What Theme Park Ride Malfunction Went Unnoticed By The Public? (r/AskReddit)

fairground in theme park workers of Reddit what is the biggest malfunction that went unnoticed by the public someone puked on the sea dragon maintenance didn't show up so they just ran the ride until it went away and then they let people back on I'm having my sister tell me some stories since she's worked at Disney World Universal Studios and SeaWorld at SeaWorld she was a camp counselor over a summer her kids one week were 2nd and 3rd graders and she was taking them to under the dolphin area to watch them just so happens that at that time there was a dolphin orgy just 30 dolphin's in one big board going at it they went up to go feed them and since they were all so busy only one fat dollop in came up to eat while occasionally you would see some tails come up and splash the image in my head of the fat lonely dolphin eating while all the other dolphins are getting it on is hilarious I worked at a water park any time the wave pool or a slide got shut down to adjust chemical levels or whatever it was most likely because a kid took a crap in it happens all the time I worked at a certain amusement park in Ohio that was considered America's roller coaster in 2005 that summer the transformer generator of a particularly wicked roller coaster of a cyclonic nature blew and we had to literally pull people back into the station with a rope tied to the car and about 20 people instead of completely replacing it they just worked at making it usable for the rest of the summer and throughout the rest of the year we would have the ride go into emergency shutdown mode at random times we were told just to try turning it off and on a game until the code cleared without any inspections or anything like that I worked there one summer and got transferred to this very ride one day they taught me controls but I got rotated out pretty quickly after launching the Train without doing the countdown whoops I worked at a small amusement park one summer as someone else said the biggest issues weren't the rides themselves but kids parents not following the rules we had one ride I think it might be called the paratroop and parents would constantly try to get their kids on the ride despite the height requirements the only protection from falling out of that ride was a lap bar and sometimes kids would wriggle their way pretty far under that I wasn't working but apparently one time a kid actually got all the way under and was holding on to the bar for dear life until the worker managed to stop the ride clean up at the park was pretty disgusting we pretty much just throw water on the blood vomit until it was rinsed away maybe we used bleach water for the blood I can't remember a no gloves or anything for cleanup then we wouldn't let anyone sit in that car for the rest of the day it's as far as I knew they didn't do a more thorough cleaning at any point I worked for Six Flags Over Texas and while not a malfunction most people don't know about the employees that would ride a shock wave without seat belts and standing up the reverse g-force would hold you in your seat as long as you sat back down after the two loops one female employee decided to be brave and try to do it through the whole thing she was ejected out of the right after the loops at the little hump a small hill that pushes you away from the seat with a negative g-force she fell and was saved by her face hitting a guy wire before hitting the ground one time a motorcycle from the Batman stunt spectacular jumped a ramp and hit a female performer during a rehearsal run that's all I know oh and that time the tube slipped on the roaring rapids it made the news and the chick dying on the Texas giant it made the news to that Batman show made my life when I was a kid it was the first thing I always wanted to see I worked at Disney World for a little while and most of the major malfunctions Disney either fixed or shut the ride down quickly the biggest one that I think is still there today is the Yeti and Expedition Everest it's a huge mammoth machine that's supposed to swing down of the riders but it broke a while ago the problem is to fix the Yeti would require some major work so they just left it as isn't put strobe lights on it I don't know if they fixed it recently but for years it didn't work as I said Disney tended to fix ride errors quickly like during spring break when some idiot jumped off the log on Splash Mountain robear's clubbed off the floor and dropped it in the flume ride was shut down real quick disco Yeti I was a ride operator at a smaller theme park for several years the rides that had the most accidents were the ones that you would not expect the top three rights for accidents in our park in order with a carousel the go-karts and the raft ride I went to Disney World when I was eight and Snow White Horse and Princess was standing up against the wall taking photos I somehow glanced behind her and saw that her dress was ripped like her butt was completely out she was wearing a white song and she was taking pictures like nothing was happening I was eight so I had no obscene thoughts all I thought