Netizens freak out after 2 people seen dangling on Sentosa MegaZip

Videos on the internet can sometimes be misleading, especially when a convincing but incorrect narrative is woven around it.

In a video posted to the Singapore Reddit thread yesterday (May 24), at least two people were seen dangling in the air, manually pulling themselves along Sentosa's MegaZip as they slid down the zipline.

"One of my worst fears coming true," the title of the post on Reddit read. "When you can't slide down properly on these [kinds of] rides and you have to manually pull yourself down."

In the 20-second video, two people could be seen tugging the zipline as they were hanging in the air, slowly moving forward.

Although they do gradually make their way across, their shuffling pace is a crawl compared to the 60km/h speed that Sentosa states on their website.

Redditors that commented on the video speculated that there might have been a technical fault that left customers stranded.

"How did it come to that? The rope is frayed or something?" One user asked.

"The pulleys must have seized up," another user surmised. "It's going to be a b**** to manually pull yourself all the way to the bottom."

Given how high up the duo were on the zipline, their concerns were valid.

In September 2011, an Australian tourist in Singapore broke several vertebrae in his back when a MegaZip malfunction meant that he didn't slow down towards the end of his ride — he took a 50km/h tumble that broke his back.

However, in the video above, the two people shuffling along the zipline aren't customers — they're MegaZip staff, a spokesperson from MegaZip reassured.

"They are our staff conducting training and practising," the spokesperson told AsiaOne, explaining why the duo were up there. "Staff go on the cable everyday to do daily routine checks and training or practice."

The staff were not stuck — these trainings and manual safety checks on wires would take under five minutes to complete, the spokesperson added.

Following queries by AsiaOne, the MegaZip spokesperson also stated that there were no injuries afflicted as it was "routine staff cable checks".

READ ALSO: P4 girl fell while doing zipline activity in Concord Primary School last year

khooyihang@asiaone.com