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For families spending the final days of summer at a theme park, a rollercoaster ride is supposed to mean excitement, not an emergency helicopter landing inside the grounds. But visitors at Warner Park Madrid saw the Batman Gotham City Escape ride stopped after a 49-year-old man was seriously injured in an accident, suffering fractures to both legs and requiring an airlift to hospital.

The incident happened at around 02:38pm on Saturday, August 29, at Warner Park in San Martín de la Vega, Madrid. The man was treated at the park before being flown to Madrid’s Hospital 12 de Octubre with injuries described by Madrid’s emergency services as “potentially serious”, however his life is not believed to be in danger. 

Emergency helicopter called to Warner Park

The man suffered an open fracture to his left leg and a closed fracture to his right leg, according to Emergencias 112 Comunidad de Madrid. Medical teams treated him at the scene before deciding that he needed to be transferred to hospital by helicopter for further assessment. Guardia Civil and Policía Local officers also attended the theme park following the accident.

The precise circumstances of what happened remain unclear. Authorities have not established how the man was injured, and the investigation into the incident is continuing.  Some witness accounts have described the man slipping from his seat and becoming trapped between parts of the ride. However, that version has not been established by authorities as the confirmed cause of the accident. Reports differ on the circumstances, so the official position remains that an accident occurred and its cause is being investigated. 

Batman ride immediately stopped

Warner Park said the Batman Gotham City Escape stopped immediately after the incident and that its emergency procedures were activated. The attraction has now been closed while it is reviewed in coordination with the authorities. The park itself has continued operating, although reports indicate that visitors were removed from the immediate area around the ride and nearby businesses were temporarily closed during the emergency response. 

For people still inside the park when the incident happened, the response turned an afternoon of rides and entertainment into a very different, nerve-racking scene, with emergency services arriving at the attraction and a helicopter being used to evacuate the injured man. The authorities will now have to establish exactly what happened before the ride can return to operation.

One of Spain’s fastest roller coasters

Batman Gotham City Escape is one of  Warner Park’s major attractions and opened in 2023 as Spain’s first multi-launch rollercoaster. The ride reaches 45 metres in height and includes a 98-degree drop, several inversions and multiple high-speed launches. It can exceed 100 kilometres per hour, making it one of the most intense attractions at the Madrid theme park. 

Its design is built around Batman’s Gotham City universe, with the ride combining high-speed launches, steep drops and inversions into a route lasting just under two minutes. The technical characteristics of the attraction will now form part of the wider examination of what happened, although there is currently no official indication that a mechanical failure caused the injury.

Investigation continues

The Guardia Civil and Policía Local attended the scene, while the attraction remains closed pending review. Warner Park has said it activated its emergency procedures immediately and is cooperating with the authorities while the incident is examined.  There is currently no confirmed explanation for how the 49-year-old sustained the injuries to both legs.

Until investigators establish what happened, claims about a fall, a problem with the restraints or a mechanical fault should not be treated as confirmed. The man’s injuries are significant, particularly the open fracture to his left leg, but emergency services have confirmed that his condition is potentially serious rather than immediately life-threatening. He remains under medical care at Hospital 12 de Octubre.

Not the first incident at the park

The incident also comes years after a separate fatal accident at Parque Warner. In 2005,  a 23-year-old man died after suffering a serious head injury on the Hotel Embrujado attraction, an indoor illusion/dark ride where passengers sit in a stationary-looking carriage while the room and carriage move in opposing directions, creating the sensation that the riders and surroundings are rotating or tilting. Warner park itself describes it as a “Mad House” attraction and says it combines optical and motorised effects to disorient visitors.

The accident happened during the mechanical section of the attraction. Visitors were seated on tiered seating and restrained by a safety bar. According to the park’s account at the time, the 22-year-old stood up after suffering a panic attack and was struck in the head. His family disputed that account and said the restraint could be raised and that the attraction did not stop.

For now, the focus is on establishing what happened on Batman Gotham City Escape and why the visitor suffered such severe injuries. The attraction will remain closed while that work is carried out while the rest of  Warner Park continues to operate. 

