Disney Skyliner shutdown and evacuation - October 6 2019

[danlb_2000]

In February 1999 a WDW custodian was killed by the Skyway. WDW was cited for a safety violation:

65-YEAR-OLD CUSTODIAN KILLED WHILE CLEANING DISNEY RIDE

Federal investigators will be at Disney’s Magic Kingdom on Wednesday to try and piece together how a 65-year-old custodian ended up falling from a Skyway gondola to his death over the weekend…

www.sun-sentinel.com

True, but that accident wasn't a result of an inherent problem with the ride, it happened because the ride was started up when someone was in the path of the ride vehicle, which could happen on any ride if proper safety procedures are not followed.

 

[WheelsUpRN]

But surely the point is it did break down and despite them being very slow to evacuate, everyone's fine. So maybe some of those fears were unfounded.

Yeah cause it happened at night.

 

[KC00]

It took me mustering up a good deal of courage plus two drinks at lunch to get on the Skyliner last week but I talked myself into it. For months I had been claiming I would never ever ride because I hate hovering at a height. And while I logically know that worst case scenarios are always super unlikely, you can’t always explain away irrational anxiety. I KNOW the car ride to the airport is more dangerous than the plane ride itself but I only ever find myself white knuckling the plane ride. That’s how anxiety works.

Anyway I rode and found them far less scary than I expected and as a DVC member I was excited to know that I would be able to get myself to ride should I ever stay at the Riviera. But I still wondered how I would handle it if I got stuck for a long time up in the air, particularly on the part that goes over the very busy road.

Now even though I KNOW that what happened last night is hopefully not something that will happen again, it does give me a little pause to ride again. The idea of being stuck for a long time swaying up there or having to be rescued by a lift was just a general unfounded anxiety last week but now I have actual photos and videos of it happening to guests and it makes me really reluctant to take a chance on the Skyliner again. I wonder how many people are having those same kinds of thoughts today.

 

[VaderTron]

The value of my button went upView attachment 416468

You will be hearing from my lawyer for IP violation.

 

[note2001]

I'm still determined to muster the courage to ride the skyliner (this dragon is a wee bit nervous with heights). I'll make sure NOT to ride the EPCOT line though as it seems to be having the most stoppage.

 

[admiralDax]

Does this change anyone's thoughts about riding on future visits? I know rides break down all the time...but this is kind of scary.

Actually, I kind-of wish I had been one of those stuck. I know, I'm a weirdo...

 

[Lilofan]

It took me mustering up a good deal of courage plus two drinks at lunch to get on the Skyliner last week but I talked myself into it. For months I had been claiming I would never ever ride because I hate hovering at a height. And while I logically know that worst case scenarios are always super unlikely, you can’t always explain away irrational anxiety. I KNOW the car ride to the airport is more dangerous than the plane ride itself but I only ever find myself white knuckling the plane ride. That’s how anxiety works.

Anyway I rode and found them far less scary than I expected and as a DVC member I was excited to know that I would be able to get myself to ride should I ever stay at the Riviera. But I still wondered how I would handle it if I got stuck for a long time up in the air, particularly on the part that goes over the very busy road.

Now even though I KNOW that what happened last night is hopefully not something that will happen again, it does give me a little pause to ride again. The idea of being stuck for a long time swaying up there or having to be rescued by a lift was just a general unfounded anxiety last week but now I have actual photos and videos of it happening to guests and it makes me really reluctant to take a chance on the Skyliner again. I wonder how many people are having those same kinds of thoughts today.

If it occurred during the afternoon, the outside temps would have been hotter accompanied with frequent lightning and rain storms. That would have been a challenging rescue in those conditions.

 

[flynnibus]

Anyway, non-insurance people on here had concerns about the no a/c. Then those concerns ended up being a reality on DAY 6

What became reality? That people would be stuck for extended periods? That has never been contested. Did issues with no A/C become reality yesterday? Not from anything I've seen.

And if by “mass causality incident” you mean people becoming sick or in need of medical assistance (I don’t think there will dozens of dead people nor do I think anyone is claiming that either), then yes, that is a very real possibility during the middle of summer, and how you can honestly deny that is mind boggling.

Will some people get sick? Surely. Is it manageable, IMO yes. Apparently enough people felt that way as well to move forward with the solution.

And yes, people are claiming people are facing serious harm - en mass - and not just getting dehydrated or facing heat exhaustion.

