Tidal Force flume crashes at Hersheypark, six have minor injuries

Hershey needs to take a lesson from Holiday World. If they were open from the beginning about this, the negativity of the press would have likely been quashed.

An E-stop is a machine stop. You hit the E-stop on that ride, and, assuming its E-stop works as expected, the lift stops, the conveyor at the top (if it has one) stops, and the pumps shut off. The only way a boat could go down the chute during an E-stop would be if the E-stop were pushed after the boat started down the chute, in which case I don't think there would be enough time for the catch basin to drain enough to not stop the boat. That is, assuming that the Hopkins works like the Arrow ride, and uses a conveyor at the top of the lift to push the boats over.

Hmmmmm......

Oh, and if you want an example of how NOT to handle the media after an incident, were you aware that there was also an incident at Williams Grove over the weekend? http://www.whtm.com/showstory.hrb?f=n&s=93098&f1=loc

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Only going from what the rather hard to follow accounts on Themeparkinsider stated. I don't know the workings.

As for the Williamsgrove story. Wow. Talk about a nice p.r. statement. There is just something about that little park. I have lived no more than an hour from that park (now 20 minutes from that park) all of my life, and I only rode the Cyclone in 2000. I returned two years later to ride Wildcat (and reride Cyclone). I am in no hurry to go back. There is something scary about that place. As for the comment by the owner. Why be so "gruf" about it? It sounds like the park was cleared of any wrong doing.

However, after reading that article on Williamsgrove from a local source, I think I am going to really reserve my judgement on the Hershey incident. That one slipped right past me. Other local media may have had stories about Hershey that I missed. I gotta start reading the papers and listening to the news more... especially on the weekends.

------------------
Kind of hard to take a post as objective if a park or coaster name is part of the "user name"

Using that Williamsgrove story as a starting point, here is a link for WHTM's coverage of the Tidal Force "accident"...

http://www.whtm.com/externalwebsite.hrb?website=http://www.thewgalchannel.com/news/2302254/detail.html

No mention about crashing up onto the rocks, and it states that the six who went to the hospital were not only treated and released, but also returned to the park. After reading this little article, Jeff's observation that "perhaps, this was really a non-incident and the hospital visits were all a CYA move," really seems as though it is the case.

-----------------------------------

Kind of hard to take a post as objective if a park or coaster name is part of the "user name"

I will be laughing about that statement to the press for days. I deal with reporters quite often and boy would I like to say that sometime. Of course, I am not my own boss so termination doesn't sound pleasant.

Ok, just looking at the picture HP has on their site (as I have not been to Hershey) it appears this ride uses the same setup as most other OD shoot the chute's rides.

As rideman said, when estop is hit, it stops the lift, pumps, station. If the boat had already cleared the lift when estop was hit, figure at most about 20 seconds to splash down. That is not enough time for the flume to drain....but here's the catch...the flume does not drain (unless this model is unlike the majority of others). These rides are setup so that the pumps in the station create flow from the pool into the station to move the boat after the splash (turn around before station tires take over) while allowing the necessary level of water in the pool to safely slow the boat. When the pumps shut off, there is a backflow from the station out into the pool, causing the pool level to actually rise a little as there is no longer water in the pumps and has returned to the pool....a mini-wave if you will, until the balance returns. Now if the pool level was too low to begin with, that would be a different story, although most of these are also equipped with water level sensors that will automatically disable the ride if the level drops too low.

I also share the thinking that the issue is being over exaggerated.

Interesting. On the Arrow flume I rode last weekend, it looked like the only thing the pumps were doing was pumping water up to the turnaround at the top of the chute. That water supplies the flow for the track, and when the boat enters the station all that water dumps out into the pool, near the pumps under the base of the lift.

