Cedar Point affected by power outage?

Thanks for the link to the video Eric. I can't hear the audio because my computer at work doesn't have speakers, but it's cool that they did a story about CP. Watching that made me think of something else that would be wierd. Watching the sun go down on a summer night and not seeing a single light on any ride.

------------------
-Chris Woodard
Who the Millennium Force ride ops made a special announcement for when he took his 100th ride on 8/12/03.

Davis Bessy normally supplies power to the general grid, no where specific. It just flows out, so to speak.

------------------
Boycott the RIAA

Monster Ride Op: Thanks. The thing I was not sure about with the Monster is whether your brake controls would work, as I am not certain how the control is linked to the ride center...whether there is a pushrod on it or not.

Now that I think about it, aren't those controls pneumatic? I gotta go check my Monster book and see what it says... :)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Ok, Upon reading these posts about the power failure in the park, but to actually be stuck on a ride for over 40 minutes was not fun as was the case with me (Stuck on Dragster when power when out). Many props to the Dragster crew for making us as "feel at home" during the outage..

------------------
Total Rollar Coaster Rides This Year
---------------------------------------------

Dragster - 2 :)
Millie - 6
WT- 6
Raptor - 12
Magnum - 7
Gemini - Countless

*** This post was edited by TooCool 8/15/2003 7:29:29 PM ***

We were in Soak City when the power went out. It wasn't immediately apparent there. Someone pointed out that there were cars stuck on the Magnum and Mean Streak, but it wasn't until I stepped up to a pop vendor that I was told there was a park-wide outage. We soon heard it was all of Sandusky. At that point, I'm wondering if this could be part of something much larger (perhaps even a terrorist attack of some kind) and how would we know? Soon after that, we heard that the whole Northeast was out of power and nobody knew why. At that point, we went out to our van and listened to the radio, where we heard things were not quite as bad as the rumor mill and my imagination led me to believe.

We stuck around for over an hour, hoping (but not expecting) the power to come back on. We had ride-n-slide tickets, and were just planning on going into the park. We noticed they got the folks off the Magnum fairly quickly. After about an hour and a half I walked into the park and signed my name and address on a sheet they had setup. They were saying either reimbursements or complimentary tickets.

We then proceeded to drive out from the back parking lot, which took a lot of time and precious gas. We were thinking we would go back to the hotel, get our stuff, and drive back to Indiana that night. We only had 3/8 tank of gas when we started, so we opted not to use the AC to conserve gas. I had heard that Toledo had power, so if we could make it that far....

Driving out, we noticed the gas powered car ride were running. When we got to the front, we noticed there was a mass exodus of cars. We had heard that people were lined up half way down the Midway to get out.

When we got to our hotel, we were told no cancellations. I told them that with no power they didn't have a service to offer, but they were adament. The main hallway was pitch black, you couldn't see someone standing right in front of you. You couldn't get in and out of your rooms, and of course there was no AC or showers (a must after a hot day at CP). The kids thought it was cool and wanted to stay at the hotel. I just wanted to hit the road for home, but would we find a working gas station before we ran out?

We were sitting outside around 9:15 when lights started to come on all around us. Finding food was a challenge since most restaurants had sent all their people home and didn't reopen that night. We finally stopped at the Meijer on 250 and bought cold food to eat.

I saw a couple of cars in the drive-thru at the Taco Bell on 250, so we pulled in to see. One drove around when we pulled up, and we waited a few minutes for the next car (it appeared as if she was placing an order). The passenger then got out at peeked around the corner, which was not a good sign. By that time there were four more cars behind us. Pretty funny. I wonder how long that kept up.

We heard this morning that the park had power and reopened at 8:00! Does anyone know if this true? It would have been awesome to have the park nearly all to ourselves!

--Bruce

Don't know for certain about the brakes. But I think that they are all hydraulic and need direct pressure from a pump to activate. As such the car sets will not stop unless there is power to the pump.
The brakes are activated when we shut off the motors for the car sets, or set the hydraulic motors in neutral.

The ride controls for the hydraulic motors are connected by direct pull wire, at least I think they are. The controls for the hydraulic pumps, and electrical moters, are all electric button switch pairs, one for on and one for off.

------------------
Mozilla may have taken two years to reach v1.0, but it is more stable and secure than IE will ever be.

I have a trip planned for Sunday and Monday. My dad is a little worried about the whole blackout thing, and is tempted to cancel. I was just wondering if everything is fine in Sandusky as far as water and all the hotels having power and what not. I know the park has power, I just wasnt sure about the surrounding area of Cedar Point. (sorry if this question was already asked)

------------------
TTD Launches - 0, Unless you count the POV, then I have 7.

The spider brakes are electric...90v to apply, I think. Meaning the brakes on the car sets. I have, as it turns out, very little information on the Monster in my little booklet, and it doesn't have a word about controls. Probably because there may not be two Monsters out there with identical controls. :)

On the Spider, the counter-shaft rotates continuously, and when you pull the control handle, it releases the brake, pull further, and the clutch engages. Of course, the Monster does away with all of that and replaces it with a pair of hydraulic motors to drive the shafts. And on the Monster, the motors can go both ways.

