PotC Boats?

JIMINYCR

Well-Known Member
Maybe when we went it was very low crowds and they put each group in their own boat? I just have to memory of other people being in the same boat with us, and I remember watching the boat ahead of us going down the drop and laughing at their (slight) screams. The other possibility is that we always sat in front, so weren't really aware of the people behind us.

I've been on POTC when I've walked on and been the ONLY one in the boat. That's been a great ride.
Heres a bit of Depp for you.
Animatronic_t1.jpg
Captain Jack Sparrow, meet . . . Johnny Depp! As part of the festivities surrounding the June 24th world premiere of DEAD MAN’S CHEST, the second installment in the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN film saga, Disney unveiled new animatronics of Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Barbossa that have been added to the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN ride.


 

ddbowdoin

Well-Known Member
I've been on POTC when I've walked on and been the ONLY one in the boat. That's been a great ride.
Heres a bit of Depp for you.
Animatronic_t1.jpg
Captain Jack Sparrow, meet . . . Johnny Depp! As part of the festivities surrounding the June 24th world premiere of DEAD MAN’S CHEST, the second installment in the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN film saga, Disney unveiled new animatronics of Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Barbossa that have been added to the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN ride.


jealous!
 

matt9112

Well-Known Member
random question...how is park capacity measured? do they just add all the ride capacity's per hour together? or do they take into account lines,food shops ect....the jist is i want to know how they figure out how much capacity is added by say a pathway...
 

lazyboy97o

Well-Known Member
random question...how is park capacity measured? do they just add all the ride capacity's per hour together? or do they take into account lines,food shops ect....the jist is i want to know how they figure out how much capacity is added by say a pathway...
The EPCOT Building Codes likely have some regulations on occupancy. They should be available on the Reedy Creek Improvement District website.
 

WannaBWendy

Well-Known Member
You might be thinking a separate boats away from WDW and DL, such as the Flooded Mine at Silver Dollar City ( Not that you've ever been there, its just an example) It holds only maybe 7 or 8.... But the boats have a fairly large capacity, 20 as everyone else's saying.

Ahhh... Love the lameness of the flooded mine at Silver Dollar City! :) Go there every Thanksgiving!
 

Goofyernmost

Well-Known Member
The capacity of a ride is probably looked at as the number of people per hour that can ride it. When you get to talking about building capacity or park capacity, a whole different set of measurements come into play. Building capacity and park capacity is determined by fire, rescue and emergency agencies and it is a formula that tries to determine how long it would take to evacuate a building, park or whatever safely. When they reach a number that is the maximum that is considered safe it means that the park has reached capacity. It doesn't necessarily mean that they have run out of room. It is determined by the estimate of how many people can get out through the exit in an emergency.

When Disney or any other group speaks in terms of more attractions to help balance out the crowd, that is another different scale. All that does is spread the crowd out more evenly, but isn't necessarily considered when evacuation is needed. They could increase the number of rides by 20 or more, but when a certain number of people are in the parks it doesn't matter how many attractions there are, just how long will it take to get these people out of there safely.
 

Victor Kelly

Well-Known Member
Splash In Fl is 4 rows of two each or are we talking about just Disneyland. For DL, I was not sure since I have never been there, just going off of pics.
 

ddrongowski

Well-Known Member
Back when I was last in WDW (2000) I believe the PotC boats each held just a few people (probably 4 or so). I just noticed from some photos that they're now big boats that hold about 20 people!

Did they make this change when they added the Johnny Depp stuff? That's a pretty big change, because I always like when they have the little boats, cars, etc. on rides because you can joke around with your family/friends in a little privacy. :)
The boats in splash mountain are small like you mention, but never the POTC boats.
 

Giwreh

New Member
Sorry, I'm late in this discussion, with a subject, suddenly made more interesting through the comment #27, from Goofyernmost ... ;-) ... I have been a silent reader only, on these forums, until now.
That being mentioned ... I can add something to that specific comment.
I'm in the concept and design buisiness, having a professional insight in capacity planning.