Again, I've only seen Tidal Force and then only from the midway...I have neither ridden it nor studied it.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I currently work at Knoebels (Elysburg, PA) Log Flume & Phoenix coaster. It is true that the "E-stop" simply turns everything off (lift hills, station conveyors, and pumps). Without the pumps operating, all of the water simply drains to the lowest point of the ride. Yes, there are water-level sensors that have the ability to shut down the ride if the water level drops too low, however, these would be of no use one a ride such as Tidal Force, which is propelled by solely by gravity and momentum once it is released from its lift chain (there are no breaks, only chains on the lift hill and in the station). Finally, during my Flume training, it was heavely stressed that I should be careful about parking boats at the top on either of the lift conveyors, because if one were to fall down the hill without enough water in the chute, the boat would not stop and would crash into the first wall it encountered.

Finally, although I have no idea why the "E-stop" was pushed, I would like to comment that sometimes these panels are not exactly designed with ergonomics in mind, and I can personally think of several instances when a wrong button was pushed (though the very large, unmistakable E-stop was never one of them).

I hope to dispel any rumors here. Several summers ago I worked at Hersheypark spending much of my time as a ride supervisor on Tidal Force. Since then, only minor changes have been made to the boats.

Here are so answers to your questions:

Does the ride have mechanical brakes? No, the boats are slowed only by the water at the bottom of the drop hill.

Could the boat have "crashed onto the rocks?" No, The boats weigh in at a stagering two tons each, not including any water and passengers. The boat could not have lifted high enough to leave the trough.

Did a "splashback wave" cause the boat to hydroplane? No, The wave is not significant and is dispersed into the pool at the point where the "break run" drops into the turnaround trough.

Here are the events that lead to the mishap, and what happens on a regular basis to varying degrees:

On hot days, the ride is always very busy running three boats all day. The constant waves cause extraordinary evaporation and the water level is slightly diminished, but not enough to cause a ride failure.

More significant is when boats are backed up at the station. They block the flow of water going to the pumps and thus reduce the amount of output into the break run, thus causing the water level to drop.

When a full heavy boat enters the break run, there is not sufficient water to slow the boat to a normal speed. The boat enters the turnaround and hits the wall of the trough pushing the boat left and passengers to the right of the boat.

Unfortunately, in this case, there was an extreme set of circumstances. Additionally, Hersheypark has a proactive emergency room visit policy. If there is an injury on a ride, no matter how insignificant, the guest will be advised to visit the in-park First-Aid. There, they will offer an all expense paid trip to the ER. In this case, six people opted to go to the Hershey Medical Center and later returned to the park.

Remember this has happened many many times! The 6 injuries are not nearly as severe as hell week, during the summer of 98 when, for no apparent reason, we had 73 bloody noses and 5 broken arms/wrists. Or the times when kids get scared and jump out during the ride up the lift, then get caught in spaces in the structure.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me. BODYPUMPINYORK@AOL.COM

So, in other words... as suspected by some (myself included) nothing has been really mentioned in other news paper / TV / Radio media because this is really a "non incident" or "all in a days work" and LDNews is just trying to do a little muck raking? (Gee... who would ever think a news paper would do that!)

------------------
Kind of hard to take a post as objective if a park or coaster name is part of the "user name"

It's been mentioned a few times in the news on Fox and WGAL for the past week SLFAKE.

------------------
"If we knew how safe roller coasters were, we'd lose their thrill" - Daniel Keller

Just to clarify Andy, this was not a log flume. Most log flumes do drain when the pumps are shut off, but most shoot the chutes do not as the lake is part of it's design. Dave is correct (as always) in that some only have the show pumps used for flow. All the ones I have looked at also have at least one other pump that pulls water from just under the lift and dumps it back in the pool creating an increased flow for the turnaround.

On a ride such as this, as well as flumes, low water indicators do have a use, they determine whether there is enough water available to safely allow the boats to stop. If there is not, the system shuts down, stopping the ride carriage before there is too little water available. If a unit is past a stopping point, it will continue, but should normally stop as designed as the sensors are set to shut down before it is too late. We even had a boat drop off of lift 1 at Voyager into a dry trough (thanks to a well executed parking job by whoever closed the night before...moron) but no damage was done.

