Just one day after the Fourth of July, a holiday outing on the Ocean City, New Jersey, boardwalk turned frightening when more than a dozen riders were left hanging upside down on a stalled amusement ride.
Among those on the Wipe Out at Playland’s Castaway Cove that evening were 13-year-old friends Charlotte Hacker and Emilia Gordon.
Speaking to Fox News Digital with permission from their parents, the teens described the panic of being suspended in the air, unsure how long they would remain trapped.
“We were stuck upside down for five to seven minutes, and it doesn’t seem like that much to the people that were down watching us, but we were up there, and it felt like an hour,” Hacker said on Saturday.
The friends had gone to the boardwalk as part of a celebration for Gordon’s 13th birthday, which was set for the next day.
Both girls said they are regulars on the boardwalk rides and chose the Wipe Out because it was a new attraction they wanted to try.
The ride is designed to swing back and forth like a pendulum, flipping passengers upside down as the seating compartment rotates.
But during that ride, something went wrong: the attraction came to a sudden stop, leaving everyone onboard suspended upside down.
“I seriously thought I was going to pass out,” Gordon said. “You try to put your head up, but you literally can’t. You can barely get it up at all.”
The girls, seated next to each other, tried to carry on mundane conversations to distract themselves while blood rushed to their heads.
“I remember thinking that the lap bars were going to open and that we were just going to fall,” Gordon said.
Family members on the ground waiting for their kids to get off the ride were terrified as well, the girls said.
“My uncle was there too, because we were all with my cousins, so he was also freaking out,” Hacker said.
Eventually, the ride’s operators managed to get it moving again, but to the girls’ dismay, it kept on going. Once the ride finished, they said they weren’t let off for another few minutes.
It is unclear what caused the apparent malfunction, and if any injuries were reported.
Hacker said the ride did not close, adding that there were some people who stayed in line and rode it after they got off.
“When we came off, people were literally clapping,” Gordon said.
The amusement park offered ticket refunds to the girls, which they didn’t think was sufficient after what they went through.
“That ride is five tickets, so they just gave back our ticket but [Hacker] only got three back. I got five. But still, after all that, I feel like you expect more,” Gordon said.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Ocean City Fire Department, Ocean City Police Department, the ride’s operator and the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs for comment.
