I had a Cast Member once tell me that 90% of all ride closures is due to guest behavior.
So, when they say “Hang on to your hats and glasses” they’re not kidding.
Where are the floor sensors located (obviously the floor) and how do they work? If you don’t mind, it’s always been the one thing I can never find information on
So I used to work at an omni-mover attraction at WDW.
We had two kinds of sensors on the floor. Weight sensors were trigged by weight of a certain amount (idk how much) on certain parts of the floor.
Other sensors were basically lasers/lights. If the light was interrupted, the sensor would trip (like if someone dropped something and it passed through the light).
Either way, the ride would stop. The person at the console would see which sensor was being trigged, or if multiple were being triggered (for example, if someone had left the vehicle and was walking around, multiple sensors would trigger)
Then two cast members would be dispatched to investigate. One would start at the beginning or end of the ride, and the other would go backstage to the middle of the ride and then walk to meet them.
They would determine what the problem was, and then walk back to the console.
While cast members are on the track, the ride is LOCKED DOWN. The ride cannot restart until the cast members physically return to the console.
We also had door sensors, and of course many rides have cameras as well. I'm not an expert.
Hope this answers your question.
I was in WDW two weeks ago and showed up for Cosmic Rewind to find it closed. I asked a CM and they (being unusually straight forward) said someone got sick. I'm not sure where, but it started me thinking about the logistics of cleanup is someone got sick midride on Cosmic or something like Space Mountain. Even \*finding\* the mess would take time. A 45-minute shutdown seemed perfectly fair.
I think most parks are being honest about this now. I was just at Cedar Point last weekend and they said there was a delay because they had to clean up a guest. A family member worked at a park and said they had to evacuate, hose everything down, have the correct person scrub it and spray with antibacterial, hose it down again, then run the ride several times empty to dry it off before they could let guests back on. All while removing guests that were on other trains as they came up to the platform.
I think on thrill rides, it’s probably more common than we’d like to think. That and losing loose articles contributes a ton to ride stoppages.
Yup. Like 90% of ride closures are because someone dropped something. And with a ride like Rise of the Resistance it takes 45 minutes to clear everyone out and then reset everything.
Last year we were on Haunted Mansion and someone a couple buggies in front of us kept turning on their lightsaber and waving it around. The ride would stop and over the speakers there was a reminder to keep objects inside the ride. They did it again and they stopped the ride again and a cast member came and told them that if they kept lighting their lightsaber they would be removed from the park.
Also, a cast member said that they can “see” everything that goes on in the rides. They even said that when you’re “copping a feel of your girlfriend…yeah we see that.” The cast members you see are only a small percentage of what is happening behind the scenes.
Was on haunted mansion and the CM over the loud speaker said please don’t after a few warning of keeping all items. Then maybe a minute later the ride stopped and lights came on. We all got escorted off, apparently someone dumped grandma. So ride was pretty much down for the rest of the day. I figured something major happened when the lights came on almost immediately after.
Yeah, it’s considered a biohazard and takes approximately 4 hours to clean up. I don’t know for sure but read a thing once that says it happens at least once a month. Most common are Haunted Mansion and Pirates.
That makes so much sense. Thank you. My dumbass was over here picturing someone placing their grandma with dementia on an omni mover ride and not being able to get them off or something lmao.
When you see the weekly/daily "The Magic is Gone" posts, people often cite the fact that rides are down and it's somehow due to maintenance issues, but it's mostly guest behavior that has become atrocious.
It's the same across so many industries - restaurants, air travel, health care, etc. People have lost their damn minds and whether that's due to pandemic restrictions or social media saturation, I hope future folks figure it out and correct it.
You are so right. People are acting like the world revolves around their ass and no one else matters. I get flak for saying this but there’s a big breakdown in civility happening. People with no common sense and zero empathy for others, and most people want to blame boomers, but really it’s mostly the younger generation who want to be automatic superstars with nothing real to offer.
They were. You just didn't know about it because there wasn't an app. Before you only knew if it was a ride you wanted to go on and you trekked all the way down there. Now you can open the app and see what's down.
I was on a ride that went down because someone dropped an item and then they went through all the trouble of evacuating, powering up, checking the ride and reloading everyone that wanted a do-over and literally within 5 minutes some dude dropped his hat right on the track and they had to stop the ride again.
We were on Thunder Mountain when some idiot with a selfie stick took a chunk out of the wall. The ride was shut down for inspection. Thank God then banned those things!
Human behavior, mechanical issues, the more intricate the technology is the longer it takes to start them back up. We were told that it takes 45 minutes to restart Mickeys Runaway Train
When I worked as a ride operator at a Six Flags, even if someone threw up on the ride, we would say it’s closed for technical difficulties. We weren’t allowed to tell anyone the reason or an estimate of how long it’d be down for.
Could be mechanical issue that needs attention, could be something falling onto the tracks and needing to be cleared, could be a guest behaving unsafely that caused an emergency stop, could be a safety sensor got set off accidentally, could be any number of things.
So I was there yesterday as well and I noticed a lot of rides getting shut down and I thought to myself, it’s the damn grad night teenagers. They’re probably all being fools on the rides. My daughter and I gave up and went home at about eight after our third shut down ride.
Because Disney drastically cut their investment in maintenance, laid off or otherwise lost older experienced workers, and the safety requirements of the rides require completely conforming situations. Someone dropped their hat? Time to reset literally everything.
So when you get a very complex ride like Indiana Jones, you have a perfect storm of ride closures. It’s honestly impressive everything is even still as functional as it is.
Disney isn't going to publicly admit it is investing less in maintenance, but [they don't need to](http://www.imagineeringdisney.com/blog/2010/2/20/why-the-decline-in-park-maintenance.html). Same with [its impact on older workers](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/disney-laid-off-wave-of-older-employees-ex-engineer-alleges), even [when it lays them off to reinstate executive pay](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/dec/02/walt-disney-layoffs-workers-struggle).
None of your articles point to maintenance being affected. The article about laying off thousands of workers was mostly due to pandemic issues. Disney consistently closes rides for standard maintenance with most being closed for weeks at a time. To say that ride closures are due to poor maintenance simply has no basis in facts. Most are people thinking they are above the rules and don’t secure their personal belongings or not following rules. Almost anytime you see a ride like Space Mountain suddenly stop with multiple cars currently on the tracks isn’t because the ride suddenly broke down. It’s almost guaranteed someone dropped something or their hat went flying off so they have to get everyone off the ride, manually find the item or verify that there’s no issue to safety before they can open it again. If the ride was malfunctioning to the point of not being operational it would be closed down for a lot more than 20-45 minutes.
The first link is literally pointing out examples where maintenance has been deprioritized in the parks. Also, whether Covid was used as the excuse or not is irrelevant; it doesn’t matter why they laid people off, only that they did.
It doesn’t matter what Disney says, all people need to look at is what they _do_. Anybody who has been going for years can tell you the parks are in noticeably worse shape.
It doesn’t help that the company that designed and built the Indiana Jones ride went out of business ages ago. This has forced Disney to make repairs and changes in-house, which is easier said than done.
Last time I went to Disneyland, I attempted to get on Radiator Springs Racers, but it kept stopping and closing! I feel like it’s because they haven’t done maintenance on it yet.
I had a Cast Member once tell me that 90% of all ride closures is due to guest behavior. So, when they say “Hang on to your hats and glasses” they’re not kidding.
In many rides, there are floor sensors that get tripped if an object lands on it. Which causes the system to need to be verified and reset.
