Teen Feared For Life Stuck Upside Down On Oaks Amusement Park Ride

A fun day at an amusement park turned traumatic for 28 thrill seekers who were left suspended upside down on the AtmosFEAR ride over the weekend.

Evie Yannotta, who shared a video of the ride on TikTok, was one of the riders hoping to enjoy a fun day at Oaks Amusement Park in Portland, OR. She shared her story and how she was feeling stuck on the ride exclusively with The Blast.

Evie, 14, and 10 friends were looking forward to a fun adventure at Oaks Amusement Park to celebrate completing middle school last weekend. But what started as a day of fun and celebration turned into a traumatic experience when the ride they were on got stuck in the upside position 50 feet above the ground.

"The ride is called 'AtmosFEAR' and is a ride that harnesses people into their seats and then swings on a pendulum. The ride has two options - a 360-degree ride option and a 180-degree ride option," Evie explained to The Blast exclusively. "I went on the 360-degree ride. I knew something was wrong when the ride stopped during the third full loop at the top and started spinning."

When Evie realized the ride was stuck at the top upside down, she began to freak out. She said she was worried that park officials and firefighters weren't going to be able to free the riders from this unexpected tragedy.

"During the last few minutes of the incident, I was worried we were going to die, either from the harness opening and plummeting to my death or that I would eventually pass out and die from not being able to breathe," she said. "Toward the end of the incident, I was thinking about my mom, dad, and sister and terrified that I would never see them again."

Evie said that she wasn't alone panicking. While some people were trying to stay calm, others were "screaming, crying, cursing, and throwing up." Some were trying to make each other laugh and one group was silent, frozen in fear.

"First, before the firefighters and ambulance arrived, the Oaks Park staff attempted to get the ride moving again by trying to operate it at the panel on the ground. When that didn't work, the workers left to call the ride manufacturer to ask what they should do," Evie told The Blast. "The workers were told to climb up halfway on the ride where there is a manual kill switch. The worker who attempted this was a large, strong man, but he could not get the kill switch to move."

The employee only needed to get the switch to move slightly to release the ride from the locked position and bring everyone down safely, but he wasn't able to do it. When firefighters arrived, they gave the worker a 3-foot-long pry bar to use to reach the kill switch.

"After 26 LONG minutes, he was able to release the ride from the locked position," she said. "Unfortunately, it did not just directly come down but still had to complete the remaining ride. This felt HORRIBLE to all of us who had been upside down for almost a half-an-hour."

Once on the ground, the harnesses wouldn't open because workers had cut the power to the ride. Firefighters had to use a special tool given to them by the ride manufacturer to pry the riders out of their seats from the back and then carry them to the ground because they were about six feet from the ground.

To make matters worse for the riders suspended upside down, Evie said Oaks Amusement Park has done very little to make up for a traumatic incident that will likely never be forgotten.

"When our parents came to the park to pick us up (they closed the entire amusement park after the incident with the ride) the parents and riders waited for quite a while before the CEO of Oaks Park and other staff members came out to debrief us," Evie shared exclusively with The Blast. "They acted like it was just a fluke thing and did not offer anything. Finally, a parent asked if they would even be providing refunds for the ride bracelets, and they said they would for not just the people on the ride, but for everyone in the park who was there that day because the park closed in the middle of the day."

Evie's mom, Amy Yannotta, suggested that the people who were traumatized on the ride should be given something more than just the same refund as the rest of the park.

"The CEO then said that they might be able to give the riders some free park passes and that he hoped the riders would return and even go on the ride again, which made many people feel upset myself included," Evie said.

Amy has expressed her shock at how the park has handled the situation during and afterward.

"Evie told me that while they were stuck up on the ride for almost half-an-hour, the only thing that park staff said to them yelled up through a megaphone was just a robotic, 'Help is on the way.' There was no attempt to calm or reassure the teenagers on the ride from Oaks Park staff," she told The Blast.

"Finally, a woman who was a teacher and had brought teenagers from her class to celebrate the end of the school year and whose students were completely panicking was allowed to speak to all the riders through the megaphone and she was much more reassuring than the staff at the park. Kids were asking her if they were going to die and she reassured them that they weren't."

Amy also questions if things happened the way the park claims it has. The incident happened at 2:55 p.m. and the park said they called 911 quickly, but firefighters didn't arrive until 3:20 p.m. despite only being two miles from the park.

Amy also shared that the CEO of the park had a "dismissive attitude" and said it was an "unfortunate" incident but it happens at amusement parks often.

"Park officials were told by the ride manufacturer when they obtained the AtmosFEAR ride in 2021 that it would be impossible for the ride to ever get stuck in the position that it ultimately did get stuck in," Amy said. "Due to this, there was no plan in place if this were to happen. Surprisingly, there is no button they can push on the panel that operates the ride from the ground to get the ride to come down if it gets stuck."

Amy told The Blast that Evie has quite a few physical and mental symptoms from the trauma she experienced at Oaks Amusement Park.

"While Evie's physical symptoms, headaches and body aches, are lessening, her trauma and PTSD remain high," Amy said. She's had a hard time sleeping and goes back and forth from wanting to talk a lot about the incident and read all about it online to wanting to just disengage alone in her room."

Amy is seeking therapy to help Evie process and heal from this trauma and said that she's shocked that the park hasn't offered to pay for therapy for the riders.

Evie said that the experience was "beyond terrifying" and the headache from being upside down for so long has been lingering for days after. And now because of this experience, her love of thrill rides is probably long gone.