Great Adventure evacuates riders after power outage

Thanks to a brief JCP&L power outage the fun at Great Adventure was interrupted Monday afternoon. Something happened offsite that’s still being investigated, according to NJ.com, which killed power for only a couple minutes. Yet it was enough that rides stopped working and riders had to be evacuated from the attractions.

It happened around 12:30 in the afternoon and all riders were taken safely off rides by 1:00pm. Details were light so I don’t know how perilous or mild these rescues were. As always Great Adventure has a contingency plan for everything.

I remember my daughter getting stuck on a ride at Casino Pier in Seaside Heights several years ago. She must have been 8 or so. It was on the Disk’O, a ride described as follows on the park's website.

Taking Care of Business: Wednesday at 7 p.m., Eric Scott leads a discussion on how to support businesses — and how they can keep you safe as they reopen in the pandemic. Listen on New Jersey 101.5 FM, the NJ 101.5 app or NJ1015.com, and join the discussion in real time at Facebook.com/NJ1015.

“Riders are seated on a giant circular disc facing outwards and experience dizzying thrills as the disc spins around while swinging back and forth on a giant half-pipe track. The greatest thrills come at the top of the track, where riders experience a whipping sensation as spectacular views of the beach, pier, and ocean whizz by.”

She loved it, until the end when something went wrong. The ride stopped sooner than it was supposed to. All seemed well until the operators realized the mechanism that releases the handlebars wouldn’t function meaning everyone was stuck on the ride. There was a lot of head scratching and trying the same levers over and over far too many times. Finally the operator just wandered off telling the parents nothing. It’s funny looking back on it but at the time we didn’t know he was going to get maintenance people. For all we knew he walked off the job leaving the kids stuck there.

Of course within minutes maintenance showed up and saved the day. I’m sure the operator would have communicated better with parents had he not been a foreign student here for the summer job. No ill will towards Casino Pier. It was the only time in all the trips I’ve been there anything went even slightly wrong and they actually handled it just as they should. In the end my daughter actually thought it was exciting to have been stuck for ten minutes and still has an anecdote to this day.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski. Any opinions expressed are Jeff Deminski's own.