Martin's Fantasy Island sexual assault

[Philrad71]

Report of an 8 year old attacked while riding the Crazy Mouse roller coaster at Fantasy Island. Makes me sick to my stomach to think something like this could really happen.

 

Link

[larrygator]

Horrible news, because there are horrible people in this world.

 

And the exact reason why I think it is creepy to "borrow" a child you don't know to ride a kiddie coaster.

[coasterkid124]

Fantasy Island doesn't have the best policies for riding. I think that they enforce at least three people to ride the Crazy Mouse or they won't dispatch.

 

This is sort of off topic, but do they still have their dumb policy for the Silver Comet? Last year, they did not allow anyone to pull down their own lap bars. The ops did it for you and they didn't even make sure it was down all the way. The worst part was that they started over if a single person pulled theirs down.

[DLex]

Fantasy Island doesn't have the best policies for riding. I think that they enforce at least three people to ride the Crazy Mouse or they won't dispatch.

 

This is sort of off topic, but do they still have their dumb policy for the Silver Comet? Last year, they did not allow anyone to pull down their own lap bars. The ops did it for you and they didn't even make sure it was down all the way. The worst part was that they started over if a single person pulled theirs down.

 

Yes on both counts. I was there in June and they would not let us ride the crazy mouse unless 3 people were riding. The ride op asked a small child (could not have been older than 7) if he wanted to ride with my friend and I (without needing tickets).

 

On Silver Comet, they are extremely rude about the lap bar policy. I ended up only riding once because I didn't want to deal with the ride op running the ride.

[coasterkid124]

I understand that after the death at Darien Lake everyone started to get worried, but the employees at MFI have turned into safety nazis. I too haven't visited the park due to the rules. I even heard that they don't let single riders on the new over the falls ride. I'd rather drive the extra ten minutes and go to Darien Lake.

[Mr.Peabody]

These are the reasons I stopped going after 13 years of holding a season pass. The other policy that irks me is having to strip down to ride the Mega Disk-O. No fanny packs, no hats, no flip-flops (not an issue for me), no glasses or sun glasses even WITH a strap. Waldameer doesn't require this. I haven't ridden the one at Seabreeze but I doubt very much they do either. Between that and the stapling on the Silver Comet the park has ceased to be fun. They wouldn't even run the program on the Mind Warp in which the seats start swiveling from the beginning, though I was told by a ride-op they run it for the employees during testing, but they won't run it for guests. Go figure.

 

Someone needs to tell Marty his park isn't big enough to have TPM. I can see having to balance the Over the Falls ride by pairing up riders, but if they have two or four people in line at the beginning of the day, will they put two in each end or make them wait until they have enough to completely load the ride? I believe the ride's capacity is eight, four per car? It would seem to me that if they enough riders to load each end evenly they should run the ride.

[coasterkid124]

I'm starting to get worried about this park actually. If people aren't happy, they'll just go to Darien Lake even if it is more expensive. I've ridden RoS with glasses no problem every time. They even allow hats on the water slides and Shipwreck Falls.

 

I love what Fantasy Island has been doing, but the park isn't as fun with these policies.

 

This most recent incident could have been avoided but the management wanted to be hard headed. Sort of reminds me of the Flume Dog guy. If they would just allow single riders on some things, especially water rides, this stuff wouldn't happen as often.

[Philrad71]

Yes on both counts. I was there in June and they would not let us ride the crazy mouse unless 3 people were riding. The ride op asked a small child (could not have been older than 7) if he wanted to ride with my friend and I (without needing tickets).

 

Now that I think about it, I remember that when we were there...they wouldn't let two of us ride so they stuck us in a car with two little girls that couldn't have been more than five or six years old.

 

They may want to rethink that policy after this horrible incident. Granted, the majority would never think of doing something so sinister, but in today's society, you just never know anymore. My guess is is that this guy may have already knew the ride policy and used that as his intended cover.

[Tanks4me05]

Yes on both counts. I was there in June and they would not let us ride the crazy mouse unless 3 people were riding. The ride op asked a small child (could not have been older than 7) if he wanted to ride with my friend and I (without needing tickets).

 

Now that I think about it, I remember that when we were there...they wouldn't let two of us ride so they stuck us in a car with two little girls that couldn't have been more than five or six years old.

 

They may want to rethink that policy after this horrible incident. Granted, the majority would never think of doing something so sinister, but in today's society, you just never know anymore. My guess is is that this guy may have already knew the ride policy and used that as his intended cover.

 

I'd wager that the level of such predatory behavior in humans has stayed pretty much stable, except the mass media tends to descend upon these stories like vultures and exploit them needlessly, feeding off of their sorrow like parasites.

[Mr.Peabody]

The policy with the Crazy Mouse came about because on one very windy day a few years back at the beginning of the season, they loaded a car with two small children and the car valleyed just as it went over the station. They started not running cars with fewer than three occupants on windy days, then just escalated from there. I don't think the park is in trouble because of this, because most of the GP doesn't know the difference.

 

As to the topic, I'm not sure what the park could do other than only pairing adult riders with other adults or only seating children with family members. It's not like they can do background checks on every guest in the park. Perhaps the best thing that will come of this is that it will raise the awareness of parents that it's no longer safe to just let your children run free, even in a family-oriented amusement park. It's sad commentary on the sick society in which we live, but more responsible parenting will surely help reduce this kind of outrageous occurrence in the future.

[DLex]

The policy with the Crazy Mouse came about because on one very windy day a few years back at the beginning of the season, they loaded a car with two small children and the car valleyed just as it went over the station. They started not running cars with fewer than three occupants on windy days, then just escalated from there. I don't think the park is in trouble because of this, because most of the GP doesn't know the difference.

 

As to the topic, I'm not sure what the park could do other than only pairing adult riders with other adults or only seating children with family members. It's not like they can do background checks on every guest in the park. Perhaps the best thing that will come of this is that it will raise the awareness of parents that it's no longer safe to just let your children run free, even in a family-oriented amusement park. It's sad commentary on the sick society in which we live, but more responsible parenting will surely help reduce this kind of outrageous occurrence in the future.

 

It wouldn't valley if they didn't trim the ride so heavily. Every single trim nearly stopped the car. I haven't seen this on any other spinning mouse.

[ilrider]

I think we need to be very careful about trying to blame the parent in this case for not riding the coaster too, as that is akin to victim blaming. The only person to blame in this case is the sick man who did this. Some parents just do not like to ride rides, and that does not make the father responsible for what happened in any way, shape, or form.

[coasterkid124]

For me it is the park and the attacker that should be blamed. The user that that mentioned the trimming of the cars is totally correct. It sort of makes the coaster unenjoyable and in some cases painful.

 

If the park uses this policy, how would they even complete test runs on windy days? Speaking of this, for their new ride, are they not allowing single riders or something? I keep hearing that they won't run that without 4 people.