One of these days I'm gonna get a peek under the hood of a Monster...!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Jeppeto- Everything in the area is back to normal now.

I just wanted to point out that in the news clip linked to at the top of this page, there is something very interesting in the shot of the empty Magnum train. You can still hear the recording playing on the lift hill. What's up with that? Do the recordings work off of solar power or something like that? I just found it really bizarre when I heard that in the video.

------------------
-Chris Woodard
Who the Millennium Force ride ops made a special announcement for when he took his 100th ride on 8/12/03.

Ralph, good observation on the news clip.

Magnum may have been on a generator at the time it was photographed..
------------------
Gemini 100 - 35
Aaron Radatz Centenial Theater '03

I remember a year or two ago there was a power outage for a few minutes during Halloweekends. I was near the front of the park...all the lights went out, and people started shouting for their families. After the lights came back on, my kids and I went on the carousel at the front of the park because it was pouring out. This was about 20 minutes after the lights had gone out and came back on...I wanted to check the time, so I looked at my watch...oddest thing...my watch was showing 12:20. Apparently my watch had reset when the power went out.....I don't know.....pretty odd things happen during Halloweekends!!!

____________________________
Let's play "Find the one-legged seagull"

TooCool, I was thinking as I walked past Dragster that you guys have one of the worst place to be stuck, in that you were seconds away from a ride! My condolences. My kids and I were minutes from our first Ripcord, but we were on the ground, at least.

Bruce, sounds like your experience pretty much matched mine, down to the 3/8's of a tank. "I'll get it on the way out, and a cup of coffee", famous last words. I didn't sign up, though. Hopefully I can convince them I was there :)

I don't know about anyone else, but I *really* don't want to know the park re-opened at 8. I had the worst case of "coaster interruptus" yesterday.

PS, thanks for setting me straight on the nuke plant.
*** This post was edited by Howard 8/16/2003 11:32:42 AM ***

As far as sky ride goes.........the sky ride has a generater called a "volkswagon". In order to activate it, maintnace needs to be present. And yes.....you have to have a superviser present in order to do a walk down from any ride.

It has been brought up before, but the space spiral does have a hand crank to lower the caben..but it takes a long time to do this. The rope latter is for the top part of the caban so peeps/workers can get to the lower section of the caban. if needed.

As far as power tower goes....I belive it has air pressure built up inside.....enough to lower it slowley. The same as if they e-stoped it.

Slightly off topic Bruce, but I read in a gas concervation pamphlet during the recent conflict, that you use more gasoline opening the windows than you do if you leave them closed and run the air conditioner. Something to remember next time there is a massive power outage and lack of places to fill up on gas.

------------------
ONE freeway stamp a day... ONE

Vanessa said:
Slightly off topic Bruce, but I read in a gas concervation pamphlet during the recent conflict, that you use more gasoline opening the windows than you do if you leave them closed and run the air conditioner. Something

Hmm...something to do with the resistance on the vehicle? Probably not relevant at the speed we were going out of the park (1 MPH) <g>

--Bruce

Wouldn't you think the big rides would have a small back up generatior for a few lifts? And When we were on Dragster last month(July 8) there was a short poweroutage for Dragster, and a ride manager didn't come get us of the ride just a person who checked harnesses and walked us on the cat walk into the station. It was over in about 15minutes.

------------------
X2 is the best movie ever!!!
I was in it!!!

That is odd. Anytime a ride is stopped and they have to let people out on a catwalk, they usally have a manager to walk them down. It was like that on Thunder Canyon and Jr. Gemini. Maybe because TTD has a flat surface instead of a lift hill.

Actually, on Thunder Canyon you can unload onto the catwalk just outside of the station, but this is the only one. Supervision must be present in order to unload people stuck on the lift or storage platform after an E-stop.

E-stops are very intense and fast-paced on Thunder Canyon. The two E-stops I participated in were purely mechanically triggered, and they went off without a hitch. Maybe that's why our crew got the Excellence Award...:)

------------------
...and the most anticipated event of summer 2003 is...

The Matrix: Reloaded!

Correction, twisterII,
When CP does a walkdown from a ride, a manager has to be *present*. The regular crew can, in many cases, do the walk-down.

I remember years ago (pre computer) when there was a set-up on Mine Ride and I was stopped just uptrack of the tunnel leading into the station. From where we were, we could have got out and walked into the station (it was, in fact, the old unload platform) except that we were in the last car and were stopped about 3' short of the platform. I was one of two people on the train.

The procedure was simple enough: Push a magic button on the wall to release the brake even though the next block wasn't clear, just to bring the train up a little. Because of the possibility of crashing the trains together, a manager had to come over and push the magic button.

Of course that day, we had power. Without power, the magic button wouldn't have done squat.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Its the day the lights went out. I live near Detroit in Michigan, and we just got power back yesterday! All weekend long we have had no power..and yes Cedar Point had people stuck on rides and all with the massive power outage across the entire northeastern United States.
------------------
LaUnCh...420 feet, 120 mph, 4 seconds....brakes...breathe