The first time I rode this I thought I had a brain injury. Well, every time I rode it I thought I had a brain injury. That fucker hurt. Then, they take out the loop, which was the smoothest part of the ride. They've had so many issues with it, it closed permanently. It's suppose to have been tore down.
The first time I rode the Beast I thought I was going to fall out in the curve leading into the tunnel. I was barely tall enough to ride it and it was back in the day when all there was was a lap bar. The lap bar didn't come down onto my lap so I spent the rest of the ride holding on for dear life.
Remember the Cobra? The stand up ride? A couple times, they didn't adjust my seat right. It was either too high or too low. I thought I was going to slip out, which did happen to some lady towards the end of the ride in the double side ways loop. I loved that ride.
That's a freakish coincidence. The closest amusesment park while I was growing up was Adventureland, in the semi-rural Western Sydney suburb of Leppington - it closed after a toilet/shed's galvanised iron sheeting roof blew off & killed a boy. This is supposed to be their slide but I haven't confirmed it (looks about right though)
Our worst was the Sydney Luna Park Ghost Train Fire, 1979, that left 1 Man & 6 Boys Dead.
Over the years it was linked with supposed satanism &then found to be an arson attack arranged by organised crime figures (with links to the Donald Mackay murder).
It was a huge story at the time, partly because it was soon made public that an attendant claimed he saw the flames & smoke & signalled to the operator to stop the ride. For whatever reason the operator failed to do so & the final car, containing 4 boys from a local private school, continued on into the flames where all 4 occupants of that car & the one before it containing a father & son's from the far west NSW country town of Warren all died. Luna Park closed for almost a decade & became derelict after the fire. It was considered an embarassing eyesore because it's right on the harbour at the bridge's north end. The moonface above is how it looked at it's worst.
I might do a thread for this, I forgot what a twisty-turny decade-spanning strange & awful story this was. & the weird goat/cow hood photo needs explaining. It's the last photo ever taken of one of the boy's holidaying in Sydney from Warren as they waited for the ferry to Luna Park & it's the cause of the satanic conspiracy claims. The sister survived (she got an icecream as dad & the boys rode the Ghost Train without her - they had 4 ride tickets left & were supposed to wait for her). She was able to explain the photo : goat/cow guy appeared out of the crowd at Circular Quay, placed his hand on her brother's shoulder while the photo was being taken, then disappeared back into the crowd. He's never been identified (or so the story goes)
Last edited by blighted star; 07-22-2013 at 06:09 AM.
was this posted yet? will switch it if it's already here, sorry guys, wasn't supposed to post yet (I'm having some technical difficulties)
http://m.wave3.com/autojuice?targetU...r-death-probed
Company to inspect Texas coaster where woman fell
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) - A German roller coaster maker is sending officials to a North Texas amusement park to inspect a ride after a woman fell to her death.
Tobias Lindnar, a project manager for Gerstlauer Amusement Rides in Munsterhausen, Germany, told The Dallas Morning News that the company will investigate what led to Friday's fatal accident at Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington.
Witnesses said the woman expressed concern about the Texas Giant roller coaster's safety bar not completely engaging as the ride was starting. The coaster is touted as the tallest steel-hybrid roller coaster in the world.
"I'm sure there's no safety bar that is broken," Lindnar told the newspaper by phone Saturday night from Germany.
Lindnar said Gerstlauer has never had problems with car safety bars on any of the roughly 50 roller coasters it's built around the world over the past 30 years.
"We will be on site and we will see what has happened," he said.
Park spokeswoman Sharon Parker confirmed in a statement Saturday that the victim died while riding the 14-story Texas Giant, but wouldn't give specifics about what happened. Arlington Police Sgt. Christopher Cook told The Associated Press on Saturday that police believe the woman fell from the ride and that there appeared to have been no foul play.
Arlington police have referred information about the woman's identity to the medical examiner's office in Tarrant County, which hadn't disclosed her name as of Sunday night and didn't respond to phone messages left by the AP.
Lindnar wouldn't address the hydraulic bar's operation or whether park employees should be able to determine if a person's body is too close to the front of the train car to prevent the bar from being effective.
"At this time I don't want to speak about the technicals," he said. "It's not so easy. It's some special equipment."
But he said once the ride began, there was no chance of opening the safety bar.
"We are committed to determining the cause of this tragic accident and will utilize every resource throughout this process," Parker said in her statement. "It would be a disservice to the family to speculate regarding what transpired."
Police, fire and emergency medical services responded to the park around 6:45 p.m. Friday after calls about a woman who fell from a car while riding a roller coaster. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Texas Department of Insurance spokesman Jerry Hagins told the AP on Sunday that Six Flags was in compliance with state regulations requiring amusement ride operators to have $1 million liability insurance on each ride and provide proof of an annual safety inspection by a certified engineer.
Six Flags received a state-issued sticker, like an auto inspection sticker, for the Texas Giant in February. Hagins said the ride now will remain closed until it's inspected again and certified to be safe.
"It's the ride owner's responsibility to keep it closed, to fix it, then prove to us that it's safe to start back up again," he said. "If for some reason they can't figure it out, no safety inspector is going to sign off on it."
Because no foul play is suspected, police are not involved in the investigation, officials said.
The ride first opened in 1990 as an all-wooden coaster and underwent a $10 million renovation to install steel-hybrid rails and reopened in 2011. It can carry up to 24 people.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Last edited by blighted star; 07-22-2013 at 06:19 AM.
saw this on the news this morning!! fucking crazy... ive ridden that roller coaster many times!!! This is just too sad!
Me too. It was always such a violent ride so I always preferred the Titan. I saw it being rebuilt but never rode on the newest edition.