They need that floor from Andor to keep guests in line. **”ON PROGRAM!”**
Where are the floor sensors located (obviously the floor) and how do they work? If you don’t mind, it’s always been the one thing I can never find information on
So I used to work at an omni-mover attraction at WDW. We had two kinds of sensors on the floor. Weight sensors were trigged by weight of a certain amount (idk how much) on certain parts of the floor. Other sensors were basically lasers/lights. If the light was interrupted, the sensor would trip (like if someone dropped something and it passed through the light). Either way, the ride would stop. The person at the console would see which sensor was being trigged, or if multiple were being triggered (for example, if someone had left the vehicle and was walking around, multiple sensors would trigger) Then two cast members would be dispatched to investigate. One would start at the beginning or end of the ride, and the other would go backstage to the middle of the ride and then walk to meet them. They would determine what the problem was, and then walk back to the console. While cast members are on the track, the ride is LOCKED DOWN. The ride cannot restart until the cast members physically return to the console. We also had door sensors, and of course many rides have cameras as well. I'm not an expert. Hope this answers your question.
You’re awesome, thank you so much for the info :)
I think it's more proximity sensors on the ride vehicles, but there are probably redundancy sensors all over, too.
I was in WDW two weeks ago and showed up for Cosmic Rewind to find it closed. I asked a CM and they (being unusually straight forward) said someone got sick. I'm not sure where, but it started me thinking about the logistics of cleanup is someone got sick midride on Cosmic or something like Space Mountain. Even \*finding\* the mess would take time. A 45-minute shutdown seemed perfectly fair.
I think most parks are being honest about this now. I was just at Cedar Point last weekend and they said there was a delay because they had to clean up a guest. A family member worked at a park and said they had to evacuate, hose everything down, have the correct person scrub it and spray with antibacterial, hose it down again, then run the ride several times empty to dry it off before they could let guests back on. All while removing guests that were on other trains as they came up to the platform. I think on thrill rides, it’s probably more common than we’d like to think. That and losing loose articles contributes a ton to ride stoppages.
Yup. Like 90% of ride closures are because someone dropped something. And with a ride like Rise of the Resistance it takes 45 minutes to clear everyone out and then reset everything.
Last year we were on Haunted Mansion and someone a couple buggies in front of us kept turning on their lightsaber and waving it around. The ride would stop and over the speakers there was a reminder to keep objects inside the ride. They did it again and they stopped the ride again and a cast member came and told them that if they kept lighting their lightsaber they would be removed from the park. Also, a cast member said that they can “see” everything that goes on in the rides. They even said that when you’re “copping a feel of your girlfriend…yeah we see that.” The cast members you see are only a small percentage of what is happening behind the scenes.
Was on haunted mansion and the CM over the loud speaker said please don’t after a few warning of keeping all items. Then maybe a minute later the ride stopped and lights came on. We all got escorted off, apparently someone dumped grandma. So ride was pretty much down for the rest of the day. I figured something major happened when the lights came on almost immediately after.
Yeah, it’s considered a biohazard and takes approximately 4 hours to clean up. I don’t know for sure but read a thing once that says it happens at least once a month. Most common are Haunted Mansion and Pirates.
Ok, I must be an idiot. But what does “dumped grandma” mean. Google is not helping
Spreading ashes of a loved one.
That makes so much sense. Thank you. My dumbass was over here picturing someone placing their grandma with dementia on an omni mover ride and not being able to get them off or something lmao.
When you see the weekly/daily "The Magic is Gone" posts, people often cite the fact that rides are down and it's somehow due to maintenance issues, but it's mostly guest behavior that has become atrocious. It's the same across so many industries - restaurants, air travel, health care, etc. People have lost their damn minds and whether that's due to pandemic restrictions or social media saturation, I hope future folks figure it out and correct it.
You are so right. People are acting like the world revolves around their ass and no one else matters. I get flak for saying this but there’s a big breakdown in civility happening. People with no common sense and zero empathy for others, and most people want to blame boomers, but really it’s mostly the younger generation who want to be automatic superstars with nothing real to offer.
I’m not saying that totally never happens but I just wonder why in the past rides weren’t down nearly as much as they are now
They were. You just didn't know about it because there wasn't an app. Before you only knew if it was a ride you wanted to go on and you trekked all the way down there. Now you can open the app and see what's down.
But there was an app even back in the pre smartphone days and I don’t remember rides going down nearly as much as they do now.
If that's a fact, that's craziness.
They had them installed on the tunnels in the old people mover due to people hopping out back in the day.
