Friday 10/23 or how to break Millennium Force

Before I begin I want to stress how sorry I am and how completely dumb this was. But it was fun and an honest mistake.

We ventured out for our first halloweekend of the year last night. I'll probably go again tomorrow and of course next week. Being laid off from my sales job is not a bad thing sometimes especially when you have a season pass.

I've been reading Pointbuzz for a long time and finally created an account when I found out Demon Drop was leaving. Last night I finally saw a few things I've read about on here. Like Single Rider Bob and parking at Soak City.

We got to the park around 7 after fighting traffic to get out of Detroit. It was our 4th trip of the year and it was a great time.

We got a lot of rides in. Millennium Force was a walk on, Maverick had a 15 minute wait or so, Raptor was a walk on, we rode Blue Streak buy ourselves. Magnum had a 5 minute wait in the station. So we got quite a few spins on a lot of our favorites.

As is tradition for us, we like to end the night with 3 or 4 rides on the Millennium. So we got on around 11:45 and then back in line around11:50 where we had an empty train waiting for us. So we walked on to a empty seat after deciding not to wait for the front.

We buckled in and headed up the hill. When we got about 100 feet in the air the train stopped and we were perched there staring up. After about a minute we heard an announcement from the station that it was down mechanical and then less than a minute later we heard another announcement this time from the speakers on the hill. "Your train has been stopped on purpose, remain seated."

Having no idea what was going on we waited and it was cold up there, but, the view was breathtaking. After another 5-10 minutes the "mine cart" as I like to call it made its way up the hill where an op had explained that someone took off their seatbelt. They didn't know who had done it but they started checking the train with a flashlight looking at every person on the train to see who did it. They came up empty and said they would be starting the train as soon as possible. The worker waiting near us in the cart said since they could not find it, it must be a malfunction. He called down to the booth and asked if a light had turned off and they said no. They visibly checked one more time, asked if everyone was ok and went back down.

3-4 minutes later we were on our way. When we pulled into the station they asked up to switch trains and we could ride again on the last train of the night. What a blast I thought.

As we were switching trains I could not get my seatbelt to un latch. I kept pulling and pulling and nothing would happen. Finally I got it to release and thats when I realized I may have been the culprit. I wear somewhat roomy cargo pants and a baggy total skull hoody when I go to the park. As I clicked my seatbelt together I must have gotten my clothes stuck in the clasp of the belt. My guess is this is what caused the ride to stop.

I felt embarrassed. I didn't tell anyone but my girlfriend and I took my free ride of shame. I can't believe I did that. I like to consider myself as a respectable rider and here I am scaring my girlfriend and some poor kid who probably needed a change of pants. I have to give mad props to the 17yr old sitting next to him. He said some pretty reassuring things to the kid to keep his fears at ease.

I hope you enjoyed that. Feel free to make fun of me.

Of course you know, this means you now own Millenium Force. ;)

Nice anecdote. Sounds like it was quite an adventure. I'm not sure how much I'd like hanging on the lift for that long after dark, even if it was only about a third of the way up.

Oh, and in case you haven't been properly ushered in yet, welcome to Pointbuzz, Prawo.

I wasn't aware that the computer on Millennium Force could tell which seats were unbuckled.

^Same. i really don't know how it would know. I think Skyhawk can know or not. There is a computer like device under the seat.

I don't think it told them which seat belt was not fastened as they were checking the entire train. I could be wrong, it may not have been me that caused it. But it adds up.

I still feel like a dolt. I'm not a new rider and have been doing this for years. Getting stuck up there in the cold, at night with serious winds coming off the bay is not as fun as it sounds.

^^^^ I own Millennium force. It's my baby. I will not make fun of you because i have always wanted to get stopped on the hill.........:)

Dude. Apologizing because an article of clothing got stuck in the latch of a seatbelt? Justifying and saying you're not a new/are a respectable rider?

Really?

Well, in that case - this one time, I sat next to a guy on Skyhawk who couldn't get his belt buckled. He was one of my friends. OMG I'm soooooooo embarrassed. How irresponsible of me to have friends who can't figure out seatbelts. I guess I'm just not "pro" enough.

