Two coasts: One very different world

[Tom]

I guess they'll have to put this on the punch list.

Yes. Or warranty, if they have already gotten Substantial Completion....but I doubt they have.

 

[JustChillinBro]

Here's the "extent" of the damage:

http://i.minus.com/iDAEQ8BmWxIbq.jpg

Five seconds until they fall off?

 

[Lee]

lol. mousemerf is insane. You all know this. He just took a picture (probably without permission) from Sam/OrlandoParksNews and jumped to 18,000 conclusions about children flying off Dumbo into the Casey Jr. Water and Pee Zone because the elephants (might be) scraping the edges of the concrete. He hasn't even seen it himself.

That sounds about right....Lol

It will be interesting to see how long it takes to get fixed, though.
Same with the water feature.

 

[bstiles]

Probably the same time they fix the yeti because no one is going to notice and even if they do how many to you think will file an official complaint

 

[cslafferty]

Note to self: Update will before going to WDW in Dec.

 

[Clever Name]

If they just took a little duct tape and stuck some heavy grit sandpaper over the scuff marks on Dumbo (sandpaper side facing the pit wall), after a few days the problem will be solved. They'll then just have to do a little touch up work.

 

[cslafferty]

They should put big Mickey Band-aids on Dumbo's boo boos!

 

[wannab@dis]

Well, that was some fun for a few pages... the doom and gloomers find a some scraped paint, the pack rallies and moves in howling about the dying children and proof that TDO is evil, just evil.

What a pack a buffoons.

 

[flynnibus]

I WILL say that if this is currently going on, I'd be shocked... Ride Engineering (or whatever their department is called, I'm not sure) would literally be putting their necks in a proverbial guillotine by checking this off each morning. If I were a supervisor for the area, there's no WAY I'd allow my CM's to operate the ride like this. Way too much liability, no matter the level of danger.

Looks like something that was already being discussed in the dumbo thread
http://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/casey-jr-double-dumbo-unveiled.839240/page-4

You can see in the photos there they had a high spot where they removed some tiles presumably to mitigate the issue.. back at least before June 15 according to the poster's photos.

Now back to our regularly scheduled pitchfork and torches recruitment...

 

[xdan0920]

OMG....seriously? This thread is comical.

I tried to keep my mouth shut, but I can't help it. I'll "apologize" in advance to those who are offended...but anyone who is jumping to the conclusion that this was a design error, or that it's because they spent less money on the ride, is an absolute fool.

Plain and simple - the inside clearance diameter of the pit is not what it should be. That's it. Maybe they drew it an inch too small. Maybe the carpenter laying out the forms cut 1" on his tape measure (common practice) when they were pulling the radius and he didn't tell the guy on the other end of the tape. Maybe they didn't account for the thickness of the tile and grout. Maybe there's a portion of the pit wall that was poured out of plumb and it kicks in ever so slightly at the top. Maybe when they cast the new Dumbos in Central Shops, their mounting bracket template was off a 1/2". Maybe the spinner arms were fabricated a tiny bit too long.

I've been on projects where something similar to nearly every one of these possibilities has happened. There's one chance it's the designer's fault. But there's a hundred chances it's a contractor's fault. And that doesn't come from being "cheap"....it's just a friggin ERROR! It happens on every single construction project in the world.

Sigh.

It has a cheap feeling about it. I don't know if it is actually cheap or not.

I don't know who they may have outsourced the construction to, or even if they did. But it seems whoever did the job, did not do the best work. That implies that the best people were not involved. Usually the best people tend to cost the most, and the quality dips along with the price when you go down the ladder. It's just a logical thought process.

I realize errors happen all the time, in every project. This situation, to me at least, is unacceptable. How do they get to the point that an attraction is operating with guests aboard, like this?

 

[OrangeTree]

Yes, they did need a second Dumbo spinner.

NEED.

It is a Walt original that amazingly still draws huge lines 57 years later. It's an iconic attraction, right up there with Space Mountain, that visually symbolizes a Disney park, appearing in nearly TV commercial, brochure, and promotional spot.

Unfortunately, due to its iconic popularity, wait time often exceeds an hour. And by its nature, it's biggest fans are toddlers and kids who aren't tall enough to enjoy many other iconic Disney attractions yet.

Hour waits + Florida heat/humidity + kids = uncomfortable kids, parents, and others standing in line beside them. (Name one other attraction that has such a miserable queue with such long waits for such a short, kid-friendly ride?)

Disney NEEDED to increase the capacity and make the queue more comfortable.

They've already added extra arms to the spinner decades ago. They simply couldn't jam any more on, or create 4-person cars.

They only way to increase capacity was to double Dumbo. That alone should cut a 60 minute wait down to 30.

