CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A crack formed in one of the support pillars for the Fury 325 roller coaster at Carowinds in North Carolina. The ride has been closed pending repairs.
An N.C. state inspection of Carowinds’ Fury 325 roller coaster, one of the world’s tallest and most popular coasters, began Monday after a crack in a support pillar was reported by a visitor on Friday.
The amusement park shut down the steel roller coaster that day, but many questions remain about the circumstances that led up to that moment at Carowinds: What caused the crack; when did it begin to show; how did Carowinds’ daily ride inspections miss a crack that ultimately was spotted by a patron; and how close did the amusement park come to avoiding a potential disaster.
The N.C. Department of Labor’s Elevator and Amusement Device Bureau is investigating and officials were at the park Monday. The department oversees amusement park inspections.
Such inspections are multi-layered, similar to airplanes, said Jim Seay, owner of Premier Rides, which manufactures roller coasters and other attractions.. Premier has worked with Carowinds’ owner Cedar Fair parks for 30 years.
Seay said cracks can occur in a weld of steel that has minor imperfections, which can lead to cracks and fractures over time, which is why inspections are needed. The park will likely coordinate the repair with Swiss manufacturer Bolliger and Mabillard, which built Fury 325, Seay said.
“This is very rare,” Seay said of the crack. Premier has not experienced a similar issue with its rides, he said, adding that it’s also rare for a park visitor to see a problem before park technicians and operators.
Carowinds did not respond to requests for comment Monday. On Saturday, Carowinds told The Charlotte Observer, “The park’s maintenance team is conducting a thorough inspection, and the ride will remain closed until repairs have been completed.”
Carowinds straddles the line between North Carolina and South Carolina, and Fury 325 is on the N.C. side, even as the ride itself extends into South Carolina.
How the Fury 325 crack was spotted
This is a milestone season for Carowinds, which is owned by Cedar Fair. The park is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
With much fanfare, Fury 325 debuted eight years ago in March 2015. Fury 325 is a “giga” coaster, a roller coaster with drops between 300 and 399 feet. Fury 325 reaches a height of 325 feet — about 20 feet higher than the top of the Statue of Liberty — before the coaster begins a descent at an 81-degree angle.
The ride can accommodate about 1,470 people per hour, according to Carowinds. The ride last about 3 minutes and 25 seconds, and reaches speeds of up to 95 mph.
On June 25, Carowinds celebrated on its social media accounts the coaster’s 500,000th rider of the season.
Nearly a week later, on Friday, June 30, a video by Jeremy Wagner shows riders going over a fractured pillar. Wagner said as the coaster’s car went by the pillar, he saw the top of the pillar shift. He reported it to the fire department and it took nearly an hour for Carowinds to shut the ride down, Observer news partner WSOC-TV reported.
The next day, Saturday, July 1, Tiffany Collins Newton of Shelby took to Facebook to say she went back and looked at a picture shoe had taken with Fury 325 in it on June 24, and said she now noticed the crack in it.
A crack formed in one of the support pillars for the Fury 325 roller coaster at Carowinds in North Carolina. The ride has been closed since Friday.
A crack formed in one of the support pillars for the Fury 325 roller coaster at Carowinds in North Carolina. The ride has been closed since Friday. Jeremy Wagner Photo courtesy
‘A gold-standard producer’ of roller coasters
After seeing the video, Seay said, he did not believe any lives were in danger. He said rides are designed to accommodate stress factors and designed with redundancies to address potential failures.
Inspections are required by manufacturers, parks, state agencies and insurers, for example. Inspections including looking at hardware and bolts, are daily, weekly, monthly and annually. Columns can be inspected with spotting scope from the ground, climbing or drones, which are becoming more available.
Carowinds and Cedar Fair are highly respected for their park operations, Seay said.
“I know (B&M), which is a competitor of Premier, but they are a gold-standard producer of equipment to the highest standards,” he said. “You should be much more concerned in getting to the park safely and getting home than getting on the rides that have all these layers of inspections going on.”
If a visitor does see an issue with a ride, report it to the ride operator or another park employee, Seay said.
