Devil's Flight

Devil's Flight
Full Name	Devil's Flight
Location	McKinley, Pennsylvania, USA
Purpose	Roller coaster
First Appearance	Final Destination 3
Last Appearance	Final Destination 5 (closing credits)

Devil's Flight is a roller coaster in an amusement park in McKinley, Pennsylvania that derailed on May 13, 2005, as a result of a broken track and hydraulics failure, killing all 7 passengers onboard.

Theatrically, the Devil's Flight derailment is the third major disaster of the series, as seen in Final Destination 3, and the fifth major disaster chronologically, given the events of Final Destination 5.

Appearance

Devil's Flight takes on the appearance of a massive corkscrew roller coaster, with a giant devil statue in front. The layout consists of a sweeping drop, followed by a turn-around and a large vertical loop. After this, the layout is generally unknown, however it consists of numerous airtime hills and corkscrews. However, it is known that soon after, there is another vertical loop, in which the train gets stuck upside down on in the premonition. The coaster itself has red track with white supports, with the catwalks near the lift hill being amateurly laced with lights. The train is red with a black lower half, and a yellow trident on the leading car. It has 6 cars and a seating arrangement of 2 rows of 2, for a total capacity of 24 riders per train.

Disaster

Before the premonition, the hydraulic pump beneath Lewis Romero's seat begins to leak when a roller coaster attendant secures his seat restraint.

Premonition

The premonition begins when Wendy Christensen has sat herself toward the back of the roller coaster and pulls her digital camera out to snap a photo. The moment the camera takes the picture, a roller coaster attendant waves his hand in front of her, ruining the photo. He points to a sign explaining that no cameras or loose articles can remain on the ride. Kevin suggests that he put her camera in a pocket inside of his jacket. A few rows ahead, Frankie Cheeks overhears the attendant and conceals his video camera inside of his jacket. Kevin becomes excited for the ride until he withdraws his hand from the handlebar in front of him after getting his fingers stuck in sticky gum left by a previous passenger.

Devil's Flight

The attendants give the OK to start the ride, and the roller coaster begins its ascension to the top of the initial drop. As the ride progresses, the leaking hydraulic line rattles and loosens. While going through a loop, Frankie yells at Ashley Freund and Ashlyn Halperin to flash him. Annoyed, Ashlyn slaps the camera out of Frankie's hand, which somehow catches onto and wraps around the tracks at the bottom of the loop. The coaster runs over the camera, which loosens a wheel on the left side of the front cart, and severs the hydraulic line and unlocks all of the safety restraints, threatening the lives of all of the passengers.

As the roller coaster continues along the tracks, the front left wheel pops off, showering sparks onto the passengers. As the passengers scream in terror, they attempt to remain in their seats while the coaster runs through corkscrews, hills, and sharp turns. More pieces from the coaster train break off. As the coaster hops over a hill and makes a sharp turn, the force causes carts one through three to separate from carts four through six. The front three carts fly off the tracks, killing Carrie Dreyer, Jason Wise, Ashley, Ashlyn, Frankie, and five others.

Lewis Romero being thrown out of his seat.

Lewis is thrown out of his seat but manages to hang onto the coaster for dear life as it travels through more corkscrews. He loses his grip and is flung toward the back of the coaster where he is narrowly saved by Kevin Fischer. As Kevin catches Lewis, his seat restraint breaks away. Kevin manages to hang onto Lewis before a metal covering from the cart in which Lewis sat breaks away and smashes into him, sending him flying into a steel support beam, snapping his spine in half and causing a part of the support beam to jut out over a portion of the roller coaster tracks. The piece of metal that hit Lewis smashes onto another portion of the roller coaster tracks, causing the tracks to become uneven.

