That didn't take long...Skyliner Accident

And how do you know what safeguards they do or don't have in place. Obviously, there was a problem that caused a crash, but do you have definitive proof that they don't have a procedure in place for managing high temperatures? Do you know without a doubt that they don't have procedures in place to evacuate a gondola quickly if someone is about to die? No, you don't, and that's the point. None of us know. I guarantee there is far more than any of us know on their safety procedures.

Well, the quote by the RCFD spokesperson about how there were no injuries but that "It may have been a different story if that thing broke down at noon," is pretty telling. Obviously, RCFD is aware of Disney's emergency procedures for the skyliner. That statement very clearly indicates that a similar occurrence during the daytime on a hot day could end in tragedy. Doesn't inspire confidence.
 
Well, the quote by the RCFD spokesperson about how there were no injuries but that "It may have been a different story if that thing broke down at noon," is pretty telling. Obviously, RCFD is aware of Disney's emergency procedures for the skyliner. That statement very clearly indicates that a similar occurrence during the daytime on a hot day could end in tragedy. Doesn't inspire confidence.

That quote was from Sean Pierce of the firefighters union not RCFD, The union is in a contract dispute/negotiation of Disney, so it might be biased a bit.
 
By far the most entertaining post in this thread!
Entertaining and amusing, but recently, currently, and in the future a poor comparison. For exactly the reasons that poster later cited.
And the biggest and most obvious "what if this happened at noon in August" is not a theoretical exercise.
It is absolutely a theoretical assumption until/unless it happens.
It's absolutely essential to answer prior to reopening that gondola.
True, and there is absolutely no indication, even hint, anywhere that the Skyliner will reopen until all the necessary questions are answered and all necessary adjustments are completed. Also no reason either Dopplmeyer or Disney will publicize those answers.
I'm interested to see how long the sweaty gondolas with the plastic cup for an emergency toilet will be non-operational before they bring them back online.
Really, repeated assumptions that the gondola cars are or will be sweaty are unnecessary and defamatory - even moreso to the manufacturer.
But no way am I going to get on one of those.
Okay? Fine? Who has been forced to use the Skyliner?
However you feel about this topic, Disney screwed up in initially calling it unplanned downtime.
No. There was no plan for the line to stop. There was absolutely no plan for one gondola to stop moving when leaving the station. There was no plan for other gondola to butt up against/crash into the stopped car. Ergo, unplanned downtime. Is there anyone here who has never, ever used a euphimism?
Sorry, but that is not just unplanned downtime. That's an accident.
Accidents are unplanned downtime.
A really bad situation. An emergency.
A
Hyperbole.
with their psychotherapist or cognitive behavioural therapist should an event like this trigger some kind of phobia.
Unsupported assumptions.
 
Well, the quote by the RCFD spokesperson about how there were no injuries but that "It may have been a different story if that thing broke down at noon," is pretty telling.
Assumption. Note especially the phrase "may have". Not "will."
 


Assumption. Note especially the phrase "may have". Not "will."
That doesn't invalidate the comment. Jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge *may* result in death. But since some people survive, it would be incorrect to say it "will." That doesn't mean it isn't likely.
 


When the system halted and restarted, the blue car was apparently at just the right point to be unpowered for movement back to the point where it would re-attach to the moving cable. This would appear to be a design flaw in the system by Doppelmayr
That's an assumption on your part. It could just as easily have been a mechanical or electrical malfunction that caused the tire at that point to not turn. It might also have been a problem with the switch, since the cabin appears to be very close to the track switch into the pull-out. Or the cabin could have hung up on something, preventing it from moving forward even though the propulsion tire was turning.

ETA: I would add that, if there had been no propulsion tire at the point the blue cabin stopped, and nothing else was preventing it from moving, I think the following cabins would have just pushed it along rather than getting squeezed against it.
 
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The one thing I think will cause a bit of a problem going forward with the skyliner is the heavy use of Scooters (now not to scooter bash but..) here's what I think... Great Aunt Edna can't move very fast. Her loving family decides to rent a scooter. They plunk Auntie down and say "go" Well, dear old Enda sorta figures it out. They get Enda onto a gondola. Sure enough she pulls right in (with help) but they get to the end of the ride and HOLY HECK she's got to BACK up!! well ain't that just peachy. Dear old Edna's vision isn't so hot so it takes - back up, hit side, pull forward, back up, hit side etc. So now they have to stop the line so someone can get Edna out the door.
I believe in the future this is why the line will stop so frequently. I wish they could put a sign up saying you must be able to maneuver your scooter on and off. But that's not possible.
 