Point one : (quoted)
Building capacity and park capacity is determined by fire, rescue and emergency agencies and it is a formula that tries to determine how long it would take to evacuate a building, park or whatever safely.
Actually, first correction : with building capacity YES, with park capacity: not really.
A possible calamity is: located. This is always ONE building at a time. It does not concur with the whole park.
Does this mean it is never applied to outdoors areas? Yes, it does, but the circunstances of handling this are way different, and do, in most cases, not apply to complete parks, but more specifically to dense open air show areas (seated or standing). Then again, we can point out thar the possible calimity is located.
Confusing for most people :
Most theme park fans will be familiar with the many videos shot at 'evacuation' (attraction broke down), and see something that has no relation to potential calamity evacuation. Evacuation of a ride at some break down, has everything to do with customer relations (still having happy, returning custumers at the back door = the goal), and has nothing at all to do with fire rescue, or similar.
In most attractions, the actual total occupation from the factor "FILL" = the maximum number of people that can be inside a showbuilding, is determined by the other factor "THRC" (theoretical hourly ride capacity = the technical maximum that will never be trespassed) together with the runtime quotes in all of the composing parts of that attraction. (OK, yes, there are formulas fot that). Fact now is, that "FILL" in an attraction always is small compared to the size of the showbuilding. EXCEPT for theater style attractions.
Planning emergency exits (and safe exit routes) is quite easy. Where it's really problematic, is in situations of uncontrolled party assembly (café-bar-clubs-dancings, shops... etc etc and yes, FEC's !!...) because those are situations where people constantly, and very much uncontrolled thus, walk (rush) in and out.
In the attraction environment, the FILL factor is determined and controlled. It set's this theme park leisure industry apart from the general leisure scene in city centers.

In the open air, it's FESTIVALS and similar events, that cause the big problems. A panic, can mean people are killed because they crush each other to suffocation. There, crowd control becomes the biggest issue. In theme parks, the issue is not worse then just crowd management.

And so... definately : NO, complete theme parks are NEVER evacuated ! Exactly THAT would be irresponsible dangerous to do !
To the contrary. The only general calamity that came over a very large theme park, ever in history, was the earthquake / tsunami, with Tokyo DL resort. The rule then, is the exact opposite of evacuation : it was PROHIBITED to leave the park !! (At full calamity control logic.)

At the follow up point in comment #27 (quoted)
.... more attractions to help balance out the crowd, that is another different scale. All that does is spread the crowd out more evenly, but isn't necessarily considered when evacuation is needed. ...
So, again, this global park evacuation is not done ! In terms of fire rescue policies, outside = SAFE. Dozens of "rescue assembly points" are allocated in the planning, throughout theme parks (inside the park, and at the backlots), just to make shure people can be "counted".
"...help balance out the crowd" , is what is done in 'crowd management'. The actual configuration of the park should help this in the first place, but the peoples behaviour is not calculable and very often operational tricks come in (on time or late ... lol ) to keep people moving. Although, only on peak attendance days !
When the parks walkways would be so crowded that they start to resemble a rock festival situation, however, then the park closes its front gates (or should) ... it happened a few times at WDW Magic Kingdom. I do not know of any other instance of such a front gate lock-up, anywhere on earth.

Cheers.
 
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Bairstow

Well-Known Member
The one thing I can think of here is that in recent years the boats on Pirates were suffering from some sort of defect that was causing them to take on water during the flume splash and not drain it properly on the lift hill. As a result, ride operators would often run the boats with the last row empty. This issue was finally resolved some time in the last couple months.
 