was you yikes actually now that I think about it the fact that she was being so relaxed chill while her button thong were exposed as pretty hot even the contrast between seeing a woman who's made up like a Disney Princess and seeing her bare butt in a thong is hot itself sounds like she was up against the wall because she knew it was ripped in just waiting on reinforcement from other cast members go to value that dedication though some much a mutter years ago I was working my summer vacation at an amusement park running a roller coaster I got to sit and push buttons give the safety instructions etc so we get the train full of people I get the all-clear hit the button to start the train up the hill when I see something out of my periphery a guy has somehow climbed the gigantic wall surrounding the ride and has dropped down next to the track where I am about to send a metal train full of people at 40 miles per hour I slam on the emergency stop button which shuts down everything on the ride and grab the phone for security my co-workers come up to see what's happening and I point to the guy down in the ride zone he's acting weird and erratic and is actually climbing on the roller coasters track and is taking off his clothes security tells us not to approach him in case he's dangerous and to move the people in line away meanwhile I head up the stairs to talk to the people who are stuck in the ride the stairs were open metal things extra narrow steep and at this point damn in the best of times I hated climbing them I get up and most of the people are calm except for one woman who is freaking out she's panicking that the ride is malfunctioning and that she wants off now I understand panic attacks and how you're completely slave to them so I'm calmly telling everyone that I was the person who hit the emergency stop why I did it etc from their viewpoint they literally could see the guy climbing up the track security chasing after him etc I've called foreign manager to let this lady off because I'm not able to do it so the manager finally arrives let's this woman off with dire warnings about how dangerous the steps can be by this point the police are arriving there's all sorts of stuff going on in the sights of the patrons as they are trying to arrest this guy and then a guy on the ride announces he wants off too so the manager lets him off he climbs over another guests faces the Train and calmly announces that there's entire thing the half-naked man security the police all of it was just to cover up for the fact that the ride had malfunctioned and that they were all going to die and I'll be damned if they didn't believe him we evacuated that ride and two people slipped walking down those stairs I had to fill out massive paperwork to keep people from suing thankfully we were able to call a cop over to witness after police left the ride was started back up with no issues I worked at a theme park for a couple of years one of the best malfunctions I can remember was actual damage to the ride discovered by the maintenance guy this was a wooden roller coaster that covered quite a bit of land area as part of the maintenance duties they would check the concrete footers for the many structural beams I was operating the ride and the maintenance guy told me he would be inside the ride perimeter conducting checks not even two minutes later I see him running to the maintenance shed as the ride is going up the lift then the phone rang it was maintenance telling me to stop the ride I did so without hesitation as the ride the top of the first lift Hill we had to extract everyone from the right after everyone was off the ride and we cleared the lines I was informed that several of the concrete footers were cracked the ride was shut down for several days and I had to deal with many angry customers worked at Disneyland California Adventure in my youth I can't talk about miner parks and carnivals but Disney does not flick around with safety a checks by OSHA Occupational Safety and Health Association would do routine checks on everything plus safety checks before and after operation one time I jokingly told a co-worker to emergency stop the ride because we're told to never e stop the ride unless you see severe structural failure well he did it the complete ride came screeching to a halt endure ID no loops or anything and well let's say that everyone was obviously trained and prepared for these kinds of situations however be aware that whatever seat you're sitting in someone has pee in it and I'm not talking a couple drops either of all bodily fluids I am the least afraid of pee I'm a ride operator at one of the big theme parks unless you're actually in the right during a malfunction you're not going to be aware due to the nature of our ride it doesn't matter if one vehicle goes down we just put them on one that works now if the entire ride goes down the wait time will be bumped up to steer folks away like someone else said the tech crew can fix most malfunctions in about 10 minutes the rides are all incredibly safe if you get hurt on a ride chances are that it was your fault nice try Hammond I'm not going to endorse your Park