A “panicking” Arkansas mom could only watch as her two children were left dangling upside down on a malfunctioning carnival ride for 15 minutes.
Ally Metzger and her family were at the Arkansas State Fair in Little Rock Saturday when her kids, 8 and 11, went on the X-Drive, a 16-seater attraction that places riders on the other end of the spinning arm and features rotating seats that flip the riders freely.
The ride had stopped spinning but Metzger’s children, raised several feet off the ground in the air overlooking were left upside down.
“They’re trying to get my kids down, they’ve been stuck upside down for 15 minutes at least,” Metzger said in a video posted to Facebook as workers attempted to manually spin the ride to help the stranded passengers.
Metzger only began recording when someone told her to, 10 minutes after the ride had stopped.
“There’s a bunch of people trying to get the ride to spin, and they would get it almost halfway down. Then it would go right back up to the very top, with my kids still upside down. So, I’m panicking. My partner’s panicking,” Metzger told KATV.
Attendants eventually got the ride to spin around, freeing Metzger’s kids.
Metzger’s 11-year-old daughter says she doesn’t remember much of what happened.
“She told me when she came home that she only remembered crying, and then, like, just got dizzy. Her legs were hurting. I guess because the circulation was out,” Metzger said.
Two other riders, along with Metzger’s children were also left upside down during the malfunction — it was unknown if they were injured.
During the loading and unloading phases, small motors are supposed to place riders on the non-loading portion of the ride into a comfortable sitting position.
A technical fault is being blamed for last week’s incident, according to North American Midway Entertainment Services VP Scooter Korek.
“The ride’s computer received a fault. What it does is when it finds something that it doesn’t like, it shuts it down. So, the ride was in the air, not in its landing position, for about 10-12 minutes,” Korek told the outlet.
Despite the 15 minutes of suspense, Korek still trusts the ride’s safety, even saying anyone in his family can go on it at any time.
“Let me break it down to you in a nutshell. Any of my family members can go on any of our rides any day. That’s how good I feel about our programs, our safety programs, and the people who work for us to operate and take care of these rides,” he said.
The furious mother and her kids, however, don’t feel the same.
“We had a really honest conversation about it and they said ‘You know I was really scared I didn’t know what was happening I just kind of want to take a break if that’s ok.'”
