Hi, I've just signed up. I was there for the weekend this weekend.
We went on The Smiler yesterday and loved it, and because we had the entry for today as well we went straight there this morning. We arrived before they opened the ride entrance, and queued for half an hour until the entrance was opened. We were pleased that the queue went down quickly once inside the actual ride queue.
Then we heard a loud clang, my friend was facing part and she saw the 8" bolt fall down. After that people from the area started moving away. There were 3 cars still on the ride and they all made it back to safety.
At first people were saying it was a mobile phone or shoe but the bang was too loud.
Then it was announced that there were technical difficulties and it was closing.
My partner had the camera and people spotted a gap on the track. We were near some children and we told them it was just to allow the expansion of the track in hot weather.
My partner got the camera out and took some photos of the gap and zoomed in. We could clearly see the missing bolt.
We carried on around the park and later bumped into someone from the Smiler queue who was near us. He told us that they were giving away Fast Track passes as compensation.
As it was nearer the end of the day and I had to go home to collect my son, my partner went to see Guest Services to see what they could do. Fast Track was no good for us.
In front of him in Guest Services was the mother of a 13 year old boy who was hit in the back by the falling bolt. He was taken to hospital with bruising to his back. VERY VERY lucky that it wasn't his head!
They obviously didn't want fast track or return passes, she said they never wanted to come here again. The younger children were scared off roller coasters and rides completely. She said she took them to some of the tamer rides and one of the younger ones said "Are you trying to get us killed?"
Quite scary stuff really.
We think it has been caused by expansion in the hot weather followed by contraction in the cooler weather this weekend.
Also when we looked at the images on the camera and zoomed in even more, we could see a second nut was coming loose.
People were being told that the ride was safely operational with one bolt missing, but if that second one had come undone the track would have come apart.
People were tweeting and commenting on facebook, but from what I can see - #TheSmiler hashtag was deactivated and my friend said that tweets were being pulled from twitter.
