Millennium Force Cable Issue

If you go to the Sandusky registers website they have a webcam its focused on MF lift hill you can see what looks like two peopl standing up there it also looks like something else is up there. http://www.sanduskyregister.com/registercam/

Yeah, I thought I saw a couple people wandering the tracks on the lift hill earlier when I looked. Too hard to tell exactly what they are doing, inspecting or repairing, but any progress and action is good to hear, I'll be making it to Sandusky tomorrow for my 4 days up there before I head south to KI.

I'm going to the park June 8th - June 12th and I'm praying that Millie is open by then!

I imagine that the reason why the catch-car track was designed the way it was for Expedition GeForce and not MF was that they were forced to design a new system for EGF. Having the open-ended catch-car channel along the top of EGF's twisted first drop would potentially cause A LOT of problems for the catch car and cables. When the new system was designed for EGF, there was no reason not to implement it on later designs such as Thunder Dolphin.

I took this picture from the funcam at funcoast.com. http://i646.photobucket.com/albums/uu186/jinglejinglejingle/millenniumforce.jpg I don't know what those black blobs are on top of the hill. Possibly people. They were moving at one point. oh well. I'm going there tomorrow and i can't wait to take a look.

I hope someone who was at the park today will give us an update...

I'm soooooooooooo bummed. I'm going tomorrow and Millie wont be running :(

CPboy77 said:
I hope someone who was at the park today will give us an update...

As someone mentioned earlier, the cranes are now down. But, the trains have remained in the exact same locations (1 in load, 1 in unload, yellow on transfer) for the past 3 days and the dummies on them have not been moved. Still activity under the main lift hill, cranes are down but still on site when I left this afternoon.

So, its either repaired and they're waiting to start testing, or its not repaired and they still have work to do and/or are waiting for a part for it (hence why they took the cranes down). I can't confirm either of those options, but its one of the two.

Update from today (took a couple rides on the train!). As of this afternoon, 2 of the trains are on the transfer track with one still sitting in unload. The cranes are gone. Around noonish, the entire catchcar was in pieces under the station. Around 6ish, maintenance was using one of the High Striker mallets to pound the catchcar piece by piece back into the catchcar "track" under the station. It looks like Millennium Force might be up sooner rather than later.

They have to "pound" the catchcar back into place?

Rapids 77-78 said:
They have to "pound" the catchcar back into place?

That was my response, ha ha. That sounds like something one does when they don't know how to fix it and the frustration reaches the breaking point ;-) Like our computers, cell phones, tvs, etc... Hit it, beat on it, throw it out the window, lol.

I was just as amazed as you are. But yes, they were actually "pounding" it back into the "track". And it did not look like the easiest job either. It barely moved with every hit. I would have thought there would be an easier way. Just heading back to the park now, I'll try to provide an update a bit later.

I would think that pounding it into the channel might help with reshaping it. Then again I'm not a ride mechanic or anything. As for using a high striker hammer, :) it was probally a plastic sludge hammer filled with those metal beads inside. Hoping for a quick recovery for Millienium, will be at the park Tuesday with some friends that really want to ride.

I noticed when I was there yesterday, that it appears to be a totally new catch car being installed. And that there was still a large crain sitting on perimeter road when we left at around 11.

I wonder how Single Rider Bob is holding up?

I noticed while riding the train at one point today that there were what looked like some of the cross bars inside the track that had been cut off, and were laying on the ground near a support by the station. I couldnt tell where exactly they had been cut from but i did see plenty of maintenance guys working on the lift area. at one point there was another crane on site around 4:00.

When i was at Cedar Point today, i noticed that there were dummies in the train. I don't know if that means anything. Also, my friend noticed some of the supports were painted red. Red never means go... :(

Sorry, not the supports. It was the track pieces.

They were working pretty damn hard on Millie today, and they almost had a test ride going till they apparently ran into more issues with the lift hill. They were about to transfer one of the trains to the station when they ran into issues and went back to look at the lift. I sat and watched them several times today, it was fairly interesting work, most of it looked like steel work on the lift hill using the maintenance vehicle. Doesn't look like they have solved the issue as of yet, but must be hitting some snag or bad part causing issues, because the cables look all normal and were moving (albeit slowly) during their work. The crane did bring up some small steel parts in 2 places on the lift hill, which is what they kept running up the lift hill to work on several times. There was a lot of tools and banging noises coming from there.

I left about 5:30, when it looked like they were defeated in solving the issue, but we'll see tomorrow if they made any progress. I got 3 more days to get my chance at a ride.

Don't worry dude, I'm sure Millennium Force will be going sometime this week. It's good that they're close now to opening it. Millennium Force is my favorite coaster so it stinks that it's not operating now. Although I probably won't make it for another week to Cedar Point; I'm still hoping the best for Millennium Force.