not really a ride malfunction but still a malfunction nonetheless I worked at Islands of Adventure when I was younger and a lady ignored the sign on the penny crushing machine and the spider-man store that read out of order she put her change in on being that the machine was out of order it did nothing she saw me working the register and proceeded to storm up to me and be that the machine ate her change I looked over and asked if the out of order sign was still on it since I had placed it there maybe 30 minutes prior she said yes and proceeded to be at me some more because I couldn't refund her I have no way of opening the machine and I'm not going to short my register eventually I got sick of her moaning and proceeded to take a dollar out of my pocket and slam it on the counter with a hair lady and then walked away to go on break later that same day our managers were investigating who happy this lady off enough to go to the front gate and be about the penny machine and the employee Lockley I would where other employees nametags for such reasons they never did find out who Sergio from Micronesia was I really hated the guests at that place most of my co-workers were awesome only job I've ever walked out on another former Disney cast member here as others have said safety is number one with our rides in fact the worst malfunction I experienced on my ride was a seat belt fault basically the ride couldn't tell that a seat was buckled so we couldn't launch the ride until it was cleared we had to get a maintenance CM in to clear it before starting the ride however I guess the biggest unnoticed thing I experienced was a bomb threat there was a rather large piece of luggage left unattended by our ride so we formed a human barrier around the area to keep guests from walking near it in case it was dangerous some people were a little annoyed that we were blocking their path but otherwise they didn't question it after it was cleared by security and taken to lost and found we just went back to work like nothing happened I just finished working at an amusement park closed for the winter and I can assure you that those rides are incredibly safe every day at 6 a.m. the maintenance crew would come through to clean all the rides and run down at just to make sure everything was in place at 9:00 a.m. the foreman would show up to work and go through that same checklist while also test running the rides then at 11:30 a.m. we'd get our ride assignments and go down the checklist of third time for our individual rides if at any point something was even slightly off we'd report it and ride maintenance would show up within minutes to assess the situation if they couldn't fix it within 15 minutes which only happens once the entire summer the ride would be shut down while they got a crew out there to fix it up after it was fixed they would go down the checklist call a foreman to go down the checklist then have the ride operator do the same thing before reopening it it seems incredibly redundant but nothing hurts your Park quite like someone getting themselves hurt and/or killed by far the biggest problem we had was people ignoring the rules trying to get their kids on right they were too short to ride on arguing that they don't need to use the seatbelts on the bumper cars and taking them off once the ride started then being surprised that I had the ability to turn the ride off wearing hats on the roller-coaster stuff like that plenty of obscenely angry parents especially during Oktoberfest yes people brought their small children to Oktoberfest a bunch of screaming kids all that stuff you hear about but there are also plenty of fun stories to cancel the bad ones out overall I enjoyed my time there and will probably work there again next year if I don't manage to find a steady job in the end between I think I may work at the same park as you or else your Park is really similar it's a great summer job honestly though I always check my own safety restraints now since I know how incompetent my fellow employees can be when I was a teenager I got a seasonal job at one of those pumpkin patch carnivals they set up in the parking lots of malls lots of wood chips pumpkins and rigged carnival games all of the employees were high school students looking to make some cash by getting minimum wage and pocketing whatever cash customers handed to them the proprietors lived out over RV trailer and the lot and we're the type of people that just did not give a Frick about anything except selling pumpkin the rides were small and sketchy as Frank all of them were those rides are just spun in a circle swings carousel boats airplanes teacups they looked like they had been transported a million times and assembled in an hour one day I was working the boat ride which just required me to press the start button time about a minute or so then press the stop button less new passengers on and take their tickets no water on this boat ride just boat-shaped carriages with a wheel on the bottom that spun around a central point the safety device was a small chain that went across the children's laps about half way through one ride the arm that connected the boat to