Subsonic Radio

Last week or the week before the new Sum of All Thrills broke down. One of the arms had an emergency evac. The ride stopped with passengers stuck upsides down. Disney in their great wisdom had not trained anyone for such an event. Even after the maintenance depart had requested training. Disney felt they could train their people when it happened. The occupants where stuck upsides down for over two hours. Reedy Creek rescue had to be called in to handle the situation.

Why didn't Disney think they had to have their staff trained for this obvious inevitability? I can't find the original article from the Orlando Sentinel.

Uh-oh there goes the neighborhood. If this is true, which I do believe, then there has to be some action taken on this. Disney can not operate an attraction with no evacuation and safety plans in case something happens. There are human lives at stake and Disney SHOULD have proper training for CM's and Maintenance for ALL attractions. Hopefully they will learn from their mistakes and actions will be taken to prevent this from happening ever again on any attraction.

Jacca5660 wrote: Why didn't Disney think they had to have their staff trained for this obvious inevitability?

There's a blindness in the corporate world where such eventualities are denied as being possible because the project people assure "it cannot happen". I have seen that so much where I work and every time upper management buys into it. And then - bang! - sure enough, what could not go wrong does and everyone scrambles around saying to each other "what should we do?". Unfortunately, propaganda is a big part of the corporate world today (a spill-over from politics, maybe?) and things like this can slip through the cracks. It leaves us common sense folk out there with our eyes rolling back in our heads with wonder and dismay...

What's your source on this Jacca?

Jacca5660 wrote: I can't find the original article from the Orlando Sentinel.

I think he was looking at the Orlando Sentinel on-line.

MW1218 wrote:What's your source on this Jacca?

Jacca listed the sentinel as a source, but I did hear about this too.

The Sentinel on-line.

You know who else didn't think they needed any evac procedures? The people who built the Titanic.

Amazing and scary at the same time. IF you think it will never happen, it will!

And I understand accidents happen, stuff breaks down but if I were stuck in there and then found out they didn't know what to do it would be ugly.

You know, in the engineering world, there is a concept called "redundancy." It has to do with building in safety factors that allow one piece of a design to help take up the load if another critical element were to fail. I've noticed over the years that this concept is becoming increasingly unpopular with the bean counters, and hence with upper management types, because of the cost factor. So now we are seeing the results of that mindset in all kinds of building and structural failures all over the place.
Yes, those are the things that make us "common-sense" types roll our eyes, and you'd think those who need to sit up and take notice would do so, but alas, there is a huge difference between "book-smart" and "real-life-smart" in today's world.
I swear, I see stuff from architects and engineers these days that makes me wonder how they got through college, or whether they got their seals from a bubble-gum machine. Sad.

I'm still going to take this story with a grain of salt. It's not being reported anywhere else, and the lone source that DID report it took it down. It smacks of it being falsely reported or elaborated.

The reason I'm most suspicious is that I subscribe to about 8-10 Disney Blogs on my RSS feed. Each time there was a story like the monorail accident, the tragedy with the Indiana Jones performer, or the bus bomb scare, it appeared in each of feeds. I didn't hear anything about this on any of the blogs.

MW1218 wrote:I'm still going to take this story with a grain of salt. It's not being reported anywhere else, and the lone source that DID report it took it down. It smacks of it being falsely reported or elaborated.

Good point. Might have been a Universal plant....

I'm not sure I understand what is alleged. The people hit one of the brief pseudo-upside down moments in Sum of all Thrills and the arm stopped. But was the arm not working period? Was the reset button not functional? I suppose I could see how this might make things difficult on how to actually evac the folks, but not nearly 2 hours w/ a fire dept. on scene. They'd have sent someone up a ladder with a jaws of life or other device used to cut through metal to free them I would have to guess. They would not wait around 2 hours until someone told them what to do. I'm not sure how much I believe the facts as relayed here.

One of my sources was an actual First Responder!

They were stuck upsides down for over 2 hours. What is the hard part that some are not understanding. The button that releases the arm doesn't work!

What's the big deal, they probably just got the longest ride in the history of Epcot, not to mention some sort of perks I'm sure. Not many can say they were on a ride at Disney that lasted longer than the wait in line. Now being stuck for 2hrs in It's a Small World, that's a BIG DEAL! I know, I know...it's about the training. As soon as they get sued for it they'll change their procedure.