Computing Power
No doubt the computing power for some of these rides is amazingly low tech by today's standards.
I'm not saying the motion and film playback isn't controlled/monitored by computer. Without proper visual/motion sync the puke factor goes way up. But the show film looped back and forth across the bottom of the pod was the most surprising thing. The fact that it wans't a video projection - and that the film loop was totally exposed. You'd think they would want to keep the film in a cleaner enviroment. The CM on the tour explained they wanted easy access to the film should a break occur.
Speaking of low computing power. Also on Backstage Magic you will get to parade control. VERY small and narrow room. All run by a single CM. Usually runs fine on it's own by computer but the CM is there to deal with the unexpected. All audio was on EPROM chips as was sounds/music for other rides down in the computer control center. I believe they were just beginning to switch over to flash memory technology (this was about six years ago). The CM asked how much RAM our group members had on our home computers, 32MB-most hands in the group up, 64MB-some hands when down, 128MB-all hands down except mine. He kept going up and finally stoped and asked, "Well just how much DO you have?" 512MB I replied. Turns out that's how much they use to run the parades.
They watch the parade movement on a screen that tracks the floats with sensors imbedded in the streets, (usually that spot that looks like a wad of grey/blackish gum). The CM had to tell the Cinderella float to slow down, "Cinderella always gets too far ahead of the rest of the parade." he said. There are also cameras mounted on buildings around the parade route, (top of train station near the flags, on the castle, ect.) The cameras can pan, tilt, and zoom. Someone in the group asked if the CM could show the Main Street view from the castle. "I'll try, sometimes the camera gets stuck in that position so I don't try to look that way often." he said. "See the Genie's head on the Aladdin float just sitting there? When you just see just the head it means the wind is too high to inflate the body."
While Animal Kingdom didn't have a parade at all back then he told us that all parades were controled from that tiny room, Magic Kingdom, Disney-MGM, and Epcot.
Since this is the Secrets forum I"ll assume the younger kids aren't lurking here. If so be warned character spoiler follows . . .
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During the parade we where watching there was a minor emergency. A CM on the street noticed that Tigger was unzipped in the back. They called in to parade control so a message to tell Tigger not to get off the float when it stopped had to be relayed.
![Dean[AU]](https://d3ofq03apmfb8c.cloudfront.net/data/avatars/m/8/8019.jpg?1339212325){kind=avatar}
. Anyway during my chat, the hydrolics on one ride did not start up, nothing a restart of the ride wouldnt fix