The roller coaster continues to bunny hop toward another large loop, where, as it ascends toward the top of the loop, it begins to slow to a stop due to the train's missing wheel grinding against the tracks. The coaster becomes stuck upside down at the top of the loop. Erin Ulmer and Ian McKinley fall from their seats but are able to hang on to their restraints. Shortly after, they lose their grip, and Ian falls to his death, followed by Erin. Two unseen characters, later revealed to be Perry Malinowski and Julie Christensen, fall out of their seats to their deaths as well.

Kevin and Wendy attempt to get the coaster out of the loop by rocking it backward. They succeed, but in the process, Kevin gets his coat stuck on a broken piece of his missing seat restraint as the coaster goes backward. The piece of support beam that juts out over the tracks from when Lewis was killed slices through Kevin's torso, cutting him in half. Wendy screams in horror and cries before the coaster hits the dislodged portion of the track. The train scorpion-tails backward as it is ripped off from the tracks and falls to the ground. Wendy is thrown out of her seat as the coaster falls, and she is killed when she lands on another portion of tracks below.

Real Life

Wendy in panic after her vision.

It is then revealed that the derailment was a vision of Wendy's, and the roller coaster is still at its station. She panics and the roller coaster attendants release the seat restraints only in carts four through six, allowing several of the students off before a large fight ensues. Ashley and Ashlyn get off the ride, followed by Frankie who is videotaping them. Jason attempts to leave the coaster but can't get the attention of the ride operator due to the fight. The remaining passengers begin to chant "Hey, ho! Let's go!", prompting the ride operator to start the ride.

As a security guard leads Wendy and the other students toward the exit of the ride, Wendy notices Jason and Carrie are still in the roller coaster. Panicked, she runs back to the ride platform and tells the attendants to stop the ride, but is forced outside of the ride exit. As Wendy and Kevin are escorted away from the ride, the roller coaster crashes, killing Jason, Carrie and five others.

Evidence of the tracks being broken at 16:45

Signs/Clues

• Wendy takes a picture of a ride called HIGH DIVE. The V light goes out the moment she takes the picture, making the letters spell HIGH DI E in the photo.
• The roller coaster's entrance has a sign reading "No exit after turnstiles. I'll see you soon.", with a picture of a devil next to it. The line "I'll see you soon" is a tagline which is usually said by William Bludworth throughout the first and second movies.
• Jason promised Wendy he would "meet her at the end" before entering the roller coaster. Jason dies at the start of the movie, and Wendy is hinted to have died at the end.
• Wendy takes a picture of Jason in front of the roller coaster at the moment one of the coaster cars descends the rails at high speed. The photo makes it look like the cars are heading down to the ground, about to crash.
  • They could also be heading towards Jason, hinting at his death in the disaster.
• The tracks can be constantly heard creaking as the coaster rolls through them.
• The name "Devil's Flight" might be a subtle nod to both Death and Flight 180, the opening accident of the first movie.
• Tony Todd, who portrays William Bludworth in the first two movies, voices the roller coaster announcer who says the line "You may never return from Devil's Flight."
• Before the ride, Jason tells Wendy that "the real fear of these rides comes from having no control."
• The opening credits of the movie highlight several park attractions as its main visual theme.

Unintended Survivors

• Wendy Christensen (unknown)
• Kevin Fischer (unknown)
• Julie Christensen (unknown)
• Ian McKinley (deceased)
• Perry Malinowski (deceased)
• Erin Ulmer (deceased)
• Lewis Romero (deceased)
• Frankie Cheeks (deceased)
• Ashlyn Halperin (deceased)
• Ashley Freund (deceased)

Casualties

• Jason Wise
• Carrie Dreyer
• Jill Savini
• Marcus Bava
• Scott Johnson
• Elle Dana
• Bob Clark

