Millennium Force stuck at close

As of 9:05, Milly was stuck 1/3rd up the hill and it sounded as if they were going with a manual evacuation. I was listening to them on a scanner. It was closed before 8pm for maintenance issues and reopened before the stuck train.

Pat.

Umm, OK.

About 1/3 of the way up the hill is where the ride operators will manually stop a train if a guest unfastens their seat belt. It's quite possible that's what happened. If that's the case, it will usually take somewhere between 10-20 minutes to reopen the ride.

The maintenance guys cleared the channel so they could work on the problem. It was stuck for 45 minutes by the time I was able to listen in on the mechanics channel. I doubt it was a simple problem tonight. We'll see if it opens tomorrow.

Pat

In a related story, Son of Beast appeared to not be running today. :)

O noes!!111!!

This is a variation on the "problems" reported on PointBuzz by Web cam watchers, only for the previous generation.

Intriguing.

In fairness...

It seems there is *something* going on with Millennium Force this season. I've visited twice, and on both visits the ride had some minor down-time during the day, and more important, every time I have seen the ride it has been running two trains, and running with a more-conservative-than-usual blocking plan (holding dispatch until the other train is stopped in the holding brake, not advancing to unload until the departing train begins clearing the station).

Not enough information to say for certain that there are ongoing issues, but certainly circumstantial evidence...and not abnormal enough to really generate any concern or interest...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Scanner? What's that about?

Radio Shack.

I used to listent to cordless phones in the dorm with one of those. Back when people didn't have cell phones.

Well they have scanner apps now. What frequency?

I miss being able to listen to staff at WDW on my scanner. Now they use cell phones with PTT.

What ever happened to the list of frequencies that was up on Guide To The Point back in the day?

The information was good enough to avoid Milly for ERT. It didn't open until 10:45. Also heard that Maverick wasn't up and running either and got some good time in on Rapter.

It seems that when I was riding MF, the lift hill sled is banging on something both up and down the hill.

Pat

RideMan said:

and more important, every time I have seen the ride it has been running two trains, and running with a more-conservative-than-usual blocking plan (holding dispatch until the other train is stopped in the holding brake, not advancing to unload until the departing train begins clearing the station).

I noticed on opening day they briefly ran three trains, and kept having block setups on the lift due to the third train not moving into unload. They went down to two trains at some point in the day.

When I rode on the Sunday after opening day, it seemed they were having issues with the kicker wheels moving the train from the brakes into the unload station. While on the ramp, I saw there were a bunch of maintenance guys standing under the brake run. You could hear the motors humming, but the train wouldn't move forward until one of them reached up towards the motor with some sort of long pole/wrench and turned or moved something. Not sure if this is still causing issues, but it does seem like it's had quite a bit of down time this year.

During the ACE Spring Conference last weekend (I was there all day Friday-Sunday), Millenium Force ran 3 trains all weekend. I noted fast dispatches THOUGH in line with Dave's comments about the "conservative blocking plan" - this was mere seconds (which I realize adds up over a day) but the moment the returning train hit the brakes, the outgoing train was dispatched.

I was impressed with how the MF crew had their act TOGETHER during the Spring Con.

I only noted ONE brief downtime for MF the entire weekend - around 4 PM Friday afternoon. Other than that, I noticed no other outages.

Go ride it! Enjoy the view!

Thanks, IwantIceCream

I haven't been on the ride yet, or watched it, but does it not do what it has done for a decade? Pull the train out, and when the block is clear, speed up the lift?

No, when I was there for the Travel Channel shoot a couple of weeks ago, it was really slowing to a crawl at the top of the lift. It was slow enough that the anti rollbacks were dragging for the last couple seconds before it crested the hill. The woman who was sitting next to me was deathly afraid of it stopping each time.

It was doing it a lot throughout the course of the day, too.

In fact, they had put 3 trains on briefly, then pulled the 3rd one off after the first test lap. Of course, that could be because they don't need it, but we were a bit delayed that morning.

When I rode it this past Wednesday (same day as the OP), it seemed to be ruining as normal with 3 trains, but we rode it around 11:30 a.m. I didn't notice any slower-than-usual dispatch times or lift-hilling.

I've struck out with Disaster Transport on both visits this year. Last Friday night it was closed, and on Wednesday it was open but went down just as we got in line.

DT was awful when I rode it this year. It was actually quite painful.

Disaster Transport seems very zombie-esque this year. I've never seen the ride down so much, and I'm hearing that it has received the bare minimum maintenance to run (and barely run apparently).

I was a huge fan of the ride in my younger years, so even after the decay, I've always had some bizarre attachment to it. It looks like I'm going to have to put in a little more effort to get a farewell ride on it this year.

When I rode MF last Thursday I didn't notice anything abnormal. All three trains were running all day and I remember being on the lift and having the train speed up during one ride.