Auckland’s Rainbows End closes theme park ride

Auckland’s Rainbows End theme park closed its popular log flume ride yesterday following an incident with one of the logs containing passengers.

According to Ranbow's End Chief Executive Karen Crabb, one of the logs became caught at the end of the ride as it was approaching the holding bay where it clipped the side of one of the rails and tipped over slightly.

Crabb said the park's staff immediately helped people out of the ride safely.

While Crabb described the incident as “extraordinary”, there were no injuries, other than people at the front of the ride just getting wet.

The story reported originally on Tuesday by some media outlets advised the ride had flipped three times.  Crabb confirmed the ride did close earlier on Tuesday after the sensors were triggered, but engineers had cleared it.

Following the incident on Tuesday, the ride was closed for the remainder of the day, as engineers checked the ride railings, and then re-opened on Wednesday.

Crabb noted this was a rare event adding that safety precautions are in place to prevent serious injuries in an accident.

"That's why the railings are there, to make sure that if in the event it does happen, there's a redundancy. The ride will tip, as opposed to flip or any kind of damage being done, so everything did what it was supposed to do."

Crabb said she has full confidence and the rides at Rainbow's End are safe.

Image. Illustrative of log flume ride being enjoyed by passengers at Auckland’s Rainbows End. Credit: Rainbow’s End