Some visitors to SeaWorld in Orlando experienced an amusement park nightmare yesterday as the ride they were on became stuck a few hundred feet in the air. The Sky Tower was on its way back to the ground, carrying about 50 passengers, when the emergency brake malfunctioned and the pod would no longer descend.
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Local TV station WESH did a helicopter fly by for broadcast. While one passenger told a news station over the phone that someone on board was having a very understandable “panic attack,” everyone was medically fine later when the pod reached the ground.
They spent over three hours trapped in the pod, admiring the scenery and wondering where their lives had gone wrong. One passenger shared the entire ordeal live on Twitter’s live-streaming app, Periscope, because nothing really happens in this life unless you share it with the entire Internet.
“Glad we weren’t on some type of upside-down rollercoaster,” the Periscoper told WESH. “This was much safer and much better.” Yes, if you have to spend three hours trapped mid-ride on anything in an amusement park, this would be a good choice.
Some sources report that the passengers were trapped on the ride as a recording of Christmas music played on a loop, leaving us to wonder what, precisely, one thinks about while listening to “Winter Wonderland” and “Let it Snow” while suspended 200 feet in the air in an observation pod 200 feet above an amusement park in the tropics.
People on SeaWorld Orlando ride were trapped for more than 3 hours [WESH]
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist