Amusement park disasters
Summary
Top 20 amusement park disasters. Everybody loves amusement parks! The amusement parks are magical places where everyone has fun and has the perfect opportunity to relax and experience high adrenaline. You may like roller coasters. However, these magical places are […]
Top 20 amusement park disasters. Everybody loves amusement parks! The amusement parks are magical places where everyone has fun and has the perfect opportunity to relax and experience high adrenaline. You may like roller coasters. However, these magical places are not without flaws. According to research between 1990 and 2010, more than 92,000 children were injured in amusement ride-related incidents. That’s an average of more than 4,000 injuries per year.
No matter how you look at it, these accidents have tarnished the reputation of amusement parks. Now let’s take a look at the top 20 most horrific amusement park disasters.
Video: Amusement park disasters
Coney Island
Built in 1927, the Cyclone experienced one of the worst amusement park ride accidents in the United States. To date, three people have died on this slide. In May 1985, a 29-year-old man died after standing up and hitting his head on a bar. Just three years later, a 26-year-old man died after falling off the Cyclone, and in July 2007, a 53-year-old man broke his neck while riding and died in hospital a few days later.
Oakwood Theme Park
The Oakwood theme park accident occurred in April 2004. When 16-year-old Hayley Williams and her family rode a waterslide, they fell out of a cart and fell from a height of 30 meters, suffering life-altering injuries.
An investigation into the tragedy revealed that the park staff regularly ignored checking the bindings and seat belts of visitors before the launch of the ride, resulting in the Oakwood administration being fined £250,000 for negligence. After the incident, the ride was closed for a year.
Video: Amusement park disasters
Kings Island
The infamous Kings Island is also considered a haunted amusement park. The facility in Mason, Ohio, took four people’s lives in one day, including three visitors and an employee. First, one of the visitors fell into a pond in the park, and his 20-year-old buddy and the 20-year-old employee tried to save the unfortunate man. As a result, all three received an electric shock, which became fatal. Just an hour later, another accident occurred in the same park: a 32-year-old woman fell out of one of the most extreme attractions in the park and crashed to her death.
Since then, the park is said to be haunted: visitors have repeatedly seen a ghost girl in a blue dress and other strange visitors from the other side of the world. These stories have become so popular that Sci-Fi TV has dedicated an episode of the documentary series Ghostbusters.
Loudoun Castle
In July 2007, an 18-year-old employee of the park was crushed to death after falling from a height of 24 meters in the amusement park Loudoun Castle. He was reportedly in the park on his day off when he saw one of the carriages of the amusement park stuck. He then climbed upstairs to fix the car and was dragged to the highest point of the slide, where he could not hold back and fell.
Okpo Land
Okpo Land was located on the outskirts of Okpo-Dong in South Korea and existed for several months. Unfortunately, the facility is on the list of abandoned amusement parks after two fatal accidents. During the last tragedy, a duck carousel turned over, and a little girl was thrown out of it. Soon after that, the manager of Okpo Land disappeared mysteriously without any trace; the park was officially closed. The scene of the horrific crash has remained intact until today. In 2011, the rides were dismantled, and the land was put up for sale. But there was never a buyer.
Action Park
Action Park in Vernon, New Jersey, experienced several accidents for a short period. The causes of the tragedies included the terrible technical condition of the amusement rides, clutter-free employees, and a complete lack of management control. Six people have died in the history of the park: one died of an electric shock, the second suffered a heart attack, three drowned, and another died after his cart went off the rails. There are also dozens of injured visitors to the park. Due to numerous health claims, Action Park was closed, then renamed Mountain Creek, and reopened after it was provided with adequate security and responsible staff.
Fujin Raijin II
In May 2007, the Expland amusement park in Osaka, Japan, became one of the worst amusement park accidents in history. Six Fujin-Raizin II carriages went off the track and collided with a road fence after one of the car axles broke. One woman died, and 19 other people were severely injured, and some of them almost died in the accident. According to Expoland’s operator, a broken wheel axle was responsible for the tragic accident. The problem might have been caught during the ride’s annual maintenance, but these repairs didn’t happen in 2007: The park claimed it didn’t have enough workspace to disassemble and inspect the cars. Expoland closed in 2009.
Six Flags Over Georgia
This attraction was one of the most popular in the entertainment complex Six Flags in Georgia. However, in 2008, 17-year-old Ashy Lyshaw Ferguson died here, lost his hat while riding, and went straight to the rails to get it. At that very moment, the boy was hit by a train that was running on the tracks at 80 km/h. Ashy was the second victim of the ride; six years earlier, the park gardener had died in the same way.
Magic Harbor
Once a thriving amusement park and a popular holiday destination in South Carolina, Magic Harbor was the place where a horrible amusement park accident struck in 1983. A 13-year-old girl was almost decapitated after standing in the trailer of the Black Witch attraction. Soon after her death, the park was closed entirely.
Lagoon
Lagoon in Farmington, Utah, entered the list of deadly amusement parks in 1989. Despite being one of the slowest and safest attractions in the park, Puff the Little Fire Dragon took the life of a 6-year-old boy. The boy slipped out of his seat belts, slipped through the tracks, and tried to climb back up; the same carriage came back and hit him on the head, causing the child’s death.
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Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom
California’s Six Flags Magic Mountain theme park housed the Superman Tower of Power slide. The essence of the entertainment was that visitors soared their backs up to the height of a 41-floor house at a speed of 160 km/hh, and then flew down in a free fall. The tower was a huge success until the ride crippled 13-year-old Kaytlin Lasitter on June 21, 2007. During Caitlin’s flight, one of the cables broke off and wrapped around the girl’s neck and legs. She managed to free her neck, but her legs could not, and at the lowest point of the flight, they were literally torn off. The doctors only managed to save Caitlin’s left leg. After this incident, the Superman Tower of Power was dismantled.
Galaxyland
The colossal three-hole internal roller coaster, Hallucinogen, is also part of one of the creepiest amusement parks with significant accidents. In June 1984, the missing shutters in the last carriage wheel caused the entire train to go off the rails. The previous wagon started to wiggle heavily, encountering supporting structures and throwing passengers on a concrete column. Three people from this car died.
East Overseas Chinese Town
Space Journey, located in an amusement park in Shenzhen, was an attraction in which carriages were spinning inside a spherical screen showing space movies. One day one of the cars unhooked, and the whole dome began to move randomly. A fire started inside the attraction. At that time, there were 40 people there. Six of them died, and ten people were seriously injured.
Gulliver’s World Theme Park
In July 2002, a 15-year-old girl with Down’s syndrome died after she got out of her chair and fell off the Ferris wheel at Gulliver Amusement Park in England. The investigation revealed that she wanted to share a stall with her mother, but the park staff refused, saying that her mother was too big and needed a separate stall.
Legoland Billund
On April 29, 2007, a 21-year-old employee of the Danish amusement park was later killed in a so-called roller coaster accident.
The girl was hit by one of the carts and died on the spot, police reported. According to the preliminary version, she jumped over the fence to lift a wallet that fell out of one of the visitors to the ride. The ride was closed for a short time but was soon reopened and is still working.
Pripyat Amusement Park
An amusement park in Pripyat, like the city itself, is often considered one of the scariest amusement parks in the world. The facility was abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear power accident in 1986. For over 30 years, this place has been under the full power of nature. Amusement rides, buildings, cars, and other objects are gradually destroyed and covered with vegetation. Bad or not, given the events, in the minds of many people, Pripyat and the amusement park have become iconic places. Some adventurers even dare to visit the city.
The most famous object in the park is the Ferris wheel, which later became one of the symbols of both the Pripyat and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone as a whole. The wheel never worked; it was supposed to be put into operation on May 1, 1986, but 5 days before the attraction was put into operation, the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant occurred.
Six Flags Magic Mountain
Once the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world, the Colossus, caused the death of a 20-year-old girl in 1978 when she fell out of the trailer. The bar was fixed correctly, but because of the girl’s obesity, it was ineffective. This accident caused the ride to close for one year until the carriages were rebuilt.
Bell’s Amusement Park
One of Bell’s leading amusement park attractions in Oklahoma, Wildcat, was the site of a fatal accident in April 1997. This amusement park gone wrong accident occurred when a breakage caused a car that was almost on top of the slide to roll back when it collided with another vehicle. A 14-year-old boy died, and six people were injured in the accident.
Terra Mitica
Even though today the safety measures in the amusement park industry have significantly improved, theme park disasters still continue to happen. In July 2014, an 18-year-old boy from Iceland was thrown out of his seat in Terra Mitica amusement park in Spain. The unlucky guy died in an ambulance shortly after the accident. An investigation showed that the boy’s seat belts were unbuckled, but the reason was never established.
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La Ronde
On July 6, 2012, the Vampire roller coaster at La Ronde amusement park caused the death of a 67-year-old park employee under an amusement ride in a restricted area head injury. Representatives of the park said the employee was hit by one of the carriages on the amusement park. The man was already dead when he was found.
Which one of these accidents do you think is the worst? Tell us about other cases that you know of in the comment section below.