The Fifty Coasters that Doomed Six Flags — 49
Superman: Ride of Steel — Six Flags New England
It’s May Day, 2004, and you’re Faith Thomas. You’re cresting the penultimate hills and approaching the final turn of the best roller coaster in the world, and you’re holding on for dear life.
It’s about 3:00 in the afternoon and a beautiful Saturday to boot, if not even a bit warm for New England in the spring. You are a chaperone for a local high school choir, but excited to be here nonetheless. You probably know you’re on the best roller coaster in the world because a sign in the station tells you so. Six Flags is awful proud of itself, after all.
For the first time, Superman: Ride of Steel is beginning a season having been voted the #1 Steel Coaster in the world in the prestigious Golden Ticket Awards. For the first time, Burke’s Six Flags is beginning a season with the world’s best coaster operating under its banner. And they built it themselves.
Best in the world. Even better than Millennium Force. Can you believe this is even Riverside Park? When Six Flags bought the place you thought they might add a coaster or two. But your Riverside Park, your Six Flags New England, got the best roller coaster in the world. The world.
No wonder the students were so excited to get here first, and now that you’re on, they’re all on the other side of the park.
Your knuckles whiten from the tightness of your grip as you crest the final bunny hill.
The Raymond, N.H., woman was sitting behind Mordarsky on Saturday at Six Flags New England in Agawam, Mass., when the Bloomfield man popped up in his seat as the roller coaster approached the last turn.
Thomas, 39, who was holding on to a safety bar, said she let go and grabbed Mordarsky’s shirt and suspenders and pulled him back into his seat.
But seconds later, as the roller coaster was ripping through the turn, Mordarsky, who was holding on to a bar, lost his grip and popped up again, she said.
“I grabbed the waist belt area of his pants and thought, ‘No, no, no.’ I was just praying the whole time. My eyes didn’t leave him. I totally had him and then the force just pulled him away,” Thomas said, weeping as she recalled the accident.
I would not like to rank this coaster where I’m ranking it right now. I would like to believe that investors would be heartbroken knowing the company was responsible for something like this, or at least understand the negative press that comes from it.
But that is giving people who don’t deserve any credit too much of it. That’s assuming they’d actually let the company take responsibility.
Superman: Ride of Steel is the magnum opus of Burke-era Six Flags. You might think otherwise, but you’re wrong. During that era you cannot find one ride that did more to elevate a single park.
Putting Superman: Ride of Steel at the former Riverside Park made about as much sense in 2000 as installing an RMC T-Rex at a Fun Spot today. But that made Riverside exactly the kind of park Burke liked to target: hardly any rides but plenty of land. Growth opportunity. All this park needed was the right attractions, and the Bostonians would begin to flock.
Can you name the roller coasters at Riverside Park when they were bought in 1997?
We have the Thunderbolt, c. 1941, a 75' PTC woodie. This one still stands.
We have Cyclone, c. 1983, a 112' PTC woodie. This one is now an RMC.
Finally we have Widow, a launched arrow looper. That one is long gone.
That’s it! Have a Riverside Park Day!!
Just stop and think about that for a moment. In 1997, Cedar Point has the #1 roller coaster in the world. It’s beginning planning for what will inevitably be the next #1 roller coaster in the world. If that’s not enough, they’ll also have the most roller coasters in the world.
The park that is destined to unseat them is headlined by a brand new Vekoma SLC.
In 2005, when investors are deciding the fate of the company, they won’t be thinking about Stanley Mordarsky. They’ll think: #1 steel.
What else is there to think about?
Nobody checked his lap bar.
In the fervor of press immediately after the incident, this assertion was not challenged in any way. The fact of it was often the headline. Eye witnesses reported that operators didn’t do it. Six Flags never attempted to contest otherwise. The official report to come out would state it explicitly.
Nobody checked his lap bar.
Not only did the report fault operators for not restraining him, but also recommended that the restraint system be altered or replaced entirely.
Investigators from the state Department of Public Safety and Agawam police last night were probing the cause of the accident on the thrill ride, which can reach speeds of 80 miles per hour.
