Demon Drop not open ?

Maybe it was just that I wasn't aware of how bad they were in 2001 because I wasn't in leadership, but ride prides seem to have gotten worse after it was changed so that they can only work the sitting positions on coasters. I'm sure some of them messed up and that prompted the change. But regular employees screw up too sometimes.

I really think they should think about just letting them work on the platforms again. I mean when a new employee shows up, you train him in the morning, but you don't make them sit at entrance and turnstiles all day. You let them do all aspects of the job except controls. Is an employee on his first day really any different than a ride pride? I'd say no.

I think letting them work all the positions would let them have more fun and actually maybe even take pride in what they are doing. Working on platform will help them to understand how important it is for the entrance/turnstile person to enforce article and height restrictions and such. If they never see the importance of those other jobs, they probably won't give a rat's a** what they let through entrance.

The gates on Demon Drop, honestly, are pretty well done. I haven't seen them affect much at all, so I don't think that running a different amount of cars is going to depend on the gates or not, especially since they're guest driven rather than slow-to-open air gates.

i really dont see the point of keeping DD b/c i think power tower is better anyways

Well, it's lasted 8 years regardless of your lack of punctuation, [Shift] keys, and full words. Great first post.

Mike Ox, has anyone seen Mike Ox?

Mikerox527 said:
i really dont see the point of keeping DD b/c i think power tower is better anyways

Nice opinion, I'll bet you don't even realize that Power Tower isn't even a true freefall.

That's why I love Demon Drop. I kinda wish someone would design a bigger one so that there is a larger free-fall zone. Make it 250 feet tall with a 200 foot free fall zone. That would be pretty sweet.

That might hurt a little on the pullout. Let's go for 300 feet with a 200 foot freefall zone. ;)

Or, let's just go ride PKD's drop zone. Best. Freefall. EVER.com.

Michael Darling said:
The gates on Demon Drop, honestly, are pretty well done. I haven't seen them affect much at all, so I don't think that running a different amount of cars is going to depend on the gates or not, especially since they're guest driven rather than slow-to-open air gates.

well, the brakes are why they pull cars off at the end of the year. And once you go down to five you could run demon loading only the right car slot if you are on the load platform. But because of the dispactch enable buttons and the gates being installed, I don't think it's possible to "cheat" the ride computer anymore into letting you do that.

Ok, probably shouldn't tell you this but it's not like they can fire me so here it goes: how to cheat demon drops ride computer 101, step by step.

1. dispatch all three cars in the station
2. keep the dispatch buttons for cars 2 and 3 held down. a simple way to do this is by runing a pen though the holes of the button guard so the buttons can't come up. this will keep the cars from stoping in slots 2 and 3, they will continue to slot 1 (they're numbered back to front)
3. Load car one quickly and dispactch it
4. The next car will travel through slot 3, 2 and stop at one and release the harnesses
5. Unload and load

Another thing we constantly did that could have gotten us fired was mess with people by releasing the harnesses after they locked and before they were checked. Great fun watching peoples faces when they are pusing on their just locked harness to test it and it pops up, and then locks again. Then you get em again once they try to test it a second time.

Demon Drop was open Friday's in 2002 because I was sent there on Friday's to work. But usually we wern't open because of rain. The ride can't operate in any kind or rain. An it tends to rain a lot on Fridays in the fall.{maybe because of high school football}.

As far a ride prides go I mainly liked working with them but there always were a few who didn't want to do anything. But without them I don't see how CP could stay open.

As for Demon Drop leaving I have mixed feelings on it. I personally don't like riding it but it is a landmark of sorts and it was added during my senior year. But its likely to leave soon no matter what

^ I personally like the "user operated" gates on DD. I don't know why they didn't add those to the rides they just changed over. I don't but that it's company-wide, either, because all of the new rides (and Power Tower at CP) at Dorney Park have magnetically-latched and user-operated gates.

From what I hear, the magnetic locking gates fail (need to be fixed) more often than the air gates that they installed at all of the coasters.

(a former Demon host, not wwrgsww)

Wow.... to all of the people that have worked Demon and think you know what's going on.... unless you have worked the ride in the last few years, you have no clue. I am friends with all of the maintenance guys in the park, and I know the mechanics of the ride.

