Nah im over that. Pantheon has been a nightmare since its opening. Everyday is a dice role. Meanwhile every B&M works
If you don’t want to read this whole thing, here’s the TLDR:
All of this to say that basically, these rides are insanely complex machines with so much that goes into their operations and equipment that all the rides could have these issues. Now rides like B&Ms and GCIs may not have as many issues, since they have less pieces to them, but they can still have a lot of downtime. Rides like pantheon may be more prone to downtime due to its complexity, but it can still see a pretty reliable season.
As someone who worked on Pantheon in only its second year of operation, I saw my fair share of problems with the ride. I can promise you without a doubt that Pantheon is just temperamental. If even one singular sensor detects an issue it’s going to shut the ride down.
These rides are multimillion dollar machines with absolute fuckton of failsafes in place. Pantheon is the single most tech heavy ride in the park at this moment in time. You might think DarKoaster or even Verbolten, but no, it’s Pantheon. Pantheon has so many intricate parts to the attraction that if anything is detected as out of the ordinary and would pose a risk to riders it will immediately stop the ride.
If it’s been stopped on launch one a lot, then there’s a good chance that whatever issues they’re having are pertaining to launch one, or it’s an entirely different issue that was detected and shut the ride down before anything could happen. Initially Pantheon would only run 1 train while they figured out the ride as running one train reduced the amount of downtime the ride had. Once they figured those out, it went up to 2 trains.
The point here is, there’s so many different things that pantheon relies on to run correctly that it all needs to work perfectly. And as others have stated, wind is actually one of the most common downtimes for pantheon. It’s wind cutoff is the same as that of the SKYRIDE—20mph gust is all it takes. And when that happens there’s a 15 minute timer that they have to wait through before dispatching another train. I have seen this happen firsthand—had a wind gust that set off the alarm but there was a train launching over the tophat. Didn’t load the next guest because it was
extremely close to rolling back. When that happens they can send one more train to get guests off and then they have to wait. Anytime it gusts over 20, the timer resets. The Skyride operates the same way, except they just take cabins off the line until none are left.
Now when I was there wind alarms of 20 didn’t auto-shut down the ride but it was common practice to cycle clear the ride, because a gust anything higher will result in a rollback causing an evac. It’s possible they could have reprogrammed the ride to auto-estop the ride when a gust that strong hits.
As for the technical side, there isn’t a day where pantheon doesn’t throw at least 1 fault, usually closer to 10. It’s not the park’s fault that the ride is tech heavy and that it can fault at any time—but I think it’s better than the alternative of say, the switch not being aligned correctly and having a derailment. Which, that’s most likely what happened. The switch could be off by even a millimeter and it will not let a train progress past launch 1. Ideally it should notice that as it switches back but then it still results in an evac.
Essentially, on top of it being an extremely tech heavy ride, it’s also dealing with the standard, “it hasn’t run for 3-4 months and is now cycling frequently again” issues which are usually relatively quick fixes. Most likely what’s happening is it’s a combination of the two, which is prolonging the downtimes even more than it would normally be. Just given it some time to break in for the season and it should be fine.
As for the B&Ms, I worked Griffon for a hot minute as well. Let me tell you… they have more issues than you think. The difference is they’re often issues that one can cycle the attraction clear of guests before having to shut it down. Griffon is also a super finicky ride as well. Overshoots in the station are quite common and happen frequently enough that there is a panel function that allows us to actually reverse the train into the proper position. In addition that water level for the splashdown has to maintain just the right level—if it’s too high it’ll slow the trains too much, but if it’s too low it won’t slow the trains enough, and that’s linked into the rides control system. Now it doesn’t happen very often as maintenance checks that I think it’s every 3 hours, but still. And, if it starts raining? Gotta run the ride with a much slower dispatch interval due to the vertical drive tires. On top of that, the floors could fail to raise/lower, which creates quite an unusual situation for evacuating.
Alpie also has its fair share of issues too, but it’s usually pretty consistent operating. It’s just that once the issues start, they don’t stop for a HOT minute.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk
