That, or a backpack fell onto the track.
Either way, learn more about Disneyland's newest ride mishap after the jump.
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According to City News Service (via San Clemente's Patch), at approximately 6:30 p.m. last Friday, while one of the California Screamin' trains made its way around the top of the coaster's loop, a passenger's backpack fell out of their car and down onto the track below. The coaster has an anti-derailment safety feature that immediately brings the trains to a halt when any foreign object touches the track. The feature kicked in, leaving the train stranded approximately 20 feet off the ground at the bottom of the loop.
A team of 22 Anaheim firefighters secured the train to the tracks, then used ladders to remove the ride's 23 passengers. Anaheim Fire Marshal Jeff Lutz told City News Service that the entire procedure took around 25 minutes.
Man, there are a lot of numbers in their twenties in this article!
Anyway, the most interesting thing I learned while reading up on California Screamin' for this article is that it is the second-longest roller coaster track in all of the United States, second only to Millennium Force at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. It's also the sixth-longest track in the entire world! Screamin's track is nearly 1 1/8 miles long; for a ride that's over in two minutes and thirty-four seconds, it sure doesn't feel like it's all that long.
California Screamin' has a pretty clean incident history, save for a 2005 brake malfunction that caused one train to rear-end another as they were pulling into the loading station. Of the 48 passengers on board, 15 were taken to local hospitals for treatment of minor injuries.
And all were given free Mickey Mouse ears. Or at least I hope they were.
