mergatroid
Well-Known Member
So would you prefer they just did nothing after those incidents proved that stuff can go wrong that they'd not considered an issue before those incidents? I'm not sure the point you're making really?Did everyone just forget that Universal has a history of, in my opinion, overreacting to incidents? Cat in the Hat is severely neutered in the back half of the ride with netting on the cars and increased restrictions in reaction to incidents, and I’m pretty confident that’s part (if not most) of why Yoshi has a surprisingly higher height requirement. They stopped Dragons from dueling because of incidents after like 15yrs of perfectly safe operations. Added metal detectors for intense attractions that interact with guest areas/other attractions due to incidents on RockIt and Dragons when most parks still don’t feel that kind of restriction is necessary. I’m sure I’ve told the story before, but during either the 07 or 08 season at Cedar Point I was standing in the Magnum station when a phone came flying in and smashed against an interior column from Top Thrill across the midway. That didn’t have super strict restrictions similar to Universal until it reopened last year as TT2 IIRC.
Universal just tends to operationally overreact to situations like this, which is unfortunate for whichever group is impacted by a given decision. As to everything else, all I’ll say is that sometimes things are fine until they aren’t, mechanically or medically, without any advance warning or knowledge.
It reads like you're saying Universal only change stuff after 'incidents' at their parks which you think is an overreaction personally, so don't read anything into them changing something following a death it's just an unnecessary step?
I think that they should be applauded for making changes following 'incidents' especially when you look at the potential of those 'incidents'. If metal detectors and nets are installed following coins and phones falling from riders pockets during rides on coasters that's the right thing to do? The alternative would be to say "Well in 15 years nobody has been injured by falling objects so let's allow objects to regularly fall until somebody is hit and injured by one and then at that stage we can consider taking precautions to make sure people don't carry things to fall and claim no knowledge that this could even happen". If an 'incident' happens and highlights that an 'incident' like that can and probably will happen again, then even if in that 'incident' nobody was seriously hurt you have to look and think could somebody have been hurt but not just for dumb luck? If the answer is yes, then morally I think they're obliged to make changes even if they make the ride slightly less exciting, visually attractive or accessible to certain folks.
I don't think other parks ignoring incidents should make that the accepted normal response and make parks like Disney and Universal reacting fairly swiftly to any identified threats to be seen as overreacting. If anything it probably more highlights other parks not reacting enough as in the example you give of Cedar Point wasn't it only sheer luck that the phone didn't strike a person in the face causing potential blindness or worse?