Again, have you even ridden one? Have you been stopped on it in the middle of the day? I have. If you haven’t, then you really have no room to say how it compares to standing outside and free to move around, and no room to talk about how comfortable it is or isn’t.

I've not ridden the skyliner yet, but I know enough to make some educated assumptions, and have faith enough in the idea that enough people have evaluated the actual scenarios to have the data to make meaningful choices. I really don't subscribe to the idea there is some mass ignorance or stubbornness within the company to ignore this obvious potential. As such, you have to have some faith in the professionals involved.

 

[VaderTron]

Listened to a BBC podcast about the moon landing (13 minutes to the moon,I think it was called). There was one episode where they talked about the average age of many in mission control was something like 26. How could we ever trust something so dangerous as running the skyline to college kids;-)

Perhaps because they are heavy on the "kid" and light on the "college".

 

[Phil12]

True, but that accident wasn't a result of an inherent problem with the ride, it happened because the ride was started up when someone was in the path of the ride vehicle, which could happen on any ride if proper safety procedures are not followed.

Yes indeed. Even highly trained employees will fail to follow standard safety procedures. It's part of the human condition. That's why designers and engineers try to make rides such as this one "idiot proof" or "foolproof". But as Douglas Adams said, "a common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools".

 

[DrAlice]

Time for speculation:

If the eyewitness account is accurate, the teal cabin, which was the next to exit Riviera station, failed to start moving after a stop, and the cabins behind it pushed into it. In the stations, the cabins ride on an overhead track and are propelled by rotating wheels above the track. I can see 3 possible causes:

1. The wheel above the teal cabin failed to start turning with the others in the station. Possibly a loss of power, motor failure, or a control system error.
2. The wheel did turn, but there was inadequate adhesion between the tire and the contact plate on the carrier, causing the tire to skid. Possibly due to a worn tire, a foreign substance on the wheel or contact plate, or the carrier being in a location where it did not make good contact with the tire.
3. At the switches into the WAV load area, cabins are propelled in the straight direction by a chain rather than wheels. The teal cabin looks like it may have been at the switch into the take-out spur. If cabins are propelled thru that switch by a chain, the chain may have failed to activate when the wheels did.

Thank you for meaningful discussion about the incident.

My "speculatory" take:

If the above eye-witness account is correct (pg. 27-ish for those that have gotten lost in all the arguing), it is described that the gondolas were stuck at the station for 10 minutes BEFORE the collision. That sounds to me like the system was alerting the operators that something was wrong. Perhaps something to the affect that you are describing here. I have to believe that this system has been designed with safety overrides to prevent a 5-car pile up (how could it not, right?). So..... since they in fact HAD a 5-car pile up after a 10 minute stop, I'm wondering if the operators couldn't find the problem that caused the stop and did some sort of override to get it moving again. In other words, operator error on a spectacular scale. If so... whoops....

Disney should feel fortunate that 1) the people in the crushed cars are unharmed and not squished and 2) that those outside were stuck in cool, nighttime temperatures.

I hope they get to the bottom of the issue here and can prevent this from happening again.

 

[UNCgolf]

I've not ridden the skyliner yet, but I know enough to make some educated assumptions, and have faith enough in the idea that enough people have evaluated the actual scenarios to have the data to make meaningful choices. I really don't subscribe to the idea there is some mass ignorance or stubbornness within the company to ignore this obvious potential. As such, you have to have some faith in the professionals involved.

Martin did say a couple of pages earlier that Disney has internal concerns about the rising heat levels inside the gondolas if they are stopped on a hot day. It's possible that despite concerns about dangerous heat, the likelihood of it happening was small enough that it wasn't worth spending the money to mitigate. That's obviously just speculation, though, and businesses make those kinds of determinations regularly. There's no malice involved.

 

[VaderTron]

My family and I are going in December. One of my group will be in an ECV, so this incident does make me pause a little bit. How much room is in the cabin if one person is on a scooter? How difficult is it to evac someone in a scooter? Can you access the emergency supplies if there’s a scooter in the way?
I’m very sure I’m overthinking this right now, but I will follow this story before making an informed decision to ride.

On the contrary, you may be one of the first who is giving this the advanced thought it deserves before making your decision to use this form of transportation or not.

 

[Hawg G]

My electrical engineering studies say otherwise thank you very much.

