Western Playland Closes Southwest Slinger Indefinitely After Cable Incident

If you are driving to Western Playland this week for a slingshot-style thrill, rewrite the day. The park has taken Southwest Slinger out of service indefinitely after a Friday night cable incident in which two guests were medically assessed for reported minor injuries.

The rest of the park is still open under normal hours, according to local reporting of the operator statement. Confirm ride status on the park site before you pay for parking or count on that one attraction.

What the park and local reports confirmed

Western Playland management said emergency procedures activated immediately after the Friday night event and that staff safely evacuated the ride. First responders evaluated both guests for reported minor injuries, according to a park statement published Saturday through regional television coverage.

KFOX14 reported that park officials described Southwest Slinger as operating within normal parameters and manufacturer guidelines at the time. The same statement path said required safety inspections for the attraction and other rides remained current.

As a precaution, management removed Southwest Slinger from operation. The ride will stay closed while the park and manufacturing partners run a comprehensive investigation into the cause.

Further details on the guests’ conditions and the exact mechanical failure have not been released in the public statement path reviewed for this report.

Independent local coverage that reached national syndication through Yahoo News from the El Paso Times described social video that appeared to show a high-tension cable broken while two people remained suspended. That reporting also stated that both riders later walked off the ride.

The El Paso Times package said Western Playland planned to keep normal Saturday hours despite the Slinger shutdown. That is the right planning split for visitors: park open, one major thrill closed, until the operator posts a different status.

What Southwest Slinger is, and why it mattered in the day plan

Southwest Slinger is the park’s reverse-bungee, slingshot-style tower ride. It launches a two-person capsule on high-tension cables rather than following a fixed coaster track.

Western Playland markets it as a high-speed launch attraction. The official rides grid still features SouthWest Slinger on the home page even while operations are suspended.

For many same-day guests, Slinger is not a background spinner. It is the vertical thrills anchor that people schedule after lunch or at night when the LED towers photograph well.

When that ride drops out without notice, the remaining mix shifts toward spinning, looping, and family attractions such as Fireball, El Loco 360, Drop Zone, and Hurricane.

The park sits in Sunland Park, New Mexico, on the edge of the greater El Paso market. Day-trippers often combine the visit with Texas-side lodging, borderland dining, or a longer southern New Mexico loop.

If your itinerary stacked Slinger as the non-negotiable photo moment, you now need a replacement highlight before you leave the hotel.

Official hours, prices, and seasonal promotions live on the Western Playland hours and prices page and the main Western Playland site. Use those pages for bracelet pricing and season-pass rules, and treat any Slinger-specific mention as stale until the investigation closes.

How visitors should replan this week

Start with the binary decision. If Southwest Slinger was the only reason for the trip, postpone until the park posts a return date.

If you still want a full afternoon of other rides, keep the ticket and rebuild the sequence around what is actually running.

Arrive ready to skip the reverse-bungee queue entirely. Staff time and guest attention will shift to the remaining thrills, so mid-afternoon lines on spinning and looping rides may lengthen.

Build a short backup list of three rides you will ride twice rather than camping near closed towers.

Parents of thrill-seeking teens should set expectations before the gate. A closed headliner is easier to absorb when the alternative plan already includes Fireball, Drop Zone, and a second-pass plan for coasters.

Young children who never qualified for Slinger may notice less change. They can still feel a slower midpark pace if older siblings fixate on the offline towers.

If you are building a multi-stop borderland weekend, protect the calendar with flexible lodging. Deep Arrival’s El Paso RV parks and campgrounds guide is useful when the stay is vehicle-based and you want cancellation-friendly options while ride status is fluid.

Pair a park day with a cooler outdoor stop such as White Sands National Park only when heat and drive time still fit. Do not force both on a single late-afternoon window in July.

Summer heat remains part of the operating reality even when one ride is closed. A practical packing list still helps, including items from Deep Arrival’s guide to the best cooling towels for theme parks, because long waits on remaining attractions still happen in desert sun.

For now the confirmed traveler facts are narrow and usable. Two guests were assessed, the ride was evacuated, and Southwest Slinger is closed indefinitely under investigation while the wider park continues.

That is enough to replan a day without inventing a reopen calendar the park has not published.