6 injured on Kali Rapids at Animal Kingdom

Yikes! Not good...

Not to nit pick too much but calling a boat or a raft a "flume" is pretty sloppy reporting.

Definitions of flume on the Web:
* A natural or man-made channel that diverts water.
* A constructed channel lined with erosion-resistant materials used to convey water on the steep grades without erosion.
* An artificial waterway to conduct surface water over broken ground to prevent its entering the workings.
* An artificial channel, inclined as a chute and used to hold running water on which logs are floated from one place to another.

i don't see a problem

-- an unfortunate accident this was

She said the company will use an alternative method to evacuate people from the ride if necessary.

Seems like they should have a way to over-ride a faulty sensor...and send the raft on its way... In terms of relative risk for guest injury...getting them out of the boat on a steep incline and riding the rescue platform just appears more problematic...to say nothing of a faulty platform.

I'm sure there is a computer safety system that does not allow manual over-ride. This is one of those rare situations where the safety features might have made things worse than they needed to be.

...just speculating!

*** This post was edited by Jeffrey R Smith 5/30/2007 10:20:58 AM ***

"One of the rides' sensors caused the flumes to stop as they were traveling up a steep incline..."

That's sort of like a reporter writing a story about a coaster that had multiple trains stuck on a lift hill and referring to the trains as "rollercoasters".

Regardless people were sent to the hospital. This made international news, it's a shame.

It's a ride at a Disney theme park. Of course it made international news.

Luckily they didn't fall from the platform onto the wooden conveyor. If they had, they would've slid all the way to the bottom of the lift and into the water intake pool. The whole lift area freaked me out when I had to walk the ride during construction. You could easily wedge your foot/ankle in between one of the wood slats that make up the conveyor.

Of course it's international news. From experience - The Orlando Sentinel has sloppy reporting. This is a classic example of it!

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She said the company will use an alternative method to evacuate people from the ride if necessary.

Seems like they should have a way to over-ride a faulty sensor...and send the raft on its way... In terms of relative risk for guest injury...getting them out of the boat on a steep incline and riding the rescue platform just appears more problematic...to say nothing of a faulty platform.

I'm sure there is a computer safety system that does not allow manual over-ride. This is one of those rare situations where the safety features might have made things worse than they needed to be.

...just speculating!

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We do have manul override systems in place on all of the rides, but they can only be performed by engineering services. Which, in this case, I can not figure out why they did not do it. But hey, I only work over in the magic kingdom, so who's to say the technology for that ride is the same as our rides.

"That's sort of like a reporter writing a story about a coaster that had multiple trains stuck on a lift hill and referring to the trains as "rollercoasters"."

Read the article again:

"One of the rides' sensors caused the flumes to stop as they were traveling up a steep incline"

There are two words I've made bold. Flumes to me implies the ride itself; i.e. the water flow stopped. They implies the riders; i.e. the riders were travelling up a steep incline.

I recommend you become a doctor so you can complain about how unrealistic all the procedures on ER are. ;)

^"They", to me means the rafts, er, "flumes". Unless it means the riders. The sensors probably weren't moving anywhere... ;)

Probably not the best use of a pronoun. Also not the proper usage of the word flume (esp. considering it's a rapids ride, LOL). But certainly no worse than a malfunctioning "safety" platform.

^exactly... ;)

Don't get me started on the 's being used for plural everywhere these days...

does anyone know if the ride has reopened yet?