Florida Roller Coaster Leaves 12 People Stranded

On Wednesday at around 7p.m. EST, 12 people were left stranded on a roller coaster for nearly 3 harrowing hours. The incident happened on The Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit (Florida’s tallest roller ...
Florida Roller Coaster Leaves 12 People Stranded
Written by Val Powell
  • On Wednesday at around 7p.m. EST, 12 people were left stranded on a roller coaster for nearly 3 harrowing hours. The incident happened on The Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit (Florida’s tallest roller coaster) at Universal Studios in Florida. The Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit has a total height of 167 feet, a length of 3,800 feet, and a top speed of 65 miles per hour.

    According to Tom Schroder, Universal Orlando spokesman, the coaster’s computer went into safety mode due to a glitch. The glitch caused the ride to come to an abrupt stop, leaving its passengers stuck. Several of the cars on the ride were stuck, but all the passengers were quickly rescued except for one car, which was left suspended in a vertical position at the top of the 17 story high coaster.

    “The safety system did exactly what it’s supposed to do,” Schroder said. “The reason the rescue took so long is because park officials wanted to take their time and do it safely…we spent a lot of that time talking to them and trying to make them as comfortable as we could.”

    When the Orlando Fire Department arrived on the scene, the disabled coaster car was moved to a horizontal position. As an added safety measure, each passenger was placed in a harness before being released from the coaster. At around 9:45 p.m., they were taken down to ground level in an elevator.

    Fortunately nobody was injured, though one woman on the ride was taken to the local hospital for “mental exhaustion”.

    This wasn’t the first malfunction for the coaster. On August 1st, the coaster came to another abrupt stop. A passenger on the ride sustained minor injuries which led the park to shut down the ride for two days .

    “We’re not going to reopen the ride until we know what happened, and we’re sure it won’t happen again,” said Tom Schroder.

    The ride reopened on Thursday.

     

    (photo via Twitter)

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