AP
A thrill ride at a popular festival in northern Michigan was dismantled and an investigation started after the machine appeared to tip and pitch with riders aboard.
Bystanders recorded the incident with cellphones Thursday night during the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City. No serious injuries were reported.
Rode on one of those once. ONCE. And not at a carnival, but at a legit theme park. I kept hearing “Titanic” sounds when it got just passed the top. After about 30 seconds on the ride, I shook my head and said, “No. This is my last one of these.” LOL
I saw that video, and I didn’t know whether to $hit or go blind! That scared me! I’m going to have nightmares! Seriously!
Magic Carpet Ride is cultural appropriation…
” It was being sent back to the Ohio company that manufactured it. ”
Uh, wait a minute, why isn’t Ohio company coming there to repair it?
It’s probably fucked up in the first place because of the delivery. lol
“Back to Ohio”
*cue the Rush intro theme…
God I miss that man!
Who doesn’t trust a large mass of moving parts that gets broken down and set back up weekly by carney workers whom probably never completed highschool?
My kids are all old enough to drive to Six Flags. I worry more about the drive there and back than the rides. Even though some of the rides were there when I was a teenager. I hope they’re not smoking dope on the cable cars like we did. On weeknights, you could ride round trip if you asked. Good times.
Most likely a low end model that didn’t come with a counter balance or EPO switch. (Emergency Power Off)
@Loco
I miss Rush so much, too. Weekdays, no…. LIFE will never ever be the same. Thirty years…. I continue to grieve.
WHERE was the ride operator and WHY didn’t he shut it down?!
Agreed Hilda.
Billy, the operator was out front with a “Fight for Fifteen $” sign
Nothing compared to the ride Biden is taking us on.
If it was a traveling carnival the rides need to be disassembled and reassembled at every stop. Not done right every time especially by temporary help.
@Billy Fuster-The article said the operator shut down the ride and jumped to safety but it had to stop swinging on its own.
@Billy Fuster
Why did you assume it was a he?
Never trust a carnie. Just sayen.
Different Tim
JULY 12, 2021 AT 5:39 PM
“… whom probably never completed highschool?”
…not sure why you had to throw that in. For a variety of reasons I didn’t complete high school, mostly because of some family issues and a perverted gym coach drove me to go to a vocational school so I ended up missing getting a diploma because I refused to go get the gym credit and they wouldn’t give me an alternative, so I was for all intents and purposes a high school drop out even though I did all the years and got my Voc Ed certificate and placed in a job before graduation, but I did go back and get a GED and talked a college into accepting it and, very long story short and skipping some literal lifesaving experiences and a decades long unrelated previous career, spent the last 25+ years very successfully programming industrial robots and integrating control systems and human/machine interfaces.
Now, more than ever, don’t look to education to tell you the worth of a man. Nowadays, the more schooling someone’s had, the bigger fool they seem to be…
The carpet my friend was blowing in the wind, the carpet was blowing in the wind.
“… whom probably never completed highschool?”
He through that in because it can be proven statistically that if you didn’t complete high school you are more than likely be on the lower end of the food chain employment wise and I.Q. wise. People that don’t finish high school are at greater risks engaging in drugs and alcohol. This is all true.
If you beat those odds congratulations. My oldest son dropped out and had to go back and get his GED. He beat the odds too. But the odds are factual.
threw.
What comes to mind is; the assholes that are MOST concerned about profits as opposed to safety.
Somehow reminds me of democraps.
I didn’t complete High School. I quit at 16 and took my GED because I had the choice to remain in the US or move to Canada with my mother and her new husband. I like being American so I needed a job to support myself so I quit school and found work. Been working for 46 years and don’t feel like stopping yet. Poor choice of wording not meant to offend anyone. Should have typed “Idiots”.😉
Billy Fuster
JULY 12, 2021 AT 6:00 PM
“WHERE was the ride operator and WHY didn’t he shut it down?!”
…years ago when my son was still little, I took him to an indoor theme park in a huge shopping mall for a day of relatively inexpensive semi-thrill riding. One of the rides they had was a Scrambler type ride, where there’s rotating motors at the end of rotating arms, and all these parts turn at high speeds for a centrifugal effect.
He was at the age he wanted to start doing things himself and he wanted to ride this alone, so I let him, but checked when they strapped him in.
Fortunately.
…the gal just laid the single strap loosely over his lap, clearly not restraining him like, at all. I said something to her and she pulled it up a hole, still not locking him down and with nothing really to hold onto.
When I still looked askance at this, she huffily told me that she had a stop button (referring to an emergency stop, which would be flamingly stupid to use to crash stop kids rotating at high speeds) if there was any trouble. I asked her if it would stop Time, which it would HAVE to in order to be of any service if the “trouble” was him being Frisbeed into the nearest wall, and before she could stammer out an angry retort I pulled him out from under the strap without releasing it just to make a point, then got my money back and left.
