Spider Collapse at Camden Park

I feel bad for the park when something like this happens at a small or independent park. Guess I hope the little guys can grow and succeed in a world seemingly full of big chains.

Kngs Island? Nobody goes there any more. The lines are too long since they started blackmailing people ;-).

RideMan said:
If it was what I thnk it was, it is something that has been a known problem with the Spider for a very long time.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I was thinking the same thing, Dave. After the incident with the Royal American Shows ride at the Broward County Fair there was a lot attention paid to the hub assemblies on all versions of that type of ride.

But that one was a Monster!

I'm still looking for anything that indicates what actually happened, but from the descriptions it sounds like either the sweep broke, or it came out of its hinge (?!). Doesn't sound like a hub problem because only one sweep was affected. Doesn't sound like a broken support rod because the safety rope would have kept the end of the sweep off the ground. The article keeps saying 'leg', which to me would be one of the mud sills, but I'd think that would have been a much bigger mess...

In general, Eyerly zoology works something like this:

The OCTOPUS has eight straight sweeps. At the end of each sweep there may be either a single tub, or an extension arm that mounts at a diagonal to the sweep so that two tubs may be fitted. Note that the Octopus generally loads one sweep at a time, but because of the longer sweeps the vertical travel is greater than on a Spider. I think Lakemont Park may have an Octopus.

The MONSTER is a 2-trailer ride, and so is usually found in larger amusement parks. Except for the first two built, and possibly one special one built for Funtastic, the Monster has six sweeps (the first two have only five, and I think there is one out there with eight). The Monster is easy to spot. It has curved sweeps, and at the end of each sweep is a rotating pod carrying four tubs on four stub-arms. The Monster is the largest of the bunch and the most interesting to watch, but the rotating pod, perversely, tends to REDUCE the amount of spinning you get out of the tub. The Monster can load two sweeps (8 tubs) at a time. Cedar Point, Kings Island, Canada's Wonderland, Worlds of Fun, and Silverwood (among others) have Monsters.

The SPIDER is a simplified Monster. It has six curved sweeps, each one ending in two fixed stub arms, so there are two tubs per sweep, and two sweeps can be loaded at a time. Like the Octopus, the Spider can be transported on a single trailer. Camden Park (obviously) and Holiday World both have Spiders.

There also exists at least one Spid-O-Pus, which is either a 6-arm Octopus or a Spider with straight sweeps, depending on how you prefer to look at it.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Dave, does all that knowledge make your brain hurt?

Dave, as I recall, the Royal American ride suffered a stress fracture in the hinge, dropping the arm to the ground. Eyerly issued an urgent bulletin on this issue and I had heard that quite a number of Spiders and Monsters where found to have this problem.

Ah, the elusive Spid-O-Pus. Wasn't there a special about it on Animal Planet? ;-)

Ensign Smith said:
It's a little amusement park in southwestern Ohio. But that's not important right now.

Somewhere, Leslie's smiling.

Lakemont Park has both a Monster and an Octopus (but no Spider), last I was there, which was kind of a long time ago, now that I think about it.

Thanks, Dave. I've copied and printed your response out as a resource. Much appreciated.

Mike: I was hoping someone might get that. :)

Lord Gonchar said:

Wow. Worst comment ever:

“When you think about as many years as the park has been around, things like this don’t happen very often. They have a good safety record,” Caudill said. “You see it in the news that things like this happen at King’s Island and Cedar Point. When you are dealing with mechanical things, it’s always possible that they can break down.”

I'm pretty sure the proper way to downplay an incident isn't to claim it happens everywhere and it's fairly common and then implicate other parks by name.

Just threw two CF parks under the (Crazy) Bus... ;)

I thought I had made this available a long time ago...

In my position, I have to know how to use presentation software, but I don't often actually give presentations. So this one was actually a demo of how to do something in Keynote. But it fits here...

Midway Zoology

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

RideMan, that was an incredible presentation. I am in continued awe of your amusement park prowess. You are the Man.

Yet another update.

It's amazing what one little malfunctioned bolt can do. I am just happy nobody was seriously injured!

-Tina

RideMan, you are amazing. I learned more about these things then I ever thought I wanted to know. I always thought they wer all nearly the same.

And it also larn'd me why the Monster at SFGAm loaded all the gondolas at once -- because it's a Polyp, not a Monster. :)

coasterqueenTRN said:
Yet another update.

Good thing there's an oversized computer-generated depiction of a bolt there, otherwise the subject matter of that article would've been a real head-scratcher.

I can only think of two bolts that, if failed, would cause the sweep to drop, and they are located in the ends of the support rod. That said, I don't know for certain that's what happened. The rod I am talking about is the one that connects the top of the sweep to the eccentric assembly at the center of the ride and causes the sweep to go up and down.

I'm glad to hear the sweep didn't break. I thought that the way Camden treats that ride they would have ample warning if one of the sweeps cracked.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.