BEWARE the zip line in St Kitts. Big accident last week on our cruise.

[fig414]

Our tablemate's zip line apparatus broke during his ride and he was left dangling 200 feet in the air. He tore his rotator cuff and had lots of bumps and bruises. I have seen that this Sky Safari has canceled their tours. Good riddance. This poor guy (with his wife looking on in horror) had to hand over hand climb back to the top. It took close to an hour. He was an in shape former Air force guy, Thank God.

[sunseeker09]

OMG!!!! My jaw dropped reading this. We sorta considered it before deciding on the beach instead. I'd checked out the site and it looked pretty modern and professional. In fact, the company started in Whistler, Canada! Yikes. Not good at all.

[sunseeker09]

I can't seem to find any news about it doing Google searches. Odd.

[fig414]

Not odd. An elderly man died (of natural causes) on our last night on the ship, plus a girl fell overboard and broke her leg and pelvis when she landed on deck 5. The guy didn't die. Nobody knew about this incident except for the people who saw it and then had to get their money back from Carnival after the incident.

[sunseeker09]

I just meant that you'd think if the media heard about it they'd be all over it, but I guess when things happen in "little out of the way" places like this it's not over dramatized.

Anyway, I replied to your other thread about it as well. I'm not one of the whiners who says accidents can happen anywhere. This IMHO was negligence, and I for one am happy to see people like yourself give a heads up about it so everyone can make up their own mind whether to still try this or not. At least they can't say they weren't warned that it's not 100% fool proof safe.

[mercedesmom]

Holy Cow, I was just considering booking this for myself and children, I even talked my 70 year old dad into doing this, we are sailing on the Miracle end of March. I think we will do the Marriott Beach Resort instead. Thanks soooo much for the heads up.

[lazygal]

For what it's worth - I won't zipline anywhere but Costa Rica - or someplace built by Costa Ricans. They know what they are doing.

 

Too many of these "franchises" have sprung up with limited lines and limited experience in building the routes. There have been many accidents. My boss broke his hand in St. Lucia due to no brake system and no pre-lesson in how to stop yourself. Another woman on one cruise broke her foot because she simply did not realize she had to lift it up or she was going to slam into the platform. Her fault for no common sense or a language barrier by the outfitter and no pre lesson on what to do?

 

DO NOT even get on one unless you know you have a double clamp harness on, in case one line breaks. NEVER go tandem and if you are over the weight limit, why chance it?

 

Now, most are perfectly safe and it is a thrilling experience, but accidents do happen.

 

Every reputable outfitt will have a class before letting you get on the line.

[andrewabby]

We did this excursion the week before thru Carnival Victory Nov 1-8. There were 8 of us together, and I felt very safe even though I am afraid of heights. They seemed to be very safety oriented. I cannot image what could have broken.

 

Why would he not just ride his safety line on back? Why did he have to climb back up?

[cruisingbreeze]

We did this excursion the week before thru Carnival Victory Nov 1-8. There were 8 of us together, and I felt very safe even though I am afraid of heights. They seemed to be very safety oriented. I cannot image what could have broken.

 

Why would he not just ride his safety line on back? Why did he have to climb back up?

 

I was wondering the same thing. I asked the Sky Safari to send me a email to let me know what happened and what they are doing to prevent this from happening again. I am interested in zipling in St. Kitts at the end of December, but I need to know that it is safe to do so. I let them know that I would post their respond on a Cruise Critic thread.

 

Sabrina

[kaicu71]

Appreciate the research you are doing. I am most interested in hearing their response since we are booked to do this excursion late December.

 

Kerri

[cruisingbreeze]

I will let you know what their response is as soon as I hear from them. I didn't book my tour yet because I wanted to hear what they have to say.

 

Sabrina

[ukbballfan]

We did this excursion the week before thru Carnival Victory Nov 1-8. There were 8 of us together, and I felt very safe even though I am afraid of heights. They seemed to be very safety oriented. I cannot image what could have broken.

 

Why would he not just ride his safety line on back? Why did he have to climb back up?

 

From what I know about ziplining....we did one in Honduras...the safety line doesn't have a set of wheels...just a caribiner...so if the main line broke you would be dangling from the safety line and the caribiner wouldn't slide...thus you would have to hand over hand it to which ever end you were closest to when it broke. Of course you could let go and rest but you'd be dangling and that would be a little unnerving.

[cruisingbreeze]

Here is the reply that I received from Sky Safari Tours.

 

Sabrina

 

 

Good Morning,

 

Our dearest apologies for our delayed response. We appreciate your enquiry and we are happy to reply to.

Sky Safari Tours would like to state that we are a company that has and will always pride ourself in the high safety and comfort levels provided to each guest. The incident that occurred was regrettable and unfortunately unforeseeable. It resulted for the most part from an underlying underground issue not related to the integrity of our equipment which negatively impacted a portion of our equipment.

While the aforesaid issue did cause a partial failure of the equipment on the line in question, it is very important to note that the safety redundancies of the system worked exactly as they were designed to, hence the reason the integrity of the line itself was not comprised and the guest was retrieved from the line with only minor injuries.

It is also noteworthy that our system is ACCT certified.

Following this incident Sky Safari Tours has taken the following actions:

· Immediately stopped the operation of all tours to determine what caused the incident and implement the necessary remedial action.

· Immediately flew out our professional engineer to manage maintenance and repairs

· Not just the line in question but all of the lines and the underground areas around the lines have been inspected and additional measures and equipment implemented on the system to increase the redundancies of the system even further and to ensure that in the very unlikely event that another such underground issue should occur it will not cause any issue with or failure in the system.

· The remedial measures we have taken have been certified by two sets of engineers from Canada, one of them being an international and well regarded engineering firm, and have been found to surpass the measures needed to be taken to protect against any such unlikely issue in the future.

· We are presently voluntarily re-certifying the system under ACCT. Kindly note that this is not in any way a requirement to operate our system but is being done so that guests have the comfort level and assurance that we have been certified by a globally well regarded adventure tour association, in addition to the two sets of engineers.

We trust this answers your enquiry and thank you for contacting Sky Safari Tours and we do hope you will book with us in December.

Sincerely,

Crystal-Rayne Tomma

General Manager

Sky Safari Tours Inc.

[boowaaccaa]

Two-ish years ago when I was in Roatan on a land based trip a bad accident happened the day before we were set to zip-line. The woman (an American who was there for the day as a part of a cruise) died in the accident. They closed the zipline and the park it is at (the zipline is only one feature there) for at least the week we were there.

 

There were a few articles in the media when it happened.

[ukbballfan]

Two-ish years ago when I was in Roatan on a land based trip a bad accident happened the day before we were set to zip-line. The woman (an American who was there for the day as a part of a cruise) died in the accident. They closed the zipline and the park it is at (the zipline is only one feature there) for at least the week we were there.

 

There were a few articles in the media when it happened.

 

We were there 2 days after it happened...we went down the other side of the mountain with another company(South Shore Canopy). When we reached the last of the 17 zips and was riding back to the top...the guy tells us about the accident. I guess he knew we probably wouldn't have zipped if he told us before.