Near Death experiance on a WOF Power Tower

On 04-13-03 a friend and I went to Worlds of Fun and were having a great time until the second time on the Detonator. If you dont know what the Detonator is it WOF version of Power Tower. Well this was the second ride and at first it was normanal until I was shot into the air. As I was shot into the air my safety harness came undone and I started to eject from my seat but my friend saved my life,by holding me back in the seat the attendants response was "Im sorry." That only enraged me more and the incident was reported to the Ride manager who use to work at Cedar Point. My friend and I are both new employees at Cedar Point this summer and I thought you might find this intresting. While the incident is still under investigation because it just happened today there are two possible casues 1. The belt buckle broke or 2. The buckle was never secure in the first place. This questions the safety of the SS Power Rides as maybe they need more support what do you all think? and has this ever happened at Power Tower?

I posted this on worst experiance and just thought that that all the ride operators should see this and tell me what you think happened. If it turns out that the belt was not secure then it is a reminder how crictical it is to check the harness very well.
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Genaro Lewis

First, if this is true, then you should be thanking a guardian angel. However, this doesn't seem very possible seeing how S & S Harnesses aren't just held down with a belt. They are also locked in position after buckling.

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Formerly the imbecile known as ddogg
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2003 Raptor Crew

The seats lock in place AND the buckles latch. Independently. If one fails, the other works.

If you rode, and the buckle was undone, AND the harness somehow broke free, at the same time, WHICH IS VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE ...your friend would not have had the energy to hold you in your seat, because they would be flying up into their harness at the same time as your harness would come up...and they wouldn't be able to force their arm to hold your harness closed because of that airtime effect.

If this really happened, and there is any proof at all, I'll eat my 2002 season faded-blue staff hat. But I worked the ride, and I know from experience that the belt is only a secondary, BACKUP measure...and if the belt was broke, that's one thing...

But if the locked harness somehow malfunctioned, that is completely and totally unrelated to the buckle, and as I stated, the odds of both happening together are slim to aboslutely none.

I hate to sound cynical, but that's all we need is another "It happened to me" amusement park ride urban legend.

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Alan
PTC02/ScrewCrew02
ScrewCrew03

It is a comfort now to know that there was a back up safety system that locks the harness, it is possible that the harness was still locked, however you have a small amount of wigle room because when you get to the top of the tower your body slams up and thats when I noticed the strap came off and my friend automaticly threw there arm across and said hold on tight. We did not know that there was a secondary lock and frankly when you are 160 feet in the air and see a strap dangling you don't think about things like that The fact is we did not know for sure and frankly did not care at that point as it was pure reflex. I do think it is odd that the ride manager that talked to us after the incident did not mention the other safety lock as he took the situation very seriously and in fact that seat was roped off. If this model of ride is the same as power tower it would have been nice to mention it to me. I would like to ask you to put yourself in my shoes if you rode a ride and did not have knowlage of all of its safety features and you looked down and saw the strap had came loose would this of scared you??? I did not intend to start a rumor but was just trying to make sense of what happened.

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Genaro Lewis

I was under the impression that the computers on the S&S towers require all belt buckles to be secured in order for them to procede to the launch or upwards sequence. This rules out the question of whether the belt was secured. Now if that happened to malfunction, the actual OTSR requires something like 10,000 pounds of pressure to be compromised. This story doesn't sound very credible.

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What is most anticipated event of 2003? the debut of Dragster, the release of Metallica's new album, the release of Terminator 3, or the release of Matrix:Reloaded...tough call.

I worked on Power Tower last year a few times and I can tell you that the tower would not begin weighing if all OTSR were down past a certain point. From what I understand this is an improvement upon the original PT ride as the ride could be launched with the harnesses up. Glad to see that they fixed that problem.

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MANTIS ROCKS 2002 & 2003

Guys let me explanin this first of all this is not the power tower it is similar but it is not the same ride. Is it possible that this could be a different model. Everyone seems to think that Im making this up this happend and I would not waste your time or my time posting a lie I have better things to do as Im sure you do. This is my first year at Cedar Point and I do not plan to let this isloated incident keep me from any rides. As I have stated at 160 feet no one is thinking about back up anything. Is it possible that this is an older version that has not been updated??? As I have stated this was the 2nd time I had been on the ride and what people are missing is the attendants response that is an inapproiate response and the attendant noticed the strap dangling as the ride was being lowered. What would have been your response if you had no technical knowlede of the ride? In closing I do not apperciate the acusations that this has been fabricated. This posted to let everyone know how important is to actually check the restraints. Computers are only as smart as the person programming them. And computers are in no way perfect...If computers are so perfect why is there a need for ride operators??????

Man you guys are just FLAT OUT RUDE, While it is easy to think that we live a place called "perfect" the fact is is that strange things do happen despite all of the best technology and the most updated computer systems. Are you guys saying that all rides are built the same and are all perfect? Give this poor guy a break. How do you know this did not happen where you there???? I must say stranger things happened. I for one think the guy is telling the truth and that this probably did happen. If this guy wanted to lie why would he use his real name and say that he was going to be working there???? I think you guys owe this man an apology as it sounds like he has been through enough.

Ryan

I've heard this story before.

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'02, '03 Foods Area Sup (area 3)

Blah blah blah.

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Jeff (who hates attention whores)
Webmaster/GTTP - Sillynonsense.com
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