Like I said before, I have not witnessed this particular installation, but just using Monsoon as an example, boats in the station to not cause the water to back up....that is unless a boat is stopped at the exit wheels at the back of the station (don't ask why it is called an exit) and another boat has arrived behind it. The monsoon station process has 4 sets of wheel blocks, the station exit (or entrance depending on whether your glass is half full or empty), OOF load/unload, WOF load/unload, and station entrance (right before the lift). It hardly ever runs more than 4 boats (heck...you are lucky to have 3) so this is usually not an issue. Back when it ran more boats, if a OOF boat was delayed, we would occasionally see a boat in the turnaround not balanced on a set of tires. That would cause the water to back up slightly, but nothing major. The tires help bring the boats up from the water to make them stable when loading/unloading.

One thing that concerns me about the post from the former HP employee is the water evaporation. Yes, it does evaporate, but the ride should also be equipped with an automatic fill valve that turns on when needed. Monsoon's runs pretty much all day.

I agree with the heavy weight issue causing a delayed stop as that does happen, but what made this particular one so violent?

Maybe the water level sensor was by passed and the ride was runing low on water when the punp was accidentaly stop
the boat was at the begining of the upper circuit and the water has plenty of time to drop the level below safety conditions

oops...I must have a typing disorder or something......I realize that the water-level sensors of water rides do perform a very important safety function. What I meant was that a low-water-level alert would be useless if the boat had already cleared the lift chain, and was going down the hill no matter what. (This seems fairly obvious now, but there seemed to be a fair amount of confusion in some of the earlier posts....)

Also, while I admit that my knowledge is limited to traditional log flumes, I still think that the report of operator error on themeparkinsider.com is very likely.

For example, as Matt pointed out, evaportion and other forms of water loss are not only constant, but compensated for with the auto fill valves that are standard equipment on most, if not all rides of this type (and with the huge "splash zone" that tidal force has, I imagine that this equipment is in near constant use. (hmmm....maybe mechanical failure could have caused/contributed to the accident??....) So, it is unlikely that this was merely a fairly common incident caused by the water being a few inches too low.

Also, Matt's correct statment, that the safety system should stop the boat before it passes the last fail-safe point lends further support to the use of the E-stop, as that could be implemented at any time, reguardless of boat position.

Next, while I do not know the exact setup of the turnaround trough, the pictures of Tidal Force on hershey's website do appear to be similar to that of the Log Flume. Why does this interest me? Well, it is surprisingly easy for the side-wheels of the boats to ride up on the rim and become stuck at the Log Flume. While this comparison seems a little out there, I just want to put forth the idea that, while much larger than a tiny fiberglass log, it is very possible for a boat to "jump" the trough, at least to some degree.

Finally, while it is hard to imagine that an accident of the type and magnitude that has been suggested could leave so few injured so slightly, please keep in mind that these are very large boats with very large, energy absorbant foam covered restraints. It is quite possible that the boats are so well designed that they protected the occupants even in these extreme circumstances.

(Most of this is just hypothesizing......)

Is there an auto fill system in this ride? As you must know a ride has many options and maybe this park did not order the auto fill system.

The riders think that a ride is like an airplane, well maintained and check every day but the truth is far from that, despite of the millions that they make the parks are always looking for cheep alternatives for maintenance and spare parts, instead of going to the original manufacturer, and unlike the airplanes there is no one to confirm that they are properly maintained.

This boat has wheel casters and wheels that only could be compared to a train even in a large bus you wont find stronger wheel brackets or wheel bearings, this together with the weight of the boat itself prevents the boat from "jumping” to the side of the trough.

This boat (the 50 feet version) is equipped with adjustable lap bars and anatomic designed foam filled pads that will hold the passengers on there seats even in a disastrous collision has it happened and nobody was injured all the passenger went home the very same day.

A lot of speculation there, Nuno.

------------------
Kind of hard to take a post as objective if a park or coaster name is part of the "user name"

So I'm assuming that the ride is in full operation again...

------------------
Just when you think you have all the answers, I change the questions