On August 25th, 2022, fourteen riders on El Toro at Six Flags Great Adventure were taken to the hospital after suffering minor injuries. According to many park guests that rode El Toro before the incident, the coaster had started to become unbearably rough.
As of when this article is being written, there isn't too much information about the cause the incident, so here is my theory about how El Toro became very rough.
Before you read my theory, please take everything with a grain of salt since none of this is confirmed. Also, I cannot share this theory without giving a big shoutout to a YouTuber named ElToroRyan. Two years ago, he posted a problematic coasters video about Intamin prefabricated wooden coasters, and I was able to learn a lot about how El Toro was designed and then make this theory. You can watch the video here.
El Toro is one of four prefabricated wooden coasters built by the manufacturer named Intamin, and their headquarters are in Germany. Some other coasters in the tri-state area that were also built by Intamin are Kingda Ka, Possessed at Dorney Park, Fahrenheit, Stormrunner, and Skyrush at Hersheypark.
What makes a prefabricated wooden coaster so unique is that El Toro was built like a steel coaster. This means that each track piece and support column was built in a factory, and then assembled in the park like a Lego set. Unlike El Toro, most wooden coasters are normally built onsite. The benefits of building a prefabricated wooden coaster are that it can be built much faster, and whenever the park needs to replace a piece of track, all they must do is call Intamin and order a new track piece.
I have learned from ElToroRyan's problematic coaster video that Six Flags does not call Intamin whenever they need to replace a track piece, but instead they use a similar technique to recreate each track piece for El Toro. It is much cheaper to recreate the new track pieces here in America as opposed to having them shipped from Germany.
My theory is that Great Adventure didn't rebuild a track piece correctly after last year’s derailing incident, and this is what unfortunately caused the minor injuries. Great Adventure should have instead contacted Intamin to re-track all of El Toro instead of trying to re-track the coaster independently.
My thoughts and prayers go to everyone who was on the ride during the incident, and I hope everyone who was on El Toro that evening has a speedy recovery.
(El Toro back in 2017.)
Comments