Morbarsky flew from the ride sideways as it hit a curve, and could not have fallen far, Draghetti said. As far as investigators could determine, Morbarsky had come to visit the park alone, Draghetti said.
“You can touch the rail standing on the ground,” Draghetti said.
Morbarsky “started spinning like a Frisbee and hit the rail, bam, and then fell down on the ground,” Anthony Arroyo told WFSB-TV of Hartford, Conn. People started screaming, eyewitness Sara Syez told WHDH-TV in Boston.
“All of a sudden people started screaming, `Stop the ride, stop the ride, someone has fallen off,’ “ she said. “They finally stopped the ride, and it was extreme panic, and we looked, and all the people in the cars were crying . . . and we looked over to the side, and there was a gentleman laying by the fence.”
Three Intamin mega coasters, each called Superman: Ride of Steel opened in 1999 and 2000. The first, at Six Flags Darien Lake, was the first Intamin mega coaster, and a clone of it was slated to open at Six Flags America the same year before being pushed back due to squabbling with the local government.
This was not the first time this had happened. It wouldnt be the last.
All three Rides of Steel have similar endings: three ejector bunny hops. On the twins in Buffalo and Upper Marlboro, these lead straight into the station. On big brother in New England, the train navigates one final hard 90-degree turn to the right before slamming into the brake run. They are the most intense moments of airtime on the rides, with trim brakes preventing the trains from taking them at too much speed.
These bunny hills have been the site of at least three known accidents and two deaths.
In 1999, Michael Dwailbee was ejected from Darien Lake’s Ride of Steel, and from the same hills, though he survived. His potbelly prevented the restraints from settling into and securing his lap. The train never should have been dispatched with him inside.
In 2011, a rider on the same ride was ejected from the bunny hills. Both of his legs had been amputated, and the restraints were unable to properly secure him in any case. He died. The train never should have been dispatched with him inside.
Intamin designs their restraints for an average weight of about 175 lbs. By the time Mordarsky was thrown from the Ride of Steel in Agawam Intamin was already being accused of unsafe restraint design.
“Our rides are safe when people are responsible and follow the instructions,” Intamin President Sandor Kernacs said, adding that millions of people ride his and similar attractions each year without injury. In each accident, he said, the rider or operators should have been more responsible.
However, officials for the parks say they were following instructions from Intamin.
In light of the most recent death, that of a 40-year-old Duarte woman on Sept. 21 at Knott’s Berry Farm, lawyers and safety advocates believe both manufacturers and amusement parks need to take a closer look at establishing weight limits for their rides or warning heavy patrons that they might be at risk.
“When they put hundreds of thousands of people through the rides in a year, they have to anticipate that almost anything that can take place will take place. And they have to plan for it,” said David A. Dodge, a Maine-based independent safety consultant and former amusement-ride accident investigator.
“If we are relying on the mental or physical capability of a rider to retain [him- or herself] in the ride, then we’re putting the burden on the wrong person.”
Rides should be designed to withstand “all foreseeable circumstances — to include unconsciousness, wiggling and obesity,” Dodge said.
The three Intamin accidents occurred on different types of rides at different amusement parks and involved different restraints. But in each case, the rider fell out, because either he or she wasn’t adequately restrained or the restraints didn’t work, according to government investigation reports or lawyers for the victims.
The case for Mr. Dwailbee, as described here, was the same case at it was for Mr. Mordarsky.
An engineer who acted as a consultant to lawyers in a suit in New York State involving a 1999 accident on another Superman Ride of Steel coaster said that if a rider has a wide girth and short legs, the bar can lock in above the belly.
When the coaster bucks and plunges over a steep hump, the force can suck the rider above the restraint and fling him out of the car, said John Serth Jr., the engineering consultant in the case of Michael Dwaileebe, who won a $4 million jury award after he was injured in a similar accident at the Six Flags near Buffalo in 1999.
“It’s the potbelly that does it,” Serth said. At 5-feet-2, Mordarsky weighed about 230 pounds and had a potbelly.
