The Smiler: What Actually Happened, and Where It Stands Now

The Smiler: What Actually Happened, and Where It Stands Now

The Smiler still holds the world record for the most inversions on a roller coaster — 14, a total nothing has matched since it opened in 2013. It's still operating in X Sector, still one of the most technically ambitious rides Alton Towers has ever built.

It's also the site of the most serious incident in the park's history, and any honest guide to the ride has to address it properly rather than skip past it.

What Happened

On 2 June 2015, high winds — around 45mph, above the ride's stated 34mph operating limit — meant an empty test train failed to clear one of the ride's inversions and stalled mid-track. The onboard computer detected this and automatically halted the ride.

Believing the stop to be a false alarm, an engineer manually overrode the safety system and dispatched a full train of 16 riders. It collided with the stalled train at speed. Prosecutors later compared the force of the impact to a 90mph car crash.

Leah Washington and Vicky Balch, then 17 and 19, each lost a leg. Several others, including Joe Pugh, Daniel Thorpe and Chandaben Chauhan, suffered serious injuries. It is a matter of record that several passengers came extremely close to being killed.

The Investigation

Alton Towers' owner, Merlin Entertainments, initially described the cause as "human error." That framing didn't survive the court process.

The Health and Safety Executive prosecuted, and in September 2016 Merlin pleaded guilty and was fined £5 million — at the time a record penalty of its kind. The judge was explicit: "Human error was not the cause." The failure was a missing structured system for handling ride faults, compounded by evidence that management bonuses were linked to keeping ride downtime low. Individual staff were not the root cause. The absence of proper procedure was.

That distinction matters, and it's worth stating plainly rather than repeating the original corporate line.

What Changed

The Smiler closed for the rest of the 2015 season. It reopened on 19 March 2016, following track and train modifications and an overhaul of operating protocols across the ride's control systems.

It has operated without a comparable incident in the years since.

Where It Stands Today

The ride remains a fixture of the park, and remains genuinely respected within the coaster community — a Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster, designed with input from John Wardley, that still delivers something no other ride in the world matches on inversion count.

Riding it today means riding a coaster that was rebuilt, retested and reopened under considerably stricter oversight than it operated under in 2013. That's not something to be squeamish about. It's a park that had a genuine failure, was held properly accountable for it, and changed its practices as a result.