Shade doesnt get eliminated when the shade was created by the materials to start with.

How many years of study in physics and thermo did you have? I had 3.5 full years.

Well, I’m a Chemical Engineer, so....

The sunlight is stopped by the roof, and side walls, but the heat is taken on by the gondola. Some of that heat conducts through the gondola, and ends up IN the gondola. When I stand under a tree, or canvas, the heat is taken on by them, whose temperatures have no impact on me.
Basic physics.

All this happens with the trees and canvases too, but you aren't trapped in a box on the other side of the tree leaves.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Well, I’m a Chemical Engineer, so....

The sunlight is stopped by the roof, and side walls, but the heat is taken on by the gondola. Some of that heat conducts through the gondola, and ends up IN the gondola. When I stand under a tree, or canvas, the heat is taken on by them, whose temperatures have no impact on me.
Basic physics.

All this happens with the trees and canvases too, but you aren't trapped in a box on the other side of the tree leaves.

The gondola will indeed heat up, and it will radiate heat away inside the cabin (but just as much will be radiated outwards). The heat inside the cabin will not stay there. There are vents below and above. The warmer air will rise and go out the top while fresh air will come in from the bottom.

We already had people in 90+ heat stopped in the gondolas with a thermometer. The temperature rose one degree.

 

[senor_jorge]

Interesting read. I'm sure management and first responders will write up their AAR and some changes will be made.

That being said, it always proves to be educational to read some of the responses after something like this. It's pretty clear who has some sort of operations experience and who doesn't. Since I don't know what equipment RCFD has I'm really not prepared to judge their response. I'm not terribly uncomfortable with the time taken to make sure a new system of transport was presumably checked out before putting it back into operation to complete the evac. I'm not uncomfortable that it appears that the safety of guests/passengers was the primary concern. It wasn't August, it wasn't 105 in the shade.

I wouldn't be thrilled to spend three hours, stuck, potentially with people I didn't care for. It's life. To the best of my knowledge nobody was seriously hurt, nobody died, and life went on. It is, what it is. If some people want to make it more than that, that's up to them.

Without more info, from the outside looking in, it seems to me that Disney and RC did a pretty good job and will probably learn a lot much sooner than they would have preferred to.

 

[fngoofy]

Because you have no way of knowing right away if what happened on this line could happen on the others. The safest thing to do is let the other lines run until they are clear and the shut them down.

Is that how you operated them when you were working the line?
Too bad Disney doesn't know as much as you do on this mode of transportation... you should offer your consulting services to them.

 

[mm121]

Check it out... there is a side rail right there in the riviera station too... they moved the impacted gondola over

View attachment 416414

Wonder if they can use this for Wheelchairs and ecvs to avoid stopping the line for more than just a few seconds to move it in and out

 

[Phil12]

The gondola will indeed heat up, and it will radiate heat away inside the cabin (but just as much will be radiated outwards). The heat inside the cabin will not stay there. There are vents below and above. The warmer air will rise and go out the top while fresh air will come in from the bottom.

We already had people in 90+ heat stopped in the gondolas with a thermometer. The temperature rose one degree.

And that one degree rise is enough to be a problem according to the Mayo Clinic:

Heat exhaustion - Symptoms and causes

www.mayoclinic.org

As an example, in Orlando right now the Air Temperature (ºF) = 84 and the Dew Point (ºF) = 73. So that means that the Heat Index is 91º F. So right now it would be very dangerous for the gondolas to stop with passengers on board.

 

[flynnibus]

Martin did say a couple of pages earlier that Disney has internal concerns about the rising heat levels inside the gondolas if they are stopped on a hot day. It's possible that despite concerns about dangerous heat, the likelihood of it happening was small enough that it wasn't worth spending the money to mitigate. That's obviously just speculation, though, and businesses make those kinds of determinations regularly. There's no malice involved.

Yeah, but there is a lot of 'middle ground' in such a choice. You can have concerns that it will lead to undesirable conditions.. and know it will lead to unhappy guests... but there is a lot of ground between that point and accepting a choice that knowingly will result in sending dozens to the hospital.

I mean.. we're not talking about the risk of full cable derailment, falling cabins, etc.. things with very low probabilities. Stoppages are pretty much a given to happen. They know they will happen, they know there is a risk of a good amount of time because they will have modeled how long evacs would take. This is a condition that has a reasonable probability of happening... So it's exposure is quite high.