For nearly a quarter of a century, X2 has been the ride Six Flags Magic Mountain dares its bravest guests to try, a “rite of passage for the ultimate daredevil,” as the park itself once described the notorious rollercoaster. Now that same ride sits shut down in Valencia, California, while more than a hundred former riders say it left them with brain injuries, and a Los Angeles law firm works through a growing pile of lawsuits it says will keep coming for weeks.
What started as a handful of isolated claims over the years has, in the span of a single summer, turned into one of the biggest safety scandals in modern theme-park history. Here’s what’s actually happening, who’s involved, and why the ride many thrill-seekers once bragged about surviving is now at the center of a legal reckoning.
What Makes X2 So Different — And So Dangerous, Critics Say
X2 isn’t a normal coaster. Its seats rotate a full 360 degrees independently of the track, flipping riders upside down as the train hits nearly 80 miles an hour across roughly two minutes of track time. That’s the whole appeal: total disorientation, a 215-foot opening drop, and rotations that fight against the direction the train is moving. It’s also, according to the attorneys now suing Six Flags, exactly why the ride is dangerous.
“According to our experts in biomedical engineering, this ride is built to be more extreme than other rides that came before it, has more variables, and has more forces,” attorney Christopher Bulone of Dordick Law Corporation said at a press briefing this week.
The New Wave of Lawsuits
On Tuesday, Dordick Law Corporation filed three new lawsuits on behalf of riders who say they suffered catastrophic brain damage after boarding X2. The firm says that’s just the beginning: more than 100 additional clients have already retained the firm with similar claims, ranging from concussions to brain bleeds, and additional suits are expected to be filed in the coming weeks.
Among the three plaintiffs is Pamela Guillen, who rode X2 on July 5 while celebrating her daughter’s 16th birthday. She was rushed to the hospital and needed emergency surgery for an acute subdural hematoma, bleeding on the brain severe enough to require intubation. “It was seconds. You go in as yourself, and then when you come back, you’re a medical emergency,” she told a local CBS affiliate.
Six Flags attorney Gary Dordick was blunt about what he believes the company has known for years. “Magic Mountain has known about the danger of this ride for years,” Dordick said at the same briefing, adding that the new complaints allege Six Flags has already been sued more than a dozen times over catastrophic brain injuries tied to X2.
A Pattern That Goes Back Two Decades
The current wave of litigation didn’t come out of nowhere. A CNN investigation earlier this year traced a pattern of similar injuries on X2 stretching back nearly 20 years, at least a dozen serious complaints, including riders left with life-altering disabilities, comas, and two deaths.
One of the cases CNN highlighted involved a 62-year-old man who suffered a traumatic brain injury riding X2 with his daughters back in 2009. Internal Six Flags records, later obtained by an injured rider’s attorney, reportedly showed at least five other guests had gone to the hospital complaining of head pain before that.
The most devastating case remains that of Christopher Hawley, a 22-year-old San Diego State graduate who rode X2 with his brother and cousin on June 23, 2022. According to the family’s lawsuit, the coaster “suddenly, abruptly and violently jolted to a halt” near the end of the ride. Hawley got off holding a rail for balance, mumbled that his head hurt, then collapsed. He was taken to Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital, where a CT scan revealed a catastrophic subdural hematoma. He died the next day. His family’s wrongful-death case against Six Flags was settled earlier this year, a settlement that, according to attorneys, only encouraged more riders to come forward with their own stories.
More recently, in a lawsuit obtained by TMZ, rider Patrick Plumlee alleged he was “violently thrown around” during a 2024 ride and struck his head against the headrest hard enough to cause a traumatic brain injury, leaving him with medical bills, lost wages, and ongoing symptoms.
Why the Ride Is Closed Right Now
X2 has not operated since mid-July, after a string of alarming incidents in quick succession: an EMS call on July 5 tied to Guillen’s injury, and a fire aboard the ride on July 11 whose cause was never publicly explained, though no one was hurt in that incident. California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA), through its Amusement Ride and Tramway Unit, opened a formal inspection into the ride shortly after.
Six Flags has largely stayed quiet publicly, telling reporters only that the ride “remains closed at this time” and declining to answer detailed questions about X2’s history. The company has said it does not comment on pending litigation. In court filings tied to earlier cases, though, Six Flags has taken the position that X2 undergoes daily inspections and that, used as intended, it should not cause a rider to suffer a brain injury, arguing that posted warnings make clear the ride carries inherent risk.
What Happens Next
The legal fight is far from over. A separate lawsuit tied to an earlier X2 injury is already scheduled for trial in August 2027, and a California appeals court recently reinstated the ride’s manufacturer, S&S Worldwide, as a defendant in that case after finding unresolved questions about its role in the ride’s design. Dordick Law says it expects to keep filing new suits on behalf of its growing client list in the weeks ahead, and with more than 300 people reported to have contacted the firm with injury complaints, this looks less like a single controversy and more like the opening chapter of a much longer legal battle.
For now, X2 sits idle above Magic Mountain, its future uncertain, while investigators, attorneys, and a rapidly growing list of injured riders try to answer the same question: how long did the park know, and why did the ride keep running?
