A group of Disney California Adventure guests may not have had the most incredible time on Sunday after they needed to be rescued from an “Incredibles”-themed roller coaster amid sweltering heat.
Park employees wearing safety harnesses made their way to the stranded guests and handed them umbrellas before they were escorted down from the ride. Temperatures in Anaheim reached 86 degrees on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.
A Disneyland spokesperson said the ride was stalled for about 30 minutes and park employees followed their standard procedures to help the guests safely exit the ride.
A park guest who was staying at a nearby hotel with his family and said he had a front-row view of the ride from his room told KNBC-TV that the ride also stalled on Saturday.
“I thought maybe the ride was closed,” Vince Crandon said. “I was really concerned for the heat and obviously for the people. … It was not moving and was on top of the apex.”
It’s unclear what prompted the ride to stall or how long riders were stranded, but several videos shared on TikTok show that this is not the first time riders were forced to descend the ride after mechanical issues. Previous videos show riders descend several flights of stairs while being escorted by park employees.
The Incredicoaster, previously known as California Screaming, opened in June 2018 and stands 120 feet tall and has a top speed of 55 mph, according to the ride description.
A few months ago, we told you about a legendary ride closing its doors for good at Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri.
It was called Fire In the Hole. The coaster was a mainstay attraction for millions of families over the decades it operated at the theme park. Riders traveled through a town battling a fire, with animatronic characters on sets and a few dips along the way. Fire in the Hole was one of those rides the entire family could enjoy – and they did. I was there when it closed and met parents riding with their children one last time, remembering the times they were kids riding with their parents and grandparents.
When the original Fire in the Hole was built, the park had no idea they would be operating well into a winter season. The building had no heating or air conditioning system. It was getting older by the day, making maintaining the ride a real challenge. Silver Dollar City made the difficult decision to say goodbye to the coaster – but not for good.
The exterior of the new Fire In The Hole show building
Instead, they spent $30 million to completely recreate the ride in another section of the park. The brand new building now has heating and air conditioning and is built to last. They hired Rocky Mountain Construction to build the coaster, but the ride is exactly the same as it was before, with the same pattern and the same dips.
Some of the first riders leave the station on the all-new Fire In The Hole.
But there are some changes.
An entire new audio system has been added to the coaster trains. As you travel through the building and through the multiple set pieces, you hear new dialogue explaining the story and everything happening around you. There is a music score that drives the action. All of the sets were built in house by the staff at Silver Dollar City with incredible focus on detail. This is one of those rides where you will notice something new each time you ride it.
For example, when a character named Bugs hisses his line of dialogue, you’ll hear the scurry of roaches all around you. Look closer at the walls and you’ll see those roaches covering them.
A character named “Bugs” appears to drop bugs on passengers below
The original Fire In The Hole featured a moment where you encountered a train car – it was just an old coffee can that spun around a light to give you the impression that a train was coming. This time? They built the actual train and it’s revealed just as you take the drop.
The new train just before a drop on Fire in the Hole
And finally, when you take the last drop, look for a lit fuse along the right wall that leads to an explosion as you hear a voice yell “FIIIIIRE IN THE HOOOOOOOLE!”
The scene before the last drop on the new Fire In The Hole. Look for the fuse that lights on the right wall.
There are so many little things like that throughout the ride, minor details that will likely be appreciated by longtime fans of this attraction. You can watch my full ride on Fire In The Hole in the video below, with and without commentary:
Here is the official POV video from the park:
The all-new Fire In The Hole is now open at Silver Dollar City in Branson. You can find more information about the park on their website here.
This isn’t my first trip to Silver Dollar City. I’ve done a few stories on the park and their unique attractions they’ve added over the years.
Here’s my ride on their launching, spinning roller coaster Time Traveler:
And my first-ever Coastin’ the Country segment was on their roller coaster Outlaw Run:
Roller coaster riders are typically seeking a jolt of adrenaline ― but not like this.
On Monday, the Magnum XL-200 roller coaster at the Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio, got stuck as passengers were at the top of a 205-foot drop, prompting a hair-raising evacuation.
Those aboard ultimately had to descend a steep set of stairs to safety, led by park employees. Video posted to Facebook shows the evacuation, with the witness who posted the footage quipping, “Glad I wasn’t those folks!”
No one was injured in the incident.
Rider Laina Cafego told local news station WOIO that passengers were stuck in the air for around 20 to 30 minutes before the rescue took place.
“My immediate reaction, I said out loud, was, ‘Is this supposed to happen?’” she recalled. “But it was the not knowing what was next that was the most frustrating part because it took them a while to say over the speakers that they were getting maintenance.”
