Power Outage
- Thread starter Andy
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Totally forgot about them owning the FD
If you haven't already, read the Wiki on Reedy Creek Improvement District. It is somewhat mortifying how money and politics control the world.
Spinners use either pneumatic or hydraulic lift cylinders to raise the arms and in turn the RVs. Each cylinder will have a restriction valve at the air/fluid port to restrict the rate the air/fluid exits the cylinder. One of the purposes of this valve is to control the rate at which the cylinder lowers during a failure. The failure could be a failed pump, a blown line, any other systems failures of even a loss of power.
- Jul 14, 2010
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I have seen One Fish when the power went out. The fish stay up in the air and the techs have to come out and drain the cylinder's manually. Little time consuming but safest.
Also to cover the coaster question, as was said, the brakes are by default in the closed position. On mummy for example they have pop up breaks. By defualt they are up, when a car approaches they go down. So with the power out the next one wouldn't go down and the car would stop. On Hulk and Dragons which use friction breaks on a fin under the car the end of the friction breaks are Y shaped so the fin slides right into the break.
It was pretty insightful for Walt to do this and plan for the future development, pretty crafty though
Reminds me of Vatican City
^ Yep, and Disney has continued to give Mayors and Governor's the ability to preside over ribbon cutting ceremonies. The coming WD theater will be one of the newest.
HTF, this thread is a perfect example of the PM I sent you last night.
HTF, this thread is a perfect example of the PM I sent you last night.
Universal has a plan, for power outage. Some things have backup generators, but most just use emergency lighting. Like others have said rides default to full brakes, and Yes operators are to manually E-stop the ride so it does not start up. Until it is known that power will not be restored guest on rides typically stay, unless they are in the station. Once operations determines a long restore time, then a full evac will begin.
Shops are to have guest leave and doors locked, restaurants can have people stay if there is ambient lighting. But food operations are shut down.
During opening season, we had several outages. Mostly due to Hulk, Poseidon, or doom causing too much draw on the service, typically only affected the individual transformers. It sucked when Hulk did because it would take out parts of POE too. My office we were required to stay in the dark, until our dept manager came from the USF offices.
The worse is a full hurricane closure. They told my department, prepare to stay on property. We would have cots set up on the soundstages. I was released to go home, but had to return as soon as possible after things were safe. My team leads stayed on site for 5 days.
As for Disney, yes the emergency lights are checked annually by RCFD, but some buildings i have heard have emergency lighting issues. Usually after 1 big incident, risk management takes over to replace/repair.
Shops are to have guest leave and doors locked, restaurants can have people stay if there is ambient lighting. But food operations are shut down.
During opening season, we had several outages. Mostly due to Hulk, Poseidon, or doom causing too much draw on the service, typically only affected the individual transformers. It sucked when Hulk did because it would take out parts of POE too. My office we were required to stay in the dark, until our dept manager came from the USF offices.
The worse is a full hurricane closure. They told my department, prepare to stay on property. We would have cots set up on the soundstages. I was released to go home, but had to return as soon as possible after things were safe. My team leads stayed on site for 5 days.
As for Disney, yes the emergency lights are checked annually by RCFD, but some buildings i have heard have emergency lighting issues. Usually after 1 big incident, risk management takes over to replace/repair.
- Mar 16, 2010
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And I thought the Hulk ran on a completely different system to avoid that very scenario. Cool stuff here, thanks for chiming in!! :thumbs:
I will say, though, that there are a few Arrow coasters from the 70s and 80s where, for whatever reason, the brakes were designed to be open and required air pressure to close. I believe they have all been appropriately modified, but they were out there at one point. I don't remember which ones, but I know the conversation happened with a few friends and on a coaster forum back when Magnum had an incident thanks to rain helping it to slide through a brake and the topic of certain Arrow coasters having reverse designed brakes came up.
- Oct 14, 2012
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Im not sure about the other info, but shops are not evacuated..they can still do business in a power outtage using crash kits to do manual transactions for cash and credit cards. The open doors provide enough light for guests to stay inside
Why was there a line? Did Uni refund their money?
I cannot begin to comprehend waiting in a line to complain about waiting in a line.
I cannot begin to comprehend waiting in a line to complain about waiting in a line.
- Dec 8, 2009
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Where is Spideyfreak when you need him
Vacation...
WARNING... EXTREMELY NERDY POST AHEAD!!!
Roller coasters are interesting. An E-Stop and power outage are pretty much the same thing. Everything is designed to be fail safe in case of a power cut. ROTM's brake calipers are spring loaded shut, and require air pressure to open. The skid brakes work the same way I believe, only they move up and down. There are two types of magnetic brakes used on ROTM and Rockit: stationary and actuating. The actuating brakes can retract and disengage from the magnetic field of the RV, letting it glide without resistance. Air is required to retract them.
So in a nutshell for Rockit and ROTM: E-STOP/Power Cut causes all the air to release from the system, closing the calipers and popping up the magnetic brakes.
B&M's from what I understand use air pressure to open AND close the calipers. The valves are set so that if there is no power, the air is directed in a way so that it dumps from the compressor/local air tank and closes the brakes. FYI: Hulk & Dragons have not been retrofitted with magnetic brakes.
Vekomas and Arrows are interesting. There is a leaf spring to open the calipers, and air is required to close them. Releasing the air opens the brake. Each caliper has a separate air tank ready to charge the brake. This tank must have enough air to charge brake before it releases. That's the fail safe. In an E-Stop/power cut, the air in the local tank and compressor is released into the brakes at the same time. At night on older Arrows, the trains had to be chained/chocked because the system would eventually loose pressure without the compressor on. Newer Arrows have a Premier style brake caliper to park trains.
There ya go...
- Oct 14, 2012
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Beause people were pissed!! They cancelled the parade and fireworks show and several rides went down...parts of the park were blacked out for an hour and a half!
The problem is a lot worse happens every other day just because of rain. But because you can blame Universal for this moreso than weather, people wanted to squeeze out some perks from them (mostly Express passes from what I understand).
The kicker is that Universal extended the park hours by half an hour, so all those people couldve been making up for their time lost rather than waiting to complain.
And just so everyone knows... the theme parks are right up there with hospitals for the county and city getting their power back on. Otherwise, there would not be a need so many hospitals and fire departments if the parks weren't there. It is an ironic dichotomy of priorities.
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Wow. I did not know that. But it makes sense. I was working with a power company during and after Sandy. It was fun trying to explain to high paying customers why they weren't on as quickly as the hospitals other important facilities.
- Dec 8, 2009
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I have heard that back in the day, Spidey's emergency lighting was pretty dodgy. Supposedly there would be outages where the lights wouldn't come on. So the person in controls is sitting there with no lights, not cameras, with a few hundred guests in the building and he/she can't see anything. Guests could be climbing out of RVs and running all over the place and TMs wouldn't know.
Not saying any of that is fact, but it is a random story somebody told me.
Not saying any of that is fact, but it is a random story somebody told me.