Yes I am apologizing. In case you skimmed the post you'll see they announced the ride was down mechanical because of this. Since it was during the last ten minutes of the night and it didn't appear to re-open when we pulled into the station. Its possible people missed rides because of me and it could have been prevented if I made sure my belt was properly fastened.

Congratulations on being a jerk. You win the internet today.

Interesting story... Unless something has changed in the past couple years on MF, there is nothing that senses whether seatbelts are fastened, or lapbars are up or down. Here's my assumption of what happened.

When leaving the station, someone on the crew thought they saw a seatbelt unfastened, and called a hold. Where you were stopped is the typical place to be stopped in that situation. Once the seatbelt situation had been cleared via the visual check, they tried to restart the ride, but likely got some sort of trouble light. This is typical when trying to restart the ride after a situation like that. Once it got reset, you were on your way.

I don't think you have to worry about your cargo pants causing downtime :)

Jeez Josh, having a bad day? lol.

Welcome to PointBuzz Prawo. I would be a little bit embarrassed too. :) Good thing you kept your mouth shut, because if I were a passenger on that train I probably would have killed you. lol. I hate going up that lift. I could not imagine being stuck on it.

Me? Bad day? Nah... Just bein me :).
Thanks for the award, but I wasn't looking to win the internet, just calling it like it is.

Oh well. **** happens. We're all prone to dumb mistakes no matter how easy it can be, in this case, a seat belt. Sounds like you had a good time though, that's the main thing.

Josh M, that makes sense. I thought maybe there were remote sensors or something a long those lines. But it seems odd to stop the train so high up. We were directly across from Dragster's 2nd cross beam placing us at what I believe to be 100 feet or so from our point at the middle of the train.

I had an awesome time. I didn't get to go as much as I would like this year/ Oh well, one more weekend left.

Due to how the lift system works, they want the entire train to be completely on the 45 degree section of lift before stopping for a seatbelt issue. That's why you were up so high. Also, with the speed the lift moves, a late reaction of a few seconds can add quite a few feet onto your stopping point.

That happened to a friend and I on Sat.Sept.19,2009. It was great,the highlight of the day. Happened after sunset,the views were great,watching the fog from 'fright zone',looking at the people staring up at us. Since we weren't moving,or about to anytime soon,I pulled out the camera and starting clicking off pics. Never happened again to us,but we wanted it to. We were not gonna be the ones to purposely unbuckle the seat belt to cause it happen.

Since we weren't moving,or about to anytime soon,I pulled out the camera and starting clicking off pics.

Out of curiosity, if you were to take pictures from a train that you know from a ride op's announcement won't be moving for a while, would that be reason for removal from the park, etc? I've seen people be escorted by CP police out of both the CCMR and Iron Dragon stations for taking pictures, and I wouldn't be surprised if they at least reprimanded you for it.

If there was no harm done, those have to be some great pics that you should upload. And I totally would have taken pictures from Raptor when I was stuck up there a few years ago.

I've only been stopped on a ride for long periods of time twice. First was on Mean Streak's lift about 4 or 5 years ago and the ride op who came up said we could use our phones/cameras. The second time was last year on Raptor's midcourse and they told us not to pull out phones or cameras. I'd advise against it unless they specifically give you permission.

^Makes sense, especially seeing that on MS you're in a car where if you drop something, it's likely just going to fall into the car, while on Raptor if you drop something it could go anywhere, including the ground. I'd never do it without permission.

Now that I think about it, I remember being stuck on Magnum's brake run a while back and a bunch of people had phones out. It was only for about 20 minutes, though. When I was stuck on Raptor's lift hill about two-thirds of the way up for about an hour, I couldn't see if anyone had phones/cameras out because we were in the front seat, but I think that a ride op may have requested that no phones or cameras were used. These were both several years ago, though, so I'm not too sure.

I may be wrong but doesn't MF have cameras on the lift hill that the op looks at to see if seatbelts are undone?