The Getaway is an obstacle, firstly introduced as the fourth obstacle in the first qualifier episode on American Ninja Warrior 15, and later in the fourth and fifth qualifier episodes.
The obstacle consists of a "vault door" consisting of a circular basket (called a vault wheel) attached to a large disk on a hinge, a ring with a diamond embedded on it that rested on a cradle, a glass box covering the ring, and a moneybag attached to a zipline.
First, competitors must use a mini-tramp to jump up to the vault wheel, which they must rotate 270 degrees counter-clockwise. After the vault door drops down on them, they must rotate the wheel 180 degrees clockwise, which would cause it to drop down even further. This would cause the glass box to rise upwards and smoke to billow out at the end of the obstacle. From there, competitors must grab the diamond ring and jump it to another cradle in a similar manner to the Sky Hooks. Finally, competitors must lache to the moneybag and ride it down the zipline, avoiding a small wall and dismounting to the landing platform. Once they complete the obstacle, smoke would billow out once more. There were also lasers at the end of the obstacle that added to the visual aesthetics.
In the first qualifying round, no competitor failed The Getaway. In the second round, it only took out Larissa Cottle. In the fifth round, The Getaway took out three competitors: Drew Marinelli, Nate Person, and James Wilson. In the sixth round, it was more destructive than in the past, taking out four competitors: Nate Tackett, John Uga, Alex Goodwin, and most shockingly, Jamie Rahn.
Trivia[]
- The name of the obstacle comes from the term "getaway," which refers to the process in which criminals escape from the scene of a bank robbery or heist, often after successfully pulling off the crime.
- In a Reddit comment, ANW obstacle designer Thomas Doweidt revealed several interesting facts about The Getaway:
- The Getaway holds the record for the most amount of rigging and resetting for a single obstacle in a Qualifying course, with five moving elements (the two triggers that dropped the vault door, the glass box, the diamond ring, and the moneybag) needing a reset after every run.
- For this reason, Doweidt himself disliked the obstacle, going so far as to call it his "personal nightmare."
- The transparent box and smoke functioned without the course designers operating it remotely; rather, the final drop of the vault door triggered a mechanism that would lift the box up and cause the smoke to billow out.
- The Getaway holds the record for the most amount of rigging and resetting for a single obstacle in a Qualifying course, with five moving elements (the two triggers that dropped the vault door, the glass box, the diamond ring, and the moneybag) needing a reset after every run.
- The Getaway takes inspiration from several different obstacles:
- Spin Cycle: The vault wheel looks vaguely similar to one of the baskets from the Spin Cycle. However, this is purely coincidental: the wheel has a smaller diameter and is not tilted.
- Drop Zone: Both Drop Zone and The Getaway included an apparatus (a bar for the former and a vault wheel for the latter) that was on a hinge. Competitors were required to rotate that apparatus around a hinge, which would cause it to drop down on competitors. However, there were no injuries on this obstacle unlike Drop Zone.
- Sky Hooks: Competitors had to jump the diamond ring to a cradle, just like the Sky Hooks. However, the cradles on The Getaway are slightly different; the first cradle featured two prongs on which the diamond would rest on, while the second cradle was a rectangular frame with a short cradle protruding from it.
- The prongs on which the diamond rested had a similar function to the V-shaped cradles on which the I-bar from Final Frontier rested on, so The Getaway may have also taken inspiration from that obstacle.
- Rope Glider: The concept of the moneybag attached to a zipline is similar to that of the Rope Glider, which features a hanging rope attached to a zipline.