Riders stranded on vertical part of Rockit at Universal Studios Florida

I've always wondered what would happen should an evacuation be needed on a vertical lift. Apparently, at least for this coaster, the answer is "call the fire department and hope they can figure it out."

That ride is boring when it's moving... I can only imagine it when it's not.

If I was stuck at least I could hear my Disco selection, Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive.
Over, and over,.... and over...

When it was designed it had a release to station rollback system.

They were told "It has too have anti rollback system"

If it had not been changed they would have put it in reverse

and backed them down the vertical lift.

Going to HHN next week and I hope this is open.

Not that I will ride it during HHN but hopefully some people will and that is fewer people standing in front of me at the houses.

"firefighters started using harnesses and ropes or cables to rescue the passengers perched atop the ride"

Now that sounds like the most fun part of the ride - aside from the fact that capacity would suck.

Looking at the news footage, it looks as if they manually ran the lift to get the train to the top of the lift with a train in the next block (on the MCBR). I think I would have been nervous being in a train that was manually being moved up towards the crest of a lift knowing that a train was in the next block.

Hopefully they didn't know...LOL

So they did crank the train up to the top and then let people out?

Jeff said:

So they did crank the train up to the top and then let people out?

The video shows the train at the top of the lift hill (almost, last two rows on hill the rest at top)

I saw them taking the riders off at the top

This made the 6pm TV news in the UK. That is strange to me.

kevin38 said:

Not that I will ride it during HHN but hopefully some people will and that is fewer people standing in front of me at the houses.

Sorry. Like most Halloween events, rides are pretty much walk-ons while the haunts have long lines.

The rides, like the ill-fated Dania Beach Hurricane, are exceptionally pretty billboards and serve as the backdrop for the entertainment. (Hurricane is more like Mummy in the sense that both are/were really solid rides).

So, another ride that took hours to evacuate. That puts this ride on par with the Windseekers and maybe makes some a little less critical of the Windseeker ride.

I have not been on HRRR so I don't understand completely how the lift system works. I take it they can't "back them down" because of the anti-rollbacks, yes? Doesn't Fahrenheit operate on a different principal (without anti-rollbacks) where they could roll them back down?

I am wondering if the possibility exists that Intamin may have actually gotten something right...

Fahrenheit uses dual lift chains. I don't know if that's "better," as I would think a non-moving thing would be better. To be effective, I assume they're tied to separate gears and motors, which in typical Intamin fashion adds complexity by requiring they spin in a synchronized fashion. Rockit appears to have a traditional lift mechanism.

Jeff said:

So they did crank the train up to the top and then let people out?

Yes. The problem wasn't with the train on the lift, so they took it to the last position that the system would allow and evacuated as many people as they could traditionally before removing the rest of the guests the exciting way.

Thanks for bringing me back to reality Jeff. I should have never doubted my lack of faith in Intamin...