There are few things more off-putting than sitting down to eat and discovering that the people preparing your food have been talking about you behind your back. But for one Brazilian tourist enjoying breakfast with her family in the Italian resort of Riccione, the message she eventually found on her restaurant receipt went far beyond a complaint about a difficult customer.

Maria Clara was eating at Victor Lab on Viale Ceccarini in when she ordered an orange juice and  scrambled eggs for breakfast, when the eggs arrived she noticed them a little under cooked so she asked for them to be cooked a little longer. She says the request was met with a dismissive response from the waiter, who told her that the restaurant did not serve raw eggs.

The message appears on the receipt

Rather than argue, Clara decided to leave the matter alone when the eggs arrived still very soft. She also noticed that salad had been served despite her asking for it to be left off the order. It was only afterwards when they asked for the bill that she saw the message that had been entered into the restaurant’s ordering system and printed on the receipt.

The message, written in Italian, complained vulgarly about the customer stating: ”This b**ch has p*ssed me off burn her eggs and spit in them”. The order had originally recorded Clara’s request for the eggs to be cooked very well and without salad. Instead, the offensive comment appeared alongside the order and reached the table with the food. Italian reports identify the person who wrote it as a 17-year-old waiter working at the restaurant.

Family in disbelief

Clara and her family initially wondered whether the message could have been a joke between members of staff. Their concern changed when they considered the possibility that the food itself might have actually been tampered with, fortunately for Clara she did not eat the eggs due to them being undercooked. The family confronted the restaurant and the manager became involved.

According to Clara’s account, the young waiter became extremely nervous and attempted to throw away the receipt before the family retained it as evidence of what had been written. The restaurant apologised to the family and offered to cancel the bill and provide replacement food. Clara declined the replacement dishes after seeing the message.

No evidence the food was contaminated

There is no evidence that anyone actually spat in the eggs, but the family were untrusting of the staff. The restaurant’s owner has also maintained that nothing happened to the food beyond the offensive comment being entered on the order, but unless he was actually in the kitchen supervising nothing can prove this to be true. It has has not stopped the incident from spreading widely online. Clara shared an image of the receipt as part of a complaint about the experience, and the photograph quickly circulated across social media and Italian news outlets.

The restaurant subsequently issued an apology, describing the employee’s behaviour as completely inappropriate and saying that it did not represent the establishment’s standards or attitude towards customers. The owner, Luciano Colono, described the incident as a serious mistake by a young employee and stressed that Victor Lab has an open kitchen visible to customers.

Restaurant response causes fresh controversy

The incident might have ended with the apology and disciplinary action, but the restaurant later attracted further criticism over its response on social media. Victor Lab later published a video on TikTok appearing to make light of the controversy. The clip referenced the disputed eggs and included a joke about whether they should be served with or without spit.

The restaurant also asked online followers to weigh in on whether the 17-year-old waiter should be allowed to return to work. That response divided opinion online, with some people arguing that the teenager should face consequences for what he had written, while others said his age and subsequent apology should be taken into account. The young waiter was initially suspended. After three days, the restaurant’s owner decided to allow him to return to work, saying that he had understood his mistake and deserved another chance.

@victorlabriccione

Non puoi scegliere cosa accade, puoi scegliere cosa significa…😅 TU cosa faresti?🤔⬇️⬇️ (Da guardare fino alla fine)😂🤣 #victorlab #riccione #uovastrapazzate

♬ audio originale – victorlabriccione

Customer says she never wanted the waiter fired

Clara has also made clear that she did not want the teenager subjected to a public campaign for his dismissal. Her objection, she said, was about the treatment she received as a customer and the lack of an appropriate response to what had been written about her. She later said she wanted responsibility to be taken and an apology to be given rather than the incident being turned into another social media spectacle. She also criticised the restaurant’s decision to make the controversy part of its online content.

The incident has since taken a further toll on Clara, who reportedly received insults, threats and racist comments online after the story spread. For the family, the problem was never simply that a waiter was annoyed by a request for more thoroughly cooked eggs. It was seeing an instruction about their food, written by a member of staff, arrive at their table on the same receipt as the meal. And while there is no evidence that the disgusting instruction was ever carried out, before Clara even saw those words, she had already lost any confidence in eating what was on her plate.