PortAventura Discussion Thread

Intamin should use this idea; it looks failsafe!

Magnets/lims are always safe; unless the power goes down..

I don't understand why the cables are not covered, it just seems logical to have a cage of some sort much like the chain guard on a bicycle.

That's just me though.

And I also heard that the car that the people sit in are stopped by magnets? Is this true? If so wouldn't this be a safer alternative that can be implemented in these larger drop towers?

The Intamin drop towers already are stopped by magnets. In fact, they are pretty much the pioneers of such technology.

As for a cable guard, it seems as if it would be rather difficult, as it would be right in the ride's path. However, if they were to somehow retrofit, or develop new, a system of holding the car from behind, that would effectively move the cables so they would be flush with the tower, allowing for some type of guarding similar to the hydraulic launch coasters to be placed and the vehicle would clear it.

Am I making sense with that?

Josh

^Yeah that makes perfect sense. Basically if the cables were "guarded" the cars wouldn't be able to function up and down the towers.

With S&S towers, if you watch the cables, their distance from the tower structure increases and decreases depending where the car is. As far as I know, the cable is furthest from the tower where the cable is connected to the car.

Sorry if I was saying people were "complaining". My take on it before I posted was that I read a couple posts of people saying they wouldn't ride drop towers again because of these 2 incidents, and I thought that was a bit drastic. SFKK was a combined mechanic and ride op failure. This ride did exactly what it was supposed to do.

I think the most important thing to consider in these "cable snapping" cases is that the huge wire cables are capable of supporting more than 10 times their weight, as long as the cables are inspected and replaced as neeeded. I know an engineer for a huge designing company and she says when it comes to the GP, things are so over designed that there's no reason for cables to be snapping. The problem, therein, is trusting ride mechanics to replace and inspect the wires frequently enough to make sure they don't have problems. I think that's what companies like Intamin are depending on too...they aren't expecting cables to snap because with the load they're built to carry, there's really no reason to even consider it.

I know the Knott's mechanics were very adamant on inspecting cables daily and they'd be replaced after so many cycles, and with Supreme Scream towers would be closed just for that.

I still feel safe on every ride I go on. These are just 2 random incidents that are getting press time.

Yea it makes sense, but honestly it wouldn't take a redesign to add a guard. I'm not talking about enclosing the cable, isolating it from the vehicle, but rather shielding the passenger from open cables.

Rather, if the cable were properly maintained at all times then the addition of a shield or guard would not be necessary.

I am not sure how you could completely protect the riders from the cable without almost completely enclosing them. Because of the nature of the cable and its extreme length, it could feasibly enter the rider envelope from any side.

As an aside, I loved this ride and rode it over a dozen times while there on the Spain trip last year. It does surprise me about the cable snap as PortAventura's ride maintenance seams top notch, though I guess accidents can happen everywhere. I can assure everyone HC was not run by lackadaisical teenagers, this thing was run by miltantly strict ride ops.

Intamin should use this idea; it looks failsafe!

 

Magnets/lims are always safe; unless the power goes down..

The whole "power going down" fright with anything that brakes with magnets is completely useless. When LIMs lose power, along with most installations of magnets on thrill rides, the magnets become exactly that, magnets.

They stop anything that passes through them with the opposite charge. When they do have power going to them, the computer systems can alter the amount of charge they have, lessening and increasing the charge to stop or allow movement of the vehicle.

They function almost 100% similar to brakes, as the normal brakes are closed by default, and takes electricity to open them, and when loss of power occurs, they close.

Perhaps Intamin should issue a recall for these rides much like what Chance Morgan did with their Chaos rides in the SF chain?

A recall on rides when a cable breaks? Don't be ridiculous. The cables for the ride probably weren't even made by Intamin, along with the fact that cable breaks happen more than is thought on different rides, it is only hyped when something tragic happens (like on S:TOP at SFKK).

Cable breaks have happened on Top Thrill Dragster, Kingda Ka, and Millennium Force too, and other than the cable shearing accident on TTD, it hasn't been sensationalized.

Faults can happen in anything, its all under circumstance. Saying that all rides have issues by default is like saying that all cars of the same make, model, and year will have the same issues. I had a lemon of a car, while my friend had the same year, make, and model, but different color. His worked perfect, while mine sucked. You can't always generalize problems to everything.

Cable breaks have happened on Top Thrill Dragster, Kingda Ka, and Millennium Force too, and other than the cable shearing accident on TTD, it hasn't been sensationalized.

Well, nobody lost a limb in those incidents!

I agree, the story here SHOULD be "New safety system installed on Intamin drop towers successful in preventing injury to riders" and NOT "Intamin drop towers are still prone to the cable failure that severed a girl's feet"

The rest of the conversation here is just us ride geeks wanting to know more about how these rides and their safety systems work.

Can an S&S tower already detect a cable failure, and what happens to the ride when it happens?

IRT cable guards and shielding... you know that trick we all did when we were a kid... putting one magnet on the top of a table, and another magnet underneath, then making the top magnet move around the table "by itself" by controlling it with the magnet underneath?