Intamin developed the mega coaster to break records. Intamin mega coasters are among the tallest in the world, and the Rides of Steel were no exception. Yet the tallest height a person fell from was ten feet. You could reach up and grab the section of track Mr. Mordarsky was thrown from.
But it doesn’t matter the height. It matters the speed. Mordarsky was totally unrestrained, only a stranger behind him struggling to pull him to safety.
Faith Thomas of Raymond, N.H., said she saw Mordarsky slipping out of his seat as the coaster whipped around turns. Thomas said let go of her own safety bar and pulled Mordarsky back into his seat by his shirt and suspenders. But she couldn’t keep him from falling. She said the T-bar in front of Mordarsky was halfway up.
The report says Mordarsky’s hand was severed when it hit the roller coaster track and the wheels of another car, something that could not have happened if he were properly restrained.
I wish I could rank this higher, that is to say that it was a worse decision to build, but I’m just too cynical. If investors were really concerned about safety, if accidents such as Stanley Mordowski’s were really motivating Six Flags investors to change owners, there would have been some acceptance of responsibility. But there never was.
Why? Because ultimately it can all be put on the dead.
It’s wild, researching this. The stories nearer to when it happened, they all mention that Mordarsky’s restraint was not checked. The further away you get, the more you see that concept morph into he should have known better than be on there in the first place.
The Superman Ride of Steel roller coaster was back in business yesterday, a month after a fatal fall prompted the installation of new safety equipment.
The roller coaster at Six Flags New England had been closed since May 1, when Stanley J. Mordarsky, 55, of Bloomfield, Conn., came loose from a lap restraint on the roller coaster and plunged to the ground.
A report issued this month by the state Department of Public Safety found that Mordarsky, who had cerebral palsy, should have disclosed his disability and that park attendants should not have allowed him on the ride, one of the highest and fastest of its kind.
The report also said lap restraints had not secured Mordarsky in his seat, partly because of Mordarsky’s size — 5 feet, 2 inches and 230 pounds.
A 55-year-old man who died after falling out of a roller coaster shouldn’t have been allowed on the ride because he was heavy and had cerebral palsy, his mother said Sunday.
Germaine Mordarsky said her son, Stanley J. Mordarsky, could barely walk and used a motorized scooter for transportation.
“How could anybody as heavy as he was go up and spin up in the air like a yo-yo? It doesn’t make any sense. He was over 200 pounds, maybe 225 pounds,” Germaine Mordarsky, 82, said in a phone interview from her home in Bloomfield, Conn.
Her son fell Saturday from the Superman Ride of Steel roller coaster at Six Flags New England in Agawam, Mass., about 90 miles west of Boston, park officials said.
Park officials said Mordarsky was able to board the roller coaster by himself, according to broadcast reports Sunday. The park, under the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, must allow disabled people on rides if they can get in the rides by themselves, the officials said.
Good old Fox News. Perfectly willing to harass a dead man’s mother, not quite so willing to mention the simple fact that nobody checked his restraint.
And this is why I’m cynical. If I’m a Six Flags investor I’m not thinking about Stanley Mordowski or Faith Thomas. I’m thinking about Cedar Point, and how you’ve got something that’s every bit as good as what they do. Hell, even better.
How far down the list of attractions does Ride of Steel fall after its horrifying accident? To #2. It lost one spot. If you felt at the time that it was only a blip in relation to the accident, you wouldn’t even be wrong. In 2006 Ride of Steel found itself right back at the top.
In 2008,the ride would prove a perfect candidate for what would become a staple of Snyder’s Six Flags- the “plussing” of existing attractions and presenting them as totally new with a shrewd retheme. On the opposite coast, new trains for X were all the company needed to redub the ride X2 and present it as a totally new experience.
Great Adventure’s Medusa underwent a similar transformation that year, with both coasters receiving enhanced theme effects through the ride and on-board audio.
Six Flags would heavily advertise both of these as new rides.
The Great Adventure change still stands, but New England’s is now just “Superman The Ride.”