Carowinds safety inspections
Carowinds technicians inspect each ride before the park opens each day, looking at the ride’s mechanical, structural and electronic components, according to Carowinds. The inspection also includes a complete cycle of the ride. Each ride has a checklist used during the inspections.
According to the 2021 Fixed-Site Amusement Ride Injury Survey, which is compiled by the National Safety Council, there are 0.9 injuries per million rides. That report is for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, which represents over 6,000 amusement-industry members in more than 100 countries.
In a typical year, more than 385 million people go on over 1.7 billion rides at approximately 400 North American fixed-site facilities, according to IAAPA.
“As an industry, we work to continuously improve the safety protocols of the global industry,” IAAPA spokeswoman Caitlin Dineen said. She declined to discuss the Carowinds incident, referring comment to Seay.
A crack formed in one of the support pillars for the Fury 325 roller coaster at Carowinds in North Carolina. The ride has been closed pending repairs.
A crack formed in one of the support pillars for the Fury 325 roller coaster at Carowinds in North Carolina. The ride has been closed pending repairs. Jeremy Wagner Jeremy Wagner
About the Fury 325 roller coaster
Fury 325 opened eight years ago featuring a 1.2-mile track with three 32-passenger open air trains. It’s been named the best steel roller coaster in the world for the last six years by industry publication Amusement Today.
Due to the ride’s height and proximity to Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Carowinds needed to get approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to build the coaster, according to Amusement Today.
Fury designer and builder Bollinger and Mabillard also constructed other Carowinds roller coasters including Vortex and Afterburn. It cost an estimated $30 million to build, not including some taxpayer help with the land it sits on.
In the summer of 2014, this was the first piece of track to arrive at Carowinds for the new Fury 325 rollercoaster; it had been made at an Ohio steel manufacturing plant. On Friday, June 30, 2023, the popular ride was shut down after the park was notified that a crack formed in one of the steel support pillars.
In the summer of 2014, this was the first piece of track to arrive at Carowinds for the new Fury 325 rollercoaster; it had been made at an Ohio steel manufacturing plant. On Friday, June 30, 2023, the popular ride was shut down after the park was notified that a crack formed in one of the steel support pillars. Courtesy Carowinds
The company did not have any immediate comment about the Carowinds incident.
Bollinger and Mabillard is behind several of the world’s most popular steel roller coasters including Apollo’s Chariot at Busch Gardens Williamsburg in Virginia, Mako at SeaWorld Orlando, Diamondback and Orion at Kings Island in Ohio, Candymonium at Hersheypark in Pennsylvania, and Nitro at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey.
Other Carowinds incidents
Carowinds has seen a few safety incidents over the years:
—Last year, Flying Cobras in County Fair at Carowinds stopped moving, stranding passengers for 30 minutes. On April 29, 2022, park officials said there was an unexpected ride stoppage on the lift.
—On April 10, 2022, the Electro-Spin ride got stuck in mid-air with passengers stuck upside down. The ride spins on a 360-degree axis and goes as high as 64 feet. “Within minutes, all guests were returned safely to the ground,” Carowinds told Newsweek.
—Also in April 2022, a man whose hand was severed while working at Carowinds in 2019 filed a federal lawsuit alleging negligence, a charge the park denied.
—In 2015, soon after Fury 325 opened, the ride became stuck at least three times in less than a week, but nobody was hurt. Park officials blamed a safety mechanism. Passengers did not need to be evacuated and there were no injuries. Tommy Petty with Elevator and Amusement Device Bureau assessing the issue said “it’s probably more safe than your automobile.”
—In March 2007, the week before the park opened for the season, seven of 16 employees on a test ride of The Borg Assimilator roller coaster (now called Nighthawk) sustained minor injuries after the mechanism that keeps the seats in position disengaged, the Observer reported at the time. The mechanical failure triggered a safety precaution that’s built into the ride, and the car the workers were in stopped at the base of the vertical loop.
An employee accidentally pushed a button that released seat locks, causing the cars to stop at the bottom of a loop, Carowinds said at the time.
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(Reporters Gavin Off and Chyna Blackmon contributed to this report)
