In a previous life I worked on the software for a similar transportation system. The control system should have notified the driver immediately when the door opened and stopped the vehicle until the driver decided what was the appropriate course of action. Depending on the passengers to notify the driver introduces a significant delay into the equation and was not considered a valid safety approach. In my day the doors were considered a "human rated" system which meant that it was designed to safely transport people and not permit or cause injury. Such systems depend on multiple sensors to ensure the correct operation. That this occurred on monorail red and was not automatically detected implies to me that the safety systems have degraded to a point where they are no longer safe. If the operators have a history of multiple sensor failure alerts and have become numb to those alerts then that falls on management to correct the situation. Maximizing shareholder value is not the same as operating in a war time condition where you cut corners. Guest safety should be the primary concern and just getting people to the parks to spend money is not more important than safety
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News Monorail Red in motion with guests on board and doors open
- Thread starter ptaylor
- Start date
TheGhostWithTheMost
Well-Known Member
Hmmm. Maybe this is about the company's slipping standards and basic disregard to anything that doesn't bring in insta cash. Sit down, Daniel.
xdan0920
Think for yourselfer
I thought the same thing.
It's sort of irrelevant anyway. Picking up the phone would not have changed the fact that the bleeping door opened while the train was moving along the line at high speed at high altitude. Add in the fact that it seems like TDO knew about this issue before this event. And, really, I think focusing on the dang intercom is the very last thing we should be doing.
xdan0920
Think for yourselfer
No, You are a child with a grudge. And maybe it's justified, but bringing it here is counter productive. Start a new thread about how TDO treats front line cast. Bringing up your friends lack of a potty break in a thread about the Monorail is just silly.
I can just imagine that conversation...
Pilot: "This is the pilot -- what's the problem?"
Guest: "Disculpe, la puerta de la cabina se abrió."
Pilot: "What? I'm sorry, I don't speak Spanish..."
Guest: "Un momento por favor..." hands phone to next guest...
Next Guest: "Com licença, a porta da cabine ficou aberta."
Pilot: "What? I'm sorry, I don't speak Portuguese, either..."
Guest: "Desculpe - apenas um segundo..." hands phone to next guest...
Next Guest: "警告，我们的小屋的门是开着的，一个小孩刚掉出来！"
In other words, they haven't decided who to fire over this incident yet.
Brad Bishop
Well-Known Member
I'm still kind of amazed at the: Blame the guests approach.
Regarding the accountant aspect:
You're not going to get the "disable the safety measures" order from an accountant or management. That's dumb. I remember explaining this in a different thread.
What you'll get are hours cut, maintenance put off because "...it's not going to break tomorrow..."-line of thinking, and employees doing their best to get the trains out as best they can. The maintenance/safety bits take backseat to: get the trains out! and it's all about saving money and making the spreadsheet look better.
You can see that the maintenance takes a backseat to getting the trains out just in the overall appearance of the trains. You can argue, "What can they do? They have to run the trains 20hrs/day carrying 1000s of passengers!"
In a normal situation you'd realize that you're pulling in a lot of customers and should be able to afford said maintenance. In addition, if the current trains are being maxed out with regards to time then you:
- buy more trains
- maybe add another maintenance shop
- start cycling out trains so that instead of 12/12 trains running 20hrs, you have 12/20 trains running.
- you don't let your replacement/refurbishment cycle lapse or almost a decade
You can run 12/12 trains 20hrs a day with a skeleton crew and save money, though. That appears to me, at least, to be their mindset. It's not, "We'll save money by statistically killing a family a year"-mentality, but, simply, "if we run 12/12 trains 20hrs a day with a skeleton crew then the bottom line looks better"-sort of thinking.
There is a way to keep the system running both clean and safely but they choose not to invest in that. You can argue that they're putting in an automated system but while that may be done under the guise of safety and, in fact, may be more safe, my guess is that it looks better on the bottom line, long term, once you remove those employees. I know for now that they're putting a pilot in but long term, I bet that they cut it because that's the point of automation AND their are plenty of proven systems running now without pilots. It's mostly a cost-saving maneuver.
Regarding the accountant aspect:
You're not going to get the "disable the safety measures" order from an accountant or management. That's dumb. I remember explaining this in a different thread.