I suppose a ride could be designed so that the cable is attached to a magnet in a shielded trough, and carries the vehicle sheerly by magnetic force.

^ erasing the credit cards of everyone on board in the process.

Ha! Yeah. Are magnetic brakes already somewhat capable of doing that?

The cable snaps on these rides are due to lack of maintainence. Plain and simple. If that were not the case, no one in their right mind would ever get on a sky ride.....

notice the lack of anti-FallDowns

Ha! Yeah. Are magnetic brakes already somewhat capable of doing that?

No. If that was the case, they'd ask you to remove your wallet (and probably anything on you that is metal) before getting on. It's kind of funny to think about, though.

Josh

^^ Don't Sky Rides have fray sensors on them? I didn't think the drop towers did because a cable failure didn't mean immediate death to everyone aboard. What kind of new "sensors" have been installed on the drop towers? Cable fray or cable break sensors?

Also, I'm pretty sure parks would replace Sky Ride cables way before they even need to. If that cable breaks, LOTS of people die. If the cable on a drop tower, MF or TTD breaks, people MAY be injured, but it's not as likely. That's why it appears parks have been pressing the limit of these cables. Maybe now they'll start replacing them before they see evidence of fraying/fatigue/failure.

Has anybody thought that the added "danger" (not saying that there is any) might add to the thrill of the ride? They should keep the cables until they are almost broken, and play Drop Tower Russian Roulette, where one side is bound to break, but which side? That would be a "thrill ride"

Seriously though, I don't think that there is anything to be gettung worked up about. Nobody got hurt, the saftey systems stopped any chance of somebody getting hurt. As Robb and others have said before, there is a LOT more chance of you getting hurt doing something else. If somebody slipped on a wet floor in a park, do you think the park should install extra drainage?

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I've been on Detonator at Thorpe Park, but I hated it. I tried Apocalypse and love it but still, I am scared to go on it. Not that I am scared of getting hurt or something happening, just that the freefall part gets to me. I don't think this could stop me from riding a drop tower. Infact, I plan on going on Apocalypse soon! So I wouldn't worry. No one was hurt and all rides are inspected thoroughly each day so, the chances of this happening time and time again are near impossible! Infact, the chances of it ever happening are very slim. You are more likely getting injured or hurt going to a theme park than you are at one.

 

 

On an S&S tower, there is one cable per side which holds the entire weight of the ride vehicle. If, for some reason, all those cables broke, the ride would plummet to the ground at full speed, and the chances of survival would be quite low.

Are you kidding me, you are telling me that the department of Health & Safety cleared hundreds of rides all over the world with the possiblity that a bad batch of steel cable was installed and could cause death to all that ride?!

This might be useful to you all, S&S product sheet for Space Shot, shows a technical Top view of the tower with the correct tube location.

http://www.s-spower.com/download/space.pdf

Are you kidding me, you are telling me that the department of Health & Safety cleared hundreds of rides all over the world with the possiblity that a bad batch of steel cable was installed and could cause death to all that ride?!

No, I am saying that both rides are ridiculously safe, but saying "S&S towers are safer because this particular accident couldn't happen" is ridiculous.

In any complex system there are thousands of things that can go wrong, and preventing problems is like playing whack-a-mole -- you solve one problem and another crops up. That doesn't mean that they're dangerous, it just means that you can't simplify problems and take a reactive approach.

^^Essentially yes, S&S towers do employ four hydraulic dampers per tower that while preventing imminent death of the riders, really won't do much to prevent substantial injury should all four cables happen to fail.

I don't understand why the cables are not covered, it just seems logical to have a cage of some sort much like the chain guard on a bicycle.

 

That's just me though.

How are you gonna be able to cover the cables when the ride car has to go up and down the tower?

A 55-year-old employee at Portaventura died this morning after being run over by a roller coaster wagon at the amusement park in Salou, Tarragona.

 

The accident happened at 7am whilst the man, Diego S.B., was carrying out routine maintenance work on one of the attractions in the Far West area of the park.

 

The emergency services were called immediately and the victim was taken to the park's medical centre, but despite efforts to revive him, he died shortly afterwards.

 

Agents from the Catalan police force, the Mossos d'Esquadra, are investigating the incident but have so far failed to provide any explanation for the accident.

 

A PortAventura spokesperson said that they 'deeply regretted' the man's death but reassured the press and the public that the accident was 'not the result of faulty equipment'.

 

The area of the amusement park where the accident happened has been cordoned off and closed to the public while investigations are carried out.

The title is kind of misleading as aren't coasters supposed to be "runaway" in nature. Another tragic accident caused by human error.

Link

I'm sorry but there aren't enough details in the article and it's to early to conlcude this was a human error. Not every accident is a human error, so we'll see after the police investigation.

^ Don't rule it out. It could be human error, it could be something else. Never rule something out just it doesn't have the "proper" details.

Sounds like there may have been a lack of communication between the operator and maintenance worker.