Rides closed for maintenance information

Hi all,

Most of us will be anxious to avoid visiting a park when one or more of it's big rides is closed for scheduled maintenance, if at all possible.

In my experience, if you ask a park directly, they'll usually respond with the line "ask us closer to your visit" This is all very well (and sensible) if you are planning a short trip to a reasonably local park, but not so great if you are organising a vacation well in advance and trying to plan it at a period when the rides you are interested in will not be down for their scheduled maintenance :-)

Does anyone know of any sites that keep reliable information on various park's/coaster's maintenance schedules? I appreciate that rides may have to be closed outside of their scheduled maintenance periods for unforseen reasons, but there is not much that can be done to plan for that.

All the best.

I think that would be just about impossible to do. Anything can happen with a ride in one day. Cedar Point did have the TTD page telling people if it was open that day or not. It was good for people with in a hour or two from the park but doesn't help much with people driving a long distance planning a week long trip or so

Look at Steel Dragon a few weeks ago it lost a wheel while people were on it. I'm sure that was closed for at least a day or two. I think your best bet would be to check a few trip reports for a park and see if the same ride has been down in numerous reports over a month or two. It's hard to tell what a mechanic will find early morning while do inspections.

If the ride had problems like TTD, X, Son Of Beast, and the DeJaVu, I'd say plan on them being down and if they are open consider it a bonus. If you can try and plan your trip with a little room to modify it. If a certain ride is closed skip the park till the end and return.

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Coasterpunk: thanks for your reply. I know it would not be feasible to keep up to date with the operating status of numerous coasters in real-time. As you pointed out, a lot can happen in a day.

There is not much one can do to plan for unexpected closures. HOWEVER, anticipated closures are another matter and can be planned for. Most parks schedule routine maintenence periods for their rides (assuming nothing else goes wrong!) BGTB, for example, were very forthcoming and helpful; they gave me a list of rides that were scheduled for maintenance during the period of my prospective visit, with the proviso that others might need to be closed due to unforseen circumstances.

I just wanted to know whether there were any sites out their that kept track of coaster's or park's SCHEDULED maintenance. This is perfectly feasible. It would make trip planning much less time consuming for us lazy-bones :-)

As for visiting the park on a different day, well that can work if the maintenance/repairs required were only minor, but many big rides undergo more extensive maintenance that puts them out of action for weeks (i.e. someone's entire vacation). It is useful to know about such protracted maintenance when planning a vacation. I would have been gutted if 'Montu' had been closed for scheduled maintenance for the duration of my vacation.

All the best.
*** This post was edited by BeyondOblivion 9/8/2003 7:47:44 AM ***

I know I ran into Ghostriders scheduled yearly matainance back in 2001. That was early May. We were with the Coaster Zombies on their California trip so we couldn't skip the park. A few of us did go back that weekend and caught one ride on it and left. It's a good thing we had Dorney passes.

We also missed the Matterhorn at Disneyland but that was down for like 6 months for a rehab. :(

That would be a pretty good site to start up. I think it would mostly be for parks that operate all year around. I'm sure if you would email the park they would tell you their schedule.

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As coasterpunk points out, seasonal parks almost never schedule maintenance during the season, so closed rides there are almost always unanticipated.

Year-round parks are another matter. You can get good info on the Disney parks, partly from Disney themselves, and partly from well-placed insiders. Unfortunately, in e.g. Disneyland, annual refurbs appear to be planned only 3-4 months out. http://www.riderefurbs.com/ has a schedule for Disneyland (my Spring Break trip), and Cast Members sometimes post more up-to-date info in the obvious places (http://www.laughingplace.com is one).

If you really don't want to miss anything, but want to avoid some crowds, try to hit the very beginning of the summer season. In the US, that's around mid-June. The kids are *just* out of school, so don't yet need a diversion, but the parks consider it peak season, and try not to schedule refurbs during this time. The closures that remain are the really long term ones (e.g. Space Mountain at Disneyland closed for 2 years) which are easier to plan around.

