Terrifying WEDWAY (TTA) experience

[AstareGod]

I work at Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach so I can only really speak for those parks.

The only ride (at TL) we had "real" E-Stops for was Crush'N'Gusher. In the *very unlikely* event someone had a problem and separated from their tube, someone in a video control room hit a button which shut off the water pumps for the slide. Our operations building also got an alarm, but the person in the video room called to give operations more details so they're able to clear the slide.

For all the other slides at TL, we have a button that resembles an E-Stop, but they're technically OAs (Operater Alarms) which don't control any water flow, but do send alarms to operations so they know something needs their attention.

(And for the person who asked, the buttons are clearly marked and colored red and yellow... and there are sensors as well that automatically stop an attraction if they detect an unsafe situation. Actually for many machines in industries and manufacturing, the design of the buttons is pretty much the same.)

For Blizzard Beach, we have chairlift. Chairlift is a funny animal. For anyone who's been to Blizzard, working the chairlift requires extreme attention and safety. If you're not watching your back, you can get hit by one of the chairs, which can hurt a lot. Most of the time we've ever had to stop the chairlift is if too many people inadvertently step forward to load (only 3 can load at a time) and the people don't have enough time to get off the platform. I also had to e-stop the chairlift once because a woman put her 2 year old child on her lap and they were about to start their ascent.

For those maybe concerned about whether or not to engage an E-Stop... if you have to think about it, you should probably do it. The top priority at any Disney park is safety - safety of CMs and guests. So in that chairlift situation above, if I had not stopped the ride and gotten the child to sit on the outside as in the operating guidelines and, god forbid, the child fall out of the chair, I would feel a LOT worse than when I caused a minor inconvenience for a guest's deserved safety. In the case of the speedway ramp, I heard one other story (on WDWMagic no less) about the same thing happening, and I wouldn't be surprised if I yelled out to stop the ramp or engaged the stop myself. Physics tells me with everyone moving up and forward already, stopping the conveyor would just result in people falling forward if they don't catch themselves, but think about the alternative if they just kept piling up on each other. Which is worse?

 

[TP2000]

This is all so scary to read!

Those Cast Members need to be trained better, and know how to operate the machinery they are in charge of!

 

[Rob562]

For those maybe concerned about whether or not to engage an E-Stop... if you have to think about it, you should probably do it. The top priority at any Disney park is safety - safety of CMs and guests. So in that chairlift situation above, if I had not stopped the ride and gotten the child to sit on the outside as in the operating guidelines and, god forbid, the child fall out of the chair, I would feel a LOT worse than when I caused a minor inconvenience for a guest's deserved safety. In the case of the speedway ramp, I heard one other story (on WDWMagic no less) about the same thing happening, and I wouldn't be surprised if I yelled out to stop the ramp or engaged the stop myself. Physics tells me with everyone moving up and forward already, stopping the conveyor would just result in people falling forward if they don't catch themselves, but think about the alternative if they just kept piling up on each other. Which is worse?

E-stops are a tricky thing. Amusement park rides are very much like industrial machinery, in that they involve large moving pieces of machinery, high voltage, etc. With industrial machinery like in a factory, E-stop buttons remove all electricity from a machine and stop it from moving. The attractions' E-stop buttons do that, too. But that's not always what you should do in an amusement park situation. On some attractions, there is actually more than one way to stop the attraction because a power cut-off might actually be bad in some situations.

Soarin' is a good example:
If the Tower CM presses the E-stop button, it disconnects all power to everything. The film stops and the chairs freeze in place. There is then no way to get the chairs down until Maintenance comes and overrides the system. This is obviously the correct course of action if there was something happening on the ground where the chairs coming down would be a safety risk, like a CM, Guest or large object somehow getting out onto the floor.

But, there's a second button that immediately returns the chairs to the ground position. Obviosuly this would be the preferred course of action if there is a safety issue with one of the Guests on the ride. If someone is having a heart attack, or a kid is squirming out from under their seatbelt, you don't want to strand them up in the air. The system can easily be reset from this type of stop, so it's the preferred way of stopping the show.

There's an amusment park ride called an Enterprise (sometimes called an Apple Turnover). Free-swinging cars on the egde of a wheel that spins, and then stands up straight into the air so that the cars are upside down as they go over the top. I've heard that operators are told to press the E-stop button only as a matter of life-or-death for the riders. The E-stop will cut all power, apply maximum brakes, and the arm that the wheel is attached to does something close to a free-fall to bring the wheel down as quickly as possible. It's very bad on both the structure and the riders on it. The preferred way of a premature stop is to end the ride cycle early and let the ride stop in the normal fashion.