Cedar Point spokesperson Tony Clark told Fox News Digital that the incident was a “standard ride stoppage” but that operators were unable to restart the coaster.
The park’s website touts the Magnum XL-200 as holding a Guinness World Record for “leading edge height.”
Little more than a week after Myer announced it was leaving Brisbane’s CBD, the department store chain has now said it could ditch another city centre location.
Myer has dramatically threatened to close its Adelaide store within the Myer Centre on the busy Rundle Mall.
The Melbourne based company has claimed the CBD shopping centre which bears its name is “substantially empty” of other stores surrounding Myer and as such its lease has been breached.
The revelation didn’t come from Myer itself but from the shopping centre’s landlord. It has responded saying Myer’s claims are “ill founded” and it will challenge them.
While major retailers like Uniqlo inhabit the floors near street level, the upper levels have seen empty storefronts.
“Myer alleges that there has been a breach of the lease (which currently runs until June 2032), claims unspecified damages and seeks a declaration that Myer is entitled to terminate the lease,” the landlords, Singaporean firm YTL Starhill Global REIT Management, said in a statement.
“Myer alleges that the landlord has breached, and is continuing to…
Have you ever waited for a few hours to ride a popular roller coaster? Perhaps. But I can guarantee you that nobody has ever waited the entire life of the known universe. Well, unless you are the unlucky digital folks stuck on a new wild and complicated Roller Coaster Tycoon 2creation from YouTuber Marcel Vos.
Released in 2002, Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 is a popular PC theme park builder that is still actively played and modded by players in 2023. But there are also purists who don’t play the game using fancy mods or open-source ports. And Marcel Vos, a popular RCT2 YouTuber, is one of these players who enjoys experimenting with the original 20-year-old version of the game. A few years back he made a coaster that takes 12 years to complete. But now his newest creation—impressively created without mods—is a working roller coaster that will take over 3 quinvigintillion years in real life to complete. Bring some snacks.
Marcel Vos / Atari
To pull off this amazing and hard-to-comprehend task, Marcel Vos first built a really, really, really long roller coaster that had almost no hills or dips. This means the coaster’s train moves very slowly around the entire thing. Then, when it reaches the end, it reverses due to specific ride options. That return trip takes even longer. And it has to take this very long journey seven times before the ride is considered finished. All in all, that ride takes over two years. That’s long, but not the universe-spanning ride the headline of this article promised.
That is achieved via 253 smaller roller coasters that are synced—using in-game options in RCT2—with the larger, very slow coaster. So once that big roller coaster finishes one ride—which remember takes two years—one of the smaller coasters will start its ride and that coaster is synced to a coaster that will then complete a ride, and so on and so on. What this all means is that by the time you reach the final roller coaster in this nightmare chain, it will take much longer than just two years to complete. In fact, the actual number is so large I can’t even write it all out.
Here’s a picture of it:
Screenshot: Marcel Vos / Kotaku
G/O Media may get a commission
Marcel Vos does a good job in the video demonstrating just how impossibly large this number is, pointing out that if you were to count a single atom every year of everything that exists in the known universe, you’d be done right around the time Vos’ “Universe Coaster’’ would finally be ending its hard-to-comprehend journey. Yeah, you definitely want to pack a lot of snacks before hopping on this ride.
If you want to see this bonkers Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 ride yourself, Marcel Vos has graciously released a file you can download and play on your own PC. Just be warned: You won’t be around to actually see the final ride finish its eternal journey through theme park hell.
The Mindbender, billed as the world’s largest indoor triple-loop roller-coaster, has been shut down for good, West Edmonton’s Mall’s Galaxyland confirmed Monday.
The roller-coaster has made its home inside the mall since 1985. Galaxyland said the area the ride was located in will be redeveloped.
The changes to the area started with the decommissioning and removal of the Mindbender, a statement from the mall explained.
The Mindbender roller coaster in West Edmonton Mall’s Galaxyland.
Supplied: WEM
“The iconic Mindbender has been the park’s premier thrill ride since the grand opening in 1985,” said Lori Bethel, the mall’s vice-president of parks and attractions.
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“While the Mindbender will be missed, we are excited to announce that we are working on groundbreaking new plans for family thrills that will immerse our guests in an out-of-this-world experience.”
It shut down for more than a year. After safety modifications, it reopened as a main attraction at the mall.
A provincial inquiry eventually blamed the crash on a defunct West German company for design and manufacturing flaws. It found that four bolts had worked loose, allowing a wheel assembly to fall off the roller-coaster car.
