God, I remember when the ads would play on tv. Then they suddenly just stopped, obviously I didn't care at the time but now I think I know why...

it wasn't really the ride itself but the stupid people overriding the safety warning without consulting the rest of the team. The break down in communication. The actual ride was programmed to automatically stop and it did, but the fact that an employee ignored that and manually altered it is terrifying. If I was that person I wouldn't be able to sleep at night lol

Whoever did the marketing thing for this must have been a genius. They should have done horror movies instead.

Trouble history or not, this thing's design is absolutely stunning. The whole story line it has, and the the aesthetics are just amazing. From a purely cosmetic design standpoint, it's one of the best and coolest looking rides I've ever seen.

Spray painting sheep has got to be the most British advertising thing I’ve ever seen.

I’m a ride operator and I cannot believe this was human error, you should never ever override stoppages without looking into them, business often think too much about what customers will think if they take too long to fix a ride, but I’d rather wait than be put in danger like that.

The creepy idea of the rollercoaster makes the accident even more spine chilling.

I’m actually super glad this ride wasn’t demolished, since I went on it back in 2019, but then again, the phrase ‘You Belong to The Smiler’ got a whole other meaning after the accident, didn’t it?

All these people claiming they were at Alton towers during the accident but I actually died during the accident so get lost liars

Such amazing (and disturbing) marketing and theming for a coaster and such a tragic and awful story. You covered this very well as always. Fascinating and sad.

Marketing meeting for this ride: "Alright so what do you got?" "I'm thinking high-concept horror. Mind control, medical experiments, lots of uncanny valley stuff too." "Yeah, that's perfect! That's exactly what's gonna draw to people to our tiny train going nowhere specifically designed to make your lizard-brain think you're about to die. It needs a little extra something though." "How about we spray-paint some sheep?" "Johnson, you've done it again!" *everyone passes out face-first into their 3-foot-high mountains of coke*

How come we're not talking about the fact that it took TWENTY MINUTES for anybody to even call emergency services?! That is insane!

The marketing campaign was absolutely terrifying. We got ads for the ride ALL THE TIME in Ireland. I was really young when the campaign started, and it still gives me chills.

Having low key dangerous rollercoasters is part of British culture

"When people visit theme parks they should be able to enjoy themselves safely." Action Park: Are you sure about that?

It is depressing that Alton Towers now has a bad reputation and people don't want to go in fear of injury

That. Is. The Scariest ad campaign I have ever seen. Except for the sheep *I LOVED THE SHEEP*

Alton Towers: Why can't you just be normal!? Smiler: *screaming*

Can I just say the Smiler advertising material is creepy

How many loops do you want? The smiler: yes

Hi alton towers employee here. There are now only 3 carts operational at one time, even at peak 2 are out whilst one loads, then one cart comes in and unloads whilst the now loaded fist cart is set off, rinse and repeat. There is also alt more communication between staff with multiple people giving thumbs up before a new cart is sent out

What an INSANE AD CAMPAIGN. If a North American park ever did this, the news would be all over it, and the park would close that day just because of over population!

I really want to emphasise the safety of the Smiler, especially after the accident. Even prior to the accident the ride was working as intended. At peak traffic a 5th carriage was added to the coaster to run at maximum capacity. This carriage had to be tested and sent around the track empty as per procedure. This carriage was not weighted and was sent onto the track in high winds, winds that were reported to be high enough that the ride shouldn't have been operating anyway. This is the park operators fault first and foremost: They knew the risk, prioritised money and didn't inform ride operators to run the new cars weighted within their procedure. The high winds caused the empty car to valley after the first drop, it didn't have momentum to clear the course. The sensors at the second chain lift had not counted the correct amount of wheels that were programmed to be on the track and stopped the next car on the first lift as it should have. Maintenence believed that only 4 cars were in operation, and were not informed of the fifth car being tested. This led them to give the all clear. They did not do a visual appraisal of the track, they didn't think to look. They sent off the next car by overriding the safety system when 4 cars were accounted for and that led to a full carriage colliding with the stranded, empty, fifth car. This is now not possible with new regulations, but the fault of the park is that they shouldn't have been able to override the safety mechanism without a sign off from a higher-up, which is now required. The Smiler has always been perfectly safe, and is incredibly safe today. The greed of park managers, the lack of information passed between workers and one terrible, lazy lapse in judgement is what caused this crash, not a ride failure. The ride highlighted the issue and humans ignored it.

It is sad that this amazing ride is just now known for that horrible accident. Smiler is a favourite of mine and deserves more recognition

The advertising for smiler was BRILLIANT. the hype outlived anything I’ve experienced before in regards to coaster promo. I rode before the crash and vowed never to go on it again as it’s the only coaster that’s ever made me feel genuinely unwell for the rest of the day and I was so upset as I was giddy af to ride a coaster with 14 loops!

