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02nd Jun 2021

30 people rescued after Blackpool rollercoaster breaks down

Ellen Fitzpatrick

The youngest was only five years old.

Around 30 people in a theme park in Blackpool, England were rescued from a rollercoaster on Tuesday afternoon.

The well known ride at Blackpool Pleasure Beach broke down while the 30 people were enjoying the ride, including a five year old boy.

Built in 1935, the wooden Grand National rollercoaster stopped in its tracks at around midday leaving staff to climb up the ride to help those stuck get down.

This wasn’t the only incident to occur either as the Big One ride also stopped for a short time, but quickly began working again after five minutes.

One witness told LancsLive: “It looked like they were going to have to head all the way down like they did a couple of months back. Fortunately two staff climbed up, flicked something and got it going again.”

Unlike the Grand National, nobody was escorted off the ride and remained seated until the stoppage was sorted out.

A spokesperson for the resort said that the rides were checked out later for any further issues and resumed once safe to do so.

They said: “At 11.55 am on Tuesday June 1 a stoppage occurred on the lift hill of the Grand National.”

“All riders were safely escorted down the lift hill, and the ride was checked and re-opened just before 1pm.”

“Shortly afterwards there was a very brief stoppage on the Big One lift hill, at 50ft, riders remained seated and the ride continued after five minutes.”

This isn’t the first time in recent months that something like this has happened, back in April the Big One had a similar issue and riders were again escorted off the ride.

It reopened later that day, only a few weeks after the resort opened up after the easing of restrictions.