If you can't satisfy California safety regulations, move your theme park ride to Missouri.
That the attitude Knott's Berry Farm has taken with its Windseeker attraction in Buena Park, the iconic tall swing ride you can see for miles–and where two riders got stuck last year.
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California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health then ordered the 301-foot ride shut down in September 2012, prompting Knott's to make some safety changes. But the theme park never replaced ladders the state had found out of compliance.
Cedar Fair Entertainment Co., Knott's parent company, announced last week that Windseeker will be dismantled in January and moved to its Worlds of Fun park in Kansas City, where the ride will be renamed SteelHawk.
Stacy Frole, a Cedar Fair spokeswoman, reportedly explained the current ladders are legal in other states, including Missouri, the “Show Me the Pavement State.”
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.