Carowinds Amusement Park’s roller coaster Fury 325 in Charlotte, N.C., won “Best Steel Coaster” on Monday, months after the ride was closed due to a large fracture in a support column. Photo courtesy of Carowinds
Sept. 12 (UPI) — Despite a summer safety scare, a North Carolina roller coaster is hitting new heights after being named “Best Steel Coaster” in the world for the seventh consecutive year.
Carowinds Amusement Park’s Fury 325 in Charlotte won industry publication Amusement Today‘s top prize Monday, just months after the ride was closed due to a large fracture in a support column.
The roller coaster, which the park calls “the tallest, fastest, longest, giga coaster in North America,” was shut down in June after a park visitor took video and photos showing the large crack.
Carowinds inspected the ride, which opened in 2015, and found the “fracture, which appears to have formed along a weld line in the steel column.”
A few weeks later, inspectors with the North Carolina Labor Department’s Elevator and Amusement Device Bureau found a second crack on Fury 325 but did not say where on the ride it was located.
The park spent the next month working with the ride’s manufacturer, Bollinger & Mabillard Consulting Engineers, Inc., to have the damaged column replaced. Crews conducted 500 test runs before reopening the roller coaster on Aug. 10.
While Carowinds has not revealed the cause of the crack, the park said it has increased ride inspections and added drone cameras to see hard-to-reach areas.
On Monday, Carowinds responded to news that the roller coaster — which reaches speeds of 95 miles per hour and drops 81 degrees from more than 300-feet in the air — had won another Golden Ticket award.
The park takes “immense pride in this recognition, and it serves as a testament to the incredible support from the amusement industry.”