My question is this, why are we telling general guests the secrets of our rides? things WE even are not supposed to know? Honestly.... pens? You must be kidding.... why don't you tell them where we keep the keys while your at it?

As for why Demon will not be open for Fridays this year... it's a Friday, the park is empty, and it's not the most popular ride in the park. Plain and simple. The main draw is the fright zones, not necessarily the rides. I am sorry that Demon may not be open on Fridays. I say may because............. you never know. It wasn't scheduled to open Fridays last year either....

e x i t english said:
...because all of the new rides (and Power Tower at CP) at Dorney Park have magnetically-latched and user-operated gates.

Funny story...

First visit to Dorney this year. Standing in line for Talon. Two kids in front of us take off through the gate as soon as it opens. The gate swings back at us pretty hard. Don't be slow getting through there cause the first time they catch they don't open back up. I was like....WTF?

wwrgsww said:
I am friends with all of the maintenance guys in the park, and I know the mechanics of the ride.

I'd give you a cookie, but I don't really care enough.

The keys for all rides are kept in the ride operations office under the front desk at night. It's the office by kiddie kingdom.

while in operation, the keys are kept in the control booth, while its powered up the power key is in the controls, while shut down the key is kept on a hook in controls.

oh yeah.. almost forgot... i've got a copy of the key, its been awhile but i think its the DO-18 key. Actually it turned out that my storage shed key is identical to the universial key cedar point has for all its rides. found out by accident when working on midway carrousel. I had both keys in my pocket from my walk arround, and accidently used my storage shed key, and didn't notice till i took it out! So, in theory i could start up any ride, except most major rides have locks to thier electical rooms and such that have to be opened to power up a ride. Like the electrical room for demon drop, you have to turn the power on with the ride key in there before you turn it on at the controls.. so i couldn't power up demon.

want me to tell you how to disengage the lift and make the car fall through the tower? It's really simple and is done every day. Before the ride can start you manually take it up each set of tower brakes and then a matinence man disengages the lift to make sure that the drop brakes are working properly. (no i'm not going to say how to disengage lthe lift.... it is really easy though) *** Edited 8/15/2006 6:21:01 PM UTC by liebevision***

Demon Drop is open on Bonus Weekends/Friday Fright Nights. See "Today in the Park" for one of the Halloweekends Fridays on Cedar Point's website and scroll to the bottom where they have a list of the operating rides:

Rides available today (weather permitting) are: Chaos®, Troika, Blue Streak, Midway Carousel, Raptor®, Cedar Downs, Kiddy Kingdom (6 rides only), Cadillac Cars, Matterhorn, Scrambler, Skyhawk, Wave Swinger, Wicked Twister, WildCat, Demon Drop, maXair, Iron Dragon, Top Thrill Dragster, Magnum, Power Tower and Millennium Force®. All other rides and Camp Snoopy will be closed.

It isn't written on the Friday Night Ride Availability on the Halloweekends website so it might be another typo.

*** Edited 8/22/2006 3:15:01 AM UTC by RacefortheSky1234***

By the way... maitnence guys are clueless when it comes to the ins and outs individual rides. Truthfully seasonals who are in leadership on the ride will know more about the ride than most of the maitnence crew, if not all of them. I won't say what happened but we had a mechanical shutdown and no one could figure it out, and after two hours of maitnence trying to figure out how to fix it... I asked them if I could try something, and fixed it in twenty seconds.

Demon won't be open on Fridays unless other rides break down. The crew is already being trained at other rides.

As for maintenance, they know alot more than you think. Sometimes the ride ops know more, sure... especially those in leadership that have worked a ride multiple seasons. Were YOU in leadership liebevision? Because if you knew any better.... you would have known that you have to communicate the EXACT problem to maint. before they figure it out sometimes. All they see is a problem and data... not how it happened. Have you no common sense? Why the hell would you want to tell someone how to drop a car through the tower? No, it's not hard, but all it takes is a guest going somewhere they shouldn't, playing with things they shouldn't, and then seriously injuring someone. I for one, am glad you are no longer a ride op. I would be scared for the safety of the guests if you were on my crew.