power outage

Mr. Toad

Mr. Toad

Active Member
Yes, back in the 1970's when I was a kid. It was after midnight and the MK had just closed and from what I remember being told a wheel broke on the monorail and fell onto the electric rail, shorting out everything in the MK, Contemporary, and Polynesian (this might not have been the actual cause but it is what we were told). We took a boat back to the Poly and they had put out candles to supplement the emergency lights. Not sure how long the power was out since it was already late and we went to sleep.

Thankfully back then we used an actual key to open the room door. I wonder how they open the doors with the new Magic Band system if there is no power. I wonder if WDW has a better backup power system today compared to the mid 70's.
 
Rob562

Rob562

Well-Known Member
Years ago we were staying at CBR. Came back to the room to find a letter from the head of the hotel that said they had to do emergency utility work on the power feed to the hotel and that the power would be out for about 6 hours overnight that night. With the letter they included a flashlight. (2100 rooms at CBR, that couldn't have been cheap).


-Rob
 
Tom

Tom

Beta Return
Mr. Toad said:
Yes, back in the 1970's when I was a kid. It was after midnight and the MK had just closed and from what I remember being told a wheel broke on the monorail and fell onto the electric rail, shorting out everything in the MK, Contemporary, and Polynesian (this might not have been the actual cause but it is what we were told). We took a boat back to the Poly and they had put out candles to supplement the emergency lights. Not sure how long the power was out since it was already late and we went to sleep.

Thankfully back then we used an actual key to open the room door. I wonder how they open the doors with the new Magic Band system if there is no power. I wonder if WDW has a better backup power system today compared to the mid 70's.
Click to expand...

It was likely something else that failed, which caused the power in that whole grid to go out, including the monorail.

The card readers on the room doors have batteries to keep them working, and the computers that run the doors are on UPS power supply, with plenty of backup power.
 
copcarguyp71

copcarguyp71

Well-Known Member
what is the situation with backup generators? Obviously backups sufficient to run the park would be out of the que$tion but do they have backups for mission critical stuff or just UPS backups and exit lights? Just curious...
 
Mr. Toad

Mr. Toad

Active Member
Tom said:
It was likely something else that failed, which caused the power in that whole grid to go out, including the monorail.

The card readers on the room doors have batteries to keep them working, and the computers that run the doors are on UPS power supply, with plenty of backup power.
Click to expand...

It seemed odd that the monorail could black out everything but I was only about 10 and believed that the cast members knew everything. :) It was certainly a very odd night at MK.

Good to hear they have battery backup in place for the doors. It would be really frustrating to not be able to get into your room because the power was out.
 
tl77

tl77

Well-Known Member
There was a power outage a few years ago in the middle of the night that knocked out power to the Beach Club, Yacht Club, Boardwalk, and Epcot was closed the whole next day
 
Gabe1

Gabe1

Ivory Tower Squabble EST 2011. WINDMILL SURVIVOR
I believe it was the winter of 2012 when the entire TTC went down and the back up generators malfunctioned. It was crowded that day, guests did not listen to take monorail to Epcot to purchase tickets, guest relations and kiosk outside the MK was solid guests trying to purchase tickets. Even the restrooms were not functioning at TTC.

Bad day.
 
Tom

Tom

Beta Return
DHoy said:
On August 18, 2013. All of WDW property lost power. Every attraction except Laugh Floor (lol) went down. I was working at MK at Space Mtn (It was our third downtime of the day ... womp) Usually during downtimes, especially extended, attractions will dump their queues and hand out a special fastpass (aka re-ad). This is the only occurrence I know of, where space didn't dump its queue for a full double reset ... at the time while working at grouper i assumed we had ran out of fast-passes for recovery it wasn't until i went on break i discovered that every attraction was down.

Aside ... during resets whether guests are held inside or dumped it is required to make spiels when anything in the ride path will become active ... ex "Attention please stand clear of the main lift on track A, the main lift will begin motion immediately" ... so when resetting both sides with a full queue imagine the plethora of inquiries for each spiel. THe lower lift spiel was the best, it was announce the lower lift (takes rockets from unload to load) would start immediately and the queue cheered, little did they know of the remaining 20 minutes of resetting still to go.

All in all, it had happened that all of WDW went down for power issues except Laugh FLoor .. but technically arent they in another dimension?
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Did you ever receive a legitimate explanation as to how it's even remotely possible that Laugh Floor was the only attraction to have power in a complete blackout? I'm guessing it's on generator, but so are many other attractions.
 
216bruce

216bruce

Well-Known Member
No, but during the big blackout in 2003, we had just gotten on DCL's Disney Wonder for our first cruise ever. Timing is everything! We found out about it right after the boat safety drill and that it was centered back home in Ohio.
 

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