Anyone else notice the "Check"

Hide, damn you! You can't let the people on the ride see that the ride isn't entirely computer controlled and robotic!

I'll admit this. When Bill Spehn came back to Sandusky, I was expecting to see some of the silly overkill safety policies relaxed a bit. The only one that I saw relaxed this past weekend was the weather policy. Everything else was exactly the same, plus the addition of the "check" policy. However, it does sound like this has been in other CF parks for awhile and it is just making it's way to CP. Also, I realize Bill only has so much power, before the insurance and legal teams step in and mandate things.

Jeff said:
I don't see any benefit to anyone. It sounds like an arbitrary and silly policy. If it's not, I'd love to hear what the rationale is behind it. Someone tell me, concretely, how this makes anyone safer.

Ask the almighty Falfas. He's supposedly the one that requested it be instituted. Excuse me as I roll my eyes.

....check.

I also noticed they weren't double checking every seat on Gemini. Unfortunately, they were still stacking like every time. :( Here's to hoping they stop it on Maxair and Skyhawk.

Maybe it was Falfas idea to do the "check." Didn't they start this crap at Knott's a few years back?

I'm not entirely sure the weather policy has changed one bit. Magnum went down to one train in the rain Sunday morning. It could run two perfectly safely. as there are always TWO chances to stop a train with two trains. Thankfully there was no one there so I still rode a bunch of times even with one train. MF was open for a while, then closed, then open again. Not much was running on Sunday morning in the rain.

Raptor was still a disaster. I'd almost go as far as saying with their new system of checking, they need to have only 4 or 5 people on the platform instead of 6. I'd personally go with 5 - 4 checking the train with a third on the unload side to deal with special access and try to direct traffic because it's such a cluster over there all the time since there's no room whatsoever.

Bill Spehn has a lot of work to do still. I hope he doesn't stand for things like they are because they're not real good.

What is the new system over at Raptor?

One person loops through and checks all four seats in each of two rows, rather than checking two seats in three or four rows. In theory, this way should have less wasted movement and put you right back where you need to be when you are done, but I'm not sure how they're working it with 3 people on each side of the train. To me, those extra two people almost seem counterproductive. I think they could eliminate one and keep three on unload side, with one person not checking seats, but dealing with getting people the hell off the platform and down the stairs, special access, parent swaps, etc.

I'm amazed at how employees at any ride but Magnum (where they really can't relax ever) just completely set aside checking their seats to deal with lost items, parent swaps, special access, etc while their seats sit there unchecked. And it seems like it's not against some sort of rule for the other person to check their seats. If one person is stuck, the other should pick up the slack, "meeting in the middle" so to speak.

I guess times have just changed, but I don't think things are any safer and they certainly aren't any more efficient then when I worked there and we hit hundreds of intervals in a row at Magnum and went full days without stacking all three trains. Raptor crews back then were equally good too.

MDOmnis said:
I'm not entirely sure the weather policy has changed one bit.

It's changed. Last year, coasters would close just because of rain, even if there wasn't any lightning. Now coasters won't CLOSE just because of rain, (except for the ones that closed for it before last year's ridiculous policies like Raptor, TTD, Gemini... and DT I think) but unfortunately, we'll still reduce the number of trains. Another improvement is that we won't be required to cycle every train a ridiculous number of times once the rain stops before we can load it. Over at Magnum, each train will only have to be cycled once. Still not perfect, but it's a vast improvement over last year's absurdity.

I thought the "check" came from that nice piece of paper they receive every 2 weeks?

Just a hunch.

Yeah, last year, I think Magnum went down when there was a *prediction* of rain.

Of course, any time you add a ride vehicle you'll have to cycle it once empty. (ASTM F 770:4). :)

Remember, it's still the first week of the season. There is lots of time for things to get better! I hear so far Raptor has borne the brunt of changes, although I heard they were trying to run one more car on Wildcat as well.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Doing away with the ridiculous number of cycles before opening back up is definitely a step in the right direction. Having run Magnum for three years in rain with three trains without incident, I still believe that something went wrong to cause that incident. I think the "excessive moisture" was that they weren't properly draining the water from the brake lines. It wasn't even raining very hard at the time of the incident and it's not like metal can become saturated with water to the point where metal on metal doesn't create friction.

Even so, dropping to two trains (avoiding the whole big long process of winching the third one back to the second storage track), leaving two chances for the brakes to stop the train before any incident would occur, would be more than adequate. Sometimes on these non busy and rainy May weekdays, I think they should just open with two and run with that all day until the weather clears and it gets busy and then they can put the third on. CP is usually hellbent on getting all three on to start the day which I like in most cases, but in some cases when you know you're going to end up transferring it off shortly, there is no point.