Roller Coaster Safety: How to Manage Too Many Trains at Once

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Roller coasters are pretty neat, I must say. But they rely on passive vehicles holding fragile humans while zooming around at high speeds. That can be a tough thing to manage safely, but it's not impossible. This video shows you a few ways it's done.

Space Mountain with the lights on, reset sequence:

Expedition Everest on ride POV:

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The following photos are used under the Creative Commons License:
Expedition Everest Exterior Shot and Lift Hills:
Entrance to Walt Disney World
Photo by Jrobertiko. Used under Creative Commons License
Note: Trademarks within photo are owned by the Walt Disney Company
Spaceship Earth: Photo by chensiyuan. Used under GNU Free Documentation License

[eboomer]

"If these marbles were vehicles containing fragile and litigious human beings..." dead-pan comedy perfected, good sir!

[elliot]

Fun fact: When a crew member walks through Space Mountain, all the lights turn on. The easiest way to terrify people is to run the ride with the lights on.

The tracks are extremely close. They’re not kidding when they say you need to keep all limbs in the vehicle.

It’s terrifying.

[TheMaverick]

It's amazing to find a coaster video by a non coaster channel that knows what they're talking about and isnt making parks seem unrealistically dangerous.

[thelonecabbage]

Me : *played way too much Rollercoaster Tycoon as a kid*
Also Me : You know, I'm something of an engineer myself.

[naapalm]

My grandfather, who was an electrician in the navy, once fell into the water at pirates of the Caribbean trying to figure out how they did the fireflies at the start of the ride.

[dfcnyc]

The 114 year old NYC subway system works on a similar block signalling type of system. Only 1 train can be in a block section at a time, protected by a signal. As an added precaution if a train goes through a red signal a trip arm on the track automatically engages the train's brakes. The motorman (driver) can override the system but only with permission of the control tower.

[oodoodoopoopoo]

My favorite technical jargon during this video was "squeezy bits". 7:02

[onffxiimanon]

"I will fix the Yeti someday." -Joe Rohde 2013
I hope he does, I would love to see the Yeti in his full glory.

[CambrianStimulator]

"Fragile and litigious"

That's pretty good.

[artnc]

Another consideration is that each stopping point, the train must be able to return using only the potential energy from the elevation, not the kinetic energy, since it is starting from a dead stop. This means on an inverted loop, it needs to build up enough speed to have enough momentum to complete the loop or a mid track lift hill to add back more potential energy. Friction will also vary by temperature, and if the ride is outdoors, wind and humidity in the air - so it needs a lot of safety buffer

[IgnoreMyChan]

I love how they also thought about the lights, as shown in that video of Space Mountain. They light up slowly, allowing peoples eyes to adjust, instead of blinding everybody by throwing them full power immediately.

[zorgatron]

MIND = BLOWN! As a Florida resident, I've been to all of those parks many, many times, and it never did dawn on me how this was an issue and how it was managed. I always knew that multiple trains were running, because I could hear others yelling all over when you're on the ride. Incredible video! You make dissecting topics like this so easy to understand.

[ishashka]

The use of multiple lift hills and planned stops is genius. It's both a safety feature and it builds suspense. Amazing.

[josephgumm]

I miss the days of working Space Mountain! I knew all the ways around the Doors to get into the "cage" and wander around in the dark! So many hidden passages! It was AMAZING!

[monicamottley]

Former EE cast member here, and I currently work at another theme park. When a block section reads full by a sensor, yes, it can break down the ride, but more often it means a dispatch inhibit that can be manually reset by the tower or main control operator. However, if we do the manual reset and the sensor still reads occupied, then we call it an “auto e/101” meaning that the ride is down because it automatically emergency stopped, at which point we will do everything we can to restart the ride (depending on the ride, a full ride manual reset can be done from the main operation console) before the choice is made to evacuate, as it’s safer to bring the guests back on the train than to walk them down flights of stairs and around ride mechanisms. Expedition Everest, when I was there, had operated continuously for 10+ years with no refurb, so it had a tendency to be finicky and would auto e/ apd (auto power disconnect, not recoverable and usually means an evac) frequently. Because it happened so often we were very quick to get it going again and could minimize downtime. We ran 5 out of 6 trains under normal operations. That put the blocks consistently full, which unfortunately meant that if it took too long to dispatch a train from loading (there was a time frame of 52 seconds, and to maintain this we said “choo choo and go.” To tell us that as soon as the speech ended with a choo choo, we should be moving the train.) for various reasons such as accommodating a guest with limited mobility or doing a last minute height recheck and any number of unexciting things, it could back up blocks quickly. Starting with the brake run before the unload station, each train could get delayed and it was a matter of a two button reset in the operator console. Using security cameras, we could usually tell when a block stop would happen because we had a good feel for the rhythm and timing of the ride.
Where I work now we have an older coaster that only has two blocks and has a manual brake release at the end of the ride. If the brakes are held open too long, it leads to a block delay even though we only have one train. If the operator doesn’t notice it before dispatching the train from the station (there’s a light that changes color during a block delay), the train stops on the lift. At that point we essentially turn the ride off and back on again to reset it with the guest still on. “Stay sitting for ride reset!”

Joe Rhode keeps saying that, but he truth is that the mountain will have to be at least partially taken apart to fix the yeti and considering this years financial outlook, I’d guess it won’t be for a while.

[MrAlexanderAmes]

I was on Space Mountain once when we abruptly stopped midway through because of exactly what this video talks about. They turned the lights on and escorted us out of the ride, and we got to go again as soon as the ride reset. Seeing the interior with the lights fully on was kind of surreal, like looking behind the curtain.
There was another time I got to see behind the scenes of Space Mountain, but that was in Disneyland Japan, when they had to bring me to a room to make sure I actually fit in the car (I'm 6'4", and Japan isn't really designed for that. I did fit, but the car was noticeably smaller than the US counterparts)

[brandonmorris]

Two more items to think about during any rollercoaster is weight of the train and chain lift hill block sections. Space mountain secretly weighs each vehicle before it runs the track then calculates when it should let the train go. Also with mutiple lift hills they can change lift speeds to adapt to slower or faster moving trains.

[johnezell]

The mine train coasters at the Six Flags parks use the multiple lift approach to have up to 3 trains on the track. The old control system had a big display board that showed where each train was on the track.

[TheMrMarkW]

I love the new stuff that’s being done - such as magic bands meaning you don’t actually have to go to the picture booth on a ride and tap to get your picture - the ride knew you were on it and the in ride photos automatically appear on your photo library.
We were there for the last two weeks. Biggest downside was that due to volume of people and investment elsewhere, there were many more broken down rides than I’ve experienced there before. The upside is that we got lots of generic fastpasses :)

[sarahawks]

Ok, so I've never seen your videos or channel before, but this video showed up on my recommendations so I figured "why not". I can honestly say that I have never before been this interested to listen to someone talk about safety. You killed it dude! Very informative, great voice and excellent enthusiasm about the topic. Thanks for teaching me something new in an entertaining and fun way. Keep up the good work :)