World News

Some design flaws are disastrous, others simply leave you red-faced. The owner of an amusement ride in southern Germany had it shut down after realizing that from a distance it looked like a pair of swirling swastikas.

The gaffe happened to a ride called ‘Eagle Fly’ in the Tatzmania park in the town of Löffingen. At its core is a time-honored pendulum-style thrill ride, where you take a seat in one of the eagle-shaped gondolas, to get lifted into the air and spin in a vertical plane.

The caveat is that the eight gondolas are in two groups of four, and when seen from a distance they make two very distinct reverse swastikas, the same that the Nazis used as their symbol.

The ride opened in late July, but it was not until journalists from the broadcaster SWR showed up that owner Rüdiger Braun noticed the design flaw. He said he was taking it out of service and apologized to anyone offended by the ride. Those eagles will take flight again only when the manufacturer makes them look more appropriate.

The ride’s peculiar shape has not been a secret for some time, at least not on some social media platforms. One snarky commenter on Reddit even called it “Holocauster” while another suggested the name “2fast 2Führerious.”

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