Man, that was some utterly terrifying commercials, especially for a coaster. They seem straight out of Halloween Horror Nights. Such a shame that a tragedy like that could happen when it could have easily been avoided. If I wasn't already scared of roller coasters, this would definitely cause that.

The people who got injured on the ride probably don’t want to go on it again because 1. The got injured 2. They don’t want to listen to that damn laughter

FOR EVERYONE: I went on the smiler yesterday, and it’s 100% safe! They made it so much safer after the accident, so have no fears about going on it :)

Imagine being on a ride with such trippy and creepy theming, sights and sounds that makes you feel so out of your element and then getting in a crash and losing your leg...damn. For some reason, the theming makes that incident even more unsettling somehow? I went on the ride for the first time maybe a year after the incident and, while it was objectively a great coaster, I just felt so terrible for those people the whole time and that coupled with the theming made me feel so uneasy. Also that jump scare in the ad with the tapes REALLY got me. Geez. Great video, well made, informative and mot overly sensationalised. The old footage of X Sector with The Black Hole was a great nostalgia trip too.

I find it annoying that the ride mechanics get blamed instead even though it was staff mistakes

It's just crazy how these things are incredibly rare due to the number of safety systems in place but when they do occur it's usually down to human error. If the operator was told there was a fifth car on the track, none of this would have happened. The ride didn't malfunction, the people operating it did.

The smiler music sounds like something that joker would listen to

Went on the Smiler myself last year, and I must say the most fun roller coaster I had been on. The immersion, background story and design of the coaster is excellent. I went on the ride even after the tragic events on it; but it’s all down to miscommunication and human error. They obviously don’t design the rides to fail, it’s just in the nature and stigma of theme parks.

I remember seeing a “I survived the smiler shirt” I can’t seem to find it online but I swear I saw it

I was lucky enough to only have a 30 minute wait for The Smiler. If I had to wait any longer I would have gone insane from the theme song

Sad that they removed the whole correction / marmalisation theme, like stated in the video it's not like they set out to injure anyone and the ride + theme is superb. Not been AT in ages but it still remains one of my favourite rides in the UK.

We went to alton towers the day after the ride reopened after the crash and there was literally nobody was queueing for it- we could go on it an unlimited amount of times it was great

That Smiler shop clip gives me Black Mirror vibes

Every time I watch this video I end up crying. The Smiler is my favorite roller coaster in the world and also one of the first major coasters I ever went on, It's such a shame that a ride like the Smiler is now known for a devastating accident that could have been completely avoided if Alton did the responsible thing and kept the ride closed on such a windy day, hell, even if the ride stayed open that day, when the ride's block safety system was triggered it should've been a huge red flag that something was wrong...as an enthusiast and a rising ride operator I don't think anyone should ever override stoppages. I feel terrible for the 16 people that were injured on the Smiler that day and I really hope every single one of them are doing better now. Once again, such a shame that the Smiler is now known for this tragic accident instead of it's 14 brilliant inversions and incredible theming/storyline...

Imagine being one of the people who was blamed for the accident. I don't know how I could deal with myself after the mistake I made.

This just reminds me of this weird kid called James at school. Every non-uniform day he would come dressed in his smiler merch and even last year he did not disappoint. I probably won’t see him anymore since I’ve left now, but I hope he continues to live his smiler dreams

That marketing is messed up. I LOVE IT.

omg the advert at the beginning brought me back to being a kid and covering my eyes when it came on the telly, that thing was scary

The two in the front who lost a leg and a few fingers respectively were on their first date too. yeeesh. The silver lining is that apparently it made them closer and I believe they are still together. I saw them talk about all this on the news when the ride re-opened. The clips are on youtube

Omg I remember getting adverts for this on my cereal boxes years ago

I went to alton towers for the first time. This was before the accident and i went on smiler. When lining up, i heard a couple talking about how the ride is sick. I heard them say something about someone dying but just joked it off as if it would never happen. The next day the crash happened.

It’s extremely common to see that in modern roller coasters, when an accident occurs it’s rarely (if ever) the fault of the ride. These metal behemoths are designed down to the *millimeter* with safety always first.

I remember watching the news and reading about this when it happened. We had just been at Alton Towers two weeks before, and me and mum had actual been on The Smiler. It was absolutely horrifying to hear about this and what had happened, and then to learn that the ride had actually done what it was supposed to and stopped, but it was the human error that caused such injury. Me and my mum both went on this ride weeks after it had reopened, and have been on it multiple times since, and it's fine. But just to think that the actions of stupid people and human error could cause such a problem probably brought in a lot more caution around the ride itself, and to be honest, I wasn't surprised that when me and my mum went back to the ride the first time, there was hardly anyone queuing up for it.

