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Dragons Not Dueling?

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DragonSlayer said:
When did this incident happen? When I was at IOA last week they were dueling and I thought it was more than a week ago?
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Man Injured On Harry Potter Roller Coaster: http://www.orlandounited.com/forums/showthread.php?6275-Man-Injured-On-Harry-Potter-Roller-Coaster

Man Injured On Harry Potter Roller Coaster
Man Possibly Blinded While Riding 'Dragon Challenge'

POSTED: Monday, August 1, 2011
UPDATED: 4:57 am EDT August 2, 2011

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Universal theme park in Orlando shut down the "Dragon Challenge" roller coaster on Sunday after a man was injured and possibly blinded.

Carlos Montalvo told Local 6 he and his wife were on vacation from Puerto Rico but said by phone from his hospital bed, "This is not a vacation. This is a nightmare."

Montalvo said they were in the front row of the ride inside the Harry Potter attraction when he says something hit him in his right eye. He still does not know what hit him, but said it happened just as the two coasters veered near each other. He remembers the pain he felt as he rode the rest of the ride screaming and wounded.

Universal reopened "Dragon Challenge" around 1:30 on Monday after determining the ride is safe.

A statement from Universal spokesman Tom Schroder went on to say, "We have also spent the hours since then thoroughly inspecting and re-inspecting the ride, the ride vehicles, the tracks and the area underneath the tracks. We have found absolutely nothing that could have contributed to this incident."

As Montalvo remains in the hospital, his brother told Local 6 he's a nurse back home, already had one bad eye, and whatever hit him may have taken his remaining good eye.

Montalvo said nobody else knew what happened, but his wife sitting next to him was in shock.

Universal said it will do what it can to help this family and said nothing like this has ever happened on this ride since it opened under another name in 1999.


Copyright 2011 by Internet Broadcasting Systems and ClickOrlando.com. All rights reserved.
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Disneyhead said:
Around 9PM tonight they were only running Fire. They ran Ice a couple of times empty. I believe that they may just be havine technical difficulties.
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Haha, I love how everyone still calls them Fire and Ice (myself included) :lol:
Hopefully this is just a temporary fix.
 
I sincerely hope this is some kind of temporary technical glitch. If this is permanent due to some freak accident, I'm going to be quite irritated. First, they ruin an awesome queue and give Dueling Dragons a cheap and horrible name change. Not even going to mention the embarrassing names they gave Fire & Ice. And now they take the "dueling" effect away?! Sad.
 
Hope this is not permanent. I am going to be there tuesday or thursday (with many others it seems) and will take a look. Universal will really let me down it this becomes a permanent change.
 
This better not be permanent. They were designed to duel; that's the whole point of the near-misses.

Staggering the trains is not going to eliminate that extremely small chance of someone getting hit with a projectile; they can come from anywhere.

These things already have low enough ridership as it is. Taking out the most unique aspect of the ride certainly won't help that.
 
http://screamscape.com/html/islands_of_adventure.htm

Apparently a Screamscape reader sent in a story of him being hit with something on the other train as well, and this is the reason that the trains aren't being dueled anymore. Apparently Universal believes that it's a single person behind these attacks, and Screamscape as well. I mean, for 2 objects to hit people within weeks of each other when the ride has never had this happen in 12 years? It's somewhat suspicious. I don't know how you would protect from that then... make everyone empty their pockets?
 
Wow, if there some little kid, because honestly, only a stupid little kid would think its funny to do something like this. I hope they find him and feed him to a real dragon.
 
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Vyrus said:
Wow, if there some little kid, because honestly, only a stupid little kid would think its funny to do something like this. I hope they find him and feed him to a real dragon.
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You severely underestimate the stupidity and careless of our society. I can see this being anyone under 30 honestly.
 
Universal needs to get to the bottom of this and fast! But I don't know what more preventative measures can be taken to ensure rider safety while dueling. Are the coaster's safety monitors not enough to catch what's going on? And if this is truly some moronic guest doing this , well, he should be stoned to death. Maybe that's a little extreme. But it's angering when some idiot ruins it for everyone else.
 
They should install some on-ride cameras. Money in their pocket because they can sell videos, but secretly surveillance to catch the culprit. :look:
 
Well this is disappointing news. I guess with "dueling" stripped from the ride's title there is not really a case to be made as to why it shouldn't be single trains. Other than it totally sucks and nobody likes the decision...
 
This really upsets me. Dragons Challenge is one of my fav coasters because it's never got a long wait, so I can go on both tracks back to back. If they keep the no dueling aspect I will probably never ride this again. This really saddens me. If they ever catch the ******* who threw those things I give universal full permission to use brute force to make the message that 'thats wrong' stick (assuming it was the same person who did both attacks).
 
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