Riders Trapped Upside Down on Ocean City Boardwalk Ride, No Injuries Reported

Two 13-year-old girls from a New Jersey Shore trip are describing what it felt like to hang upside down on a stuck amusement ride, in an account first reported by Fox News Digital.

The malfunction happened on the Wipe Out ride at Playland's Castaway Cove on the Ocean City boardwalk, the day after the Fourth of July. That timing puts the incident in early July, roughly a month before this report.

Charlotte Hacker and Emilia Gordon, both 13, were riding the pendulum-style attraction when it stopped mid-cycle with passengers flipped upside down. More than a dozen riders were stuck, according to Fox News Digital.

What the girls said happened

Hacker told Fox News Digital the ordeal lasted five to seven minutes, though it felt far longer. "It doesn't seem like that much to the people that were down watching us, but we were up there, and it felt like an hour," she said.

Gordon described the physical toll of hanging inverted that long. "I seriously thought I was going to pass out," she said. "You try to put your head up, but you literally can't. You can barely get it up at all."

The two friends, seated next to each other, tried making small talk to keep calm while stuck. Gordon said her biggest fear wasn't the blood rush, it was the restraint system. "I remember thinking that the lap bars were going to open and that we were just going to fall," she said.

Family members watching from the ground were reportedly just as shaken. Hacker said her uncle, who came to the boardwalk with the group, was "freaking out" while waiting for the ride to restart.

The ride eventually moved again, but didn't stop when it should have

According to the girls' account, operators got the ride moving again after several minutes, but it kept cycling past the point where it normally would have ended. Riders weren't let off the platform for several more minutes after the ride finally finished.

Hacker said the attraction did not shut down afterward. Some people still in line reportedly chose to ride it anyway once it reopened. "When we came off, people were literally clapping," Gordon told Fox News Digital.

What's still unknown

No cause for the malfunction has been made public. No injuries have been reported. There's no indication in available reporting that state ride inspectors, Ocean City officials, or Playland's Castaway Cove issued any statement, opened an investigation, or ordered the ride inspected or shut down following the incident.

New Jersey's Department of Community Affairs oversees amusement ride safety and inspection in the state, but no findings or inspection report tied to this specific incident have surfaced in reporting so far. The public has the riders' firsthand account, but no operator statement, no regulatory response, and no technical explanation for what went wrong.

Why did a ride that stranded more than a dozen people upside down for several minutes, with witnesses reporting fear that safety restraints could fail, keep running the same night with paying customers still in line? Amusement ride malfunctions of this kind are not unheard of. Similar incidents have made news elsewhere, including riders stranded 245 feet up after a power outage at a Six Flags park and eight people left dangling for over three hours on a Texas roller coaster. Those cases prompted park statements and, in some instances, mechanical reviews.

This one, so far, has not produced any public accounting from Playland's Castaway Cove or New Jersey regulators. Ocean City's boardwalk draws heavy summer crowds every July, and Wipe Out remains a relatively new attraction there, according to Fox News Digital, which is part of why the girls said they wanted to try it in the first place.

Until an operator or state inspector goes on record, the only detailed account of what happened on the Wipe Out that night comes from two teenagers and their families, not from anyone responsible for running or regulating the ride.