Knott's Berry theme park ride strands riders 300 feet in the air for hours

A husband who wanted to "train" his wife to lose her fear of heights got his wish granted when a Knott's Berry Farm ride stranded riders for the second time this month.

"The first half an hour was pretty rough on me. I have a fear of heights,” rider Donna Garrison told KABC-TV. “I was on it because my husband wanted to train me to get over my fear of heights.

“By the end,” she added, “I was."

Knott's WindSeeker shut down after passengers left hanging in air

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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ahecht

I’m not surprised. Not only did this ride at Knott’s get stuck two weeks ago, but of the 6 Mondial WindSeeker rides in existence, the 4 at Canada’s Wonderland, Cedar Point, Carowinds, and Knott’s have all gotten stuck with riders aboard.

As an interesting bit of history, Cedar Fair (the parent company of all those parks) was originally considering building Funtime StarFlyers instead, which have a proved track record. However, they chose to go with Mondial, who promised that they could build a copy of the StarFlyer that was more reliable. Meanwhile, Six Flags parks have been building StarFlyers across the country, and have been running them without any major incidents.
jerwin

Why is this video cropped? I’d like to see the right hand side, or more specifically, controls that usually appear on the right hand side of such videos.
- EH
  
  Looks like the page formatting is expecting a YouTube-sized video, but this one isn’t or doesn’t shrink to fit.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jonathan-Vanasco/728395557 Jonathan Vanasco

This was in an episode of Get A Life…
Boundegar

You get a ride, you get a meal, a free t-shirt, a class-action lawsuit, punitive damages, and PTSD!
papiermeister

I dunno, but something about the choice of words “train his wife” has a dull thud to it. :
- millie fink
  
  You mean you don’t treat your own wife like a domesticated animal?
  
  http://www.funnyphotos.net.au/images/worst-husband-in-the-world-awards1.jpg
- Boundegar
  
  Particularly when it’s “training” them to overcome fear by rubbing their nose in it. That works, sometimes. Like in the final pages of 1984.
  - Pirate Jenny
    
    Well, exposure therapy is a thing–and it looks like “train” was her wording. But I think you’re supposed to start a little smaller and work your way up!
RaidenDaigo

Oh no a No on 37 ad!