Mack Rides Revise Height Restrictions

Following the recent announcement of the height restriction increase for Dragon Falls at Chessington, UK Park News can now also confirm that two of Alton Tower’s family attractions have had their height restrictions increased this weekend: The Flume (1.2m minimum) and Marauder’s Mayhem (1.1m minimum).

The original height restrictions were 0.9m-1.1m when accompanied by an adult, so the increase is quite significant and will leave many younger guests disappointed, especially considering guests may have previously been able to enjoy these attractions this year already (during Feb half term for instance).

Currently, there has been no official announcement from Merlin over why these limits have been revised, though UK Park News can exclusively report (in an email sent directly to us) that Mack Rides (manufacturers of The Flume & Dragon Falls) have recently revised the height limit for all their log flume attractions. Interestingly, Marauder’s Mayhem is also manufactured by Mack Rides.

UK Park News have received an exclusive statement from MACK regarding the recent changes:

“Dear UK Park News,

Thank you for your email and the interest in our log flume rides.

In the long history of MACK Rides we always built our rides with the most actual safety regulations and update these if it is required. As you certainly know, the logflume boats are not equipped with lap bars and so we have to make sure that the age of people that are transported is at a certain level. Together with TUEV Sued, one of the most experienced teams to provide us with consultations and tests, we came up to change the height restriction to 1.2 meters.

Let me state here a part of the TUEV website:

“The German safety standards on which acceptance tests or periodic testing and inspection are based are very strict and thus frequently require considerable improvement for amusement rides before going into operation. Any Amusement Rides to be operated in US, Europe or Germany today has to satisfy the requirements of strict standards like DIN, EN and ASTM safety standards. Beyond any detailed standard – like ASTM or EN – chosen by the owner or manufacturer to be applied for the approval of a ride we base our approval also on the requirements of DIN 4112 which has provided a quality experience over the past decades.”

The height restrictions of 1.2 meters is one of this improvements. For the safety of their own children the parents should understand that this decision is just a precautionary safety issue and we always know that this will disappoint some of the families visiting the park.

I hope we could make clear, how the height restriction changes came in place and that you understand the purpose of it.

If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards

Maximilian Röser”