I’ve seen a LOT of machine operators over the years. Generally speaking, because they tend to not do that forever, not a lot is put into training them, and very few have native machinery skills and understanding. This is probably worse with itinerant carnivals offering seasonal,no benefit employment AT BEST, so you definitely need to caviet your own emptor when it comes to tenporarly ride installations…
…even permanent ones, USDA inspected and everything, kill people sometimes. I know someone who was working maintenance at Kings Island the day they had three deaths on the same day, one of which involved a gal falling out of a ride, and people die even at Disney.
…but in fairness, he said the MOST lethal ride is the Eifel Tower elevator, but this is apparently because of elevator surfing idiots, so it’s not ALL the operator’s fault…
Different Tim
JULY 12, 2021 AT 8:00 PM
“Poor choice of wording not meant to offend anyone.”
Congrats on taking the hard path like I did and Brad’s son did. We know the value of hard work.
But I’m not really offended in the liberal sense, just wanted to point out that the sheepskin isn’t the controlling factor in determining useful skills, as I’d never EVER trust someone with a Harvard PhD to push a single button on one of MY machines, because you couldn’t teach them ANYTHING since they’d believe they already KNOW anything, plus they’d complain about the color scheme for looney reasons (I once saw an article on how robots are not black because of racism, and someone once complained because a machine was delivered from an OEM with a white button that powered it up, and they were pissed the manual said to push the WHITE POWER button).
Not saying Brad’s not right about the statistics and I’ve certainly met my share of uneducated idiots, but at least some of the stupid comes from the diplomaed suits who make the decision not to train operators properly in the FIRST place…
SuperNS, sounds like you are talking about “The Bat” at Kings Island.
It was a hanging-flying style ride they had to shut down.
It was popular and fun, I rode it a few times until I heard it dropped someone!
The Beast was K-I’s best ride. I was at the preview opening in October, 1979?
It’s a wooden coaster that is a very fun ride.
It was so popular they made a “Son of Beast” ride in another part of the park.
That ride gave me a concussion. I believe they closed it down but not before they padded the hell out of it so much that obese people couldn’t fit in it.
It was bullshit to see the overweight have to do the walk of shame because they couldn’t fit in the ride.
My girlfriend said I was full of it with the “concussion” until she read in an IAAPA report about the ride and all the lawsuits.
I always like riding in the rear car and NO amount of padding will keep your brain from bouncing about.
As far as “Tower of Terror” being deadly, I can only assume idiots defeated the restraints?
LocoBlancoSaltine
JULY 12, 2021 AT 8:51 PM
I got a concussion from Son of Beast too. It was a huge problem how rough its track was and why it ultimately shut down, and it was mostly due to shoddy construction.
https://youtu.be/Q8NMCyvaimY
…but while the Bat had huge problems, it was a ride called the Flight Commander that dropped a woman the same day two guys got electrocuted in an improperly grounded fountain in the Bier Garten.
https://apnews.com/article/4aae967eb09abdc8ef0c1fe0fac6b300
…but as far as the Eifel Tower goes, there’s been much death and maiming among drunken idiots there, but here’s a better known one…
http://kingsislandghosts.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-truth-behind-tower-johnny.html?m=1#:~:text=A%20high%20schooler%2C%20%22Tower%20Johnny,1983%20and%20his%20ghost%20remains.&text=John%20Harter%20attended%20Delaware's%20Hayes,captain%20of%20the%20track%20team.
…glad you enjoyed the park, hope you got to see it back when Taft Broadcasting owned it and they had a nightly air show and everything, it’s just a shell of that now but it was a good time back in the day…
It was the extra weight from all of the masks.
SuperNS, thanks so much for the links.
I was just thinking about a lot of things happening that predate the internet so you don’t have as much info.
I remember the Flight Commander, it was in a building on the North side of the park.
I grew up in Louisville and Kings Island was a fantastic Summer destination.
They had concerts in the parking lot, the water parks, arcades, rides, pizza, etc.
Many fantastic memories there.
We were teens roaming free but we weren’t thugs ruining things like they do now.
That was the perfect time, before corporate lawyers and bureaucrats ruined everything.
MeTV occasionally play the two-part Brady Bunch family visit to Kings Island.
Great episode to see the park in the 70’s.
Makes you wonder what drunken “safety inspector” allowed them to plug it in?
I had a rope swing at Santa Rosa. You pulled the seat up to the second story deck with a rope, mounted the deck rail, and squished into the seat. Then you just leaped off the rail and went 50 feet above the abandoned neighbor’s house which was 75 yards away. And if you were going towards a tree you had to know what you were doing, or die.
There’s no way I’m gonna let a retard figure this shit out.
And by the way, I can’t believe the retard shit I have done.
How about a hand for those brave kids and people who rushed forward to help steady the ride. Doubt it did much at first, but they didn’t hesitate. That took guts with that ride pitching forward and sideways the way it was.