An Arkansas mom and her children experienced the fright of a lifetime when a fair ride malfunctioned and left the two kids dangling upside down for 15 minutes.
Videos by Wide Open Country
As you can imagine, the Arkansas mom panicked big time. Before that, Ally Metzger and her family were having a nice time at the Arkansas State Fair in Little Rock. Her two kids, 8 and 11, were excited to ride the X-Drive.
X-Drive is a 16-seat fair ride that spins riders on an arm. Unfortunately, the ride suddenly stopped spinning, and it left Metzger's kids upside down several feet off the ground. Workers tried to manually move the ride to get them down.
"They're trying to get my kids down, they've been stuck upside down for 15 minutes at least," Metzger said in a video posted to Facebook.
"There's a bunch of people trying to get the ride to spin, and they would get it almost halfway down. Then it would go right back up to the very top, with my kids still upside down. So, I'm panicking. My partner's panicking," Metzger told KATV.
Fair Ride Turns Terrifying
Fortunately, they managed to eventually get the kids free. Metzger's 11-year-old said she doesn't remember too much about the ordeal. "She told me when she came home that she only remembered crying, and then, like, just got dizzy. Her legs were hurting. I guess because the circulation was out," Metzger said.
North American Midway Entertainment Services VP Scooter Korek says a technical fault caused the fair ride to malfunction.
"The ride's computer received a fault. What it does is when it finds something that it doesn't like, it shuts it down. So, the ride was in the air, not in its landing position, for about 10-12 minutes," Korek told the outlet.
Despite the incident, Korek said riders shouldn't fear. "Let me break it down to you in a nutshell. Any of my family members can go on any of our rides any day. That's how good I feel about our programs, our safety programs, and the people who work for us to operate and take care of these rides," he said.
However, the family disagreed with this assessment.
"We had a really honest conversation about it and they said 'you know I was really scared I didn't know what was happening I just kind of want to take a break if that's ok,'" Metzger said.
"After what was spent to get in this place? RUN ME MY REFUND," Metzger wrote on Facebook. "Oh and I filled out a cute complaint,"
