No More Carnival Rides for Me!

We don't get many carnivals and street fairs here in Las Vegas, so when one shows up...everybody goes....

So last night I stopped by one, just to check it out. There is this ride called the KamiKaze (known to some as the "Hammer") . Its one of those rides where the two cars swing in opposite directions making loops.

I have been on this ride lots of times in the past, but I just wanted to watch it this time. A group of people get on, everything is locked, and the ride starts....

Suddenly I hear "stop the ride" being yelled. I look up and this girl sitting in one of the front rows has slipped out of the restraint and is struggling to stay in her seat. Since it takes a minute for the ride to stop she is hanging onto the secondary lap bar while being tossed around the "cage" of the car. Once the ride stops a lot of yelling ensues and she is dangling upside down on the metal bar on the floor of the car. VERY SCARY!

Now having worked in two theme parks and visited several carnivals I have knowledge of rides and their operation, but this was unbelievable. I mean I saw her get locked in...

The guy running the ride tried to say it was her fault and she tried to slip out...she was crying and so shook up by it that she cound move...I doubt she tried to do that. What I think happened was that somehow the shoulder harness popped up so that it was held at a certain point by the auxilary "lap" bar, but to far away from her body so she came from under it when the ride stalled perpendicular to the ground. I talked to the girl and she said she was trying to pull it back down, but it wouldnt lock.

The whole thing was almost sureel...it was like I couldn't believe it was happening. To see her dangling and the reaction of the operators was terrifying. Luckly the ride has a cage like structure, because if it didnt she'd be dead! All said I highly doubt I will ride anything like that at a carnival again.

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"ok everyone go ahead and pull down on your shoulder restraint so you feel nice and stuck!"

Yeah, gotta admit not feeling overly "secure" on some fair/carnival rides...IF (huge IF here) Markey really cared more about actual safety than about grabbing headlines, the CPSC would monitor THESE places instead of permanent parks....

bill, actually *concerned* about being on a 10' tall Molina coaster....

Exactly...

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"ok everyone go ahead and pull down on your shoulder restraint so you feel nice and stuck!"

I've ridden very few carnival rides in my life, because I just don't see them to be very safe at all. Riding that stupid Dragon Wagon thing is bad enough.

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Wise men say, a world without coasters is monotony.

I've ridden the Kamikaze ride a couple of times before and that thing doesn't really have all that much of a secure restraint system,if I remember correctly the one I rode just had a rather flimsy horsecollar that wasn't self locking and was dependant upon a rather flimsy lap bar as a locking device.

Needless to say after hearing of this incident I'm swearing off traveling carnivals forever because the rides just aren't as safe as those found at a fixed location such as an SF,CF,Busch or Paramount park.

Wasn't there an accident in Chicago either last year or in 2000 in which a disabled 13 year old girl was killed on a similar ride at a carnival? I recall reports indicating that she somehow was able to free herself from the restraints as well as the rides safety cage while the ride was in mid air at it's highest point.

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen one of those in Wisconsin, I have seen the similar ride called the Terminator, but the restraint is actually locked when the door comes down (a bar actually sticks through the door) and there was a back up lock on the back of the harness if the door would somehow open during the ride duration. Still makes me wonder though.

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Tuesday's Gone With The Wind.
Elijah Rock.
Is it written in the stars?
La Vie Boheme!!!

BATWING FAN SFA, Yes I do remember someone dieing on the Kamikaze in Illinois. I thought it was at the Illinois State Fair but I could be wrong. Also it was a child but I thought the person was mentally handicapped and the person slipped out of the restraints and fell to their death.

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Mike
Favorite Wood: Viper at SFGAM,Shivering Timbers
Favorie Steel: Magnum and Raging Bull

Yeah,that's the accident I was talking about.

Baddboy, what carnival company was it?

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Well, I have a Chance Inverter at my carnival. Wow. Some lap bars have to be held down for them to lock into the right place, and the harnesses give a little. The scary part is, there is no cage. The secondary restraint will probable give way to 125 lbs. Now for those of you who don't know inverters, the "train" rotates so if a restraint unlocks the car can rotate you right-side-up (hopefully) before the secondary restraint gives way.

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Have you ever seen the Demon?
Have you ever heard him scream.............

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SFGAMDie HARD said:

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen one of those in Wisconsin,

There is one travelling with Murphy Bros Expositions and I saw it a few church festivals and also at the Wisconsin State Fair I believe.

As to the topic at hand, I have had more than one ride on a carnival version of a ride and feel like the restraint system is not safe only to ride the EXACT same ride at a perm park and feel totally safe. About five years after almost coming out of a swinging ship ride at a carnival I swore off carny rides completely. Besides I hate carnys :)

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Bob Hansen

A proud CoasterBuzz Member

Operation Wicked Twister - Goal: Lose 50 lbs by next season to ride it! (updates soon)

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Basically anything that can be transported then put back up is unsafe. I don't care if your in a body suit stuck to the side with super glue they just aren't safe. I remember that a person was riding a ferris wheel when all of a sudden the carrige(the thing you sit in) unhooked and fell down, the person died.