Wasn’t really Alton towers fault it was the employees who overwrited the safety system , there was clearly something wrong with the ride wouldn’t have stopped for no reason

Seems like everyone in the comments was in Alton Towers on the day of the accident.....

That’s an amazing concept for a ride, and I wish more rides did interesting things like this. It’s a shame that this ride is known for that

I remember going on a weekday not long after they reopened the smiler. Best day I've had in a theme park in my life. It was like we'd hired it out for the day.

I've heard all about the infamous Smiler incidents even though i'm not from the UK. UKposts helps me learn about that stuff. Edit: WOW. That's the craziest ad campaign i've ever seen in my LIFE. I wonder who here saw the Smiler logo projections in person as they were walking through the streets of the UK. It looked like the whole country was CURSED.

It's amazing how 9/10 accidents are due to ignorance and negligence, not mechanical faults. An old friend's mother was killed on a ride several years ago. The family settled for around $2 million if I remember correctly. I never asked about it, only know from a third party.

I swear the smiler is the best rollercoaster ever. Great theme. Great backstory. Great EVERYTHING!!

Please don’t let the accident prevent you riding this honestly amazing coaster not only was it all human error but the smiler is now one of if not the safest rollercoaster in the world.

13:30 Nothing good can happen after "they overrode the safety warning"

The ad marketing makes it even more scarier now that something sinister did happen on the coaster. it's cursed or something.

I was at Alton Towers last week, when I was in the queue for the smiler, waiting to board, I noticed that there was more than the normal amount of staff compared to other coasters. Even had announcement saying that it raining, if you do wish ride let a member of staff know before boarding. When boarding the ride, I had two members of staff check the safety brace. When it’s normal one person, on most rides. You can understand why considering the history of the ride. It’s still an awesome whirlwind of ride.

From what I’ve heard, the laughing part of The Smiler theme was playing when the two carts collided.

Great video, and great explanation of the accident. It just shows how safe coasters are though, it took a perfect storm of miscommunication and overriding safety systems for that to happen.

I’d never seen the CCTV footage of the accident before. Your video was balanced and non sensationalist. The tragedy is that the ride knew there was an issue and tried to prevent it, but those fallible humans simply made a horrible error of judgement.

3:21 Any ride that drops you from a tower and pulls you backwards into pitch blackness bloody well counts as a thrill ride to ME! Looking at you, Expedition Everest!

I watched Tommy’s blog and now EVERYTHING about the smiler shows up in my recommended

I don’t understand how people blame the rollercoaster, sure, when it was opened there were bound to be issues but the 2015 incident was due to the engineers and employees fault at failing to inform others and failure to fully check the ride so if anything I wouldn’t trust the employees working there. I’m not saying they’re bad they’re just a bunch of numpties.

Wth was that ad its a horror movie, you covered this fascinating yet traumatising ride well.

I think health and safety has been significantly improved. I was in line for smiler for almost an hour yesterday when an announcement came out that due to the rain the ride might have to close. There was the usual grumbling from guests but there are good reasons these rules are in place. Fortunately the rain stopped almost immediately, we got on and it was the best ride I’ve ever been on!

This ride in a nutshell (using a quote from an American theme park ride): "He's using it on the people of Metropolis... driving them crazy with laughter."

I will always adore the lore and theming that went into this ride, and some of the artists it inspired, such as the incredibly talented and creative Beautyofthebass. I hate that one incident had to permanently ruin the coasters image and I truly feel bad for both the victims of the crash and the people who loved and still love the ride. It's a nasty stain on an otherwise incredible feat of engineering and ride-based storytelling.

They sure don't make theme park commercials like they used to

I remember watching the ride getting build when I was a small kid. I was around 8 years old and was so excited to see it open.

Smiler is such a good roller-coaster. I went on it about a year ago. It's hard to to describe how good it is. It was a quiet day at alton towers and I went on it about 10 times. No queues in the park.

Wow. There were so many checks in place that it took a whole list of things going wrong in very specific ways to cause this accident. 1) Extreme wind causing downtime 2) Adding a 5th car during downtime 3) Engineers not being told about the 5th car 4) 5th car stalling out 5) Manual override of the system warning about the stalled out car. The odds of this happening were made so slim.

Hooooly shit. That last bit hit me like a ton of bricks. I had no idea that had even happened (granted I’m in the US so explains why) but that’s just tragic........you would have thought someone in the control booth would have access to those camera feeds of the track at all times and notice the empty train on the tracks going back and forth. Damn.

