Firefighters Free 16 Stranded Atop Adventureland Roller Coaster

A Friday night at an amusement park is supposed to end with tired kids, sticky fingers, and a slow crawl out of the parking lot. On June 19, 2026, a night at Adventureland in Farmingdale, New York, ended with firefighters pulling children out of the air one at a time, in the dark, while their parents watched from the ground.

Sixteen people, fifteen of them kids, got stuck on a brand new ride called the Wave Twister. They were stranded for more than three hours. The ride froze just before the park's 8 p.m. closing time, and the last person didn't get down until 10:40 p.m. By then the sun was long gone. Here's what actually happened that night, and why the ride is still shut down.

The ride stopped just before closing time

The trouble started around 7:30 p.m. The Wave Twister, which climbs to more than 50 feet at its highest point, locked up with the ride vehicle suspended in midair. Riders were left dangling roughly 25 feet above the ground, strapped into their seats with their legs hanging out below them. There was no way to walk them down a set of stairs. Each person had to be physically guided off the stuck ride.

According to local reporting, the timing made everything worse. The ride broke down right as the park was getting ready to close for the night, so families on the ground had to stand there and watch as it got darker and darker while their kids stayed stuck above them. A few minutes of being stalled on a ride is annoying. Three hours after sunset is a different thing entirely.

A 5-year-old was among those trapped

The youngest person stuck up there was five years old, riding with a 40-year-old parent. The rest were kids, most of them between eight and twelve. In total, fifteen children and one adult were stranded on the malfunctioning ride.

That age range matters because of how the Wave Twister works. Riders have to be at least 48 inches tall to ride alone, but kids as short as 36 inches can ride with an adult. So this wasn't a ride built only for teenagers chasing a thrill. It was a family attraction, the kind a parent buckles into with a small child expecting a couple of fun spins, not a multi-hour ordeal.

Firefighters brought them down one by one

This rescue was slow on purpose. Crews used ladders and harnesses to reach each rider and walk them down individually. There was no quick fix, no flipping a switch to lower everyone at once. Firefighters had to climb up to the kids, secure them, and bring them to the ground one person at a time, which is exactly why it stretched past three hours.

The emergency response was large. Multiple departments showed up, and ambulances waited on standby so paramedics could check each child the moment they were back on solid ground. Video and witness accounts described firefighters meticulously removing one child at a time as the kids sat with their legs swinging, stuck in their seats. The slow, careful pace is standard for this kind of rescue. Rushing people off a ride 25 feet up is how you turn a scary night into an injury report.

One kid tried to calm the others down

The clearest picture of what it felt like up there came from a sixth grader who was on the ride. The student told reporters the moment the ride locked up, things fell apart fast. "They just stopped it completely. And that's the point where everybody started snapping, crying, screaming at people to call 911. There was no service anywhere, so we were all panicking."

No cell service made it worse. Kids couldn't easily call for help or even tell their parents what was happening. The same student described the scene as chaos, with some kids crying and others nervously laughing. "I was personally screaming, telling everybody. A couple kids were laughing down there. Kids were crying. It was, woof, chaotic." In another interview, the same sixth grader said simply, "A couple kids were crying. I was trying to calm them down." A twelve-year-old playing counselor to a bunch of scared little kids 25 feet in the air is not how anyone planned to spend their Friday.

Parents used Apple Watches to reach their kids

With phone service spotty and the kids stuck out of reach, some parents got creative. A few of them used Apple Watches to communicate with their children while they waited for the rescue to reach them. It's a small detail, but it tells you a lot about the scene on the ground: a crowd of parents staring up at a stalled ride, doing whatever they could to stay in contact with a kid they couldn't get to.

Standing in a dark amusement park watching firefighters inch toward your child on a ladder is the kind of helpless feeling most people never want to know. Being able to send a quick message, even just "I'm here, hang on," was about the only thing some of those parents could do.

The Wave Twister had only been open since March

Here's the part that's raising eyebrows. The Wave Twister isn't some rickety old ride that's been rattling around for decades. It opened in March 2026, just a few months before this happened. It's manufactured by a company called Res Rides and is marketed as the first of its kind in the world. It features two 10-passenger spinning gondolas that sweep along an L-shaped figure-eight track.

A season ticketholder from Melville named Adam Rosen said he and his son actually rode it during a test run before the public opening. "We were test dummies for it, and it felt weird in the beginning," Rosen said. "We were there a couple times. It got smoother and smoother, so I thought they got the things out." That quote sticks with you. Someone who rode it early thought the kinks had been worked out, and a few months later it was stuck in the air with kids on it.

The good news: no one was hurt

For all the panic, the screaming, and the three hours in the dark, every single rider came down safely. No injuries were reported. Paramedics checked the kids as they got off, and after a long, frightening night, all sixteen people went home.

That's the outcome that matters most. A stuck ride is a story. A stuck ride where someone gets seriously hurt is a tragedy. This one stayed on the right side of that line, thanks in large part to how carefully the rescue crews handled it.

The ride is closed while the park investigates

The next morning, the Wave Twister stayed shut. Adventureland workers kept a close eye on it as the park opened for the rest of the weekend, but officials said they had no update on what caused the breakdown. The investigation was still ongoing as of the morning after.

Adventureland put out a statement leaning on its long history. "For more than 60 years, Adventureland has enjoyed a proud record of safety and guest satisfaction. We understand the concern of the riders and their families who were involved today, and we will be working with our ride consultants to fully assess what happened." The park added that the ride would stay out of service until the review was finished, and thanked the first responders who got everyone off.

So that's where things stand. A new ride, marketed as one of a kind, locked up on a Friday night and left fifteen kids and one parent stuck above a dark amusement park for over three hours. Firefighters brought every one of them down safe. The Wave Twister stays closed while the park and its consultants try to figure out exactly what went wrong. For the families who spent that night staring up at the sky, the answer can't come fast enough.