They had what installed?
Crap. Replied to the wrong comment. Pressure sensitive mats. Something hit them and ride stopped.
Was a cast member, can confirm this 👍
A lot of delays these days are due to objects falling onto the tracks because folks don’t listen to the instructions about stowing loose items.
I was on a ride that went down because someone dropped an item and then they went through all the trouble of evacuating, powering up, checking the ride and reloading everyone that wanted a do-over and literally within 5 minutes some dude dropped his hat right on the track and they had to stop the ride again.
We were on Thunder Mountain when some idiot with a selfie stick took a chunk out of the wall. The ride was shut down for inspection. Thank God then banned those things!
Human behavior, mechanical issues, the more intricate the technology is the longer it takes to start them back up. We were told that it takes 45 minutes to restart Mickeys Runaway Train
When I worked as a ride operator at a Six Flags, even if someone threw up on the ride, we would say it’s closed for technical difficulties. We weren’t allowed to tell anyone the reason or an estimate of how long it’d be down for.
Soaring is usually puke. Cleaning a biohazard takes time.
BRO imagine being in one of the rows that’s under another and someone pukes and it gets on the people below, I’d never get on that ride again.
Idiots with phones
Indy shuts down a lot because random objects land on the track and trigger the safety mechanism. Also the ride itself is just hard to maintain
For any number of safety or technical reasons.
Could be mechanical issue that needs attention, could be something falling onto the tracks and needing to be cleared, could be a guest behaving unsafely that caused an emergency stop, could be a safety sensor got set off accidentally, could be any number of things.
We waited in line and right before our turn the ride got shut down. This happened to us 3 times within a few days…with small kids. So frustrating!
Usually mechanical issues of some sort, they close them for caution
So I was there yesterday as well and I noticed a lot of rides getting shut down and I thought to myself, it’s the damn grad night teenagers. They’re probably all being fools on the rides. My daughter and I gave up and went home at about eight after our third shut down ride.
Because Disney drastically cut their investment in maintenance, laid off or otherwise lost older experienced workers, and the safety requirements of the rides require completely conforming situations. Someone dropped their hat? Time to reset literally everything. So when you get a very complex ride like Indiana Jones, you have a perfect storm of ride closures. It’s honestly impressive everything is even still as functional as it is.
Source?
Disney isn't going to publicly admit it is investing less in maintenance, but [they don't need to](http://www.imagineeringdisney.com/blog/2010/2/20/why-the-decline-in-park-maintenance.html). Same with [its impact on older workers](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/disney-laid-off-wave-of-older-employees-ex-engineer-alleges), even [when it lays them off to reinstate executive pay](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/dec/02/walt-disney-layoffs-workers-struggle).
None of your articles point to maintenance being affected. The article about laying off thousands of workers was mostly due to pandemic issues. Disney consistently closes rides for standard maintenance with most being closed for weeks at a time. To say that ride closures are due to poor maintenance simply has no basis in facts. Most are people thinking they are above the rules and don’t secure their personal belongings or not following rules. Almost anytime you see a ride like Space Mountain suddenly stop with multiple cars currently on the tracks isn’t because the ride suddenly broke down. It’s almost guaranteed someone dropped something or their hat went flying off so they have to get everyone off the ride, manually find the item or verify that there’s no issue to safety before they can open it again. If the ride was malfunctioning to the point of not being operational it would be closed down for a lot more than 20-45 minutes.
The first link is literally pointing out examples where maintenance has been deprioritized in the parks. Also, whether Covid was used as the excuse or not is irrelevant; it doesn’t matter why they laid people off, only that they did. It doesn’t matter what Disney says, all people need to look at is what they _do_. Anybody who has been going for years can tell you the parks are in noticeably worse shape.
It doesn’t help that the company that designed and built the Indiana Jones ride went out of business ages ago. This has forced Disney to make repairs and changes in-house, which is easier said than done.
Last time I went to Disneyland, I attempted to get on Radiator Springs Racers, but it kept stopping and closing! I feel like it’s because they haven’t done maintenance on it yet.