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StEeL PhAnToM said:

Basically anything that can be transported then put back up is unsafe.

A LOT of rides in permantent parks have been moved several times. Every ride is transportable, some are just made easier than others.

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Yeah the carnival was in Chicago where the disabled girl fell out and died. I, in fact, was at the carnival when it happened. A few of my friends and I were at the food tent area when we heard a bunch of people screaming. We went over to check it out and found out the girl had fallen out of the ride. We were all just in total shock. They shut all of the rides down and once the authorities got there, they pushed back everyone; right about that time we left. I will just say that I will never go on a carnival ride again after having to experience something like that. Apparently, it was her fault that she fell out of the ride. I think she was too small for the ride or something. I truly believe it was the fault of the ride operator and her family for letting her even board the ride in her condition. Not that handicapped people should not be allowed to ride rides, but extra safety measures should be taken. In this case, she was most likely treated like anyone else and just strapped herself into the ride, without the ride operator making sure she was in properly. I didn't know the girl, though. It was a bigger event ( i dont think it was a state fair but it was a bigger deal than just a carnival). I am greatful that this happened when it did, because that same carnival (rides, operators, staff, everything) was at my local parish the week before for our annual carnival, and it's good that it didn't happen to anyone i know, but it's most unfortunate that it happened to anyone. period.

I used to not care as a kid but nowadays I am a bit uneasy with Carni rides. Riding something that is assembled, dissasembled, packed up, moved on and then reassembled day after day is very scary.

Tina

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Feel The Adrenaline....
www.intenserides.com

As a former ride foreman with 10 years moving rides, I have to say that the overall chances of a carnival ride having a serious mishap due to mechanical or operator error are pretty dang slim. Thats not to say that they don't happen, they do, and 90% of the time it is patron error.

In this particular case, I would say it very well could have been a restraint failure since a similar thing happened to me on the show I worked for on their Kamikazi. Lapbar popped up, and banged into the secondary bar, leaving me plenty of room to bounce about.

IMO, I believe that most shows out there are very particular about their safety program. However, the quality of the ride help and the pride they take in the rides they move seems to have deteriorated to an all time low since I left the biz.

Maybe it's also a problem due to the design of some of these rides.

I'm not sure what the engineering of most of the carnie rides such as Kamikazee,Zipper and alot of the others typically found in theses type of shows are but it seems as if the designers of most carnie rides didn't take the same steps that big name companies like Huss,Zamperla Zier and a lot of the others which make rides for the fixed parks have done,for example most flats at your typical park such as PKD or SFA have some type of automatic or ratcheting restraint system which is less prone to failure as opposed to the restraint system on rides such as kamikazee which are more of a mechanical or latch type system which is more prone to failure.

If kamikazee had an automatic or ratcheting lap bar/horsecollar restraint then maybe this week's accident might never have happened at all,scary but true don't you think?

Last week I got to ride a Kamikazzee 2. What makes it V.2?? Well the stripped away the safety cage and the floor, leaving the seats, shoulder bars and lapbars. It's a lot more open and leaves your feet dangling.

I have heard of a couple people coming loose from the Kamikazee restraint, in fact it runs in my mind their was a serious incident on one a few years back, imagine the ride without the safety cage.

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David Bowers
Mayor, Coasterville

The Illinois State Fair incident happened in '96...

Taken from ARARN: do not copy and paste other sites material (Chitown)

http://members.aol.com/rides911/accidents.htm

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http://ne.digital-coaster.com

*** This post was edited by Chitown on 9/8/2002. ***

What is ironic is when I first rode the Kamikazee I thought that the restraint system was so much overkill. I mean you have a shoulder bar which is saftied by a lapbar, the lapbar is saftied by the cage door, and seemingly the cage door was substantial enough that if you met the height requirements for the ride, there was no way you were coming out. The Kamikazze 2 is much more what I felt the ride should be like. The only issue I have with K2 is that on K1 the lapbar was manually released by a lever, on K2 is is released by the operator, at the same time the bar flies open the shoulder bars pop up with force. At least the carnies were good about telling people to sit all the way back in their seats, arms down at sides before releasing the bars.

Overall though I have noticed more and more carney rides going to automatic powered restraints, and a gratuitous use of OTSR when simple lapbars would suffice. (Storm, Re-Mix, Jumpin) Of course my body dimensions usually dictate that the carney give the OTSR a nice shove to get to the click they are looking for. (Okay, eXperience took a wholesale jump (carney places two hands on OTSR while jumping up in the air, placing all weight on OTSR in a downward thrust)) It was worth it.

In the end, last time I checked the accident rates between carnival rides and park rides was about equal. Yes there are arguements either way ("This ride is more safe because it isn't moved once a week" vs "This ride is more safe because it is fully dismantled and inspected every week")

That doesn't mean I don't look over each carney ride I am about to board, just last night I ran away from a carney ride that was making a horrid racket I don't usually associate with rides of its make and model.

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David Bowers
Mayor, Coasterville