What you'll get are hours cut, maintenance put off because "...it's not going to break tomorrow..."-line of thinking, and employees doing their best to get the trains out as best they can. The maintenance/safety bits take backseat to: get the trains out! and it's all about saving money and making the spreadsheet look better.
You can see that the maintenance takes a backseat to getting the trains out just in the overall appearance of the trains. You can argue, "What can they do? They have to run the trains 20hrs/day carrying 1000s of passengers!"
In a normal situation you'd realize that you're pulling in a lot of customers and should be able to afford said maintenance. In addition, if the current trains are being maxed out with regards to time then you:
- buy more trains
- maybe add another maintenance shop
- start cycling out trains so that instead of 12/12 trains running 20hrs, you have 12/20 trains running.
- you don't let your replacement/refurbishment cycle lapse or almost a decade
You can run 12/12 trains 20hrs a day with a skeleton crew and save money, though. That appears to me, at least, to be their mindset. It's not, "We'll save money by statistically killing a family a year"-mentality, but, simply, "if we run 12/12 trains 20hrs a day with a skeleton crew then the bottom line looks better"-sort of thinking.
There is a way to keep the system running both clean and safely but they choose not to invest in that. You can argue that they're putting in an automated system but while that may be done under the guise of safety and, in fact, may be more safe, my guess is that it looks better on the bottom line, long term, once you remove those employees. I know for now that they're putting a pilot in but long term, I bet that they cut it because that's the point of automation AND their are plenty of proven systems running now without pilots. It's mostly a cost-saving maneuver.
Bender123
Well-Known Member
Nobody ever used them, so why keep them connected? Seems like a good decision, as they were never thought of in this situation.
TheGhostWithTheMost
Well-Known Member
It's Dan: The Silly Police, come to be the way/truth/light of a thread by deciding what he thinks is or isn't appropriate to talk about when!
xdan0920
Think for yourselfer
Blame the guests might be my number one pet peeve here. Someone sites an issue at WDW and immediately the usual suspects gang up on them with..."well who did you tell? what did YOU do about it" as if it's your responsibility to monitor WDW while you are on vacation.
As to the other bit about accountants. What you are saying makes sense. It's a coherent thought, based in reality. What Exploder does, well, it's not that. Though, I believe he will now latch on to your post and claim that's what he meant.
xdan0920
Think for yourselfer
Do what you want kiddo. I am just telling you how it looks to us normals.
Bender123
Well-Known Member
It isn't a "Blame the guests" for the problem, but a "Blame the guests" for their really incomprehensibly stupid reaction. the fact that they couldn't be bothered with a curiosity level to either look in the clearly marked emergency box that sits over passenger seated head level, use the cell phone to make a phone call, as opposed to making an instagram post and generally acting completely helpless in a situation with multiple paths to safety is just stupid.
We don't know what the failure was (mechanical, maintenance, neglect). We do know there was a failure. Its on every person to know what their options are should an incident occur. If you aren't listening to the safety spiels, observing your surroundings and more interested in recording the problem, then its really hard to feel bad for them when nobody was harmed and they took no basic precautions to limit their own exposure after the accident happened.
But the Mods will remind you to stay on topic.....
Just waiting for Mom to enter the fray.
Brad Bishop
Well-Known Member
Along the same lines: I think there is a cultural problem/shift at Disney. It's no longer about taking care of cast members and having guests have a good experience but, instead, about being a large corporation with acquisitions and expenditures and expendable employees and "guests" are really more just "customers" now, which is, I think, an important difference.
You can see this with how the resort is maintained along with all of the wallet-grabbing moves of the last few years. It's working right now because they're running on nostalgia. I think a generation out (consider that means an older generation has left us, another generation has had some not-so-great experiences (but costly) at WDW, and kids who kind of figure this out) that WDW will really be struggling. Unfortunately, they're likely to look back at this time, with record attendance, and think, "That's where we had it right!," rather than go back a generation to see where they really hooked people.
Sorry, but they were probably fixated on that open door, and not looking for a phone to call someone about it.
Then go get an engineering degree, and we can start blaming engineers...
Nubs70
Well-Known Member
But you do realize accountants do run the world? Accountants control the money, without money my projects don't happen.
Thanks for posting! Now we can blame the program managers!
Then go get an engineering degree, and we can start blaming engineers...
Shift from one retentive profession to another? No thanks. And my dad was an engineer....