the central point pops loose sending the boat in it's five year old passenger careening off the platform and into the surrounding fence turns out the belt that held everything together was just put in place and never actually bolted of course when we discovered this the manager didn't tell the parents and acted as if it was some freak occurrence instead of you know negligence I was told to bribe them by giving them as much food as they wanted from the snack bar many chairs and snow cones were hard worked at an amusement park with a roller coaster that was enclosed in a future part of the land and the ride was shaped like a hill some other type of large natural structure there is a reason you can be too tall for a ride I think it's six four or six two and to keep your arms and legs at all time the person was on the ride and had his hand straight up typical roller coaster form his finger hit one of the metal rafters and a bolt in the rafter caught his wedding ring this flayed his skin right off his finger the Mouse in charge does a very good job hiding these type of accidents for both bad publicity and OSHA find statistics needles to say I don't raise my hands to the sky when I'm on a roller coaster I worked as an EMT in an amusement park one summer we had a log flume ride that if for whatever reason did not pull people up over the second Hill the flume would submerge if it was hit from behind by another flume coming on the ride we had a specific coat over the radio for it and if we heard it we were to drop everything all bus to the ride throw a board over the channel and start hauling people out thankfully never happened that summer but someone died last time it happened 10 years prior this sounds like a ride built on roller coaster tycoon I worked at a local theme park in my late teens and we had a sky coaster type thing which is basically a large 180 foot tall arch type structure with two cables hanging from the sides at a table and from one three people in a sleeping bag type thing you get raised up to the top pull the release cord freefall for like 80 feet then swing back and forth for a bit it was a blast and a huge attraction one day this couple went up and left their five-year-old daughter on the ground to watch they got to the top and released after the freefall they started to swing back up and a seagull decided to fly towards the cable the cable wunen sliced off the wing to the seagull blood rained down on the poor little girl waiting on the ground in the seagull spiraled and landed in the bushes a few feet from her for some reason she started screaming and the people nearby started to panic it was an interesting 20 minutes cover for some reason I feel like screaming is the appropriate response to having blood rained on you I used to work at an amusement park where they have Sesame Street characters one day Big Bird showed up drunk and puked inside the costume he got fired they needed someone to be Big Bird later in the day I worked nearby but not as a character somehow they chose me it's awkward wearing an 8 foot two inches 65 pounds costume you look through some mesh in the neck area of the costume it's hard to see there's a contraption that comes down from the head which controls the head and mouth it looks like a bicycle brake on a swivel at the end of a thin rod inside the costume squeezing it opens the mouth turning or twisting it moves big bird's head big bird's feet are wide you're supposed to walk with your toes pointed outwards so you don't strip it's a lot to think about when you've never been Big Bird before I got caught up in how crazy it was to suddenly be Big Bird I especially liked opening and closing the mouth and moving the head around it probably looked like Big Bird wanted to eat someone maybe I should have focused more on doing basic Big Bird things within 10 minutes of getting the costume on I accidentally kicked a toddler in the chest I just didn't see him TL DR drunk Big Bird's puked so new Big Bird could kick kid I will share some stories from when I was a supervisor for the Carolina State Fair we had this one ride called different names depending where it was at usually it was called the gravitram down south and the starship up north it was the classic ride where you would stand lay on an inclined wall than the circular structure would spin until you feel slightly weightless this ride caused lots of injuries but they were always small cases for example smaller kids would see the elder one spinning upside down or trying to walk the right and they would try out the same trick when the ride was slowing down so basic run off the list we had kids with bumps on their heads or something sprained this was always typical of that ride on the last day of the fair I rode it to check how its operating and throughout the whole ride I would watch the door barely come hinged or be shaking wildly I informed the owner of the ride and closed it for the two days so they could maintain it before they set up at another fairground I don't know the exact details but a few weeks later that same ride ended up injuring seven people at another fairground when the pounding broke off and threw