I had a hair raising experience on the Superman Tower of Power. My over the shoulder restraint didn't click down all the way, or so it seemed to me. I was having to reach back and hold myself in as it was trying to flop open. Fuck that ride, never again.
No heart attack.
ARLINGTON, Texas -
A medical examiner's report says the woman who died Friday while riding the Texas Giant at Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington was killed by "multiple traumatic injuries."
Read more: http://www.myfoxdfw.com/story/228896...#ixzz2ZnCgz2Gm
Yep -
1309221 Tarrant Ayala-Goana Rosa 6/28/1961 52 7/19/2013 D Hispanic F
Police Department: Police Svc #:
Deceased Address: 3104 Mojave Drive , Dallas, Texas 75241 Time Of Death 7:00 PM
Occurred Location: 2201 Road to Six Flags , Arlington, Texas 76011
Place Of Death: roller coaster track Prosector: Tasha Greenberg, M.D.
Place Of Death Address: 2201 Road to Six Flags , Arlington, Texas Manner Of Death: ACCIDENT
Cause Of Death: MULTIPLE TRAUMATIC INJURIES Due to:FALL FROM ROLLER COASTER
http://mepublic.tarrantcounty.com/mepublic/Default.aspx
I fucking hated that ride. My husband rode it by himself and said it was no big deal. I went as a single rider. I wanted to kick his ass when I got off. Texas Giant was way up my alley. I liked it better than the Titan, but the Titan was awesome!
Also, that video posted is from 2007. The Giant had renovations in 2009, I believe. People said it was scarier before the renovations.
Also, I think the thread title should be changed to include Rosy's name.
I don't know if I explained this right. You pull it yourself. It doesn't have a lock or anything. You can hear it click as you pull it down. When the right is about to start, you can hear the controllers do something and it "locks" the bars that are down, it locks it to where it is. I sounds like it locks all the seat bars at the same time, then the kids "check" the bars. Does that make sense? I feel like I didn't make sense in my first post or this one.
Hmmm. Is her name Rosy Esparza or Rosa Ayala-Goana ?
On that video, the reported mentioned investigators were looking at cameras on the ride. I bet there's something that shows what happened.
I'm wondering if they will try to bring up the fact that people who were bigger complained they were discriminating against them if they tried to say they were too big to ride one of the coasters. I'm pretty sure that's happened before, where someone who was heavy was told they couldn't ride, and the person threw a fit and tried to sue??? That was my first thought.
That's the ride where the girl got her feet cut off. :(
Yeah...I just don't get the appeal of thrill rides.
I thought of that, too. If they tell her she's too big, it's offensive. If they don't tell her and she gets hurt, it's their fault. I'm not trying to defend the amusement park here, but it does seem like a no-win situation.I'm wondering if they will try to bring up the fact that people who were bigger complained they were discriminating against them if they tried to say they were too big to ride one of the coasters. I'm pretty sure that's happened before, where someone who was heavy was told they couldn't ride, and the person threw a fit and tried to sue??? That was my first thought.
The woman who suffered a fatal fall from a Texas roller coaster last week is the latest death associated with an amusement ride, but researchers say no one really knows how many people are hurt or killed on such attractions every year.
Rosy Ayala-Goana died Friday night when she fell from the Texas Giant at Six Flags Over Texas, which bills the 14-story, 4,900-foot ride as the world?s steepest wooden roller coaster.
Such deaths typically attract high-profile media coverage, but outside of news headlines, there?s way to track deaths ? or injuries, said Dr. Gary A. Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children?s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
?We don?t have a really good system for catching all of these,? said Smith, who published a study this year tracking kids younger than 18 who are hurt on roller coasters, carnivals and kiddie rides. ?Many of these go unmonitored and unaddressed.?
About 4,400 children a year are hurt on such rides; that?s up to 20 kids a day in the peak season between May and September, Smith found. No similar study has been conducted to assess adult amusement park injuries, mostly because the research required a line-by-line review of data from U.S. emergency department reports.
?If we started looking, we would find similar numbers,? Smith said.
Smith?s data didn?t include amusement ride deaths, either, because the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System only includes injuries. There 52 deaths tied to amusement rides logged between 1990 and 2004, according to a 2005 report by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
But the agency no longer tracks the data, so it?s up to websites like RideAccidents.com to post headlines detailing deaths and injuries reported in the media.
The problem, of course, is that without data on the frequency, site and cause of injuries and deaths, there?s no way to prevent them, Smith said. Lack of monitoring is exacerbated because there?s no state or federal agency responsible for enforcing amusement park safety. CPSC has no jurisdiction over so-called ?fixed-site? amusement parks, the large theme parks. The agency only has authority over mobile amusement rides that travel from community to community.
In addition, 17 states have no agency responsible for inspecting amusement rides. Six Flags Over Texas will lead its own investigation into Ayala-Goana?s death in the absence of an outside authority.
Officials with the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions or IAAPA, note that about 297 million people, both adults and children, safely rode 1.7 billion rides in the U.S. in 2011. The chance of being seriously injured on a ride at a fixed-site park in the U.S. is about 1 in 24 million.
But Smith said that basic tracking should be a no-brainer in an industry that attracts so many with the lure of thrills. He?d like the CPSC to change the way amusement injuries are coded so that they categorize ride injuries separately from other park injuries so that
?We should have a better way to monitor these types of injuries so when we see a pattern, we can address them,? he said.
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/how-ma...ows-6C10707436
oooops. double post.
Last edited by M Joy; 07-22-2013 at 12:59 PM.
Thanks NQ for changing the title!
ETA: rideaccidents.com makes me never want to get on an amusement park ride again
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