The one thing I think will cause a bit of a problem going forward with the skyliner is the heavy use of Scooters (now not to scooter bash but..) here's what I think... Great Aunt Edna can't move very fast. Her loving family decides to rent a scooter. They plunk Auntie down and say "go" Well, dear old Enda sorta figures it out. They get Enda onto a gondola. Sure enough she pulls right in (with help) but they get to the end of the ride and HOLY HECK she's got to BACK up!! well ain't that just peachy. Dear old Edna's vision isn't so hot so it takes - back up, hit side, pull forward, back up, hit side etc. So now they have to stop the line so someone can get Edna out the door.
I believe in the future this is why the line will stop so frequently. I wish they could put a sign up saying you must be able to maneuver your scooter on and off. But that's not possible.
This would only be a problem at Riviera. At the other stations, Aunt Edna can take as much time as she needs.
 
The one thing I think will cause a bit of a problem going forward with the skyliner is the heavy use of Scooters (now not to scooter bash but..) here's what I think... Great Aunt Edna can't move very fast. Her loving family decides to rent a scooter. They plunk Auntie down and say "go" Well, dear old Enda sorta figures it out. They get Enda onto a gondola. Sure enough she pulls right in (with help) but they get to the end of the ride and HOLY HECK she's got to BACK up!! well ain't that just peachy. Dear old Edna's vision isn't so hot so it takes - back up, hit side, pull forward, back up, hit side etc. So now they have to stop the line so someone can get Edna out the door.
I believe in the future this is why the line will stop so frequently. I wish they could put a sign up saying you must be able to maneuver your scooter on and off. But that's not possible.


I don't think that scooters should be permitted on the Riviera section of the gondola.
 
That quote was from Sean Pierce of the firefighters union not RCFD, The union is in a contract dispute/negotiation of Disney, so it might be biased a bit.

It's not like that statement lacks credibility. It's common sense.

Plus, I don't think you should ever NOT listen to an emergency services provider when they say they don't have the personnel to manage an emergency effectively in the largest vacation destination in the world, where at any given time, there are over 100,000 people on property. Shame on Disney for not providing the funding for adequate emergency services. I don't really have an opinion one way or another on unions, but budget cuts affecting emergency services is a disaster waiting to happen.
 
Another thing to consider about the amount of time needed to evac is when did they start the evacuation procedure? I'm guessing it didn't start immediately because it takes time to get someone out there to troubleshoot. Obviously the best/safest scenario is to get the line back up and running so the passengers exit normally at a station. So mx shows up and says hey it's going to take a couple of hours to fix this, then you have to decide is it safer to leave people in the gondolas for 2 hours and then exit them at the station or take the risk of the evacuation. This decision is probably different based on whether it's noon in July or a warm but not stiffilng October evening. So I don't know that it actually took 3.5 hours to evac six cars because they didn't start the evac as soon as the accident happened.
 
After the blue cabin stopped, the yellow cabins behind should have been stopped prior to hitting the blue cabin and/or each other.

If a cabin should fail to reconnect to the cable, it should continue to roll on the overhead rail (in the ceiling) on its wheels mounted below the cable clamp. The rail does not continue indefinitely; there should be a braking (retarding) mechanism on the rail so the unattached cabin stops by itself.

If the next cabin should try to push the disconnected cabin something bad will always happen. The disconnected cabin could roll off the end of the rail and fall to the ground (just a few feet at that location but nevertheless a crash). Actually it would have counted as a crash the moment the cabin behind touched the cabin just ahead.
 
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That was my post. My friend did have a panic attack on board. She had been fine with the ride itself and she was okay for nearly two hours of just being stopped. Her panic attack started when we started seeing reports on social media about other gondolas evacuating in place and it was thinking about having to climb down a very high ladder attached to a boat (since we were stopped over water) and how unstable that would feel to her that lead to her panic attack.

We were also told by the medics attending to her once we got off that there were other people onboard who had experienced panic attacks as well.

Additionally, the only paperwork filled out was to gather contact information for one person in our group. There was no signature or anything like that - it was for Disney to record how many people were on board and to have a way to contact us about the incident in the future.

Thanks for posting. I am glad to see that Disney didn't try to get people to sign non-disclosure or legal documents right after that incident.

And yet errors still happen because not everything is done properly. Every day. And procedures get modified constantly. And sometimes staff and personnel identify problems and things still DON'T get changed by the org until more people get hurt. This happens all the time. I've been in medicine 25 years.
My point is that it is simply incorrect to put so much faith into organizations having addressed *all* safety issues before exposing you to potential danger because that simply isn't the way the world works. And in this case, Disney left people in the gondola for almost 4 hours. Either that was intentional (in which case they are in big trouble) or they don't have a faster evacuation procedure yet. Mocking people or being upset at people for being concerned about that isn't helping Disney be the best and safest Disney it can be.

