A mum has shared the horrific experience of being stuck 50ft in the air for over two hours after a rollercoaster malfunctioned.
Stacey Stewart, 31, had been at Pleasurewood Hills in Lowestoft, Suffolk, with her daughters Poppy, eight, and Marnie, seven, for the bank holiday Monday.
They had been among the nearly 30 riders who were trapped on the Wipeout ride for almost two hours. Thankfully, they weren’t upside down.
Stacey called the experience ‘horrendous’ and ‘really scary’, with her partner Joseph Bowman and their two youngest daughters, 10-month-old Raya and three-year-old Isla, watching on helplessly.
‘They had to manually release the ride, allowing us to shoot backwards,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘The girls are now shook up and so am I.
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‘It was horrible just seeing the concrete below you.’
Her youngest ran forward as the cherry picker arrived to take them to safety, with the tot running forward towards her mum.
‘It’s awful she witnessed that,’ said Stacey.
The ride had come to a stop during a change of direction, becoming stuck for around 10 minutes before staff stepped in.
Passengers said the carriage was then released on the expectation that the emergency stop would kick in, but the system failed and the carriage was propelled backwards.
13-year-old Honey Purkiss was also on the ride, with her panicked mum watching on from below.
She described watching a worker use a metal bar to release the carriage, which promptly started going back down.
However, despite the staff member’s explanation of the procedure, his face ‘changed’ when the carriage passed the emergency stop point.
The carriage then shot back around the track, stopping halfway through the second loop but upright.
Honey said they had started to panic after the emergency stop failed, admitting they thought the worker had ‘lied’ to them about the severity of the situation.
Her poor mum was panicking on the ground along with plenty of other parents but managed to calm down once the ride came to a stop.
Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service crews sent out specialist rescue equipment and fire crews to free the rollercoaster enthusiasts.
A spokesman said on Monday: ‘The carriages, which came to a stop on the track, are approximately 15 metres in the air, but not upside down.
‘Crews will be using advanced rescue at height equipment to bring down the ride passengers.’
The ride stopped just before 1.30pm and it wasn’t until 4.05pm that they were finally freed.
A spokesman later said: ‘Firefighters have now rescued all 27 passengers and brought them safely to the ground using our aerial ladder and a scissor lift. No one was injured.’
One of the passengers wrote on Facebook: ‘My children were on the ride and whilst it was a terrifying experience for them and me, the park and fire services did a great job.
‘It didn’t stall, it got stuck on the back straight and when they released it the back brake didn’t stop it from travelling very slowly back onto the loop, swinging back and forth and coming to rest on the middle section.’
The surfing-themed ride opened at Pleasurewood Hills in 2007, and is the only Vekoma Boomerang in the country – a type of rollercoaster that shoots down a lift hill before hurtling through a cobra roll and a vertical loop.
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