ARLINGTON, Texas — You may have seen what looked like an unbelievable video on social media this week -- footage that appeared to show a parkgoer at Six Flags Over Texas dangling off the edge of its Superman ride and hanging on for dear life.
Superman: Tower of Power is just about the worst ride you'd want to be caught falling out of your seat from at the Arlington theme park. It involves a stomach-churning straight shot 325 feet into the sky before it drops back down to surface level (with a few planned bumps along the way).
So, it's no wonder that a viral video that appears to show an attendee dangling from his seat as the ride slowly lowered went viral.
But was it real?
No, not to hear Six Flags tell it, it wasn't.
"There was no incident at the park," Six Flags Over Texas said in a statement to WFAA. "The video appears to be a hoax. I can confirm, there was no incident of any kind."
Although this incident doesn't appear to be real, there have been serious injuries before on Superman: Tower of Power rides, which is also featured at the company's Georgia park, and was previously installed at its parks in St. Louis and Kentucky. In June 2007, a 13-year-old girl at the Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom was riding the tower when a cable snapped shortly before the ride began and struck several passengers on the ride -- including the young girl.
The Associated Press reported at the time that the girl's legs were severed due to the snapped cable, and only one of her feet was able to be reattached.
The ride was closed indefinitely following the accident and was demolished in 2008.
This is also not the first time a video showing a fake incident at a theme park ride has gone viral. In 2019, a video of the Gyro Drop ride at a theme park in Seoul, South Korea, went viral for showing what many viewers deemed to be unsafe thrills -- which was an accurate assessment, given how the frightening features of the ride highlighted by the viral footage didn't actually exist.
WFAA has reached out to Six Flags Over Texas for further clarification on what, specifically, about the video making the rounds this week made it a hoax, and we will update this article once that information becomes available.