Trivia

• Amber Regan was a survivor in the original script, but this storyline was abandoned because her death was similar to Lewis Romero's.
• Ethan and Harry were going to ride on the Devil's Flight with two friends, but the attendant kicked them out because they weren't tall enough to ride.
  • Additionally, Olivia Castle and her friend once rode Devil's Flight at some point, having acquired a picture of herself and her friend in front of the attraction, with a tagline that reads "the scariest roller coaster".
• Veronica was going to ride on the Devil's Flight with her boyfriend Lewis Romero, but the attendant stops her from entering the roller coaster station.
  • The reason of Veronica didn't get on the Devil's Flight, was seen in a deleted scene: Lewis couldn't find his pass, so he took Veronica's pass and got on the roller coaster. It's unknown whatever the scene consider canon.
  • However, there was another reason given in the novel: Veronica didn't get on the Devil's Flight was because she couldn't enter the station with the bears that Lewis had won.
• In The Final Destination, a news broadcast in Death by Caffeine shows a news reporter talking about faulty amusement park equipment, right after Nick and his friends survive the McKinley Speedway disaster.
• The opening credits for Final Destination 5 reference the derailing by having parts of roller coaster cars fall on the screen.
• The model for Devil’s Flight was the former “Corkscrew” coaster at Playland, Vancouver, Canada. The scene was shot using green screens and replicas on the train to make the train appear to derail, and CGI was used to make the roller coaster appear much taller and longer than it really is. The real ride was 75 feet tall, 2,400 feet long and reached a top speed of 40 mph. The ride's layout consists of a drop, a turn, 2 corkscrews and a "Bayerncurve", a 540 degree helix.
• In real life, it is impossible for a piece of fiberglass to damage the tracks.
• For the Devil statue that appears at the ride gates, which was constructed out of Styrofoam, production designer Mark S. Freeborn included a sculpted penis. Although not depicted in the final film, it can be seen in behind the scenes features and b-roll, with Freeborn and cast members joking about the "anatomical correctness" of the statue.
• There is a plot hole as to how the coaster crashed, since the primary cause was Frankie's camera. Since Frankie got off the coaster, it would've taken longer for the coaster to detach and crash, or it should not have crashed at all.
  • However, this can be disproven as Frankie's camera only aided in rupturing the hydraulics further, which in consequence, only contributed to the deaths of Lewis, Ian, Erin, Perry, and Julie because their harnesses malfunctioned. They weren't on the ride when it crashed in reality, therefore making Frankie's presence insignificant to the crash and deaths. At 16:45 of the movie, it can be briefly seen that the tracks are indeed broken, as Wendy claimed. Also, a 'popping' sound is heard, indicating that a portion of the track has been broken, which caused the wheels on the left side to derail. This ultimately killed Jason, Carrie, and the other 5 victims, who were the only ones on the ride.
  • Their deaths are shown as the coaster hitting a sharp curve, throwing it off the tracks, just like in Wendy's premonition. Therefore, Frankie's camera had no effect in the amount of time it would take for the roller coaster to crash. The tracks still would have broken in the same place, and still were the cause of the actual derailment, not the camera.
• The Devil's Flight derailment holds the distinction of being the only disaster in the franchise with more survivors than casualties. It is also the opening disaster with the lowest death toll in the entire film series, and the only one where female survivors outnumber male ones.
• Not only was the death order by what row they were sitting in, it was also by which side they were on. In this case, whoever was sitting on the right side of the rollercoaster was the first one to die of the two. With Ashley Freund and Ashlyn Halperin, Ashley was sitting on the right side of the coaster, while Ashlyn was sitting on the left and Ashley died before Ashlyn. Then Frankie Cheeks and Lewis Romero were sitting by themselves. Then with Ian McKinley and Erin Ulmer, Ian was sitting on the right side and Erin was on the left. Ian was originally meant to die before Erin, but he was saved, causing Erin to die first. Then with Julie Christensen and Perry Malinowski, Julie was the one sitting on the right side and she fell from the coaster before Perry did, putting her before Perry on Death's list before she was saved. Then Kevin Fischer died before Wendy Christensen because Kevin was sitting on the right side of the coaster, while Wendy was sitting on the left side.
• Both the Devil's Flight derailment and the Coral Clipper sinking takes place on May 13, 2005, making it the first time where 2 disasters happen simultaneously.