2016-06-26 (Day 178) M&Ds Theme Park

We had some tickets to M & Ds - "Scotland's Theme Park" - that we had got by collecting tokens from a newspaper. Since they expire on Friday coming, we decided to use them this afternoon.

Cameron isn't a fan of roller coaster rides, so he went to play crazy golf with his grandad. Marie went to book a bowling alley, and Jenni and I went for a shot on a couple of the roller coasters.

We went on this one first; Runaway Mine Train. Two loops of the track, it was good fun.

We still had about twenty minutes before our lane was available, so we went for a wander to find another ride to go on. We ended up at Tsunami, a roller coaster in which your car is suspended from an overhead rail, and goes through various twists and turns on its short run. And we joined the queue.

There was a bit of a rain shower, but we were waiting in a covered area. A few people ahead of us a few young lads were having a competition to throw a couple of plastic drinks bottles into a bin a few yards from the queue. The queue moved slowly, but it moved.

The ride has two cars - a green one an a yellow one (the green one is yellow with a green shroud around the underlying mechanism). Each holds ten passengers, and as one runs round the loop, the other is loaded. We were near the front, with twelve people in front of us. The green car was running round the loop, people were about to enter the yellow car. There was a loud bang, and after a beat the two ride operators started running. Jenni and I looked around, and there was debris on the path beside the coaster.

The coaster had come off the track; eight people on it were injured and taken to hospital. Jenni and I would have been on that car on its next run; we were very lucky it wasn't us.

There was already a crowd around the crashed car, there was nothing I could have done other than get in the road. So we left the park.

Thank goodness nobody was killed. At present it is not clear what injuries were sustained by those on the car - I hope that the injuries are minor and that everyone there recovers fully.