Disney Announces Chief Safety Officer - Part Two,

Disney Announces Chief Safety Officer - Part Two
Page 4 of 6

California Screamin' Maintenance Bay
Next Greg Hale and Rich Langhorst showed some of the safety features of California Screamin' in the maintenance bay:

Video: California Screamin' Maintenance Bay
RealVideo: Low Bandwidth (320 X 240) • High Bandwidth (320 X 240)

Rich Langhorst: Every night, while you and most of the people are sleeping, the maintenance team here at the California Screamin’ go through about 88 points of inspections and preventative maintenance checks on each train before we open to the public the next day. This is done by about 15 machinist augmented by electronics technicians that do this daily to assure that everything’s been checked and ready for operation the next day. This chart back here..you’ll see in the report on safety, it illustrates a typical night of a resort support machinist in support of the attractions. Again, they come in approximately 12:00 a.m., check the attractions, partner with the appropriate folks for inspection or correction, turn it over to the operations shift in the morning and then again it's ready for operations next day. This is a pretty sophisticated facility as you hopefully can see. We bring the trains in along these two rails. We perform the maintenance and then take them back out for operations during the day. I’ll give you a few pointers on how the train is constructed and how it operates.


A Day in the Life of an Attraction Maintenance Team
(c) Disney
Click here for a larger version of this picture

I’ll use this right here. The trains weigh approximately 9 tons empty. They go from 0 - 55 mph in approximately 4 seconds on a course of a little over a mile. They are retained on this very, very large track by load wheels, guide wheels and upstop wheels that is what keeps the train in place. And for those of you who have ridden it, it is a very smooth coaster. It almost feels like a wooden coaster of old. That’s partly because of the elasto-merrick mounts we have here that takes a lot of shock out of the train. So as it goes in, even through the loop - I think you’ll find, those of you who are willing to ride it at the end, will find that it is very, very smooth and very enjoyable.


Langhorst discusses the fins on California Screamin'

In addition to the undercarriage - wait, let me point out a few more things here, there are fins on the underside of coasters and many ride vehicles that are used for various things. This fin here is a fin that is caught by friction brakes. This is how we stop our trains essentially. There’s a fin on this side and a fin on the other side. The next fin here, looks like teeth, are actually proximity sensors that the ride control system can sense specifically where the train is on the track. We’ll talk a little bit more about that later when we get downstairs in the bunker. Finally, we have propulsion fins that are under here that are used to push the train during launch through its linear induction motors. Its an electromagnetic push that sends the train, as I mentioned earlier, from 0 - 55 mph in about 4 seconds.