Wild Thing accident causes partial derailment, 18 people hurt

Posted | Contributed by Jeff

Eighteen people suffered minor injuries in an accident on the Wild Thing roller coaster at the Valleyfair amusement park Sunday, authorities and park officials said. The rear car on one of the roller coaster's ride trains separated from the others about 4:25 p.m. at a point where the trains slow down as they enter the ride station, Valleyfair spokesman Bill Von Bank said. The Wild Thing reaches speeds of up to 74 mph, but it would have been braking and going much slower at that point, he said.

Read more from WCCO/Minneapolis.

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Is it wrong that all I can think about is "I hope this doesn't cause Steel Eel to close" for my vacation next week? :p
It's odd that major news seems not to be picking up on this. On cnn.com you have to search for it and then there's only a link or two to local stations. I remember when Titan at SFOG was momentarily stuck on the lift and there was live helicopter footage of it. Crazy media.
Goliath at SFoG?
No matter how hard the national news media try, they still are attuned to mostly east or west coast news. Very little of what goes on in the midwest is covered, with the exception of Chicago. Atlanta and the south get more coverage on CNN than on other stations because that's where CNN is, and news directors there are going to be a bit more biased to things that affect their local area. Look how often you see the weather channel show idiot drivers in atlanta when it freezes up a bit - that sort of thing happens at least once a winter all over the south, but it's always headline news when it happens in Atlanta.

-chris

Well thank goodness it happened on the brake run if at all. I really want to see what would cause this because its very unusall for a roller coaster to actualy derail because the amount of wheels holding it on.I just hope this doesn't bring bad rep to the park or the coaster. I know now that rumors are gonna spread saying a coaster flew off the trakcs going 80 mphs and 18 people died!(That sounds like RCT)

And this happened at a Cedar Fair park too, thats incredible.
*** This post was edited by Keith2005 5/21/2006 11:46:05 PM ***

that's really odd... i had a strange dream last night of a car seperating / running on its own... though it was a woodie, so i'm not THAT good.

// call me ms. cleo?
[i don't regularly have coaster dreams, i'm not THAT big of a loser =P]
*** This post was edited by SFDL_Dude 5/22/2006 12:01:29 AM ***

Geez. Look at the beginning of the video on that site. The car that tipped on its side wasn't even on the platform part of the brakerun yet. If it tipped the other way, we would have seen a much worse situation. That fence seemed to be the saving grace.
Didn't something similar happen on Steel Dragon 2000? And that's Morgan too.
^oops, SFOT is what I meant. Darn acronyms always messing me up!
I was gonna say that Grant. I was wondering if this is what happened to Steel Dragon also.

Same company, I wonder.

I love how they cover up the track and the car... you know, so that no one can look at it and speculate as to what might have happened...

Actually, it was probably to preserve the site until the official inspection can take place... but still.

Yes, it is to preserve the accident area. When the Orient Express derailed the same thing was done. Then you wont have to worry about metal oxidizing, other contaminants, and anything that may interfear with an investigation.

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