Originally Posted By vbdad55 ^^^^^^^^^^^ exactly - -didn't a vehicle on a similar ride at a 6 flags or somewhere flip over a few years ago ? That would be way more major IMHO - but no accident should be taken lightly
Originally Posted By mickey_ring here's the latest squawk from the Orlando Sentinel: Beth Kassab | Sentinel Staff Writer Posted May 30, 2007 STORY GALLERY Bay Lake -- Walt Disney World reopened the Kali River Rapids ride at Animal Kingdom about 4:15 p.m. Tuesday after six people were injured while they were being evacuated from the ride earlier in the day. Disney spokeswoman Kim Prunty said the company conducted safety checks of the ride and did not find any problems. It did determine, however, that the platform used to evacuate people from the ride vehicles "disengaged and slid." She said, if necessary, the company will use an alternative method to evacuate people from the attraction, which features a raft ride through the turbulent waters of a jungle river. Five Disney visitors and an employee were taken to hospitals after the incident. Prunty said all were released. The attraction needed to be evacuated when one of the ride's sensors caused the rafts to stop as they were traveling up a steep incline, prompting an evacuation about 10:20 a.m., said Bo Jones, deputy fire chief of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the government district that oversees Walt Disney World.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros "Disney determined the problem was a faulty exit platform. The park removed the platform and reopened the ride Tuesday." Yah...I'm sure they did. The platform to load wouldn't be too difficult to remove and reconfigure in a couple days, but it would be impossible to do in a matter of hours with no prior plans to do so. They keep making references to reworking the loading platform, but the only way to do that (other than just updating the current mechanics but keep the same general loading style) is to do the one by one loading of stopped rafts that so many other parks do, creating notoriously long lines for raft rides. Yes, it's sad that it happened, but if they look at why it happened and try to minimize the possibility of it happening again with the same infrastructure, I think that would be the best solution. As neat as the queue for that ride is, I really don't think it would be very fun to wait in it at the disturbingly slow rate that most raft rides move. On our local news last night, when they were doing stories across the country, they covered this as well. They said that people were injured and it happened six times. While, technically, it did happen six times, that makes it sound like they were all seperate events, while this clearly all happened at the same time. It's nice to see that the media in general can't really seem to pull together a story that makes sense.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip From the news story posted above it appears that it was not the main loading/unloading platform for the ride that malfunctioned; but some type of platform that is used to evacuate riders from rafts on the lift hill when the attraction shuts down.
Originally Posted By Dlmusic <<As neat as the queue for that ride is, I really don't think it would be very fun to wait in it at the disturbingly slow rate that most raft rides move.>> I can't remember ever getting on a rapids ride that didn't have the moving platform. I certainly hope they are the exception as the capacity must be horrible.
Originally Posted By sherrytodd After this injury I was waiting for them to announce the new Mission Space version of Kali River Rapids, where you have the option to take the green route in which the rafts don't move and the CM's just throw buckets of water on you and make swooshing noises.
Originally Posted By Lake Nona >>where you have the option to take the green route in which the rafts don't move and the CM's just throw buckets of water on you and make swooshing noises.<< Take your pick...hot or cold?