a few riders outside that's probably the worst incident to ever happen for that ride another time I got contracted to go down to Atlantis and the Bahamas to supervise some rides over there nothing happened to my rides but the dumbest setup i ever seen was when a subcontracted open-air Gravitron was set up near some trees this ride operated almost like the fairground gravitons yeagley was a open cage the riders wore a belt and the machine tilted a 30 40 degree while spinning each time it tilted up if I wanted to I could life my hands up and touch the trees no one was injured but fricking heck there were power lines near those trees wTF is wrong with some people well other than that my life isn't that amazing seen enough puking crap yes some people actually crap their pants to last me ten lifetimes I live in northern Michigan and the fairs around here always called it grab it until it got stolen yes the whole ride we got stuck on it's a small world ride and Disneyland for over an hour the song makes me want to hurl now one entire ah of Chinese it's a small world after all story one I didn't work there but back in the late 90s there was a theme park in Tulsa called bells one of the roller coasters had an accident that hurt a lot of people as it was inclining up the chain on the first hill it lost its grip and skyrocketed backwards into the car behind it luckily it wasn't too bad but it was enough to shut it down story - also in Tulsa a celebration station in late 90s a worker died when they were dragged into a ride it was a rate ten person ship that went back and forth eventually going upside down work up at a towed out and put a hand in middle and got sucked in someone ended up dying from the accident in your first story really as long as you listen to the right operators everything will be fine and if something goes wrong just remain calm and listen to the ride operators especially if the place is some big-name famous that says Cedar Point Mall of America Six Flags etc' the ride operators will know what to do crap happens when people decide herder I've paid money so I'm gonna do whatever the heck I want this is the fastest tickets to getting kicked out and getting your season pass revoked over and did I mention at least in Ohio and I'm pretty sure in other states as well not obeying the instructions of a ride operator and or written instructions is a misdemeanor source former ride operator I love pulling that crap on people I work out a certain southern Ohio Park and when people don't listen to me I just say it's a misdemeanor not to listen to me and they stop everything it's funny watching teenagers freak out after you say that I'm a supervisor at a small amusement park and one day I was operating the roller coaster when this Russian family gets on the mother along with her two-year-old daughter sit in the front and the dad in the car behind them now there is one bar that comes down over both people in the car so since the bar only came down to the mother's lap there was a lot space between the baby in the lap bar it's not usually a big deal the coaster doesn't go upside down or anything like that now halfway around the loop the baby gets up on her knees and turns around to smile for her dad the parents don't seem to care and keep taking photos so when the train comes back into the station I tell them that the girl needs to sit down in bla bla bla so I send them up again and this time halfway up the chain the girl stands up on her feet right as she does so the coaster jolted forward and the girl fell backwards out of the car my heart fricking stopped I slammed the emergency brake but it was too late the coaster was on its own somehow the mom managed to grab the girl's ankle and pull her in right before her head smacked the cuddler the worst part is they kept laughing and taking pictures as if nothing had happened when the train arrived I told them to get off and not come back this happened a year ago and I still held it as my most traumatic life experience even though it wasn't my life at risk a TL DR irresponsible parents nearly got their child steamrollered by a rollercoaster then nonchalantly walk off as if nothing had happened I worked at a zoo that had rides so I guess it sort of counts I wasn't a ground worker or someone who worked with the rides I was just working on advertising which I have a bachelor's degree in for a zoo in the Midwest to help get some money for grad school that fall well this particular Zoo had a ride that was like a ski lift type contraption where children and adults could basically sit down have a bar placed over them and they could ride over the animal exhibits seeing them from about 60 70 feet in the air before disembarking at an identical station at the other side of the zoo it was really cool actually but this zoo was so Esper ought to get it out they were having financial problems and moving that they ignored some less than positive results from regular testing since I was doing advertising for this ride I was privy to a lot of the materials that came out pre-opening they tested it using full backpacks filled with hay or a similarly harmless material were it to fall