ZodIsGr8

Well-Known Member
The one thing I can think of here is that in recent years the boats on Pirates were suffering from some sort of defect that was causing them to take on water during the flume splash and not drain it properly on the lift hill. As a result, ride operators would often run the boats with the last row empty. This issue was finally resolved some time in the last couple months.
i was just there and the boats are taking on more water than they used to. Last year sometime they replaced the boats if memory serves me correctly. Then i was reading on this forum how there were a lot of complaints about how the boats were taking on water and that cast members were having to use towels, etc... So we went down in October of 2013 and sure enough the boats were new and when you went down the hill the front of the boat would take on a lot more water than they did in the past and you would get pretty wet. They also increased the canon fire splash so that now you get wet form that water explosion as well. All I remember is when i got off that ride, I felt like I had just got off Splash Mountain when they don't have the super soakers on. So when i went back in March of 2014 i made a conscious effort to pay attention to the ride this time to see if it was just a one off thing the last time, but sadly it was not. The boats are now to the point that pretty much wherever you sit on the boat the seats are already wet from the ride before and you are going to get wet. You can also tell that more and more riders are leaving soaked when you go up the GoodYear escalator/belt as you exit the ride. It is always soaked with wet foot prints now and I don't remember that being the case before the refurb last year. Either way it is still a great ride and I can't wait to ride it again in May!!!!!!!
 

Bairstow

Well-Known Member
i was just there and the boats are taking on more water than they used to. Last year sometime they replaced the boats if memory serves me correctly. Then i was reading on this forum how there were a lot of complaints about how the boats were taking on water and that cast members were having to use towels, etc... So we went down in October of 2013 and sure enough the boats were new and when you went down the hill the front of the boat would take on a lot more water than they did in the past and you would get pretty wet. They also increased the canon fire splash so that now you get wet form that water explosion as well. All I remember is when i got off that ride, I felt like I had just got off Splash Mountain when they don't have the super soakers on. So when i went back in March of 2014 i made a conscious effort to pay attention to the ride this time to see if it was just a one off thing the last time, but sadly it was not. The boats are now to the point that pretty much wherever you sit on the boat the seats are already wet from the ride before and you are going to get wet. You can also tell that more and more riders are leaving soaked when you go up the GoodYear escalator/belt as you exit the ride. It is always soaked with wet foot prints now and I don't remember that being the case before the refurb last year. Either way it is still a great ride and I can't wait to ride it again in May!!!!!!!

I noticed the problem this past September; at that point cast members at unload were using dustbins to bail out what water they could before advancing the boats forward. This was causing a big logjam of boats clear back to the hairy-legged pirate.
When we rode again this past April the problem seemed to be largely fixed, at least in our boat.
 

Goofyernmost

Well-Known Member
And so... definately : NO, complete theme parks are NEVER evacuated ! Exactly THAT would be irresponsible dangerous to do !
To the contrary. The only general calamity that came over a very large theme park, ever in history, was the earthquake / tsunami, with Tokyo DL resort. The rule then, is the exact opposite of evacuation : it was PROHIBITED to leave the park !! (At full calamity control logic.)
You probably said the same thing I did, with more detail, of course. I did quote the above portion because you are talking about controlled evacuation which of course is controlled and limited to the occasions when they want to get people to leave but not panic them.

That is a measurement for capacity on the low end. Unfortunately, you cannot, for example, lock the doors of a burning building and not have the crowd in total panic. If something happens that completely freaks out the people, then you need to stand out of the way and allow them to get out. The planning is to make that happen without people getting trampled over and killed. Prohibiting them from leaving is a way to do the opposite of calm the crowd. So, it may not be defined as "officially" calculated because no one wants to read about "full on panic" procedures, but, they exist. The best way that they can manage that is to not let more people in then the exits will handle if they all decide to leave at the same time. Even then, it's a shot in the dark as to what will be sufficient crowd movement to make that type of panic evacuation not end up with fatalities.

I'm not sure that using the Tokyo example is a good example of how a U.S. crowd would react to emergencies. My experience has been that the Japanese people are much calmer and able to follow instruction much better then us. But even then, to feel that the only possible "general calamity" that can beset a place is an earthquake or Tsunami is a pretty narrow vision. Remember, up until the earthquake/tsunami in Tokyo, there was no history of a park needing to be concerned. That is no longer true.
 

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