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There's something I've been meaning to ask since just before my vacation.

I get that parks with year-round operation schedule maintenance of their rides. It's a necessity given that they don't have an 'off-season' to perform such maintenance. But, at Disney and Universal, particularly, I've *never* encountered a single situation of a ride being *unexpectedly* closed. Not once. I've seen rides close due to weather and for reset and stuff like that, sure -- but never an attraction closed for an entire day.

How is it that Disney/Universal/et. al. can manage to keep their rides operating consistently for what seems like more time than a typical theme park is open at all? If I showed up at the Magic Kingdom to learn that Space Mountain was closed for the day without having any prior warning of that close, I'd be annoyed. Yet, when I go to Six Flags over Anywhere, it doesn't surprise me in the least to learn, at the last minute, that major attractions are closed for the day.

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--Maddie--
What do I Listen-To?
May the Schwarz be with you.

The most troublesome rides seem to be the newer ones; Dragster, X, Xcelerator, Deja Vu have all had their fair share of early-opening troubles.

In Disney's case, it seems to me that they have a much longer lead time before declaring a new attraction "open". They also have the flexibility of declaring an attraction "open" just about whenever. For example, Mission Space still hasn't had it's media day; cast previews started in early June, sporadic guest testing in mid-June, and gradually increased operating hours/days until it was open in August.

A seasonal park would *never* consider opening a headliner ride in August, and would try to defer all construction to the off-season.

Unfortunately, this doesn't explain Xcelerator, X, or Deja Vu/SFMM, but there you go.
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Maddie: I know for a fact that IOA has had rides closed for days at a time. Last year Pteranadon Flyers were down for seasonal maintenance while we were there, and I remember some discussion about Dragons being down to be painted (though we never did find out if it was an all-day every day thing).

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - My Blog
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What time does the water show start?

Right, Jeff -- but isn't that scheduled maintenance? I understand that because the parks operate year-round, they have to close them down for days or weeks or months at a time to perform maintenance, but outside of those scheduled times, their attractions are practically never closed. Seasonal parks, on the other hand, have the off-season to worry about such maintenance issues, but still, we find that attractions will be closed with no notice during the season. In both instances, the parks have time to perform needed maintenance, but only in one does the maintenance seem to be worth anything.

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--Maddie--
What do I Listen-To?
May the Schwarz be with you.

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Chernabog said:

If I showed up at the Magic Kingdom to learn that Space Mountain was closed for the day without having any prior warning of that close, I'd be annoyed.

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That is exactly what happened at Disneyland's Space Mountain. According to reports I've read, it closed unexpectadly one day early in the summer, presumably because of structural problems. They decided not to fix it, rather it was kept closed because it was scheduled for closing later in the summer, for a complete rebuild. But, the closing came as a complete surprise for frequent park guests who expected the ride to operate most of the summer.

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I'd rather be in my boat with a drink on the rocks,
than in the drink with a boat on the rocks.

IIRC, it was such a surprise that there was a CM staffing the fastpass distribution point on the morning it was closed!

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Islands of Adventure does refurbishments every year to each ride. They close the ride off for a couple of weeks at a time. I was down there in January this year and only the Ice Dragon was operating because Fire was being repainted. Then, once Fire was done, they opened it back up, closed Ice and painted it. I know the Hulk usually goes down for refurbishments in early February

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Dragster Laps - 21
Trips to the Point (2003) - 19

While Disney is pretty good about avoiding unscheduled ride closures, it does happen. Obviously this is currently the case with Big Thunder Mountain. I believe that it also happened at couple times at DCA in the early days.

So, for all you coaster enthusiast web-designers out there, from the above, it sounds like there is interest in information on 'year-round' parks maintenance schedules. All information coming with the proviso that rides may be closed for unforseen reasons outside of their scheduled down-time.

It would be very useful, particularly for those of us who are partial to vacations to Florida ;-)

All the best.

In addition to riderefurbs for Disneyland, Intercot has a schedule for WDW:http://www.intercot.com/infocentral/calendar/refurb.asp

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