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Ride Availability/Operations 2022-25

Secret Weapon said:
Somebody on YouTube made an interesting comment that I hadn't thought of: what would have happened if Enterprise suddenly had a power cut whilst riders were upside-down?

Unlike most rides, the riders weren't secured into the seats whilst upside-down, so would their heads have hit the roof of the car? Or would the ride somehow automatically have brought them safely down?
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Simple: the cars would self-right as the rotation slowed down. No one would be "stuck upside down". There might be a wait to lower the lift arm, but no one would be harmed.
 
Secret Weapon said:
Somebody on YouTube made an interesting comment that I hadn't thought of: what would have happened if Enterprise suddenly had a power cut whilst riders were upside-down?

Unlike most rides, the riders weren't secured into the seats whilst upside-down, so would their heads have hit the roof of the car? Or would the ride somehow automatically have brought them safely down?
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The gondalas, like Zodiac, were on rotational joints to the wheel. When the wheel is flat / horizontal, the gondalas sit at a perpendicular angle to it. As the wheel picks up speed, the gondalas fling out to be aligned with the wheel's plane.

In the event of a power cut the wheel would slow, or stop, and the gondalas would rotate back to their natural gravitational position.

Centrifugal force is wonderful.
 
John said:
I think the above scenario is why Zodiac now doesn't go anywhere near vertical - if the power is lost the ride will come down but rotation speed also slows, so the cars wouldn't be held in position and you might not be held in the seat properly
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Thanks for the info. I had assumed that it failed to go upside-down due to wear-and-tear (similar to The Blade barely getting that high in 2024), but your explanation makes sense (I assume that Merlin got more cautious after the accident in 2015).

I also remember being disappointed when I rode it last year, as I'd always thought that failing to go upside-down kind of defeated the entire point of the ride!
 
Skyscraper said:
This is probably why;

Screenshot_20250703_113442_Samsung_Internet.jpg
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If anyone at Alton Tech services would like to get in touch about the installation/commissioning of industrial and intelligent UPS for this type of scenario (including all associated control circuits) please drop me a message.

The fact they’d put this out there is wild.
 
Ash said:
If anyone at Alton Tech services would like to get in touch about the installation/commissioning of industrial and intelligent UPS for this type of scenario (including all associated control circuits) please drop me a message.

The fact they’d put this out there is wild.
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They have UPS/ generators but they are not allowed to operate except to evacuate on them.

Wouldn’t surprise me if the newer rides like Toxicator and reborn have better ones to avoid the faulting that occurs afterwards. Can’t imagine they would get the budget to replace all of them however, particularly when you consider the sheer volume of work that needs doing around the park.
 
Ash said:
If anyone at Alton Tech services would like to get in touch about the installation/commissioning of industrial and intelligent UPS for this type of scenario (including all associated control circuits) please drop me a message.

The fact they’d put this out there is wild.
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The fact that you think you have a simple solution that has evaded experts in the industry is arguably more wild :p
 
Pretty much every big coaster has 2 main PLC's - lets call them A and B for simplicity. A and B both have separate coding / operating systems for safety, and each takes inputs from a separate set of sensors / proximity switches on the track. A and B's proxys / photocells may be millimetres apart, on opposite track rails.

There is them a third, simpler, computer system monitoring that both PLC's are in agreement with each other. So if a proxy switch on A triggers to sense a train & the corresponding switch on B does not trigger within a certain number of milliseconds, the PLC's are out of alignment. This leads to an instant ride stoppage, with all trains stopped at their next "safe point". On a two train ride [normally with no mid-course brakes] this will be anywhere between the start of the service brakes and the top of the lift - so the free-roll section cannot be occupied. On a 3+ train ride with mid-course brakes, the trains can be stopped here to keep free-roll sections ahead of the next [possibly occupied] block clear.

On the original Nemesis, the "monitoring" computer system was running on a 386SX computer. All it had to do was monitor fairly basic inputs from the two Allen Bradley PLC's [as above, both differently coded & switched] and give error messages "in English" to the ride ops / Technical Services team.
 
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