My son and I got to be evacuated off Dominator today.
Waiting on the transfer track after the ride, they dispatched the train into the station like usual. First attempt the train traveled about 5 feet on the track before coming to a halt. They recycled it again, and this time about 3/4 of the train managed to make it into the station before coming to a stop, yet again. At that point they tried for about 20 minutes to get it to move again, but no luck.
With most coasters, especially when it's mostly back into the station, it's easy enough to manually unlock the restraints on each car, and have the passengers step out. But of course, it's not that easy on floorless models.
So though my son and I waited a full 30 minutes, it was pretty cool watching the unload procedure:
- With four seats across, each row is divided in two, where a rectangular floor section is placed down spanning the gap to the middle of the train - where the floor section is stored on either side of the station itself, something I never noticed before.
- The front row has its own special floor section, with its own set of hand rails on the front half to assemble, to ensure guest safety when they step out.
- All the other rows of the train can then share a second/simpler type of rectangular floor section, which does not accommodate hand rails.
- However as the last two rows of our train did not make it into the station (which is where I was in row 7), maintenance had to get a third type of floor section (which is stored on the far end of each side of the catwalk).
So though I love riding floorless coasters, I had never given much thought to the effort needed to evacuate passengers from a train... and now have respect for all the work park ops must do each time.
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