This is a good point, however,the US is a much larger country, and there are FAR more amusement parks than in the UK. (Heck, the entirety of the UK fits inside the state of Texas) Anyway, when something really big (like when someone died on the New Texas Giant), it is always heard about on national news, and its always a big thing, but since there are so many parks, there are also a lot of urban legends, and incidents turn into legends a lot quicker here than in the UK due to the sheer number of roller coasters. (does anyone remember when someone got their feet chopped off on Drop Tower at Kings Island? Yes? Of course you do, because it happened on the Hellavator at Kentucky Kingdom, and now because of that, most freefall rides in the states have a bad rep from the GP because of the now nonexistent Hellavator. ) (Does anyone remember when 5 people died on Son of Beast? What? You do? thats funny because nobody died. There were just a couple of back injuries. Anyway, things just become urban legends faster, and suddenly 'more people died on any ride in the US than on any ride in the US.' (This can draw attention away from specific parks, and throw the urban legend on 'every single drop tower ever' instead of just Hellavator, thus sometimes big things don't get that much attention) For example, a lot of people blamed RMC and the woman who died for the New Texas Giant accident, but when the Smiler crashed, how many members of the media blamed Gerstlauer? (not very many, because it was 'definatley AT's fault' (which it actually turned out to be human error, ironically)) But smaller incidents still get a lot of attention as well. For example, when the raft flipped on Shoot the Rapids last year (last year? or 2014?) (2014 im pretty sure) it got a lot of attention, even though nobody died, and it was under maintenance for a LONG time, but they soft opened it, and nobody batted an eye, and it was soon forgotten, even though it was almost as bad as the Smiler crash. (its probably an urban legend now that an entire raft flipped and somehow brutally killed every one of the vast amounts 6 passengers to death when in reality they just crawled out from under the boat and the media made a big deal about it) So to kind of awkwardly stick my opinion about the re-opening into the end of this excruciatingly long, parenthetical, wordy rant, I think that the Smiler's re-opening will go pretty well, as long as they soft open it on a day that is not opening day. Also they have to make sure that NOTHING happens during the first few days (even if someone were to throw up, thus putting operations on standby while they clean up for 5 minutes extra, the media would throw some extra juiciness onto that story and call it a HORROR INCIDENT AFTER SATANIC CRASH and then go and film them cleaning up the vomit and say that some viewers might want to look away so as not to see the human remains left after this horrifying tragedy (protein spill). [/end rant]