Power Tower Operation

Ok to make a long story short I am working on a ride op simulation for Power Tower and other S&S rides and I am wondering various things, such as what happens if Power Tower E-stops and I thought if anyone would know it would be an employee, so anyone care to drop a little info on the situation.

If you e-stop the Power Tower, it will slowly (and I mean very slowly) return to the bottom of the tower from wherever it is.

Any other big operations things that I might need to keep in mind when designing the ride op sim.

Here is a picture of what the control panel looks like for a shot tower. The drop towers weigh when you dispatch. If it is overweight, it will say TOO HEAVY and return back to the bottom of the tower.

There's an enable at each tower that has to be depressed when the operator presses start. Each enable has a down button too.

I really hate to ask this but what is the procedure to open and close the ride down and what is the COMMON practice of dispatching.

Stratacoasters: to close and reopen the ride after a storm they have to run each train 5 times around the track each. The Mine ride crew of 07 (they were sooo nice and amazing) told me that.

I know that is for a roller coaster but does it apply to a drop tower?

Most any ride will have to be cycled a certain amount of times after a storm or some sort of downtime. Just depends on the situation, manufactures requirment, and the parks policy.

On most S&S shot/drop towers; to close the ride you just stop dispatching the ride. Leave the car at the bottom and turn the operator panel off. Then maintenance comes a bit later to actually shut the ride off. As for opening, its pretty much the above only in reverse. Maintenance will already have the ride on so it will just have to be cycled before opening. I am sure at smaller parks the crew could actually just turn the ride power off. Sometimes its as easy as actually just throwing a switch. Depends on how the park has it setup.

For dispatching: Once all the harnesses are locked, the secondary operator (at the load level) will depress a Dispatch Enable Button. Up in the control booth, the "Shoot" button will start to flash rapidly. This is to signal the Control Host that the Secondary Operator has pressed his button. The Control Host will then depress the Shoot Button and the computer takes over from there. That is all done in Auto Mode. In a manual mode you would actually have to hit the "Fill" button, then "Weigh" button and finally the "Shoot" button. All of this can actually vary by park as well.

I think we just had to cycle the ride once after shut down. The closing procedure was to estop the ride, then turn the key to off.

The cars are only weighed on the drop side, not the shot side. It's all just 'start' unless it's in maint mode.

The shot side weighs the cars as well. It has to in order to figure out how much pressure it needs to give a full ride to the top. If it used the same pressure on an empty car vs. a full one, it'd slam into the top. Don't you remember when it used to do "over shot" when the sensor would be off and use too much pressure?

I guess I actually do remember that. I didn't realize it was weighing them too. Doh.

I also forgot about the overshot. Those rocked. :)

Ok thanks guys your help is greatly appreciate, I will be sure to post the game when it is finished.