What's going on with Steel Dragon 2000?

Yeah, Birdmen was closed about 3 years, but they did re-design it.

Big cirles with amazing airtime :)

I loved White Cyclone, as well as their Schwartzkopf. Great rides, well (understatement of the century) maintained, and perfectly painted! ;)

............and the BIGGEST damn Pirate ship in the WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But Space Mountain at Tokyo Disneyland is up and running, and its (rather similar) incident happened several months later. To me, they might have found something a little more wrong with the ride, because it is really an unnaturally long period of downtime if there's nothing wrong with it, even for Japan. It is really a one-of-a-kind and no previous ride has used the same trains or track design, so it is likely that there's more to it than the incident that caused the closure of the ride.

Hmmmm....I don't know. Could be, though.

I doubt anything terribly serious is wrong with the ride (that would require serious changes), they're just probably being very careful making sure that something similar never happens again. Their culture and mentality about such things is so different from ours.

The Space Mt. thing was found to be someone ordering the wrong part, no? That's pretty easy to fix....make darn sure you order the right parts! :) This isn't that simple and likely takes more time for them to reconcile to their satisfaction.

Rob...did you ride that 250 foot pirate ship on steroids? Time (plus rain) didn't allow me to....guess I just have to go back! :)

Space Mountain was more or less to do with getting the wrong parts (metric conversion and all that), but on the same token, wouldn't you think that that's quite similar to SD2K loosing a wheel as a result of say not properly tightening the bolts that morning?

I think it's a fair argument that they might just be absolutely sure that it's all good, but I'm still thinking that 10 months or so is a bit long to fix just a few procedures if it is purely a maintenance issue, and of course by definition if it's not a maintenance issue then it's a design issue, which would fit my scenario of having to fix something more than just a loose wheel.

Hardly the same, but Dreamworld's Giant Drop stalled a few years ago for all of 20 minutes midway up. Standard procedure is to take the ride down and give it an inspection. As a result they found a problem with the drive mechanism and the ride spent the next few months down to get it all fixed again.

I understand Japanese culture is very very different from Western (and I absolutely love Japanese people... some of the best people out there), but I'm still leaning towards my design fault scenario with Space Mountain up and running again a few short months after a relatively similar incident (with a different cause obviously).

Could it be down due to track damage as didn't the trian come to a quick stop after the wheel came off? If that happened I would think that something should have happened to the track. Maybe they are just waiting for a brand new section of track to be made and shipped over.

I've been to many parks - even many in the US - that didn't check my restraints. Personally, I don't think that's as unsafe as many seem to think it is. If the restraints are locked and down, you're not gonig anywhere.

-Nate

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rentzy17 said:

A for Japanese safety, I think that's more of an unproven stereotype. When I went the "Space World" they didn't even CHECK the restraints. You just locked them down yourself and the train was dispatched.

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While they don't always check restraints by hand, I'm not sure that has anything to do with safety. They eyeball each and every one of them like hawksand don't check every one out of personal space respect....not wanting to grab at your crotch. In addition, they know that 99.99999999% of Japanese will follow all rules and check their own restraints, not unsimilar to how they know no one will shoplift from their stores. (The open air SD2K store was closed for a few hours when I was there, and all merch. left out in the open, no security systems, guards, employees, and people just walked through the store...people just don't steal there!) *** Edited 5/15/2004 7:58:32 PM UTC by Peabody***

First off... NO, I didn't ride the pirate ship. It was closed, as the day was incredibly rainy. What a bummer, but I'll go back, and soon.

About the stores, yeah..... it's insane that they just have everything open, with nobody manning them. I was blown away by that when I was there. Just empty, wide open shops, everything available, nothing locked down, stores. Wild.

It blew my mind too. People just don't shoplift or vandalize. FOr that reason their dark rides and walkthroughs will sadly never work in USA...people would tear them up. I'd love to see that bada$$ hospital and "The Death Chair" over here :(