singemfrc

Wow really? Can anyone confirm?

Well apparently unless you're flying with Malaysian Airlines...that company seems to have the worst luck. They just lost another plane today, this one apparently shot down by a rocket launcher over the Ukraine.

^ ^^ I'm betting Ninja will open before Green Lantern does (Since we already know what happened and why), but I have no idea whether it will be days or weeks.

Yes that's correct. That's kind of a good design actually, as long as you know it ahead of time. Very short waits for back row.

Riddler's at SFMM was the worst by far when I was there in 2012. It was hot with no AC inside, the station was filthy and covered in dirt, there was some piece of broken machinery which was emitting a horrible continuing high pitched squeal, the techno music was annoying, it was one-train ops and slow even by SFMM standards, it was just pure coaster hell. Fortunately when I went back a year later most of that had been fixed. It still has slow ops, but at least it looked like things had been cleaned and fixed. The mass of suffering humanity one fateful night in October 2012.

The trick to riding Kong (and most SLCs or rides with ) is to turn your head in the direction of the turn just before each turn. This keeps contact with the restraint limited to the back of your head makes it easier to keep your head against the restraint so it doesnt bang around. The only ride that I've found this doesn't work on is Revolution at SFMM.

The only ones that are one time use are the reservations for X2.

Wow I had no idea you could buy episodes of shows on google play or youtube!

I have them (for the record theyre from my tivo - I didnt download them illegally), but don't know the legality of sharing them with others. I don't know of anywhere they can be streamed legally yet, but amazon instant video has seasons 1 and 2 so I assume they will have season 3 at some point. Hulu has season 1, they may get it eventually.

That would be crazy if there were two people injured by falling trees on rides named ninja at two parks 1800 miles apart on the same day. But seriously, glad you weren't hurt.

Agree. If they're going to argue that the train or ride itself is unsafe they're going to lose and lose quickly. If they want to argue SFMM is negligent for not clearing vegetation, they may have a case. From the verbage in the LA Times story it looks like they're going for the former, which to me makes them look naive. Looks like we have a fan of Scream here. Watch this doc about that case: http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70167106?strkid=885329450_0_0&trkid=222336&movieid=70167106 I was surprised when I saw it, I always thought that was the prototypical frivolous lawsuit but its not frivolous at all.

Not questioning whether its possible for a person to undo it, questioning that it could have come off by itself or inadvertantly.

What is the "back" seat on a ZacSpin? There's inside and outside but which is front or back? I feel terrible for this family and don't for a second accuse them of giving false information intentionally but this seems like the most unlikely scenario of anything that could possibly happen, I don't think it's even physically possible for the hydraulic restraints to just release. Even assuming for a second that the restraints spontaneously unlocked, the seatbelt should have still done it's job. Seat belts don't just spontaneously release, especially Intamin seat belts, which like someone else mentioned are heavy duty and don't get unlocked accidentally since they have to be grasped on both sides to unlock them. If by some snowball's chance in hell the restraints did spontaneously unlock we can expect Insane, Green Lantern, and every other ZacZpin to be shut down for quite a while...but I really doubt that's the case. In the heat of crazy moments like this people (understandably) don't tend to remember details very well. Again, look at NTAG and all the eye witness accounts that turned out to be false. I'm waiting for some factual information to come from investigators.

The gates open at 1030 and most if not all rides should be open immediately unless theyre behind in morning testing or something. Friday should be the best day to go this weekend since Sunday was just announced as a surprise bring-a-friend day. You should start with either X2 or YOLO (which one doesnt really matter) when the gates open and then come back around 4:30 when the lines will be shorter. I tend to do YOLO first because in my experience X2's line dies more in the afternoon. Expect both Ninja and Green Lantern to be completely closed all day. Without a Flash Pass the fastest way is to hit your one big ride first (X2/YOLO) and then do the back of the park which is typically a ghost town in the morning. You can blast through several rides quickly that way and work your way out front and then in the afternoon hit whichever big ride you didn't do in the morning.

It may not have happened to Ninja in 20+ years, but it just happened to its next door neighbor Revolution only months ago. Two major accidents involving threes in a very short period of time. I'm not by any means suggesting removal of trees...as Elissa said we want to keep every last bit of shade we have left, but I think some procedural changes in inspection of surrounding vegetation would be in order. It's not possible to completely prevent every freak accident but for example they could increase the ride envelope for vegetation or just be a little more aggressive or frequent with their tree trimming to minimize the chances of something like this happening again soon.

Depending on the angle it is possible for him to be hit, but yeah the second thing - if this happened an hour before the accident, then dozens of other people would have been hit too, especially as that kid was probably just big enough to ride and a majority of riders would be larger targets than he.

Hate to bring up NTAG again, but this does seem to be a similar issue. Its not always that theyre "too big" it may just be that an unusual body shape causes the restraint to be ineffective. This is something the ride operators should notice when visually checking each restraint.

There's just no way the hydraulics failed. Although it's possible, I don't think based on the design that its like for the rider to come up and out. I think it's much more likely that due to the rider's size the restraint wasnt down all the way and that they went down and out instead. If the lap restraint came down on you mid-gut instead of in your lap where it was supposed to, it would be possible to slide out. Thats something that the ride op is supposed to make sure doesnt happen, but from what I understood thats basically what happened on NTAG. Could be something similar here. Theres no way the restraint opened. The strap could have broken, or he could have fallen out due to the restraint not being secure in the first place, but it takes thousands and thousands of pounds to open that restraint forecefully. No human being under any survivable G-force would break it, ever. (Thats kind of a safety requirement)

LOL post of the week. Absolutely agree. Just maybe need a little more attention on the morning inspection to potential hazards. There was a photo posted of the tree a few pages back, it didn't look rotten at all.

I think this is a pretty unsual case where it's fairly obvious what the cause is. Thorough inspection of remaining surrounding vegetation I would think would be the most likely cause for extended delay.

It would take many many more thousands of pounds of force to cause a restraint to fail. I can't find the exact number but it's such a ridiculous number that it is virtually impossible to occur, and that's just one of the two redundant cylinders. I feel strongly that it's going to be a similar cause as NTAG, though I find it harder to picture how that would happen the way these cars are loaded.

Actually seeing as no one was killed (thank goodness) and the incident didn't occur on a lift or break run, it's conceivable that the ride could be running the 1 remaining working train by then. I kinda doubt it, but it's not impossible.

The park is definitely still open outside of where all the emerg vehicles are. As the chopper was leaving the scene they zoomed in on other areas of the park, saw trains cycling on other coasters, even the concert was still going on in YOLOPLaza. Stupid pilot..as he was leaving we got this quote "Why couldnt this have happened on a ride more out in the open?" Thank you! Tired of the people spouting this "Ugh that ride was old and rickety this isnt surprising" ignorance.

Good thing they still have a ton of parts sitting on that unused train in transfer. I think they'll be needing a lot of them soon.

Anyone else realize this is the second major tree-related accident this year at SFMM? Revolution had major damage due to a tree falling on the tracks in I think it was January or so, fortunately I dont think anyone was on it at the time. Groundskeeping crew might have some questions to answer if the earthquake isn't to blame, and even if it is I feel they should have seen this, should have looked for unstable trees/branches even if they knew an earthquake occurred in the area.