Being stuck on a ride

ridemcoaster said:

Vater said:
Must be a Busch thing... :) The day I rode Griffon in '07 there were hornets (like, the size of Buicks) swarming the highest point of the ride just before the holding brake.

Its the area.. Welcome to Williamsburg.

I asked one the Animal Curators about that one day and she told me its the resonating of the coaster structure that oddly attracts them there. For a few years they stayed around Apollo's as well when the weather was right.

This isn't exclusive to Williamsburg - had this happen on Nitro at SFGAdv more than once. One particular fall weekend morning, we rode once and noticed a few bees. By the second ride 15 minutes later, the swarm had increased in size significantly. As soon as we got back to the station, we informed the ride ops what was going on up the lift hill and they shut down the ride. I think it was closed for most of the day after that.

It's not exclusive to Virginia or New Jersey either. I noticed it at the top of Kraken's lift.

Raven-Phile said:
Ah. I figured it out. At first I thought you were talking about one, then I realized you were talking about the other one a ways south, that used to be run by the same company. :)

Yes, you've figured it out. "Used to be run" is important. Tenses are very important: present tense for the coaster, past tense for the park. :)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

TiggerMan said:

This isn't exclusive to Williamsburg - had this happen on Nitro at SFGAdv more than once.

Thanks for pointing that out Captain Obvious.. ;)

No one said it was..

Wow that sounded grumpy, Ken. Did you wake up on the wrong side of the baud this morning? ;)

Nah.. Could have been the rough ride on Big Bad Wolf today at lunch ;)

I've only been evac'd twice, and the first was an easy walk down the lift hill of the Dania Beach Hurricane from about 1/3 up. The other was from the final brakes of Montu, A long box was brought to each row, and we stepped on to it and then down to the floor. The only thing we were worried about was being late to the ACE picnic. (:

I've had a couple of near misses which would have been a bit tougher. In 1997 I rode T2 at KK (not yet SFKK) and noticed an odd grinding sound from the chain lift. So I went to ride Chang next, and getting off, I saw T2 stuck on the lift. I had to leave since the park was closing, and at the gate I heard some parents wondering where their kids were. I said they were probably stuck on the ride, but GR said no one was. A quick phone call verified what was going on. The worst part however was that one parent called the fire department and they had to approve the park evacuation protocol: the riders were stuck up there FIVE HOURS!

The other near miss was much smoother. On opening day I rode Magnum, walked around and into the station, and was told the ride was down. There was a train almost at the top of the lift, so we went to Gemini. On our fourth ride there we noticed the evac underway, and we returned to the photo stand to watch. There were several enthusiasts getting off, and they all said the walkdown was scary!

Roz

Slight clarification. The Magnum walkdown was opening day of 2006.

Roz

Roz Stevenson said:
There were several enthusiasts getting off

Roz

From what I have seen of some enthusiasts this would not be to far of a stretch. :)

Wow that was one of the first quotes I seriously had to go back to the original post ...

Wasnt sure what Dave was pointing out ;)

I'm still not sure, but I know I don't want any part of it! ;)

Coasterphan said:
Well....I was one of the fortunate ones, to get a walkoff, from Powder Keg, during the Con. We were about 15 feet from the top of the lifthill, when the ride stopped.

I don't think that they were even gonna try and figure out what the problem was, due to how hot it was that day, because one of the ride ops came up with bottles of water, for all of us, in about 5 minutes after it stopped.

We were off the ride, and back on the ground in about 20 minutes. I'm completley guessing here, as I'm afraid of heights, and that walk down those stairs wasn't the best part of the whole experience for me.

It was the ultimate kegger, as we got 3/4 of a ride, a walk off, and a behind the scenes tour, all in one.

I was on that train, too, in the front row. One of the greatest moments in my life! ;) I was especially pleased that they allowed me to take photos :-)

I have evacuated from Lost Coaster at Indiana Beach, from the brake run, when the brakes seized.

A memorable evacuation was from the MCBR on Raptor a few years back, when there wads an issue with a train in the station. Once we walked down the spiral stairs to the midway, they greeted us with exit line passes, which I promptly used on MF, which at that time was still getting waits of 2 hours.....

To the best of my recollection, I've only been in three evacs as a rider (a few more as a ride op):

Dominator on the final brakes, SFA's Superman on the final brakes, and WDW's Tower of Terror about haflway through. We made it into the drop shaft but had to be pulled back out. Frankly, being able to see all the gadgets involved in the effects made for one heck of a walkthrough attraction, so I was pretty pumped.

I was also able to swing a lift walk on Magnum back in 2006 as a ride op (I was on a different ride's crew, but I cross-trained on Magnum). Being able to chill at the top for a bit was fantastic. Great views, beautiful morning.