Last Tuesday, there was a terrible crash at the Alton Towers theme Park in which 4 people were seriously injured on the Smiler roller-coaster, which resulting in Alton Towers being closed until the Health & Safety Executive and Alton Towers could conduct a full investigation.
Following the accident, the park owners (Merlin Entertainments) announced that they would be upgrading several rides across several different theme parks with additional safety features and standards. Some of these features were put into place instantly, some however required rides to be closed until additional safety features could be put into place. The specifics of these were not given, however they did say that the majority were software upgrades on pre-existing systems.
Today Alton Towers has announced that the park will reopen on Monday, however the Smiler and the entire section of park which it’s found in will remain closed to the public.
You’re probably thinking, what does this have to do with Sonic?
Well, Alton Towers has the Sonic Spinball ride, despite not being in the same section of park as the Smiler, it too will be closed on Monday for an unknown period of time until “Enhanced Safety Protocols have been implemented.”
Now before people react in an alarmist manner, Sonic Spinball is a safe ride which meets all safety standards, it’s just that Merlin Entertainments has been looking at all it’s rides and carrying out upgrades and enhancements on similar rides in response to Tuesdays terrible accident. Heck I went on it last year and I had a blast, I’ll probably go on it again when I go back later this year, it’s a fun ride.
However, as a response to the accident, Sonic Spinball will be closed for an undisclosed period of time until the upgrades can be fully implemented. So if you were planning on going soon since it’s near the end of school/college/university term to specifically go on the Sonic Spinball ride, you might want to change your dates.
For more information on how to do that, you’re best contacting Alton Towers directly who have been refunding/changing ticket dates for people.
Source: Alton Towers
They’re probably just going to shut it down for good. They’ve been getting less and less Sonic Merck in their gift shops (if any at all at this point.)
Actually there’s quite a lot.
http://board.sonicstadium.org/topic/3788-sonic-at-alton-towers-thread-of-hooray/page-9#entry914365
Whoa. I had no idea the put out more.
I remember an article here on Sonic Stadium showing that they had very few merch items left (I think this post got erased when there were server issues?)
On a related note, is the Sonic hotel room still open? I was under the impression that the hotel room closed a year or two ago, but I also thought that was the case for the rollercoaster.
Yup. Well it should be, I was standing in it less than a year ago. It’s a bit dated but you can still stay in there.
I was expecting this to happen since Merlin Entertainment closed another ride very similar to the Sonic Spinball at one of its other UK theme parks immediately following the accident last week.
They’re clearly upgrading every rollercoaster where there are multiple carts on the go at any one time. I’ve been on the Sonic Spinball several times over many years (even back when it was the Spinball Whizzer) and I’m looking forward to going on it again next time we visit.
Spinball Whizzer? They dropped the ball not naming it Spinball Wizard.
The guy who decided to use The Smiler control panel without checking if there was a kart left in the middle of the track should be fired for carelessly not checking the roller coaster before hand and beaning all herpy derpy.
Assuming this was human error.
It was in all the news reports, people were telling staff to stop the ride after they noticed the kart had stopped but no one listened and.. well… you know the rest so yes, it was idiocy on the staffs part.
I recommend you do a little reading on basic ride hardware before making accusations such as this. There’s a post on SSMB about the accident I made that pretty coherently explains what everything means.
when were they supposed to remove Sonic Spinball? or has that decided against?
There might still be chance to ride it in the future! * u *
the crash was unfortunate, i love Alton Towers
Weirdly, all the adverts for The Smiler creeped me the hell out so this crash seems like something from a horror movie to me… o_o
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Nice to hear it getting updated, hopefully it won’t take too long.
We’re talking about serious accidents in the rollercoaster history with record pay-out to the injured people who had to suffer this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3115191/Girl-17-Alton-Towers-rollercoaster-crash-leg-amputated.html
thats just sad