-Rob

 

[AstareGod]

Thanks Rob. You know obviously more about ride operations than I do, so thanks for sharing. It's safe to say that attractions in other parks are a lot more complicated than the ones at Typhoon & Blizzard with different operating guidelines that determine what should be done in a guest safety situation. All the more important that these CMs get the training they need in order to know what to do!

I'm not sure how attractions works in other parks, but at Blizzard as part of our training we had to learn how to open chairlift, which means checking each chair to make sure the lap bar lowered and locked into place, and also meant checking the e-stop buttons, lanyards (cords), and stop gates to make sure they all worked. I'm not saying Tomorrowland Attractions didn't train their CMs on where all the controls are for the TTA and Speedramp, but maybe this was overlooked if there are in fact new CMs in that area?

 

[The Empress Lilly]

This is so scary! Crowd control is a major safety issue. One group of people trying to get in, and another trying to get out is a recipe for disaster. As is piling up too many people in a cramped space. WDW really ought to have foolproof precautionary measures in place. If a ride, or any enclosed space, can't exit people, then it should immediately prevent people from moving in - not by relying on a college kid with a few weeks of training to do the right thing, but by the very design of the area.

I still have the image of Hillsborough disaster imprinted on my mind. To this very day, whenever a place feels too cramped (eyes greedy nightclub owners) I leave.

Also, call me stupid, but most offices and malls have emergency stop buttons on elevators and escalators. One big red button on the top of this escalator could've worked wonders, maybe? I know I am probably overlooking something...

 

[twilight mitsuk]

I was on RNRC recentley when we had to E-stop and dump the building because a rider wasn't sitting properly

 

[RiversideBunny]

This is a system problem and not one of individual CM's.

The TTA system needs to be changed, in procedures and possibly hardware, so that an unusual stoppage at the top is coordinated with a stoppage of the ramp going up to the TTA loading area.

WDW has people who study things like this.
They need to examine the TTA area with this problem in mind and make real changes.

:king:

 

[AstareGod]

How about an infrared photo sensor at the very top of the speedramp? That way, if the sensor is blocked by someone standing there for a few seconds, the speedramp gradually slows and then stops until the person blocking the sensor moves. (Hope Disney really runs with this idea.)

 

[devoy1701]

Don't know if it was mentioned...technically TTA should never get back up if people proceed at normal walking pace and the CM insures to place guests in every single car....lately I've noticed they space people out alittle bit or are not on top of things enough to load every car.

But There is a whole 20-25ft of queue at the top to the ramp that they more often then not do not use...The CMs usually has it set up to where as soon as you come off the speedramp, you hang a right and board the TTA, but there is room to go down and back along the speedramp up on the boarding level. I often feel that that part of the queue should ALWAYS be opened whether there are crowds or not... I have seen the small part of the queue get backed up many times to the point of people start squeezing in to each other like sardines...

definitely not a good system.

 

[marni1971]

Bit of a bump, but for a future project myself and a PotC CM have been doing some digging. Regarding the discussion on page one of this thread, the PotC second load channel was removed sometime between mid 1991 and 1995. Hopefully we can narrow it down some more.

 

[PhilharMagician]

^^ Martin that would be interesting if you can come up with more info. How long did this 2nd zone operate? Pics? Did the right side lane only load the old right canal? Now the right side loads to the left. Neeeeeddd mooooooorreeeee iiinnnfffffffooooooooooo.

 

[marni1971]

The second load ran from opening (December 1973) until the timeframe I just mentioned. The current load worked as now, but with loading one boat at a time (guests still crossed the bridge to get to it) and the second load ran direct from the queue, splitting before the bridge.

2 video grabs:

 

[EpcotServo]

Yeah, if you look when you're there in person, you can really make out alot of the infrastructure of the second canal.

 

[PhilharMagician]

Yeah, I guess I will need to look the area over next time I'm there. It is hard to really understand the pics with the quality.

Thanks for posting the info Martin.:wave:

 

[ann0d]

Thank God you were there to help those kids! Hats off to you! Happy Thanksgiving!

 

[DisneyMusician2]

I seem to remember a CM being at the top and bottom of the walkway, but it has been awhile and perhaps that was considered an inefficient use of CM resources.

Just was curious if anyone else remembered this.