I have possibly watched this video over 20-30 times in my life I love just putting your videos on in the back while just working on stuff it's actually amazing love the content man

I am currently a engineering major and a dream job of mine is to design rides. One thing you can see in many major amusement park rides and even stuff like elevators are over designed with safety precautions, and that is a good thing. Like looking here they use a system where as a break fin passes through each block on the ride it can know which car is on the track and where (each probably having a specific code identifier for each car to help speed up identifying specific cars and their issues) the rides computer is programed to only let one car in each break section with a certain gap of empty sections (usually one full block, one empty block ect) in this case they were operating with 5 total cars, I am not sure how many blocks or break sections their are on the ride, but putting those 5 cars at once should be fine as long as it was in the original design, and that is the max ( can’t really see it being more than that) when the 5th car didn’t make the section, the ride op gave it a manual override ( the ride sensors are very hyperactive and the slightest issue Will throw it off, in this case he/she probably thought that the sensor did not read it correctly, which can happen but you should check it 3 times to make sure before you give it the ok. It was not a mechanical issue, it was a human issue. The company whether intentionally or unintentionally put pressure to make sure one of their popular rides will run faster.

"It took 20 minutes to call 999 and 5 hours to get them to the hospital" Welcome to Britain!

Anyone getting ‘We Happy Few’ vibes from the story of the Smiler? And I remember seeing these ads on the TV as a child... They were bloody terrifying

The theming on this thing is freakin' out of this world good

i don't enjoy rollercoasters but i DO enjoy things having lore that usually do not have lore so this is right up my alley

Every time I saw the advert, I’d change the channel until it was over 😂

One reason the crash actually happened was because there was not CCTV that showed in the area of the track where the empty cart had stopped so they assumed it was clear so sent a cart with people in it.

10:55 THE CART REALLY SAID I BELIEVE I CAN FLY LMAO IDK WHY THAT WAS FUNNY TO ME

Nobody: Alton towers: heY LEtS PAINt SHEeP TO AdVErTiSE oUr RoLler cOSteR

Despite all the incidents it’s one hell of a coaster if you can get past the fear of it

9:19 Woman : *gasps and calmly power walks away*

Who's here in 2020 with this stupid coronavirus that's killing the world?

I really hate arguing with people on the reason for The Smiler. It was human error, not technical fault. I believe the Smiler is one of the safest coasters in the UK. I feel very comfortable riding The Smiler despite its reputation.

i live in the uk but have only been to alton towers once. it’s a stunning theme park - the scenery of the towers and the water courses really makes it in my opinion! i used to be terrified of rollercoasters, but as i’ve grown up have grown to enjoy a lot of them (living and working in one mere minutes from my home has helped a bit XD). anyway, when i went to alton towers with my dad and younger sister, this crash was in the back of my mind the whole time. my sister was desperate to go on the smiler, but i certainly wasn’t keen, and my dad couldn’t due to health conditions. due to her being a bit younger, my dad and i weren’t happy with her going on her own. i had obviously heard about the crash - it was heavily reported across the country - but after watching this, the whole stigma surrounding the coaster seems ever more disturbing and creepy...

I always hated the look of the smiler, and honestly I wasn’t at all surprised to hear it had crashed.

U.S.A: you can be like the hulk in a ride woah it’s soooOoOo cool U.K:

Rode it a couple years ago after the accident. It is an amazing ride, and I wish the people who's lives were changed all the best.

Problem is the UK media who won't stop treating every regular stop on a ride as a major incident and love to take every chance to reference this incident which is a shame as it's an amazing coaster. Referencing the incident is like driving past a car crash on the motorway and never driving again 🙄

Black Hole: shut down for safety regulations Smiler: literally amputated people

I remember my friend forcing me on the smiler. I was terrified because I hated dolls and the laughing and music FREAKED me out! It was honestly the funnest experience of my life and we looped back to the line and went again 😂👌👌👌

these accidents and watching final destination has a young child is what in graves fear into me about roller coasters. Especially the ones that go upside down. but this wasn’t even upside down yet?!! It was a communication problem no one knew about the 5th cart, and that’s just as scary

4:54 Imagine this music, looping constantly, for 2 hours. Welcome to the Smiler queue line

The smiler creeps me the hell out Edit: and the fact that the message was “you belong to the smiler”... its so ironic and scary Another edit: guess what sis? IM THERE TMRW GOD

Imagine waiting 3 hours in a line just to get your leg amputated and another 5 hour wait

This is such an epic ride. I came off the ride giggling like a school kid. The twists and turns are just brilliant. Absolutely love it. I understand the reluctance from some people given what happened but that's how it is. Safety rules and regulations have always been written in blood.