Then they built an indoor queue to make that 30 minutes more pleasant. Then, rather than filling it with switchbacks, they gave kids a place to run around so they werent climbing on the rails and bumping into people waiting ahead of them (which even the best behaved kids with responsible parents will do during a fun day at a sweltering theme park)

Doubling Dumbo had the added benefit of requiring it to be re-located, allowing them to create a more logical and well-designed layout of FL.

The "cheap" option would have been to leave Dumbo exactly where it was, exactly how it was. That would have been darn cheap. Free.

But they spent money to improve a classic that visitors clearly want to ride.

Should money have been allocated differently for other FLE projects? That's obviously up for debate.

But Doubling Dumbo and adding a kid-friendly indoor queue is a no-brainer.

Yes... Need. On an operational standpoint. And on that level, I think they did a wonderful job. The new area looks nice.

But... is this the best that Disney can do? Bring us fixes to large, broken (albeit, in this case, popular) park problems? Is Disney's next best thing really a fancy spinner?

The point of this is giving praise where it is due and holding Disney to their highest possible standard. New Dumbo is nice. Can't fault it.

But I can fault Disney for not going beyond this and adding more and fixing more. No, I don't think that FLE is anything in lieu of that. It is just one big, good looking, fix.

 

[OrangeTree]

i never thought of that.. what will you see? the top of the queue building... and trees?

...Space Mountain rising over you.... Woo hoo for Fantasyland.

 

[OrangeTree]

It's all good though. People can still DO/RIDE. That is all that matters.

While show quality suffers. Show before efficiency. They need to shut Dumbo down and fix it/repaint before anyone should be let back on.

 

[GoofGoof]

Not to defend anyone on here calling anyone else names or using derogatory comments....but a lot of us WDWmagic veterans are a tiny bit on edge recently, given that there has been a massive influx of new members, conveniently at the same time that K-12 schools let out for the summer.

There is a lot of freshly juvenile posting on here, and it comes across as trolling due to the lack of experience and knowledge these new members possess. All they're doing is getting under the skin of those of us who not only have been discussing these topics in depth for months (or years), but who have also experienced the pre-2000 WDW.

As WDW1974, and others, have indicated, people who were not exposed to Walt Disney World before 1995 honestly do not know what the rest of us are whining about....and we can't reasonably expect you to understand.

It's something I take into consideration when reading many of the posts made by "youth" - but when someone 18 or under tries to argue over the current state of WDW with those of us who visited the parks in the 70s, 80s or 90s....the argument should stop, because the younger generation can't possibly understand where we're coming from.

Just out of curiosity how many posts do i need before I qualify as a veteran and my opinions start to count? I see your point that someone who was not alive in the good old days can not possibly compare then to now, but that doesn't mean they aren't entitled to an opinion. On both sides there have been many off topic and generally hostile posts. I am having a hard time even figuring out what is being talked about.

 

[wannab@dis]

Just out of curiosity how many posts do i need before I qualify as a veteran and my opinions start to count? I see your point that someone who was not alive in the good old days can not possibly compare then to now, but that doesn't mean they aren't entitled to an opinion. On both sides there have been many off topic and generally hostile posts. I am having a hard time even figuring out what is being talked about.

You'll be accepted when you only post from their approved list of talking points.

 

[Tom]

It has a cheap feeling about it. I don't know if it is actually cheap or not.

I don't know who they may have outsourced the construction to, or even if they did. But it seems whoever did the job, did not do the best work. That implies that the best people were not involved. Usually the best people tend to cost the most, and the quality dips along with the price when you go down the ladder. It's just a logical thought process.

I realize errors happen all the time, in every project. This situation, to me at least, is unacceptable. How do they get to the point that an attraction is operating with guests aboard, like this?

I don't know how Disney goes about letting their construction contracts. They don't actually do the work in-house (BVCC is a pseudo company that they use to do the "secret" work, and minor tasks), they contract with large General Contractors or Construction Managers, who then let Subcontracts to individual trade contractors. I don't know how much bidding they do, or if they negotiate. Even if they bid the work out, they don't have to take the low bidder in each category, because they're not a public entity.

With this said, if this was a construction error, even the most elite and highest priced trade contractor can make an error like this. And, it could be a collection of errors made by different parties. Maybe the circular pit isn't perfectly round (it's very difficult to make a perfect circle in real life). Maybe the surveyor laid out the center of the spinner off by a half inch.

My dad and another one of my co-workers worked for the elite general contractor in the state of Indiana back in the late 70s/early 80s. They were laying out (surveying) the footings for a building that was over 1000' long. When the steel arrived, they found that it didn't fit because the anchor bolts in the footings were off by a tenth of a foot. Why? Because the surveying crew who used the chain before them broke it, and just welded two links together rather than fessing up to breaking a $500 surveying chain. So, they had to modify hundreds of pieces of steel to make it work.

