That didn't take long...Skyliner Accident

I get the point you are trying to make, but the scenario you presented is so unrealistic it's funny. Having had multiple surgeries, I can assure you that there are many steps in place to prevent something like that from happening... From having the doctor confirm the procedure with you before you're put under, to actually initialling with marker the body part to be worked on, to checking the ID bracelet you're wearing and matching that up with the file, to having you confirm your name and other identifying info with that on the chart/computer...
I don't want to scare anyone but 1) these procedures were put in place AFTER my "hypothetical" scenario took place hundreds of times and were reported in the media 2) even with those procedures there are still errors, often due to miscommunication somewhere in the line 3) electronic charting is great but there are errors in the charts all the time that can result in those "never" incidents occurring. If you ask a surgical resident the most important thing he or she learned during their residency, the answer is always "Avoid surgery if you can."
So my scenario is neither unrealistic nor is it funny. It happens to real people all the time, and they aren't laughing. NHS, which keeps better records than the US for obvious reasons, recorded 38 "never events" from April 2016-March 2017. 20 were wrong site surgery. That's in a country with 65 million people. Extrapolate that to 330 million people in the US, and you have a lot of wrong site surgical events here occurring annually. And they have the same "time out" protocols in the UK as the US does.
I used that analogy so people can understand that organizations can and should ALWAYS improve on safety, and a "near miss" is exactly when that needs to happen. That is not a time to mock or belittle someone who is concerned or was involved in that near miss. Just as your hospital is negligent if they operate on the wrong foot, Disney is negligent if they leave people stuck in a hit gondola for 3-4 hours on an August afternoon resulting in heat injury. No one wants that to happen. And no one hates Disney because Disney needs to improve on something.
 
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.
There is no indication that the cabin failed to attach. In photos and videos, the blue cabin is at the beginning of the acceleration run, well before it reaches the reattachment point. It is far more likely that the fault was in the line of tires that accelerate the cabin towards the reattachment point.
 
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.
As stated above, only at Riviera.
Shame on Disney for not providing the funding for adequate emergency services.
Do we know it's a lack of funding and not a lack of personnel?
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.
And even before that, you have to determine there is a problem that can't be easily rectified.
We bring an EVC to WDW but our driver is good, he got his license at Kmart :o
Is it still valid if Kmart goes out of business? He should check ;).
 


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.

My point was that the fire department only evacuated one gondola and it took almost 3 hours. If the system goes down due to power outage or something else how long would it take to evacuate everyone?

In the monorail cases they have been able to evacuate the entire monorail in the amount of time that it took for one gondola. Yes on that one instance they had to go through the roof but the people were still evacuated in the same timeframe.

All transportation options will need rescue eventually. The question is the logistics and if the rescue can happen in a reasonable amount of time. For the gondolas if the cable system stops working and they cannot get the cars back to the station how long does the evacuation take? Does the time cause injuries if it is during the heat of the day?

The monorail with a complete outage takes 3 to 4 hours. The gondolas who knows but so far the data point is it took three hours for one gondola so how many for all of them stranded in the air.
 
I think with back up generators there won't be many outages. That's not to say never but hopefully Skyliner's power is much more reliable and less complicated than the older monorail.
 


My point was that the fire department only evacuated one gondola and it took almost 3 hours.
RFCD begin the evacuation of the one car around 9:30. The line began moving again at 10:50.

Like xuxa said, the evacuation for the car was an hour and a half, not three. We were *on* the gondolas for three hours - my group boarded a few minutes after 8 and got off right at 11. I'm not saying the evacuation process was ideal, but it does no one any good to exaggerate and use false information.

And you can't extrapolate from one to the amount of time it would take to empty more cars, as getting set up and figuring out the conditions, etc., will always mean the first task takes longer than subsequent repeats.
 
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Like xuxa said, the evacuation for the car was an hour and a half, not three. We were *on* the gondolas for three hours - my group boarded a few minutes after 8 and got off right at 11. I'm not saying the evacuation process was ideal, but it does no one any good to exaggerate and use false information.

And you can't extrapolate from one to the amount of time it would take to empty more cars, as getting set up and figuring out the conditions, etc., will always mean the first task takes longer than subsequent repeats.

sorry I was guessing on the 3 because I didn’t see exact details. So how many carsdo they have per line? Even at 30 minutes per car I am guessing the time is longer than the monorail evacuations.
 
I am guessing about 150 gondola cars on the Epcot line.

There are 300 cars altogether and the Epcot line is somewhat longer than the Hollywood Studios line or the Pop Century/Art of Animation line.

Regardless of where the blue gondola stopped or got stuck, there should have been sensors all along the rail in the ceiling so that gondolas, either individually or in groups, are stopped before any can collide.
 
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I am guessing about 150 cars on the Epcot line.

There are 300 cars altogether and the Epcot line is somewhat longer than the Hollywood Studios line or the Pop Century/Art of Animation line.

So if the evacuation per car was a blazing 15 minutes then you are talking about 36 hours to evacuate the entire line.
 
They will not likely ever have to evacuate every car, they can manually pull the cars in even without power or on generator.
Thanks that is what I was wondering. I assumed they might have backup power. Hopefully there is never a mechanical reason where they can’t pull the cars in.
 
So if the evacuation per car was a blazing 15 minutes then you are talking about 36 hours to evacuate the entire line.
They will not likely ever have to evacuate every car, they can manually pull the cars in even without power or on generator.
Thanks that is what I was wondering. I assumed they might have backup power. Hopefully there is never a mechanical reason where they can’t pull the cars in.

Additionally, if for some reason they ever *did* have to actually evacuate the whole line in place, they wouldn't do it with just one ladder truck - they would get more emergency teams to respond, including requesting help from other jurisdictions. You really can't just multiply from one car to get the timing for lots of them - the procedure for mass evacuation would be very different than that of a single car or even just a couple.

And as a general note, not necessarily directed at anyone in particular - obviously I know as well as anyone that this incident didn't go perfectly, but the end-of-the-world exaggerations I'm seeing in a lot of places are pretty illogical. This was an unfortunate experience, and Disney definitely has some things to improve, but some of the commentary I'm seeing online in various places is veering towards scaremongering at times.
 
This event should be a blessing in the long run. There was always going to be a first incident and that first incident happening late in the day in autumn with no report of injury is not really that bad. It will give them a chance to re-engineer some of their process and enact additional fail-safes. I wouldn't want to be stuck on one of these for three hours but it wouldn't be the end of the world. I was stuck on a monorail for just about that long back in the early 90's and lived to tell about it.

This whole ordeal is definlty being blown out of proportion. It was an unfortunate inconvenience and nothing more.
 

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