop you from hitting the ground after dropping you, then it's probably working correctly. I think this was probably just a fluke. But reading about this kind of stuff makes me wonder about riding these things, which sucks, because they're a lot of fun.

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6 comments:

not in use said...

PAH ... leave it open ... it just adds to the thrill.

I remember as a kid going on a roller coaster the day after some drunken bum had decided to stand up in the middle of the ride, only to get decapitated ... from that day on that roller coaster was ten times as good as it had been before.

I know, I'm sick ;)

Seriously though, I’ve been on that Tower of Terror ride when it has malfunctioned on the drop and I still wouldn’t have thought that there was anything about that ride which could induce heart failure unless you have some pretty serious pre-existing condition.

Anonymous said...

We were on Splash Mountain one day and heard later on the radio that some guy died on it that same day when he tried to get up after it stopped for some reason.

Anonymous said...

Tower of Terror is awesome. I saw a show on amusement park rides once on Discovery or one of those channels and they were discussing the engineering/safety issues, etc. and there's no way to get killed on that ride. Even if the cables break and you freefall (wouldn't that be cool) there's auto-brakes down at the bottom to keep the car from splattering.

I do remember being at DisneyLand in Anahiem as a kid and hearing that some fucknut got decapitated because he stood up riding Space Mountain. They closed the ride for the whole week, which sucked.

Anonymous said...

It's already open again.

Fixer said...

Hey, when the Big Man calls your name that it. It's just as easy to get run over by a city bus walking out your front door. In the AF we used to call it the 'Golden B-B'. There's millions of bullets flying around, but only one has your name on it. When that one finds you that's it. You're okay until then.

Anonymous said...

The Tower of Terror is my favorite ride at Disney, because I love dropping. But it's a pretty tame ride physically. It's certainly no more intense than those big pirate ships they have at the county fairs. If you get on the last row of those, you get like 10-12 drops with some free-fall. And it doesn't compare in intensity to regular coasters. The speed and g-forces on Hulk are much more likely to aggravate people's conditions, I would think.