Ferred in the Walibi Park: Gondel stuck at 70 meters
Excitement in the Walibi leisure park in Wavre, Belgium, around two hours of car from Luxembourg. The gondola of the « Dalton Terror » free fall tower blocked there on Friday afternoon at a height of more than 70 meters. At that time there were four young people between the ages of twelve and 17 in the gondola. This was confirmed by a spokeswoman for the Belgian newspaper park « Het Nieuwsblad ».
A technician climbed up a staircase inside the tower, but his repair attempts were unsuccessful. According to the spokeswoman for the park, Adèle Moreau, another gondola was sent up – « A standard procedure if the tower is serviced but not intended for visitors. » When the technical team had reached the top, the gondola with the young people was manually lowered. According to the spokeswoman, that is « completely harmless: the brakes of the ‘Dalton Terror’ are actually a huge magnet, so that nothing can go wrong in a free fall. »
Young people climb on the broadcast – rescuer went « from the worst »
Shortly after 2 p.m., the four passengers were back down. They are doing well, according to Moreau. In order to examine the exact cause of the problem, the « Dalton Terror » was closed to the public.
The « Dalton Terror »
The 77 meter high « » Dalton Terror is the highest free fall tower in the Benelux countries. It was opened in 1998. Although the original topic was based on the gangster figures « Daltons » from the Lucky Luke comic series, the rights expired in 2014 and Walibi had to remove the pictures of the Daltons. In 2015 the attraction received a new look: the yellow tower was brown and the purple gondolas became yellow/orange.
The « Dalton Terror » is one of the fastest attractions in the Benelux countries: the gondolas reach a top speed of 106 kilometers per hour on the way down.
