Nearly ever ride closed this morning at MK

peter11435

Well-Known Member
Hall of Presidents and Carousel of Progress both use park air for some of their animation functions. Philhar uses park air for many of the in theater effects among other things.
 

Lord Pheonix

Active Member
Wow, they run all of that off of ONE compressor.
if its a big enough compressor, yeah, but i doubt it. probably one compressor powers a handfull of rides, with multiple ones running the park. thats why some of the rides were affected but not all.

i also dont think the trash sytems would run off of a compressor. that system is like the drive up bank teller thing on steroids. simple put, there would be a large fan or multiple fans putting a vacuum on the lines, so when a switch is hit or a valve turned it would suck the trash bags thru pipes to the end point of the line. if it were a compressor, it would blow the garbage out of the cans into the air, which i think would be absolutly hilairious.
 

Lord Pheonix

Active Member
also, the reason pooh was probably open first is because it probably closest to the air tank, or first in line from te air compressor. other rides, like splash, are farther away so it would take longer for them to start up.

the way an air system works is u have a moter, either gas or electric, that pumps to a main tank, then runs thru lines to each ride thats connected to it, and pressurizes their own tanks. this is a buffer, so that the moter doesnt have to run all the time. a good example is a tractor-trailer. there are tanks on the tractor that pressurize, then the air goes to the trailer tanks, and they run the brakes. if it didnt have storage tanks on the trailer, (or each ride) the moter would run constantly and would considerably shorten its life.
 

Rich1

New Member
they don't suck them through the cans though..there is a location where they dump the trash. As odd as it sounds, they do use compressed air to run this system. They even periodically run ice through this to keep it somewhat clean...compressed air would be the only thing powerful enough to prevent major clogs.
 

Phonedave

Well-Known Member
Now,the reason why a central system was built? well.. Air compressors (even muffled) are noisy when they pressurize.. wouldn't make for a very good guest experience to hear the rattle all the time from each attraction..... which this one does CONSTANTLY..... just a bigger version of what you use in your garage at home, really....

They do make quite ones. You can also put them in areas where guests will not hear them.

I understand the idea of a central park air system. It make things a lot easier when expanding or adding new things (*gasp*). But there are ways to do it without a single point of failure. Running compressors on a cycle kit from various points, with redundant air pipes and a decent manifold system.

FYI - most underground telephone cables - pressurized. At one time I used to have the national air program. I have more vendor literature on pipe panels, monitoring systems, manifolds, air pipe, air dryers, analysis software, and transducers than I know what to do with.

-dave
 

darthspielberg

Well-Known Member
I find it odd that they use one system for the whole park. Every october I work for a theme park that speciailzes in Halloween attractions and Haunted Houses. Each of the attractions (Last year there were seven major marquee attractions) run on their own air supply.

This park is well funded, but not even a blip on the map compared to WDW (although we are the second largest all outdoor Halloween event behind Knotts in California) so it astonishes me that we had, in theory, a better system of compressed air than Disney World.
 

thelookingglass

Well-Known Member
Guys, whatever happened, it was the first time in almost 40 years that it happened, and it only affected the attractions for ... 2 hours.

Its stupid to start ranting and raving about what "bad design" this is.
 

darthspielberg

Well-Known Member
Guys, whatever happened, it was the first time in almost 40 years that it happened, and it only affected the attractions for ... 2 hours.

Its stupid to start ranting and raving about what "bad design" this is.

Hey, to their credit, Disney did a great job fixing things and getting things back in order. Doesn't mean the design is perfect, though. It's a system that could use a re-think.
 

MiklCraw4d

Member
I don't know how the system is structured today, but as originally designed the pressurized air all did come from the same source.

The power generation plant, which ran two jet turbine engines off of natural gas, also generated compressed air which was distributed throughout the park. It also used its coolant fluid to generate hot water for the resort, and to run the chillers for the park's air conditioning!

Walt Disney World, 1971 style.
 

marni1971

Park History nut
Premium Member
Guys, whatever happened, it was the first time in almost 40 years that it happened,
It has happened before, but it`s the first time I know of that it was park-wide.

Reminds me of when EPCOT Centers Central failed in the early 80's. And the backup. Things over there are far less centralised now for this very reason.
 

Bluewaves

Well-Known Member
Just because its not the way we would design things now doesn't mean its a bad design, no one would do it that way now because the piping alone would cost more than the individual air pumps would.

Also remember that sometimes building one large something gives you an economy of scale over building multiple small somethings. I'd also be surprised that if you found the people that built the air system in the 70's they would be surprised the thing still works as well as it does 40 years later.
 

TRONorail10

Active Member
Fun....
Why not simply let anyone without a Park Hopper park hop if they started at the MK today?

Allow 2nd entry, or better yet, just don't care at all. Let turnstyle cast members know that as long as the ticket was valid for the day and it was used to enter MK, it's good for any of the 4 parks for the remainder of the day...

Never in a million years would this happen. Turnstile cast members CANNOT override Disney tickets. EVER. The only way to physically know if that ticket was used at MK would be to physically look up the barcode number for every single guest's ticket who claims to have been at Magic Kingdom, which would involve the cast member leaving the turnstile and utilizing the computer systems at guest relations. Don't worry, i'm not trying to be mean. I'm stating the facts that it is much more complicated than it seems, which is why u never see any "raincheck" type tickets, a completely new ticket has to be issued and it takes a lot for disney to potentially give up $85-$140 worth of park admissions.
 

Jrn14

Well-Known Member
Could someone please provide a list of affected attractions and when each one reopened thank you.

I need this for a school project.
 

Tigger#1

Active Member
The place I worked at several years ago switched over to a central air supply for the entire campus and let all the local compressors sit and rot. When I started there I repaired all of them I could but they wouldn't buy the parts I needed to fix them all. They said I was waisting my time fixing them since they would never be used again.
Move forward a couple years and the main compressor went down for several days and my buildings were the ones backfeeding the system to keep the HVAC running for everyone:ROFLOL:
 

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