Totally fine! I'm in the same kind of work these guys are (PLC Controls Engineers) and I can promise you that if there was an issue with the programming, they would be out there every day trying to fix it. At the very least, you would see people either at the control booth or at the switch with laptops and it would be moving back and forth as they are testing it. The only thing I can think of that would be a hold up when they couldn't test due to a bug was if it was an issue with firmware from a motor drive or the PLC. If that were the case, Allen Bradley would have come out with a patch by now. I ran into that issue a few weeks ago with a bagging machine at a breakfast cereal plant and they had a patch out same day.
I think the thing about these rumors and how they get started is that they generally come from ignorance. Someone relatively close to the situation (employee in Festa per say) sees something happen (Pantheon stops testing) and then assumes they know why (programming bug). They know a little about the subject (computers run roller coasters) but often don't know enough to make a logical statement. They make more assumptions (it must be a regular desktop that runs roller coasters and sometimes it takes a while for Microsoft to release a service patch) and next thing you know, they are telling everyone in earshot as to "the truth," knowing full well that the assumptions they made may not be entirely accurate, or at least that they could be debunked. In some cases they may not be aware if the assumptions they made. For a while, I thought Verbolten's computer (term I know now as PLC) was a Windows 7 desktop. I thought this because I was in the electrical room one day and noticed a desktop setup with Windows 7 running a program with the HMI touch screen on it. I hadn't learned anything about controls systems beyond what the operators had to know, therefore I assumed that it was that computer running the ride. I now can assume that it was there primarily for the park programmers to access the ride controls system, or for Zierer to remotely login for support.
I often hear a lot of these rumors in my 7 season tenure at the park and occasionally fell victim to them, especially if they came from superiors. I did have enough sense to often ignore the ones from other lower level employees. In reality, park employees are only told 100% accurate information about new attractions when the park does press releases. Even then, a lot of employees don't read them and keep the rumor mill going.
Sorry for the long post, I didn't think it would be this drawn out. Anyways, Happy 4th to all the Americans here and tomorrow makes 4 years of this thread starting, so Happy 4th anniversary to the Project Madrid/Pantheon thread!
