Timber Tower Malfunction

Saturday night at Dollywood, the Timber Tower ride malfunctioned, stranding passengers at the top for hours. You can see a picture of the crane being used to help with the aerial evacuation...

http://www.volunteertv.com/home/headlines/8045512.html

This poor ride has been plagued with problems from the beginning.

Blame the beavers!

Man, when I look at that picture, all I can think of is that drop tower moving during an evac in Korea (or wherever it was). I would be effing nervous getting off that thing and into a basket like that.

You know having ridden Timber Tower, I have to say it's really not that great of a ride. As much trouble as this flat has been, it wouldn't surprise me to see it gone next year...hopefully replaced by the world's tallest drop tower for incredible views of the smokies! ;)

DollyWood has had numerous issues with their Timber Tower and MarineLand in Canada is currently installing one.

That should LOTS of fun!

What a horrible experience those people had. I'm not a big fan of those rides that slowly take you up, you sit and wait for what seems like forever, then you drop to the earth below! If it were me, I would be nervous that the ride would drop just as I was getting into the bucket.

Glad to see no one got hurt! :)

In all fairness though, that's a Huss ride. The drop tower in Korea was a third world knockoff. The Korean ride either didn't have a safety/evac plan established, or didn't have a well designed/proper safety system in the first place, or both. The Huss ride's safety system engaged, stopping the ride and allowing an evac that presumably went exactly as planned.

Yet another example of "you get what you pay for" I guess.

This is not a drop tower type ride.

I don't know... I hate to second guess anyone, but there's always a way to bring people down if a "safety system" engaged.

If they were up there for five hours then aerially evacuated, there was a serious malfunction or structural failure. There's no way they do that because of a safety check.

Even if there's a malfunction that no one at the park can troubleshoot, hook a modem up to the PLC and have Huss call in.

From the comments below the news story...

"i was there on that ride when it was stuck i was on there for 5 1/2 hrs it sucked! my back is killing me and everything! we went for my 16 yr old cousin b-day!! she had a bad b-day because of it!! email me if you got any questions"

First question... do you know what upper case is? Do you know any punctuation other than an exclamation point? Like the park deliberately decided to ruin her cousin's birthday.

Besides that, i wouldn't ride it. It doesn't look like fun, it just looks like a bad idea that didn't make the fair. Hence why only 2 parks currently have it, basing this off of what was stated above.

But if the safety locked it early, then WTF happened? Did it safely lock the people up the tower, but didn't rock? Did it rock, and not let them down?

As said above, it makes no since for the car not be able to safely let itself down. It just doesn't add up.

^There are more than 2 parks that have one. But the ride isn't very fun the first time you ride it, and after that, it isn't any fun at all..... Oh, I mean, IMO ;)

^Why not? It looks fun to me, even if it doesn't make you wet yourself. Is it uncomfortable?

Anyway, I guess this is the last straw for this ride, DW has taken it off their website. I can't believe the way this went down though, like everyone else said, this was their evacuation plan? It seems there should be a few more fail-safes, or at least a way to release the restraints manually so it doesn't take 6 hours to get people down.

I just hope the Hershends will give Huss a second chance. Maybe with a new giant frisbee...

Wait, how many ride malfunctions have we had this season?

A lot. I don't remember last year there beaing this many, however, most were probably clouded by SOB's need for a TV Spot.

oh and, I've yet to go to a park with it, but I knew that dumb ride existed. But then again, I never look for the flat rides in parks, unless it's CP. Then i ride everything.

Freefall towers don't require much evacuation plans as the braking system is totally failsafe (eddycurrent based) and doesn't require any energy source (electricity, compressed air, hydraulics). Normally technicians should have been able to release the gondola manually as if required it can fall from any height without risk (normally the release mechanism is controlled by the safety PLC (Programmable Logic Controller)).

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SuperSteve said:Anyway, I guess this is the last straw for this ride, DW has taken it off their website. I just hope the Hershends will give Huss a second chance. Maybe with a new giant frisbee...

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I doubt the ride will be removed, but it will obviously be down for quite some time. (Not that downtime is anything unusual for this ride)

I do wish Dollywood had went with the giant frisbee though. :)

*** Edited 6/19/2007 12:46:09 AM UTC by Dukeis#1***

Once again...Timber Tower is *NOT* a freefall tower ride.

WBIR (Knoxville) has several comments from people that were stuck on the ride:

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=46314

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kpjb said:Even if there's a malfunction that no one at the park can troubleshoot, hook a modem up to the PLC and have Huss call in.

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I was thinking about that, since it only makes sense that there would be SOME way to override the program. Then I wondered if the PLC might have suffered a critical failure when the ride cycle was already started....possible?

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SuperSteve said:
^Why not? It looks fun to me, even if it doesn't make you wet yourself. Is it uncomfortable?

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It's not uncomfortable, just really boring. None of the action is really swift enough to created any real forces, it just mainly feels like you're occasionally going to get dumped out of your seat.

The best part is the theming, really.