GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – The Zippin Pippin roller coaster reopened after being closed for 19 days following a crash which sent three people to the hospital.
On the maiden voyage, Green Bay Police Chief Andrew Smith joined Mayor Jim Schmitt.
“We have some great engineers, we have some great folks at our parks department, so I’m really not worried at all,” Smith told FOX 11.
Schmitt said no real repairs were made to the ride and they have not yet discovered why the train car failed to stop before crashing into another one.
“We didn’t find anything wrong or else we would have pin pointed the cause. The brake cylinders were looked at and tuned, but there was nothing wrong with them, the ride operators were trained,” said Schmitt.
For now, the coaster will only run with one train car, so there is no possibility of them running into each other again.
Parks Director Dawne Cramer said the ride was tested more than 100 times.
“I think it was healthy for us to go through a recertification,” said Schmitt, “I think it was good for us to do the re-training and we just feel very confident today.”
One violation inspectors noticed was missing operator training records.
But Schmitt said the operator who was there at the time of the crash had operated the coaster many times. And that it is an easy ride to operate.
“It’s just more consistent training. Every city, every government, private sector, you go through upgrading your training manual and we did that,” said Schmitt.
All in all, Schmitt said the crash set revenue back about $40,000, in addition to a few thousand dollars in repairs.
“Dollar for dollar, day for day the park is ahead of last year even with the Zippin Pippin being down,” he said.
Some riders were still a little skeptical.
“I thought I’d give it a month or so to see if it was okay, because I didn’t want to be one of the first guinea pigs to go on it,” said Chris Kimminau of Pulaski.
Schmitt gave park patrons free rides for the first 19 minutes of the re-opening for the number of days the ride was closed.
