Griffon

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Zachary said:
I actually have a Griffon-specific question about these locks. Years ago (2013? 2014?) I actually found one of the path-adjacent ride perimeter gates open while Griffon was operating. I hunted down a supervisor who was (naturally) pretty alarmed. I take it that the keys to these locks are what are monitored by the system, not the status of the locks and gates themselves?
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It was opened once during Taste.
 
ControlsEE said:
Sure. The Allen-Bradley Pro-Safe Keys are interlocked so that the gate cannot be opened without the key being inserted. Vice versa, the key cannot be removed without the gate being closed and latched. The keys are all stored on the side of an electrical panel in the electrical room and are wired to switches so that removal of any key from the panel will e-stop the ride. My guess was that the gate you saw open was only a "limited-access" gate, not a "ride-restricted" gate, which all have Pro-Safe's. The only possible way for the gate to be open would be if someone took bolt cutters and broke open the Pro-Safe latch and the generic park keyed padlock to get in. Since I doubt that, I would guess that there was no real danger. Did you walk up to it and peer through? I would guess that the supervisor only had the limited knowledge of how they worked, which was from the SOP, though they probably checked it out immediately and would have shut down if there was danger. Who knows, maybe that person was me! I was in the area those years and a supervisor for 2014. I also had a limited knowledge of that back then (obviously much greater knowledge now). If you happen to remember where it was, I would like to figure out if it was a limited access or ride restricted fence.
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Your description of limited access gates vs ride restricted gates makes a lot of sense. I wasn't aware that there was a distinction there. If I remember correctly it was a gate into the area at the base of the first drop (splashdown-side).
 
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Zachary said:
Your description of limited access gates vs ride restricted gates makes a lot of sense. I wasn't aware that there was a distinction there. If I remember correctly it was a gate into the area at the base of the first drop (splashdown-side).
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Yeah, the basic description given to all ops employees is that everywhere that is off-limits to guests is "Limited-Access" (Yellow) while "Ride-Restricted" (Red) is any area where a swiftly moving ride vehicle can cause injury or death. Both are protected with fences and Ride-Restricted is always labeled as such. Limited-Access is usually only denoted in certain areas, such as underneath rides or non-paved entryways. A good example of one of these is the gate at the Alpie Immelmann. It leads back to the Alpie block brakes and [former] on-ride photo equipment.

The area you are describing has two fences, a limited-access to keep people from climbing the hill and a ride-restricted fence near where the ride actually goes. Chances are the gate you saw was a limited access fence and someone was either cleaning, or forgot to close it.
 
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Griffon down again? ? Saw an empty train go up when on Finnegan’s…and nothing since.
 
Griffon went down at approximately 8pm (empty train stuck in station and a loaded train in transfer) and we were told to leave the line as "maintenance had control of the ride for the rest of the night." Not sure if it did ever reopen. We went ahead and left for the evening. Now, I don't really believe this information to be 100% from the operator because I watched the maintenance guy point to the operator then point to us with no verbal communication. A few moments later the operator came and spoke to us and told us that maintenance has the ride for the rest of the night. Hopefully this operator gets better training/ experience to say "extended shutdowns" rather than down for the night (unless they are truly down for the night) so that other guests who do not frequent the park are not disappointed or feel lied to when they see it running later on. Just seemed like a lot of information was told to us when it was just some finger pointing across the station.
 
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I305Evan said:
Griffon went down at approximately 8pm (empty train stuck in station and a loaded train in transfer) and we were told to leave the line as "maintenance had control of the ride for the rest of the night." Not sure if it did ever reopen. We went ahead and left for the evening. Now, I don't really believe this information to be 100% from the operator because I watched the maintenance guy point to the operator then point to us with no verbal communication. A few moments later the operator came and spoke to us and told us that maintenance has the ride for the rest of the night. Hopefully this operator gets better training/ experience to say "extended shutdowns" rather than down for the night (unless they are truly down for the night) so that other guests who do not frequent the park are not disappointed or feel lied to when they see it running later on. Just seemed like a lot of information was told to us when it was just some finger pointing across the station.
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It had been down several times in the previous few hours with the way it had been going in and out and less then an hour left in the day it seems highly likely that it was shutting for the night. I personally saw it down at least 3 times between 6 and when I left at 8 it seems entirely possible that maintenance might have even told then the time before that if it went down again it was down for the night.
 
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