Valravn brake failure

Sad, really. A lot of the crews now do not put the emphasis on capacity.

It's weird because the crew on that ride was pretty decent the last couple years.

With the exception of Gatekeeper at some certain times (I've seen them be amazing, but it's pretty inconsistent), most of the crews aren't anything like they used to be. :(

Given the turnover of ride ops... it’s nearly impossible to blame the lack of consistency in focus on capacity on anyone but management.

It’s a management problem; it’s a training problem; and it’s a focus problem. There’s more to safe operation than making sure the riders are secured and the platforms are clear. It’s important to get the trains in and out efficiently just to keep them from banging into each other.

—Dave Althoff, Jr.

I agree, it most certainly is a management problem at the TL/ATL level (do they still call them that!?), which of course, is influenced by the area supervisors, the training programs, etc...

The best thing to do is lead by example as ride TL/ATL’s…But you need the proper ride leads in place of course. If you hustle, your team will often follow suit. Often it just took a simple “Hey, let’s pick up the pace!” with a smile and good energy to do just that with my crew. Even during those long, hot muggy days of summer when you were putting in 60-80hrs a week and morale wasn’t exactly the best…

Sometimes, it was ensuring the rotation was setup in such a way that we had more motivated employees in the same positions as the lesser-motivated employees, such as checking restraints.

Our area supervisors were often helpful in the effort for better capacity. I recall them checking in on the dispatches per hour, questioning intervals when they were lower than usual and talking with those employees not doing well or keeping pace. Sometimes, if they were bad enough they were often transferred to flat rides or the kids area… Often they were the first transferred to other rides when we were over staffed by request of our supervisors.

If the managers don’t care, the team often won’t. Incentives to reach capacity goals is always a good motivator. But the management team (from the ride leaders on up) need to promote the importance of course.

^ THIS. EXACTLY THIS.

Side note: location leadership have the same roles but with different titles:

TL - now Location Supervisors
ATL - now the Team Leader

I think they've just not emphasized throughput as much as they used to and I think it's an attitude that's coming from higher than the TL/ATL (or Supervisor/TL as they call them now). Of course if you have ride location leadership that still cares about capacity, they can sort of override this with a whole lot of hustle, but it doesn't seem to happen very consistently anymore.

They've put so much emphasis on things like standing on dots or pressure mats, behind poles or gates, holding buttons, not being free to move and pair riders, making sure doors are closed, looking around like a boob before sending a train, waiting until everyone is clear before anyone can give the clear signal, messing with loose article bins, looking at handstamps, looking at shorts, looking at zippered pouches, checking your seats only and not helping a partner who may be stuck with one difficult guest, etc. Basically they're jacking around with a lot of stuff that used to be secondary to just getting people secured and getting the trains out. I really like what Dave said above and I think he's exactly right. Additionally, someone said it before, but a lot of times the crowd people are treating the position like a jigsaw puzzle and when they're too slow to put it together, a bunch of empty seats go out. Just let a few trains worth of people in and stop the line when it gets too full. It shouldn't be so complex.

When I used to work at CP, they sent out a sheet weekly with all rides listed, their numbers for the day before, the previous week, month, and year to date and it was compared to the prior year or maybe two. At Magnum, we used to compete with Raptor and we'd sometimes check each other's numbers for the day when we got to the park op office at night. I remember our supervisor watching our dispatches from the midway and calling us and being like "you guys are doing awesome - every train is full and every interval is hit!"

RideMan said:
It’s important to get the trains in and out efficiently just to keep them from banging into each other.

Shouldn’t block systems be fail safe no matter how often trains stack?

Safety is the number one priority. And while you could argue that the faster methods employed in years past were "just as safe", the injured, lawyers, and the courts have determined otherwise...

Now the burden of proof is on the operator (Cedar Fair) to demonstrate that every single time the rides were checked and started the exact same way with double checks for all safety related issues.

The make-wholes and the lawyers have taken something that could be done simply, and through litigation, large payouts, and bad press altered the lens that a business has to look through to achieve a simple task: Is the ride ready to start safely?

These extended procedures remove (ok, noticably reduces) one variable from the equation.

Throughput is not relevant at all by comparison. 1RPH is a better choice than any injured.

No brainer.

Perhaps that’s the case. I don’t know. I just hope Cedar Fair can see how great operations used to be compared to now. As much as I hate the program as both a guest and a previous employee, Cedar Fair obviously finds the value in IROC. However, I’m under the impression they can renew with IROC every few years. It’s not like they’re locked in it for good.

Disney figured out how to Do it without ‘ IcROCk’ of sh*t.

Exactly. Cedar Point’s own operations program was just as geared towards safety as IROC is without putting on a *you can’t put your clear out or dispatch this ride unit until X, Y, and Z....* show

Cartwright said:

RideMan said:
It’s important to get the trains in and out efficiently just to keep them from banging into each other.

Shouldn’t block systems be fail safe no matter how often trains stack?

They certainly should!

But remember that you're now relying on a backup process. This doesn't apply to Valravn, which is intended to stop on a staging brake before entering the station, but consider a ride like Gemini, which is intended to operate without stacking. If you stack the trains, the block system brings them to a controlled stop, as intended. But if the trains go out on time, there is no need for the block system to actually *do* much of anything except to be prepared to prevent a block violation. The trains run with sufficient headway that the safety brakes don't have to actually stop the trains, and things run very nicely. But if the train goes out late, then the next train has to be stopped on the safety brake. Now you are relying on an electromechanical system to operate as expected. That introduces a number of potential failure points in that system, all of which *should be* backed up in an appropriate manner. But of course each of those protections also includes failure points. In addition, on a ride that was not originally designed to stop on a safety brake, that stop may be excessively violent, which introduces yet another potential source of patron injury even in the absence of any failure.
There is a lot of silliness going on out there not because it solves any particular problem, but because some consultant thinks it looks like a good idea, and so far as I know none of these processes is ever evaluated to confirm that it does, in fact, improve ride safety. And so I have been to smaller parks where a ride is being operated by a single operator who is throwing hand signals and audible cues even though there is no other operator to receive the cue. I've ridden a coaster with an old-school shared handlebar restraint where operators individually check both sides of the same bar. And then there is the coaster with retracting seat belts where every operator checks the belt by pulling it against the retractor, instead of against the latch plate, meaning the physical belt check *doesn't* check to make sure the belt is fastened. And yet all these things have become standard processes that are supposed to improve ride safety? I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing it.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I think Dave and probably some people at Cedar Point have FORGOTTEN more about ride safety than those consultants at IROC ever knew! :) It's a shame they've been able to peddle their trash training to so many places throughout the industry.

RideMan beat me to every point I was going to make about the idiocy of some of these standards in the second part of his post. I’ve seen all that, too.