into an animal exhibit exhibit these backpacks were roughly the size of a small child that was seated that was well over the height requirement too bad slightly under a majority of these bags fell under the safety bar and into the animal exhibits beneath the ride hello they fixed it by lowering the safety bar an entire inch and then opening the ride nobody has died there but I won't be surprised when I see the news reports that it happened I worked at a large theme park chain located in central NJ for a few years during high school and college the rides are probably the safest in the world in terms of mechanical reliability the only accidents that occur are when someone is playing around the ride or they have some heart effect that is triggered by the ride rides are inspected by the state and NJ has some of the toughest regulations in the country all rides are designed to come to a controlled stop in the event of any malfunction rides are inspected by multiple teams of people every day the only time I've ever seen riders get hurt are when they don't follow the rules there's a reason you should wait for the ride to stop moving before you try to get off but people can't be bothered to read signs when they're at a theme park so we end up having to yell at everyone anyway ask me if you have more specific questions TL DR rides almost never break people hurt themselves I worked at an amusement park a few years ago and one day I was operating the ferris wheel it was a very hot day and was around 3:30 4:00 p.m. after the maintenance workers had already left for the day there were two relatively small children on the ride when I loaded it and as I went to start the ride the cable caught on a bolt and stopped it jarring the entire ride so it shook violently I tried to maintain my composure as I realized he was a problem that I could not fix and that if I waited then the maintenance workers will get there probably around 45 minutes or an hour leaving the kids to most likely become dehydrated and upset maybe even scared although they were only about five feet off the ground the father of the two boys asked me what was wrong and I just told him that the right circuit breaker must have been tripped and that I would have to go and reset it of course that wasn't actually the only problem and I could not have actually fixed it I then said I could just get his kids off of the ride without making them wait he seemed to like this option better thank goodness and so I ended up getting the kids to lift the safety bar by reaching around and unlocking it I then got them to half jump climb into my arms and let them out of the ride enclosure the father asked if this sort of thing happened often and I just sort of laughed and smiled and said it wasn't the first time once they left I talked to my partner about what happened and he actually didn't even know anything was wrong because I had kept smiling and calmed the entire time I then told him that in fact there was something very wrong and I would have to close the ride and call the maintenance workers the cable to the right had been frayed and almost snapped because of the bolt it was caught on it was actually such a hot day out that the cable had loosened because of the heat and also it should have been tighter and that was what caused it to become caught in the end the cable had to be repaired but that wasn't even enough since the violent shaking of the ride had actually caused distortions in the metal that a ride was built out of the entire ride had to be shut down for about a month and a half and rebuilt by calling in a crane I didn't end up even getting in any trouble and my boss actually complimented me on my composure during the audio saying he was glad it was me who was operating the ride and not someone else I was pretty happy about how I handled it too considering it would have been a lot scarier for those kids if they had known how much of a malfunction it was a ride next to the one I was working at killed a mechanic apparently he was inspecting the tracks while the ride was still being operated they suspected an attempted suicide from his friends reports on his behavior it was an old wooden coaster and it crushed his head into the tracks it was supposed to be impossible to get in without the ride being shut down for but somehow the safety lock was not working that day if you are new to the channel you can subscribe I publish new videos every day until then check another video bye for now [Music]

Channel: Updoot Everything

Views: 56,790

Rating: 4.9023509 out of 5

Keywords: theme park, theme park malfunctions, malfunctions, unnoticed, fairground malfunction, #updootst, updoot, reddit, r/askreddit, askreddit, ask reddit, r/, \r, r\, best of reddit, reddit stories, reddit story, top posts, funniest posts, funny, funny posts, funny reddit stories, funny askreddit, reddit funny, askreddit funny, askreddit stories, reddit stories 2019, people of reddit, sub, reddit cringe, memes, toadfilms, updoot everything, updoot reddit, story, stories, rslash, comedy, fresh

Id: Uud_84Y-xj4

Length: 31min 4sec (1864 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 08 2020