gatorchomp83 Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 From Screamscape: According to a few reports SheiKra has been forced to evacuate riders from a train five times in the last five days, including a particularly interesting evacuation of a train sitting in the brakes at the top of the first drop. Did anyone else hear about this? I've been letting this go around in my head all day, and the visual of them evacuating from the holding brake is just intense. Does anyone know the validity of this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IceDragon Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 Imagine the fall... I'd rather stay locked in if I were there... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoasterFanatic Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 That is pretty weird. I can't see them performing an evacuation there when they could just put the ride in a lock-down mode and release the brake. Much easier to get them off at the MCBR. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AennilQ Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 How would they go about this? Floorless and all? I wonder if they have a training video or pictures that we could get our hands on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IceDragon Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 That is pretty weird. I can't see them performing an evacuation there when they could just put the ride in a lock-down mode and release the brake. Much easier to get them off at the MCBR. If they stopped the ride at the top, it must be something very important... I'm guessing the locking mechanisms are failing or something. I wonder how this'll affect Griffon and Oblivion... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coasterdude5 Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 Does sound different, but I would take an evacuation off of Sheikra any day... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Homer Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 I don't get why Busch decided to make SheiKra floorless other than for something as simple as a new gimmick and maybe a profit. I knew it would have some problems and that the money would have been better spent on, say, I don't know... flat rides or retracking/new trains for Gwazi. Although I really do want to go on that evac trolley one of these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
christianscoasters Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 ^Cause Griffon did it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scaparri Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 I don't get why Busch decided to make SheiKra floorless other than for something as simple as a new gimmick and maybe a profit. "...and maybe a profit." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik Johnson Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 I don't get why Busch decided to make SheiKra floorless other than for something as simple as a new gimmick and maybe a profit. I knew it would have some problems and that the money would have been better spent on, say, I don't know... flat rides or retracking/new trains for Gwazi. Although I really do want to go on that evac trolley one of these days. They do retrack Gwazi on a regular basis. It is just a combination of poor trains and Florida's humidity that plays havoc on the ride. I thought the whole floorless change was pretty cool. Have you ridden it yet Homer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Homer Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 ^Not yet , but I doubt its really THAT different other than a little bit more intense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loco Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 Screamscape: In a follow up to yesterday’s report about SheiKra having several evacuations this week, a Screamscape source backed this up claiming that they’ve run into some technical issues with the ride ever since transforming it into a Floorless coaster, and in a one month span of time they’ve had to perform about 28 evacuations. They claim that the problem lies with the sensors installed in to the station to handle the parking of the train in just the right spot to allow the floor panels to rise into place. If the train is off slightly the ride ops can back it up manually into the right spot and all is well, but lately the trains have been missing their mark by feet rather than inches whenever the ride is running in two station mode. This sends an error message to the ride computer that a train has slipped out of it’s block and possibly into another train’s block, causing a system ride shutdown. 28 Evacs in one month! Thats like almost one each day! I had a hunch something like this would happen after the floorless transformation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ginzo Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 ^Not yet , but I doubt its really THAT different other than a little bit more intense. You should check it out. Although I haven't ridden Sheikra since it went floorless, I have checked out Griffon. It makes a difference in the front. It's a disturbing when they hang your feet out over that drop, especially if you're wearing sandals. Griffon also wins for the second inversion. Imagine how freaked out riders would be if they had to evacuate Sheikra at the top of the lift hill. I've seen people freaking out just because a train got stuck halfway up the lift on a woodie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yankees15 Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 I doubt it was evacuated on the holding brake. There are a few brakes right before the holding brake that it could've been stopped on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jedimaster1227 Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 I posted a couple of photos of the evac procedures in process at Sheikra last month during my visit at Busch Gardens. They can be found here. Watching them evacuate the ride was interesting. The panels for evac are laying up agains the walls of the pre-station brakes' catwalks. The catwalk is long enough to hold another two-three cars in standby with both cars in the station. One by one, they manually place the panels over the track, across the catwalk and manually unlock the restraints on the ride, removing the riders from their seats, normally sent towards the right side of the station. As for the evacuation on the lift, this was a little scary to watch. A cable car to the left of the track which seats 6 (I believe) moves to the top of the lift where the train is frozen. The car is adjacent to the rows on the cars and each row of seats on the train has a matching row on the cable car. I only saw this happen once, but I have seen Sheikra evacuated near the station twice since the floorless conversion. My guess, they will close the attraction for a two-three day period to test and reset the system to prevent these evacuations from happening again (if not so often). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommanderLock Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 At least they made the computers smart enough to panic when a train is mere inches into the next block. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
resonancej Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 Well, after finally having done Griffon yesterday I have to say that the floorless feature didn't really make a difference in the second row. However, it does have the slight edge over Sheikra because of the second immelman and the faster lift hill (at least it seemed faster to me). The ride was AMAZING. Somehow this doesn't surprise me. I was there last sunday most of the day and Sheikra was down when I got there. It came back up for about 30 min early afternoon then went right back down again for the rest of the day. Fortunately all three trains I saw were in the loading station. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jten11 Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 Sounds like a bug in the sensors to me. From the perspective of the program it did exactly what it was supposed to do. Plus I also highly doubt that a train would evacuate from the holding brakes. All I know they better have things ironed out by the time I hit BGT later this year Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RctInfinity Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 Last time I went, when I was in Timbuktu, I saw SheiKra stuck in the middle of the lift. I hope it's just SheiKra getting used to being floorless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coaster05 Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 ^Why is their another Dive Machine that switched to floorless trains. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sam06pr Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 I guess I will put my 2 cents on this. From what I have seen, Sheikra has been having a few problems. I saw a few evacuations but I never found out what were the problems. The last evac I saw was last week where Sheikra was stopped at the block breaks before the second drop. I think that they tried to restart it but they could not, so they evacuated. A few hours later it was operating normally. From what my sup told me we can get trained on how to evac people but from all these problems I think I will pass. I do not want to climb that high unless I'm strapped in to the coasters seat. lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haiderodes Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 Although I have havent seen picture of these evacs, I'm thinking that its not the holding mechanism (chain) where they were evacuated from. I'm thinking its the holding brake before the chain as that is a relatively flat spot and seems safer than trying to get people off at a forward pitching angle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RctInfinity Posted August 18, 2007 Share Posted August 18, 2007 I can't imagine the evacuation if it was really at the holding brake. "Okay people, your restraints will open...please stay on the train if you don't want to fall 200 feet." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sam06pr Posted August 18, 2007 Share Posted August 18, 2007 I also heard that the ride shuts down when it detects something wrong therefor they need to evacuate before doing restarting or something weird like that. I remember waiting to get on the ride and the floors did not come up so the other train stopped before the first drop (before you hang) but it was a test run so they just close down for a while till they fix whatever. I really would love to know whats going with Sheikra. Its funny how it started acting up after Kumba's troubled days just a month ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spideyfreak Posted August 18, 2007 Share Posted August 18, 2007 Just to clear this thing up about stopping at the holding brake. A train can't get stuck on the holding brake. The holding brake is just a chain and instead of a motor there is a clutch. Power is required to activate the clutch, and in turn slow down/stop the train for the desired time. Then power to that clutch cuts off and therefore the clutch releases, releasing the train. So during an E-Stop or a power outage, the clutch would not have power, and the train would simply go over without stopping (if it has passed the brakes just before). So when they say stuck at the top, they mean at the top of the lift or at the brake run just before the drop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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