Pooh happens. These Dumbos are scraping the side of the pit a tiny bit (and OMG, not nearly to the point where a catastrophic failure is about to occur), and the reason could be one of a million things.

Just out of curiosity how many posts do i need before I qualify as a veteran and my opinions start to count? I see your point that someone who was not alive in the good old days can not possibly compare then to now, but that doesn't mean they aren't entitled to an opinion. On both sides there have been many off topic and generally hostile posts. I am having a hard time even figuring out what is being talked about.

Quantity of posts and length of time as a member aren't relevant if a member is providing quality posts. There are just so many new members all of a sudden, and many of them are just here to argue or voice opinions based on minimal experience with the subject matter. Not everyone...just many.

Everything is relative, including the state of the WDW theme parks. Sure, relative to a couple years ago, the MK is looking pretty spiffy with the new Main Street and Frontierland facades, a couple new kiddie rides in Toon Town v4.0, and the new FLE that's about to be unveiled. But when you compare it to what it was like in the mid-90s, it's depressing.

And that goes for the other parks too. In a 10 year span, they added two theme parks, and added rides and attractions to those parks. As someone else stated, in the last 10 years we've gotten a few attractions, with EE being the most elaborate (and it's broken).

Yes, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but when someone comes into a thread that was started by someone who has been visiting WDW since the 70s, and tries to argue points based on only having taken trips since the late 90s or early 2000s, there's just no point.

 

[xdan0920]

I don't know how Disney goes about letting their construction contracts. They don't actually do the work in-house (BVCC is a pseudo company that they use to do the "secret" work, and minor tasks), they contract with large General Contractors or Construction Managers, who then let Subcontracts to individual trade contractors. I don't know how much bidding they do, or if they negotiate. Even if they bid the work out, they don't have to take the low bidder in each category, because they're not a public entity.

With this said, if this was a construction error, even the most elite and highest priced trade contractor can make an error like this. And, it could be a collection of errors made by different parties. Maybe the circular pit isn't perfectly round (it's very difficult to make a perfect circle in real life). Maybe the surveyor laid out the center of the spinner off by a half inch.

My dad and another one of my co-workers worked for the elite general contractor in the state of Indiana back in the late 70s/early 80s. They were laying out (surveying) the footings for a building that was over 1000' long. When the steel arrived, they found that it didn't fit because the anchor bolts in the footings were off by a tenth of a foot. Why? Because the surveying crew who used the chain before them broke it, and just welded two links together rather than fessing up to breaking a $500 surveying chain. So, they had to modify hundreds of pieces of steel to make it work.

Pooh happens. These Dumbos are scraping the side of the pit a tiny bit (and OMG, not nearly to the point where a catastrophic failure is about to occur), and the reason could be one of a million things.

Ok, you have me convinced cheapness was almost certainly not a factor.

I think we can agree though, that it should never have gotten to this point. The issue, to me, is not that they messed up building the spinners. Which I think is crazy, but okay, it happens. The issue is, it is on stage now, being used by guests. Yes, the slight scraping is not going to cause catastrophic failures, but if it is being E-stopped multiple times per day, plus it looks real bad, I think they probably should shut it down and fix it. Really, they should have figured this out in testing and fixed it then.

 

[rioriz]

This conversation reminds me of the argument between those who debate which decade of music was better...it is all subjective because there is emotion involved...most of it relates to earlier childhood memories and those cannot be debated

 

[Clever Name]

This conversation reminds me of the argument between those who debate which decade of music was better...it is all subjective because there is emotion involved...most of it relates to earlier childhood memories and those cannot be debated

You can’t beat the classics such as Bach, Beethoven and Chet Atkins.

 

[Tom]

Ok, you have me convinced cheapness was almost certainly not a factor.

I think we can agree though, that it should never have gotten to this point. The issue, to me, is not that they messed up building the spinners. Which I think is crazy, but okay, it happens. The issue is, it is on stage now, being used by guests. Yes, the slight scraping is not going to cause catastrophic failures, but if it is being E-stopped multiple times per day, plus it looks real bad, I think they probably should shut it down and fix it. Really, they should have figured this out in testing and fixed it then.

I agree 100% that it should have not reached this point. How would they not have noticed this during testing and start-up? Or did the entire spinner become out of balance once loaded with guests?

I'm still wondering why the supposed e-stops are happening. You e-stop a ride when something goes wrong DURING the ride. Is it because guests are lowering their vehicles all the way and they're scraping DURING the ride cycle? That's all I can figure.