What happens in the case of disasters?

Hey Cedar Point employees, I'm curious to know, since no park is perfect, what happens should a disaster or issue arise? I'm not an employee myself, just a curious guest. I thought of this when I saw a news clip on youtube concerning guests getting stranded on Power Tower when a tornado came around, and they had a limited amount of time to get the people down(the ride operator had freaked out and left). Also, remember in 2011 with windseeker getting stuck at the top? What happens when a ride catches fire? Or it rains out while people are on it?Also, do the employees have drills for fire and tornados? What about dealing with rainy weather?

You are asking for a lot of information. In short- it depends on the situation. In all situations, safety is the number one goal

The park trains its staff on general emergency preparedness. Location leadership is trained a bit better and is expected to provide direction to their team and to guests to resolve the situation as safely and efficiently as possible.

For severe weather, the park will issue a general call out over the staff radios, usually around 30 mins before it is expected. This is to give rides adequate time to safely shut down and prepare as needed. This is why you will occasionally see rides shutting down for weather even though it looks fine outside. If the National Weather Service issues an alert concerning Erie County, it will automatically be broadcasted across the park. If the weather is severe enough, The park will broadcast a "seek shelter" alert. When that is given, staff will work to usher guests into shelters and will seek shelter themselves.

Ride crews are very well trained to handle shutdowns and situations that occur for their ride. If something like Windseeker should stop at the top and is unable to be quickly resolved, maintenance will attach a motorized arm to the tower base and evacuate each pair of seats. If a ride should catch fire, the crews would take action to evacuate the area, while trying to contain it, if possible. The park has its own fire department and safety team who would respond.

Cedar Point is also a Storm Ready location which means they meet certain criteria from the National Weather Service.

http://www.wtol.com/story/25477801/stormtrack-weather-cedar-point-plan

When I rode Monster, er, sorry, Friendly Monster on Saturday I saw the ops had a flip book hanging in the dog house. Every possible calamity had a tab in the book to refer to, including Active Shooter.

But the best thing to do in any emergency? Follow me.

Thanks for the info, man. Wait a minute, the seat belts for the rides can unbuckle, but what about the actual restraints? How to they unlock those? Since you have worked there, what's the worst disaster you have encountered?

Every ride has an emergency manual release key, pedal, or power pack to get guests out.

Worst repeating disaster I have ever seen is: anytime the employee cafeteria does "food" as if it were from the orient. Deep fried doughballs with a 1cm cube of "chicken" in the center, lovingly... no... sparingly covered in a "sauce" that could have easily just been extracted from a truck differential. All of that on a bed of rice that spent eleven seconds or less "cooking" before being doled out.

A sensory experience to be certain.

Charcoal briquets are likely tastier and probably easier to chew...

But, as far as disasters outside of the caf, I'd have to say severe weather. Like being under a running faucet rainstorms. I remember when Carnevil was back at Camp Snoopy it rained so hard that "Lake Carnevil" was formed by the bridge near Tilt-A-Whirl. It was not there and then in under five minutes it was over a foot deep. When the rain stopped it took a very long time to drain/be absorbed by the earth. Being a less illuminated part of the experience we lined trash cans up and tried to tell guests that it was very deep. But it was deceiving how fast it got really deep and lots of people just flopped in while trying to escape from soggy/interestingly odored clowns.

Biggest disaster I saw was the 1977 tornado that tore up Camper Village and cleared the trees for Gemini to be built. Perimeter Rd was completely blocked just outside the Food Service complex. As I recall, there were injuries in Camper Village, but, the park was virtually empty by that point due to the weather. CP closed immediately once the impact was realized. No, I had no disaster training back then, but, knew I couldn’t drive my Food Service truck through those trees!