Anyone who has been on a major theme park attraction knows the moment. “And then something goes terribly wrong.” It is perhaps the most reliably trope in attractions — the moment which sparks the conflict that allows our hero to save the day. Mickey Mouse crashes into the track switch. The velociraptors escape their paddock. Someone looks into the eye of Mara.
But what happens when something actually goes terribly wrong on a theme park ride?
North Carolina’s Carowinds experienced that on June 30, when a crack developed in a support column for the park’s popular Fury 325 roller coaster. Photos and even a video of the crack — ominously expanding as a coaster train passes above it — went viral on the internet. What Carowinds did then has been a master class in crisis management, providing a role model not just for the theme park industry but for anyone or any organization facing a potentially catastrophic turn in public opinion.
Carowinds, which is owned by Cedar Fair, the same company that owns Knott’s Berry Farm, closed Fury 325 immediately when the crack became visible to bystanders. The park and coaster manufacturer Bolliger & Mabillard then began an investigation, and the park reported initial results last week.
In a post on its social media, Carowinds said that the fracture appeared to have formed along a weld line in the support column. It said that B&M is fabricating a new support column for Fury 325 and that the park expects to take delivery and begin installation of the new column this month.
The park then detailed its next steps, including an accelerometer test and running 500 test cycles of the ride before asking B&M and a third-party testing firm to examine the coaster. North Carolina state inspectors then would get the final word before the coaster reopens to the public.
Carowinds also said that it would add new procedures to its ride inspections, including the use of drones to inspect “hard-to-reach” ride elements, such as a support column on a 325-foot-tall roller coaster, to help prevent future mishaps.
Fortunately, no one was injured when Fury 325’s support cracked, as multiple redundancies in the coaster’s design helped to prevent a track failure. That’s another lesson for observers — the proper response for handling something going terribly wrong in your workplace starts before that ever happens.
Stuff breaks. People make mistakes. Something, inevitably, will go wrong at some point in everyone’s story. So how will you plan to work around that, to address that and to recover?
Pride often compels people and organizations not to admit their mishaps and mistakes. But I believe that most people appreciate honesty over false comfort. Coaster fans online almost universally have praised Carowinds for its openness about what happened on Fury 325. Of course, I would not have been surprised if many of those fans instead would have been spreading wild speculation about the incident’s cause had Carowinds not been so transparent.
Honesty pays — for everyone.
