and Intamin AG partnered in 1979 to build the world's first river rapids ride in 1980 called Thunder River. The popularity of Thunder River caused the start of the construction of another rapids ride, Roaring Rapids, at Six Flags Great Adventure in 1980. It was modeled after the kayak slalom course that was built in West Germany for the 1972 Summer Olympics. It was constructed in place of one of the park's first attractions, The Great Train Ride. After construction, it made its public debut at the park on June 16, 1981. After its debut, Roaring Rapids at Great Adventure received major modifications to get guests wetter with a safer ride experience. In 1991, Roaring Rapids received a new name, Congo Rapids, with the new theme area Adventure Rivers. Today, the river rapids is located in Adventure Seaport, along with Nitro and two kids areas: Safari Kids and Looney Tunes Seaport. Congo Rapids operates from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend.
Ride
Once the twelve riders strap themselves into one of the twelve boats, the boat leaves the station to a canyon-themed, man-made river. During the ride, there are different objects in the water that disrupt the flow of the water creating rapids in the attraction. Also, the ride features waterfalls at the end of the course of the ride as another way to get riders completely soaked. Once riders go through the course of the ride, the boat will reach to one of the lifts to take the boats back to the station. Congo Rapids features dual loading stations, where boats can be loaded twice as fast than one loading station.
Incidents
Goose Stuck in Ride
On July 15, 2012, a goose was trapped in the conveyor belt of the ride and was resistant to fly away despite the attempts of the ride's staff. To save the goose, the operators would have to halt the rides already in motion making the exit from the ride dangerous for the passengers. Ultimately the staff decided to let the ride proceed, thus killing the goose that was stuck in the conveyor belt. Following the events, a representative of a goose endangerment protection organization named GooseWatch NJ, said, in reaction to the event, that they were “disturbed and saddened” by the staff's decision. The representative suggested that the park put in extra precautions into their attractions to prevent more of these incidents from occurring. To convince the park to do so the organization filed a request to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate the incident. The spokeswoman of Six Flags at the time defended the decision of the ride's staff to not endanger the lives of the passengers in place of the goose's. Her reasoning for defending their decision is due to the dangerous process of evacuating the passengers which involves flushing the rafts into the ride's reservoir and having the riders exit the raft by a rope climb. There has been no follow-up on the result of the request filed to the USDA.
Primary sources
Great Adventure History, full of information and facts of Congo Rapids
