Busch Gardens - Tampa: Injury Reporting

Jason Herrera

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In a case of reporting, or lack thereof, we present injury information on Busch Gardens - Tampa:

• Gwazi: Back related injuries were not uncommon with this ride, with rider's being thrown around like mere rag dolls on this rough relentless wooden roller coaster. There were a total of 27 reported injuries to Amusement Safety Organization in 2009. In an earlier article, Ed Normand, touched on third quarter injuries at Florida amusement parks - or a case of just how worthless the reporting process is in Florida. 0 injuries? Sure, Busch Gardens may be totally compliant with the current reporting standards, but, again, goes to show how the reporting process "works" in Florida.
• Montu: Riders losing feeling in their legs after riding Montu was not an uncommon issue. Riders blacking out, another issue we came across. We found, however, that the 4 black out issues brought to us were from a lack of hydration.
• Hydration Issues: A theme park killer, makes your trip to a theme park an experience you want to forget. We always suggest drinking water, before, during, and after your trip to a theme park. Feeling parched and under the weather? Hit up this park's first aid stations for ice cold water and a place to relax.

For a look at issues at Busch Gardens - Tampa, please look here.

Amusement Safety Organization (ASO) was started in response to requests from the public for a source of honest and unbiased information on amusement park injuries that is not run by or affiliated with the amusement industry.

Information is submitted to us from park patrons and amusement park line workers. The amusement park industries unwillingness to acknowledge our existence has proven to be invaluable, allowing us to sneak under the radar to obtain information without any resistance.

Issues instead of injuries? An issue is something that is happening to a wide range of people, a common ground if you will. We ran into 2 problems before we came up with our issue method, those problems were:

• Tried to work with the amusement park industry for the purpose of consumer awareness – this was a huge no-no. In order to get anything productive done, you have to go about things without the industries assistance, because if you do not, they’ll tell you everything is alright, Florida theme parks are a good example of this.
• Releasing all injury numbers – this was a decent idea at first, but it creates mounds of meaningless information that the consumer does not care about, bottom line, get to the point! Show me what rides are hurting people.

We looked through injury information and noticed something, how and why would we focus on 2,3,4, or 5 injuries with a particular ride, it could cause unneeded panic. What about 10 injuries? Now that would be reason for concern and something people need to know about. 10 of something is a good amount, it just felt right. So the word issue became a part of our vocabulary.

It’s not to say that we don’t account for injuries with less than 10 issues – more the opposite (we will roll out attraction alerts, which tackles rides that are nearing 10+ issues, we will address that in a future blog). An issue is just that, something that needs to be brought to light, in order to educate the consumer on the potential risks of a particular ride, park, etc…

I look forward to many more entries here on injuryboard.com.