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Wild Thing returns to service
Friday, June 02, 2006 9:11 AM ET | contributed by Jeff

Valleyfair's Wild Thing was up and running again, 11 days after the Shakopee amusement park's signature roller coaster was closed after a brake accident that mildly injured 18 riders, 15 of whom went to the hospital. Since then, each of the 22 brakes in the ride's slow-down area was removed, disassembled, inspected and tested, park officials said.

Read more from The Star Tribune.

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Willh51 (Edit)     6/2/2006 10:36:14 AM
That's good to hear, hopefully it will be smooth sailing again. Does anyone know if they reassembled the train involved in the accident?

*** This post was edited by Willh51 6/2/2006 10:36:29 AM ***

beast7369 (Edit)     6/2/2006 10:46:59 AM
I would have my doubts that train is in operation quite yet. But it is possible.
Juggalotus (Edit)     6/2/2006 11:06:48 AM
This is great news. I'm going to be in St. Paul for a training class next week and I was hoping it would get back up before I went. Guess I'll be spending at least a couple hours at the park.
OrientExpressKid (Edit)     6/2/2006 11:34:03 AM
Excellent news, I was afraid they were going to have to close all the morgan hypercoasters for inspection. And more good news is that I will get to ride it in a month.
pkidelirium (Edit)     6/2/2006 12:20:11 PM
"They also re-examined those possible causes on other coasters with the same brakes -- the Corkscrew and Excalibur."

What?

WT uses Arrow brakes?

J7G3 (Edit)     6/2/2006 12:26:22 PM
Arrow brakes. That was good pkidelirium. Took me a minute! Geesh, how big of a coaster geek do you have to be to....
Drew (Edit)     6/2/2006 10:04:41 PM
I rode it seven times today. Yea, train #3 was missing (not on transfer track either)
SVLFever (Edit)     6/3/2006 1:25:21 AM
Glad to hear that WT is up and running. I am guessing that train #3 is probably undergoing a structural inspection-analysis.
mr_darkmatter (Edit)     6/3/2006 7:06:41 AM
Thanks for clearing up my question Drew, I couldn't remember if it was two or three trains.

I don't know if Valleyfair does a full rehab during the winter ( all three trains, and structure) or if they stagger the trains during the spring and fall. I would hope that all the frames were re-NDT'ed. Who knows how many brake fins got nailed before the whopper.

CoasterCameron (Edit)     6/5/2006 11:27:15 AM
Darkmatter, who said the brake fin was to blame for this. That wasn't even the case according to the article.

About PKI's Arrow brake comment, the name sake of Morgan Mfg. was half of the original Arrow team. The brakes, while not identicle, are similar. Better safe then sorry.

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