The ride has been closed since shortly after the second incident, but this week park managers said they were shuttering it for good.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter almost 20 years, we have decided to permanently retire X2,\u201d park President Brian Oerding said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince X2 opened in 2008, it has welcomed more than 16 million guests and earned a passionate following among ride enthusiasts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile X2 consistently passed a multitude of safety tests, we have decided to close the ride because we believe it\u2019s the right thing to do. Ride safety is a cornerstone of our business, and when we see guest confidence affected, we take it seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n
Attorneys at Dordick Law, who are acting for Greer-Wilkinson, said they had been contacted by more than 100 people who say they were injured by the roller coaster.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe design of this ride makes it inherently dangerous, and makes it dangerous in a way that no reasonable rider would expect,\u201d attorney Christopher Bulone told reporters.<\/p>\n
Theme park operator Six Flags, which has properties throughout North America, says it does not comment on pending litigation.<\/p>\n
In August, the company and ride manufacturer S&S Worldwide reached a settlement with the family of 22-year-old Christopher Hawley, who died after riding X2 in 2022.<\/p>\n
A separate lawsuit is scheduled for next year in which Sheila Katerelos, 56, alleges she suffered a traumatic brain injury on the ride in 2020.<\/p>\n
\u2013 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ride has been closed since shortly after the second incident, but this week park managers said they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[74,1975,682,1596,138,179,23552,2562,170264,22510,6097,6183,15213,305,1906,21524,111,139,69,1523,384,1341,10903,31124,92024,6753,4739,31145,223,6123,96821],"class_list":["post-616958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-after","tag-at","tag-being","tag-brain","tag-business","tag-california","tag-claimed","tag-claims","tag-coaster","tag-damage","tag-down","tag-dozens","tag-flags","tag-have","tag-magic","tag-mountain","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-people","tag-permanently","tag-popular","tag-riding","tag-roller","tag-shut","tag-six","tag-suffered","tag-the","tag-while","tag-x2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}