DALLAS — "I should have been freaking out," Will Mancera said. "I know I shoulda been."
Monday evening, minutes after 7 p.m., he and his fiance strapped into the Texas Blast, a tandem bungee ride at the Zero Gravity Thrill Park on Interstate 35E in Northwest Dallas.
The $32 tickets were a birthday present to Mancera's fiance, Thalia Rodriguez.
"They told us they just bought new cables on it [and] we should definitely ride it," Mancera said the ride operators told him.
At 26, Mancera still has not overcome a fear of heights.
"I'm thinking, 'Thousands of people get on that. Nothing happens. Nothing is going to happen to me. Relax,'" he said.
Then, as Jamie Foxx's song, "The Best Night of My Life," was blasting on loudspeakers, the couple was catapulted into the air.
Rodriguez's younger brother recorded the launch on an iPhone. But the real terror didn't start until the bouncing stopped.
The ride wouldn't retract.
"I started crying," Thalia, 23, said. "I just started bawling at that moment, thinking, 'Oh my God, we're going to die.'"
Mancera and Rodriguez were stuck sideways some seven stories high.
Rodriguez, who sat higher on the right, started to panic. But it was Mancera — the one who's afraid of heights — that stayed calm.
"He was trying to be funny and make jokes," she said. "I thought, 'Who is this person?' I would have thought we would have both been crying our eyes out and yelling like little girls or something."
As Dallas Fire-Rescue put together a plan, the couple laughed, cried, and — when Thalia panicked again — they even fought.
"So I had to kind of put my foot down," Mancera said. "I couldn't literally put it down, because it was hanging — but I said, 'You need to relax.' But not in that nice way. I was a little bit strong with my language. And she was mad at me for a point there."
Three hours after it began, rescuers finally lowered the couple to safety.
What went wrong remains uncertain, but Zero Gravity Thrill Park said it has a flawless safety record.
The events of Monday night didn't help Mancera overcome his fear of heights, but he and his fiance walked away with a rush that wasn't included in the price of admission.
E-mail jwhitely@wfaa.com
