Six Flags Closes 10 Coasters Across North America After a Rider Died on Goliath in Georgia

AUSTELL, GA. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2026

One day after a rider died on Goliath, the 200-foot hypercoaster at Six Flags Over Georgia, the company has temporarily closed ten roller coasters across North America — Goliath itself and nine similar rides at six other parks — while investigators work out what happened on a Monday afternoon ride that ended in the worst way a theme-park day can end. According to USA TODAY, which cited reporting by The New York Times and the Associated Press, the closures were announced on Tuesday, and a Six Flags spokesperson told Entertainment Weekly that the nine additional coasters have “temporarily paused” while the company responds to the Georgia death. No reopening date has been announced for any of them.

The shutdown is the widest ripple yet from the incident in Austell, just west of Atlanta, where the Cobb County Police Department told USA TODAY that one person died and several others were injured in an incident reported at about 3:58 p.m. on Monday, October 12. According to WSB-TV, four other guests were injured. What precisely happened in the ride’s final moments is still a witness account, not an official finding: According to 11Alive, whose reporters cited witnesses, the man was ejected from his car near the end of the course and struck the ride multiple times as he fell. Police have not confirmed that sequence, have not identified the man, and have not announced a cause. Six Flags, in a statement to USA TODAY, said it was “deeply saddened by the guest incident” and was cooperating with authorities, and said it would not share additional details out of respect for the family’s privacy.

01 The closed list: nine more coasters, six more parks

The closures reach well beyond Georgia. According to The New York Times, in a list carried by USA TODAY, the paused rides are Raging Bull at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Illinois; Goliath at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California; Nitro at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township, New Jersey; Leviathan and Behemoth at Canada’s Wonderland in Vaughan, Ontario; Fury 325 and Thunder Striker at Carowinds outside Charlotte, North Carolina; and Orion and Diamondback at Kings Island in Mason, Ohio. Add Goliath in Georgia, which has not reopened, and ten headline coasters are standing still at seven parks in the middle of the fall season.

Kings Island confirmed its piece of the shutdown on Monday night. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Orion and Diamondback — the park’s two biggest steel coasters — are temporarily closed, that the park described the move as precautionary, and that no date has been given for either ride to reopen. Kings Island is open on fall weekends, which makes the timing concrete for guests holding tickets: the two rides most visitors plan their day around are the two that are down. The company’s phrasing, repeated across its parks, is that the closures were made “out of an abundance of caution” — a phrase park officials also used, per WKRC in Cincinnati, when Kings Island first announced the decision on Monday evening.

02 Why these rides: one Swiss designer runs through the list

The common thread is a manufacturer. According to Entertainment Weekly, nine of the ten closed coasters were designed by Bolliger & Mabillard, the Swiss firm behind many of the tallest and smoothest steel coasters in the world — including Goliath in Georgia, a B&M hypercoaster that opened on April 1, 2006, climbs 200 feet, drops 175 feet and reaches 70 mph over 4,480 feet of track. The one exception on the list proves the rule in reverse: the Magic Mountain Goliath was built by the defunct Italian firm Giovanola, not B&M, and EW reported that a Six Flags spokesperson confirmed Titan in Texas — a similar Giovanola model — has not closed. In other words, the company appears to be pausing a design family, not simply a name.

According to the Akron Beacon Journal, one detail investigators and riders will both circle back to is restraints. The Beacon Journal reported that B&M has roughly 130 coasters operating worldwide, that Ohio alone is home to several of them, and that the legacy Cedar Fair parks — Kings Island among them, now under the Six Flags banner after the 2024 merger — long insisted on seatbelts on their B&M hypercoasters in addition to the lap restraints. Goliath in Georgia, a legacy Six Flags ride, uses a clamshell-style lap bar with no traditional seatbelts, according to the Beacon Journal. To be clear about what is and is not known: witnesses cited by Atlanta stations described a rider coming out of the train, but no official — not Cobb County police, not Six Flags, not any state inspector — has said a restraint failed, or said anything at all yet about why the man fell. That question is now the center of the investigation, and the design differences between the closed rides are the context it will be answered in.

03 A company already carrying a hard year at the parks

The closures land on a company whose stock and reputation were moving before Tuesday’s headlines finished forming. According to StockTwits, Six Flags Entertainment shares fell nearly 11 percent in overnight trading after the death, ahead of the company’s third-quarter earnings report scheduled for November 5. And Georgia is not the company’s only open wound this year: according to the Beacon Journal, Six Flags closed X2 at Magic Mountain in July amid claims from riders alleging brain injuries on the ride, one of whom died. Entertainment Weekly, in its coverage of the Georgia death, also pointed back to 2013, when a woman fell from the New Texas Giant at Six Flags Over Texas and died — the incident that reshaped how the industry talks about lap-bar restraints on hybrid coasters.

Goliath itself has a history investigators will know. In July 2006, three months after the ride opened, a 45-year-old man was found unresponsive aboard Goliath after losing consciousness during the ride and was pronounced dead at a hospital; an inspection found the coaster operating properly and it reopened. That death was a medical event on a working ride. Nothing released so far suggests Monday’s death was the same kind of incident — the witness accounts describe a fall, the park evacuated the ride, and riders were brought down from the stopped train, a sequence WSB-TV documented as the response unfolded on Monday.

What happens next runs on two clocks. The investigative clock belongs to Cobb County, whose detectives are handling the case, and to the state and insurance inspectors who will examine the train, the restraints and the ride’s records before Goliath carries another guest. The corporate clock is louder: ten coasters, seven parks, a Halloween-season calendar built on exactly the kind of big-thrill rides now standing still, and a guest base that will want more than a caution phrase. Six Flags has said the closures are temporary. Until an official cause is announced, every reopening will be read as a verdict — by riders, by investors, and by the family still waiting for the man’s name to be released. Previously will update this story as officials confirm new facts; follow the day’s developments in our news coverage.