Six Flags Closes Its Most Notorious Roller Coaster, and Calls It "the Right Thing to Do"
X2 spent nearly 20 years as Magic Mountain's signature thrill ride. A wave of brain-injury lawsuits and a CNN investigation ended that streak for good.
Six Flags permanently retired X2, the flagship thrill ride at its Magic Mountain park in Valencia, California, after a CNN investigation and a wave of lawsuits tied the coaster to more than a hundred alleged brain injuries and at least two deaths dating back to 2009. Three lawsuits are currently filed, with more than 100 additional complaints on record, including two women hospitalized in July with subdural hematomas after riding it.
Magic Mountain president Brian Oerding did not dress the decision up as routine maintenance. "After almost 20 years, we have decided to permanently retire X2," he said, adding that the company closed the ride "because we believe it's the right thing to do." That is a notably blunt admission for a theme park operator, an industry that typically frames ride closures around scheduling or refurbishment, not liability exposure.
X2 opened in 2002 and got a mechanical overhaul in 2008, built around free-spinning wing seats that flipped riders forward and backward at speeds up to 76 mph, a design that made it one of the park's signature attractions for two decades. Pulling it now, in the middle of active litigation and an ongoing investigation, is as much a brand-safety move as a legal one: better for Six Flags to retire the ride itself than let a jury or a regulator do it first.
Source: Time
Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →
