After more than 3 decades, West Edmonton Mall's Mindbender roller-coaster closes for good

The Mindbender roller-coaster, a fixture for decades at Galaxyland in West Edmonton Mall, has come to the end of its triple-looped track.

In a news release this week, the mall confirmed the closure of the "iconic" roller-coaster that had thrilled riders since it opened in 1985.

"While the Mindbender will be missed, we are excited to announce that we are working on groundbreaking new plans for family thrills that will immerse our guests in an out-of-this-world experience," Lori Bethel, WEM's vice-president of parks and attractions, said in the release.

Redevelopment of the area has begun and the roller-coaster will be decommissioned and removed, the mall said.

The Mindbender, dubbed the world's largest indoor triple-loop roller-coaster, had been closed to the public since 2020.

The ride gave adrenalin rushes to untold thousands of thrill-seekers over the years, but its reputation was tarnished by a 1986 accident that killed three people and critically injured another.

Matthew Dutczak, a self-proclaimed WEM historian and creator of the Best Edmonton Mall YouTube channel, said he was shocked to learn the ride was permanently closing. 

"I heard the rumours like everyone did over the last few years, and I was the biggest, most vocal opponent of it at the thought of it closing," he told CBC.

"I never in a million years thought they would close it."

Dutczak recalls being too scared to ride the Mindbender when he was young. But after he picked up the courage to ride it as a teenager, he was hooked. 

"And now I'll never get to ride it again, which is very sad," he said.

From a tourism perspective, the roller-coaster made for one of the mall's most iconic images, right after the pirate ship and indoor waterpark, Dutczak said. It was featured in the majority of tourism photos he has seen of the mall, he said. 

The ride was a favourite of roller-coaster enthusiasts like Andrew Cunningham from San Francisco, who has been on 717 roller-coasters around the world.

Cunningham told CBC's Radio Active on Monday the Mindbender was popular with enthusiasts because of its intensity.

"It has a very long ride time and it's a very aggressive ride," he said.

"It goes upside down three times — extremely powerful loops; they're not just like little floaty things. You get really pushed down into your feet throughout the entire ride."

The roller coaster ranked No. 4 for highest G-force — short for gravitational force — on Coasterpedia, an online resource about roller-coasters and other amusement rides.

Cunningham said that in his experience, most roller-coasters transition out of the high G-force to give riders a chance to breathe and recover. 

"But the thing about Mindbender is it was just relentless [in] how long it held those G-forces for, and it really just pins you to the seat throughout the entire ride," he said.

1986 fatal crash

On June 14, 1986, the ride's last car derailed at about 100 kilometres per hour, hitting a concrete pillar and hurling four passengers to the concrete floor below.

Three of the ejected riders died and the fourth was critically injured. Nineteen other riders were treated for minor injuries.

The ride shut down for more than a year and underwent safety modifications. ​​​​​

A provincial inquiry blamed the crash on a defunct West German company for design and manufacturing flaws. The inquiry found that four bolts had worked loose, allowing a wheel assembly to fall off the roller-coaster car.

Edmontonian Brian McMorran was on the ride with his friends a day before the crash. 

"It really rattled me," he told CBC on Monday. 

McMorran never rode the roller-coaster again. 

"It could have just as easily been me and my friends," he said. 

Dean De Benedetto, who was 15 when he worked at the amusement park in 1987, remembers the Mindbender being the most fun ride in Edmonton, but also the scariest.

"I do remember thinking about it a few times," he said, referring to the crash. 

"When you're on the ride, you're just like, 'We only hope this thing holds together.'"

Many of De Benedetto's colleagues at the amusement park — then known as Fantasyland — were around his own age and ran most of the rides, he said.

But the Mindbender was supervised by adult employees.

"It was kind of the one, the one ride that you had to have a bit of a bit of technical expertise to run, from what I remember," he said.