Visitors taking a ride in a Nanjing amusement park got more thrill than their tickets suggested this past weekend, when their rollercoaster stopped dead on a vertical descent, leaving the ride’s occupants suspended in mid air. Turns out it had been a bit too much for one.
The incident occurred on 26 June at an unspecified amusement park in Nanjing, when one of the thrill seekers on board felt the ride to be a little too thrilling, prompting them to hit the emergency stop button.
Shanghai-based media outlet The Paper the next day spoke with a park attendant, who stated there was no fault with the roller coaster. “Tourists were enjoying the ride up until about the halfway point, when one of them became frightened and pressed the emergency stop button”, said the attendant. “The ride came to a halt where it did, and remained there for some time, since the release mechanism can only be operated manually.”
“No one was hurt”, he added.
That which made the park visitor on the ride scared is not clear. But there is plenty precedent for things going wrong on amusement park rides in China.
This past weekend’s incident in Nanjing is, in fact, startlingly similar to one that occurred in nearby Wuxi, also in our very own Jiangsu Province, on 5 September, 2020.
There, in the Wuxi Sunac Park, approximately 20 people on a ride were left hanging upside down, after their rollercoaster malfunctioned, reported the Global Times at the time. No one was injured in the incident, which occurred just days after the park’s reopening in the wake of COVID.
The same park had even experienced a similar event just over a year earlier. In August 2019, another ride came automatically to a halt, leaving its occupants stranded in mid air. It was thought the cause to be a bird which had inadvertently passed in front of one of the ride’s sensors, which, mistaking it for a serious threat, activated an emergency stop.
Elsewhere, in Shaoyang City of Hunan Province, a swing ride crashed on 13 February of last year. A total of 16 riders and onlookers were injured, as then reported the South China Morning Post.
And as the BBC reported in February of 2017, a teenage girl died after she was flung out of a ride at the Chaohua Park in Chongqing Municipality. The girl was thrown on to metal railings and later died in hospital. An investigation revealed her seatbelt had broken and the fit of her safety bar had not been tight enough.
But for the biggest China thrill-ride accident of all, we need go back to 2010. It was then, on 29 June, at the Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Town, that a ride named “Space Journey” malfunctioned. In crashing to the ground, the most-deadly rollercoaster accident ever left six dead, 10 injured and 48 trapped in the wreckage.
