Suicide Attempt on MF?

My wife and I were at CP last night (July 20, 07). Around 9:30, we went to ride MF and were told a train was stuck on the lift hill. We got in line outisde the entrance to wait and a woman behind us got a call from someone waiting on the platform who told her the train had been stopped because a male rider had removed his seat belt on the way up the lift hill. A few minutes later, an ambulance went by. Later, the woman got another call stating the man had been removed from the train and security guards were there. She was told the guy had been thinking about killing himself by jumping from the train.

Does anyone know anything about the incident? We felt awful to consider someone would even think about doing something like that. Poor guy. But, again, we don't know if that is really what happened.

Interesting. Would take some serious work to get out of the lapbar though.

Wow. I was in line when that happened. I saw the man that had taken it off. Not sure why he would want to kill himself. As JuggaLotus said, the lapbar would have been tough to get through.
*** Edited 7/21/2007 10:39:52 PM UTC by steve420***

I was in line during the incident, directly between the load & unload platforms. Word was that a seatbelt was undone, but I don't know for sure. Police and EMS were present.

Judging just by the vibe in the line, I don't think anything quite that serious was going on.

I did hear a ride op say at the unload platform "they'll wait for him here when he gets off." If someone was suicidal and willing to use CP as an instrument in their plan, I doubt they'd let him finish his ride.

Even if someone wanted to do it and removed their seatbelt, I can't imagine how they would wiggle out of the lapbar.

I was slightly irritated at the delay, but felt even worse for the people stuck on that lift hill for almost an hour.

Yea, someone taking a seatbelt off is bot all that uncommon of an occurrence, but it is not normal at all for a single guest to be removed from the train on a lift. I'd have been concerned about him fighting the people trying to help him get out and putting them all in danger.

I'd have been more inclined to staple him in nice and tight and say, "have a nice ride." At least everything turned out okay from the sounds of it.

Sounds to me like some guest made the assumption that taking off the seat belt meant the guy was trying to kill himself. I doubt the story actually played out like that.

My guess is that the system went down and needed to be rebooted. Then when everybody was asked if they were OK, he wanted off the ride. I have been stuck on the hill before. Anyways that's my guess!

My story(2003), after we finally moved, when I got off the ride my legs were numb. It was the last ride of the day (at 2pm). When we exited the ride we were given a ride pass. Problem with that, it was no good on MF or TTD. All other rides were walk ons that day.

Quick question, if someone undoes their seat belt on the way up the lift, does that immediatley stop the train or something??? It dosent look like its rigged up to do that...

No, but there's cameras going up the hill.

If you really wanted to commit suicide on a coaster, why would you pick MF? If the ride ops are doing their job, there's no way you could wiggle out of that restraint.

901liveson said:
My guess is that the system went down and needed to be rebooted. Then when everybody was asked if they were OK, he wanted off the ride. I have been stuck on the hill before. Anyways that's my guess!

I don't think they'd do that in a situation like a train on the MF lift. Maybe his seatbelt was never buckled or they couldn't get it to rebuckle while up there so they took him out since they couldn't let him ride without his seatbelt fastened.

Wow!!! Crazy crazy crazy! My pick would be to do it on the frog hopper but im to tall, so I would walk the other way and do it on the Junior Gemini, but my legs are to long, so by then I would just give up and get DIP N DOTS! Sorry im having to much fun with this!!!

Okay maybe he unbuckled or it came unbuckled, but why the ambulance and security?

I don't know about the ambulance, but we always called security when someone intentionally took off their seatbelt. It depended on the mood of the guard that showed up and the cooperation of the guest as to whether they were just warned or escorted out of the park.

We didn't take kindly to people causing downtime on our ride.

Moving to General Discussion.

Let's be careful on the speculation.

What can be done is buckle the seatbelt as tight as possible and staple the crap out of them. Chances are that they won't be able to unbuckle the seatbelt then. If they do manage to get it off, the lapbar is down so tight as to prevent them from getting out until they are released. Unloading from the train is dangerous. One slip could spell disaster. In fact, Cedar Point won't unload anyone from that lift unless they have no other viable options.

Maybe if he was just really nervous and worked up about riding and went into a sort of panic and wanted out. Some people really do get pretty worked up about riding the bigger coasters. If he had himself that worked up he could have been having some sort of panic attack or something, which means CP would call medics in. Just a guess, it makes more sense to me then a suicide just because those lap bars are so tight.

So the ride ops looking on the cams probably saw him freaking out and holding the two buckles and perhaps trying to escape.

but there is really no device to detect unbuckling other than the watchful cameras?

Just watchful ride ops and watchful cameras.

I'm not sure why new coasters don't have some kind of sensors on the seat belts. I know it's a secondary safety restraint, but they should not be able to be released once the ride has been dispatched. Most of the newer rides at Disney have this feature. If you ride Countdown to Extinction (Dinosaur), try taking off your seatbelt during the ride. It doesn't work. Once the ride is cleared, the buckles are locked and you can't even press the button.

I know it adds cost and more systems to a coaster, but as we all know, restraints are more for protecting people against themselves. Plus, this would be an easy way for the park to guarantee someone isn't coming out of the seat because of an undone safety belt. Those third and fourth layers of protection don't do much good if someone unlatches it on their own.

Also, if a coaster stalls and they have to evac the passengers, undoing the belts would be no different than the restraints. They have to hook up a generator to the trains to release the restraints, so the same could release the belts.