A “tilt” roller coaster, the Circuit Breaker at Circuit of the Americas’ new theme park, COTALAND, unexpectedly stopped twice on opening weekend.
The roller coaster stopped mid-ride at the brand-new amusement park in Austin, Texas, leaving guests dangling in midair and forcing them to evacuate and descend more than 100 feet of stairs.
The Circuit Breaker tilt coaster at COTALAND appears to have stopped at the top of a vertical drop, and videos from the park’s opening weekend appear to show riders being evacuated and transported to safety.
In a video Nicholas Thomas uploaded to Instagram, Circuit Breaker riders appear to face the ground at the top of the coaster, and the ride stops there.
“What? Oh my God. No way,” he says in the video, while waving to friends.
When they ask if he is okay, he responds, “I’m good! We’re just a little stuck.”
“They did an amazing job at keeping everybody calm and getting us down,” Nicholas Thomas told KXAN News. “Definitely not a malfunction. It’s a safety system acting as they’re supposed to.”
Thomas told CBS Austin that he received multiple items from the amusement park after leaving the ride, and then went back on after it reopened.
“This shirt, season passes, free hot lap on the racetrack. It was truly a blast. They did a very good job of apologizing and all that,” he said. “For me, it wasn’t really that big of a deal.”
COTALAND said the roller coaster stopping mid-ride is ‘normal’
The park said the riders experienced what it called an “unplanned stop.” According to the park, riders “remained safely secured” for around nine minutes the first time it happened.
The following day, the ride made yet another unexpected stop. In that case, the park claims that after roughly two minutes, the vehicle returned to its regular horizontal position, allowing guests to exit the ride “normally.”
COTALAND spokesperson Megan Fazio said the Circuit Breaker ride has “has numerous sensors and safety systems that continuously monitor operating conditions. If a required condition is not satisfied, the system may automatically stop the ride rather than allow it to continue.”
She added, “Occasional operational stops are a normal part of operating sophisticated amusement rides.”
Not everyone agrees that a tilt roller coaster stopping mid-ride is ‘normal’
“There’s nothing normal about it,” said attorney Edward Festerygra. “There’s nothing normal about being suspended face down for two minutes, two minutes, or anything ever in that situation.”
Why is Festerygra commenting on it? Because he represents Matthew Cantu, who told KXAN News that he was hurt on the Circuit Breaker at COTALAND last December.
After Cantu and a friend were stranded on the Circuit Breaker for almost an hour, Cantu and his lawyer filed a $1 million lawsuit against COTALAND, claiming “gross negligence.”
“They haven’t ironed out the issues with its operation,” said Festerygra. “Two incidents in the first weekend … should never happen.”
The news about the Circuit Breaker roller coaster comes around a week after over 100 people claimed to have suffered traumatic brain injuries from riding the X2 roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Southern California.
Three X2 roller coaster riders recently required emergency brain surgery for severe traumatic brain injuries after exiting the ride. One of them is still in a coma.
Six Flags Magic Mountain closed the roller coaster on the evening of July 12. Although that was reportedly the day after the most recent injury, park officials have not said what caused the closure.