Valravn Goes Vertical--Construction Starts

The question of fall protection is an interesting one. I know the facility that I work at would require us to wear fall protection on the lift hill as there is only a handrail on one side. It would depend on what exactly the stairs are classified as but my guess would be fixed industrial stairs which are allowed up to 50 degrees. However this type of stair requires handrails on all open sides.

I have seen operators climb GK lift hill without fall protection but that has rails on both sides, as well as fencing under the track to prevent someone from falling through that gap. I know there a bunch of people here who have worked as ride ops, did CP require fall protection on any lift hills that didn't have rails on both sides such as Magnum? What if they have to evac a train on the lift hill of such a ride? Out of all the times I have been to CP I've never seen anyone up there.

Still seems like the safest route would be to use the funicular, ever since the announced the Sunrise Thrills I was wondering how they were going to make it work.

I've seen many coasters evacuated and have never seen fall protection used, neither from the park or the guests. Even Raptor just had guest simply step onto the stairs and walk down. As I said before I have climbed a Vekoma Boomerang lift and it wasn't required that we used fall protection since it was considered stairs, even at that degree. That's why I am curious if OSHA has different standards for amusement equipment. I'm a Fall Protection Trainer for my company but we are considered "General Industry" and at times "Construction" when we are building a stage or ride. However I don't know what a ride would fall under once it's completed.

It seems like there would have to be some sort of different classification as they cant install railings on both sides. Our company requires us to wear fall protection on anything that doesn't have rails on all sides. All of our fixed, and permanent work platforms, stairs, vertical ladders etc.. have rails on all sides. It is mostly temporary scaffolding that doesn't have the rails which requires us to wear the harnesses.

We have to go through refresher fall protection training every 12 months and I just did mine a few weeks ago. I know our company would make everyone wear it on the Valravn lift but perhaps that is their requirement and not OSHA.

I was thinking it would be strange, and perhaps more dangerous to try and equip everyone with a harness during an evac but I honestly cannot recall seeing one.

Thabto said:

Some bad news about Valravn:

http://www.shareonfb.com/s9hfhg/cedar-points-new-coaster-valravn-is...ree-months

No! It can't be true! I have plane tickets to Cedar Point to make it on opening weekend.

In all seriousness though, I was so frustrated when I opened the link.

We are also talking about guidelines that employees would have to follow but not guests. OSHA is in place for those who work at a park, while guest safety, I believe, should follow an ASTM standard. Dave would be a better resource for this subject. I can only speak for OSHA standards.

ASTM standards pretty much state that evacuation procedures should be developed by the ride manufacture (when possible) and the ride's owner. In other words, there is no comprehensive industry standard on ride evacs. This would be a very difficult standard to write due to the shear number of different situations that might be encountered.

That would make sense seeing as how evacuation procedures can be different by park and/or ride.

99er said:

I've seen many coasters evacuated and have never seen fall protection used, neither from the park or the guests.

Sure, I walked down on SFA's Superman, but that's a pretty standard rise at 30-ish degrees. Steeper with hand rails on only one side (as in, you can only hold on to one side) is a pretty different scenario.

99er said:
...I don't think that angle is too steep...

Umm have you tried climbing Gatekeeper's lift hill? That thing is no joke! Not to mention, the incline on Valravn is more vertical IIRC.

With any type of walk downs, each ride is to accommodate 4 guests at a time. My poor diagram example below is to demonstrate how each walk down should happen. For every 4 guests, there is a ride host in between:

XooooXooooXooooX

Let X= ride host
Let o= guests

I'm not sure if that's how six flags practices their walk downs though, so I can't really speak for their walk down procedures.

Don't look now, but is that a tunnel? Or are we getting some "castle walls" for the coaster to dive down into, similar to the rock walls around Maverick?

^ Maybe that's where the on ride photo will be where that wall is, I can't remember if it was explained before where it will be.

Don't expect a test run anytime soon with all of this snow coming to Sandusky. Typical Ohio.

What snow? The forecast calls for a rain and snow shower mixed, that's it.

Every year in Ohio around this time, the weather is always so wacky. Yet, I still am shocked every time I see that snow is in the forecast after it being in the 60s and 70s the week prior.

I wonder if perhaps when the train is behind that "castle wall" there'll be some kind of sound effects/ lights flashing in the windows.

Hopefully they're repurposing the water cannons you could pay to shoot at people from STR in those windows

JUnderhill said:

The question of fall protection is an interesting one. I know the facility that I work at would require us to wear fall protection on the lift hill as there is only a handrail on one side. It would depend on what exactly the stairs are classified as but my guess would be fixed industrial stairs which are allowed up to 50 degrees. However this type of stair requires handrails on all open sides.

I have seen operators climb GK lift hill without fall protection but that has rails on both sides, as well as fencing under the track to prevent someone from falling through that gap. I know there a bunch of people here who have worked as ride ops, did CP require fall protection on any lift hills that didn't have rails on both sides such as Magnum? What if they have to evac a train on the lift hill of such a ride? Out of all the times I have been to CP I've never seen anyone up there.

Still seems like the safest route would be to use the funicular, ever since the announced the Sunrise Thrills I was wondering how they were going to make it work.

I haven't seen photos of Valravn's funicular. But I do know Griffin's holds 10 people. The trains have 10 per row, so they could evac an entire row each trip up the lift hill.

Valravn's funicular is about the same size as Millennium's funicular. They have pictures of it on the construction photos section on th website. Evacs will probably take about an hour if they use the funicular

XS NightClub said:

Hopefully they're repurposing the water cannons you could pay to shoot at people from STR in those windows

I'm confused here. You want onlookers to shoot people on the brake run with water?

It really isn't a funicular because there's no second car running in the other direction. An inclined lift, sure, but it's not a funicular.