Fury 325 closed due to fractured support

Never mind that the park operated this ride with a catastrophic failure and did not catch it because of insufficient inspection and maintenance.

Cost cutting to meet budgets is a disease that spreads across departments. If they were spending proper funds it the maintenance dept, thus ride would have not run under those circumstances and the crack would not have completely fissured trough.

The cutting of employee hours is just one piece proof that this park only is concerned with cost cutting. Not providing a quality OR now even safe experience.

The chickens have fine home to roost on the mismanagement of this park. Already suffers from low attendance and now with a star attraction deemed unsafe it’s only going to be worse.

You're making some serious metallurgic assumptions.

There's little choice but to make assumptions when that axe needs so much grinding.

Thank you everyone, maybe I can sit this one out.

Jeff:

metallurgic

Even though I have worked in a library now for close to a decade, Coasterbuzz is still my #1 source of reading where there are words that require me to look up the definition.

There’s a thing called picking up extra shifts for call-offs and no-shows if you’re referring to seasonal/hourly positions having hours reduced because of weather/attendance. Yes, someone might have to work a 6-day work week but you know what, it’s the way it works in a seasonal business and many of us worked 6 or even 7 day work-weeks when we were young and paying for college. There’s also a multitude of jobs available outside the parks. Businesses are in business to make a profit, can’t fault a VP/GM for sending employees home if the needs of the business don’t require them to be there.

Yes, but you can fault the GM if they were sending people home early and not fully inspecting the rides per manufacturer’s guidelines. I don’t know if that may or may not be the case in this situation.

I agree that the video is pretty alarming, especially for a relatively new B&M coaster, but I’m going to take a bit of a zag and say that dumping this all in the lap of maintenance is a bit unfair. I mean, what part of the ride is this? Is there a lot of visibility to it? Fury is an enormous ride with a very large footprint.

I keep seeing “maintenance” thrown around like some kind of catch-all term, but what exactly do you mean? Be specific. Because I don’t think having your maintenance crew act as spotters to check every piece of the ride structure while it is in operation is a part of any park’s routine. Maintenance has a list of things they are supposed to maintain, and most of the high frequency checks (daily) center around the mechanical systems: the trains, lift system, brakes, drive motors, etc. The actual ride structure is probably more of a monthly thing, at best.

I admit I’m speculating, but I dunno; common sense says this is a freak incident that no one even thought to be in the lookout for, with good reason. I can say with confidence that poor maintenance had nothing to do with the fracture happening in the first place. The most you could shame them for is letting it run like that for a week, but again, I can see that happening.

Two questions, out of curiosity: Is that park of the ride in North Carolina or South Carolina? I know that park straddles the state line... Second question, does either of those states have a state ride inspection program?

This is quite scary to see, but by the same token, I have to wonder if this was noticeable on the ride at all? I'd think there might be some sort of metallic clanging when the coaster when over that area as the metal flexed and hit, but I'm not sure you'd notice it from being on the ride.

Walt

Looking at the map it looks like the support that broke is nearly right on the state line or barely on the South Carolina side.

Bakeman31092:

common sense says this is a freak incident that no one even thought to be in the lookout for, with good reason. I can say with confidence that poor maintenance had nothing to do with the fracture happening in the first place. The most you could shame them for is letting it run like that for a week, but again, I can see that happening.

I've been thinking this all along. I worked on rides back in my younger days and, outside of the one wood coaster I worked on, crawling all over and inspecting the length of the structure. As for it operating in that condition for a week, does anyone have a source on that? The only place I've seen that information is here. Not saying it didn't happen, but nowhere else I've read seems to be clueing in on that.

As for where it happens and state ride inspections, my experience in another state is that an annual government ride inspection that occurred before the start of the season wouldn't likely have uncovered this. They're doing a cursory visual inspection of the structure and operation and looking at record keeping.

I’m surprised that, if this ride was running for a week with that fracture, maintenance didn’t catch it or address it, but while it’s easy to point the finger there, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume a design flaw. Maybe B&Ms get retracked/resupported on a regular basis and I’m just not aware, but this ride has only been around 8 years. Supports shouldn’t be failing that quickly.

That video is scary as hell. Any more flex and I would worry about the track castestrophically misaligning vertically such that it no longer returned to the correct alignment at rest and subjected the track to forces it’s not meant to handle.

sirloindude:

Maybe B&Ms get retracked/resupported on a regular basis and I’m just not aware, but this ride has only been around 8 years. Supports shouldn’t be failing that quickly.

The only B&M I can think of that got such a treatment was Hulk at IOA, and that's in the horrendous Florida atmos.

It’s pretty shocking to see that big of crack and to hear that no one noticed it for a week.

Jeff:

metallurgic assumptions

That’s the name of my next album.

I watched the video, and my first question is, why did the guy shooting the video not immediately tell someone instead of getting video of it? Ditto for anyone that got a photo "days earlier" as alleged.

It's my understanding the guy took the video of it and then went and showed it to Guest Services. He also mentioned after he reported it to guest services that the ride continued to run even as he was leaving the park.

As for the photo of the crack the week before, that was from a lady who just happened to take photos of the ride last Saturday and upon hearing about the crack last night went back and looked at her photos and to her surprise she saw the crack was present then. A week ago it could still be classified as a crack, since it wasn't completely broken off yet.

From what I read somewhere, people on the Twitters where posting photos with that part of the ride in the background, and after this story broke, they zoomed in and saw that there was a crack, but not yet a complete break.

I always thought that coasters got a thorough track and support inspection every morning before opening by maintenance. I suspect the ride didn't make any unusual noises in this part of the ride because of the morning test ride. My guess is that the total break probably occured between the morning inspection and test ride, and the time the video was recorded.

Which leads me to put blame with ride maintenance, but only if I am correct to assume that their morning checklist includes visuial inspection of the supports.

This is probably something that someone who works at the park might know for sure.

Fury is probably one of the greatest roller coasters on the planet. It's terrible that the ride will be closed during one of the busiest times of the season.

This is not unusual, really. These things happen. Didn't The Bat at Kings Island close for a few weeks last year (or the year before) because of this exact situation?

LostKause:

Didn't The Bat at Kings Island close for a few weeks last year (or the year before) because of this exact situation?

From what I remember The Bat lost a wheel and track sustained some minor damage.