WindSeeker Closed

It's experienced problems, lol, just not to the extent as the rest of the 2011-2012 classes.

One thing I hope Mondial fixes is the restraint locked system, to actually pinpoint what seat isn't locked instead of the ride hosts running around pushing down every bar.

Actually, there are two indicator lights on the side of each seat. The indicator goes out when the switch is closed,indicating that the bar is down "enough". There are three problems with this. First, it is a white incandescent bulb behind a red lens. When sunlight shines on the lens you can't tell whether the bulb is lit or not. Second, half the bulbs are burned out. And third, the operators don't bother looking at the indicators because of problems 1 and 2.

They really should use an LED or neon indicator, something without a filament so that it can survive daily operation. And the indicator needs to be obvious, perhaps a red lamp behind a clear lens, or even better a white frosted lens so that the color does not appear unless the lamp is lit. Positioning the lights a little higher might make them more obvious to the operators. Making them red/green lights instead of red/off lights would be even better because then there would be a clear " go" signal instead of merely the absence of a "no-go" signal.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Dave I don't disagree with you one bit. The lights are there for a reason, but I've never seen them used when checking for closed or open.

There has been numerous times, I've been on WindSeeker in cloudy weather, my bar was down, the light was off, "Gondola" unlocked, ride hosts run around push my bar down further, not even checking the light to see that I'm secure.

I think that a green/red led system would work better, like MaxAir and other rides. From what I understand there isn't anything on the WindSeeker drive panel that indicates which seat is unlocked either...it'd be nice if they'd update that.

I like maXair's system. It works pretty good.

Yes. A red/green system is perfect! But remember, this is a company that Cedar Fair has never dealt with before. Mondial is unlikely to come out and change the whole purpose of the safety system unless they 100% have to.

The problem with putting an indicator on the main control panel is that then you have to figure out how to run 64 (or better, 128) additional signals back to the main console. And yes, I presume that there is probably a data connection now between the carriage and the console, but the idea here is that you have an operator watching the "real world" who can figure out what's wrong (apart from the problem of half the lights being burned out) and doing it as a series loop is simple and bullet-proof.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Coaster Boi said:
Yes. A red/green system is perfect! But remember, this is a company that Cedar Fair has never dealt with before. Mondial is unlikely to come out and change the whole purpose of the safety system unless they 100% have to.

If they ever want to work with company again they would come out.

Maxair's control panel has a virtual representation of the wheel that shows each seats status in red/green. The ride won't go unless every seat is green/secured (not counting manual mode.) I'd be surprised if Windseeker didn't have something similar.

Regardless of this system, CP/CF policy still has employees manually push/pull on each restraint to check them.

^ bullet proof? why?

"bullet-proof" because the ride ops will be issued hand guns for sea gull control and CF cares about the safety of thier guests! This will also add to the thrill factor of the ride.

MF&WTer said:
Regardless of this system, CP/CF policy still has employees manually push/pull on each restraint to check them.

I like it when they pull, sometimes they push it down way too far.

MF&WTer said:
Regardless of this system, CP/CF policy still has employees manually push/pull on each restraint to check them.

Yes, but the problem is the multiple checks. I have seen them check the seats three times because one of the seats was "open". They always need to do one check, but not several. Thats the problem.

Coaster Boi said:
Yes, but the problem is the multiple checks. I have seen them check the seats three times because one of the seats was "open". They always need to do one check, but not several. Thats the problem.

Maybe someone wanted their restraint loosened a bit and the ride can't release individual seats/sections of seats; thus forcing the re-check of all of the seats.

Some rides allow hosts to open just groups of restraints. With Maxair it's 1/4 of the wheel at a time (there are standalone switches on the edges of the platform for this.) On Raptor the rows go in pairs; rows 1-2, 3-4, etc. On Millennium Force however, the entire train is released at once so this forces a recheck of all restraints even if only one needs to be released/adjusted. This may be the case with Windseeker.

Yes, this system is slow/inconvenient, but it's nice to know that they put safety first.

Windseeker is able to release lap bars in quarter sections of the gondola as well.

Have any of you ever noticed the two red lights on the outside of each set of seats? If the red light is on, it means the restraint isn't tight enough so I don't quite understand why the operators had to go around every seat a tighten them. Second, I live near Canada's Wonderland and I can tell you that at the beginning of the 2012 season, being on WindSeeker guaranteed yourself to get stuck....but not like Knotts. When the ride stopped at the top, it immediately began to come back down to the ground...at an extremely slow pace. It took about 20 minutes for the gondola to come back down completely. So maybe there is some override thing for operators when the e-stop triggers.

Also, I thought some of you might find this video about WindSeeker interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdZcGclDzts&list=UU3IwLP2Qfe7-JCPpvF...ature=plcp

Dom497 said:
Have any of you ever noticed the two red lights on the outside of each set of seats? If the red light is on, it means the restraint isn't tight enough so I don't quite understand why the operators had to go around every seat a tighten them.

Also, I thought some of you might find this video about WindSeeker interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdZcGclDzts&list=UU3IwLP2Qfe7-JCPpvF...ature=plcp

Yeah a few of have mentioned the two lights, but we hardly ever see any ride hosts actually using them.

As for the video, yes interesting! Thanks for sharing.

For those of you saying Kings Island's didn't have trouble this year: it didn't open until the third week of the park opening.

Yeah, those lights are the ones I was talking about. Great idea, in theory. In practice, you frequently can't look at them and tell whether they are lit or not; and when the ride unloads you can see that a large number of them are actually burned out. So just because the red light isn't lit doesn't necessarily mean the system is happy.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Zach I think what people including myself are saying, is that Kings Island's WindSeeker hasn't had the same problems as the other WindSeekers have had by stranding people. Kings Island's WindSeeker was the last to launch in 2011 as well.

Check this out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfQlgmCCiQA

The WindSeeker at CW comes down REALLY slow. It usually takes 30 minutes. I would be upset if I was on this ride.