This is my point. The problem with the system is not how generally safe it is or not it is. The problem is WHEN (not if) the power goes or something happens and you have a thousand people in the sky dangling how long does that take to evacuate in mass? There has to be a plan. If truly only one car was evacuated and that left people stranded for over 3 hours that is a major issue. Part of the issue is apparently attributed to that they couldn't figure out what car was needing evac. Another aspect is it just takes too long to evacuate one car. It is easy to say "well the monorail has evacs too that last 3 hours" but that circumstance everyone was evacuated. Was it nice? No. Was it unexpected? Yes. I am not saying that is the problem the problem is it was 3 hours here to evacuate a single gondola. It cannot be assumed that the next malfunction or outage will mean that they can just turn it back on and get everyone off like this time. What happens if they can't get it to move and they have to manually evacuate the gondolas. I can guess it won't be near as nice as the 3 hour monorail evacuation.

I really want Disney to succeed. I also understand the statistics of this situation and how the gondolas are way safer than other modes of transportation. I just want to understand how they deal with these emergencies. We got a taste of it after the first incident this past weekend and it didn't look pretty.
 
Another thing to consider about the amount of time needed to evac is when did they start the evacuation procedure? I'm guessing it didn't start immediately because it takes time to get someone out there to troubleshoot. Obviously the best/safest scenario is to get the line back up and running so the passengers exit normally at a station. So mx shows up and says hey it's going to take a couple of hours to fix this, then you have to decide is it safer to leave people in the gondolas for 2 hours and then exit them at the station or take the risk of the evacuation. This decision is probably different based on whether it's noon in July or a warm but not stiffilng October evening. So I don't know that it actually took 3.5 hours to evac six cars because they didn't start the evac as soon as the accident happened.

And what if they leave everyone in there for 2 hours and then realize they can't get it moving again. Then how long does it take to evacuate the system when they cannot get the gondolas back to the station. Maybe there are ways to do this but I don't have confidence that they can avoid this scenario in the next 20 years of operation.
 
This would only be a problem at Riviera. At the other stations, Aunt Edna can take as much time as she needs.
ECVs should back into the gondolas so they can easily drive out on arrival. Tricky to do at Riviera if they don't have the separate loading area to stop a gondola. I wonder what they'll do? Stop the line for ECVs departing from Riviera?

We bring an EVC to WDW but our driver is good, he got his license at Kmart :o
 
ECVs should back into the gondolas so they can easily drive out on arrival. Tricky to do at Riviera if they don't have the separate loading area to stop a gondola. I wonder what they'll do? Stop the line for ECVs departing from Riviera?

We bring an EVC to WDW but our driver is good, he got his license at Kmart :o

It sure feels like they do... we rode it 5 times before they shut it down and 4 of those rides we experienced stoppages on the line to Epcot. Most were just a few minutes, one was about 10 full minutes in the air. We had no idea why or what was going on, which was frustrating. While you are stopped they sway a little in the breeze or if someone shifts in their seat. The woman sharing our compartment on the 10 minute stoppage said they also had a few stops, and even her husband's belly laugh caused hers to rock around. This is before Riviera has even opened - I can't imagine what it will be like when there is more traffic on the line.
 
.... If truly only one car was evacuated and that left people stranded for over 3 hours that is a major issue. Part of the issue is apparently attributed to that they couldn't figure out what car was needing evac. Another aspect is it just takes too long to evacuate one car. It is easy to say "well the monorail has evacs too that last 3 hours" but that circumstance everyone was evacuated. Was it nice? No. Was it unexpected? Yes. I am not saying that is the problem the problem is it was 3 hours here to evacuate a single gondola. ....

But they did evacuate everyone in all cars in the 3.5 hours and it would have been significantly less had no one called 911. RFCD begin the evacuation of the one car around 9:30. The line began moving again at 10:50. Much better than the the monorail incident just a few weeks earlier. Only 6 people had to be cherry picked from the Gondola, where everyone 90-100 people on the monorail had to go through an escape hatch, climb on roof of monorail to get to cherry picker.

It's not like that statement lacks credibility. It's common sense.

Plus, I don't think you should ever NOT listen to an emergency services provider when they say they don't have the personnel to manage an emergency effectively in the largest vacation destination in the world, where at any given time, there are over 100,000 people on property. Shame on Disney for not providing the funding for adequate emergency services. I don't really have an opinion one way or another on unions, but budget cuts affecting emergency services is a disaster waiting to happen.

Never said it lacked credibility, but might/might not be a bit biased and exaggerated as a VP of the union in a contract negotiation.
 

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