Let's Learn about the Matterhorn!

[SeaWhippet]

Ok, last layout update until at least Sunday night, this is everything until the tracks join up for the final circuit around the exterior of the mountain. The black square that appeared is the elevator's location, as you can see it's about the only place one could go. There's one error on the lift's overlap right now, but that'll be fixed eventually.

 

I'll cover any non-layout questions whenever there's time to compulsively check forums/myspace/etc as so many of us tend to do...

 

Alpenguy, this is a great start! I look forward to the finished product. Do you plan to do a side elevation? Combined with the completed layout, I think it would be entirely possible to do a NoLimits ride from this.

 

What did you mean "it really has much tighter clearances than any vehicles/track in that program allow?" Except for building two "separate" rides in NL (you'd have to make it a mobius track), I don't see any limitations for building the Matterhorn.

 

Anyway, keep the details coming. This remains one of my favorite new threads!

 

-S

[MisterP]

I would say that the Matterhorn is still as popular as ever. Really, on my trip to DL just last week, I found the bobsleds to be the second hardest ride in DL to get on, after the subs. I only got to ride each side once in 3 days. Due to no Fastpass and 45 minute wait nearly from open to close, its the hardest reride in the park(assuming no one is dumb enough to want to reride Nemo) unless you want to wait 45 minutes, which I almost never would do for a reride in any park.

 

I did find the Fantasyland side much slower and more rough. It seemed to me that the TL side is much, much better.

 

Edit note: Actually Peter Pan and Storybook land are probably harder rides to get on than the bobsleds, but I was mainly talking about E ticket-type attractions.

[Revolucion]

The Tomorrowland side is definitely a better ride. The drop facing the Subs lagoon is called "Dolly's Drop" by employees; Dolly Young had the misfortune of getting ejected at this drop and was run over by the next car. A cast member who helped evacuate the ride told me her head was pushed partially into her body cavity by the car.

 

Guests leave thousands of dollars of change on the ride annually. The leftover change has funded many amenities for the employee break area (to the left of the lift). Most of the funds collected are donated to Guide Dogs of the Desert.

 

Up until the 90's the Matterhorn had no height requirement; just an age requirement of three. That 40 pounds of trouble couldn't go on the Matterhorn today!

 

Did anyone else notice that in the 40 pounds movie the sign read "Tom Sawyer's Island"? I wonder when they took away the possesive 's'?

 

Before there was a Matterhorn it was called Snow Mountain. Vintage pictures below:

It's beginning to look at lot like Christmas. I feel sorry for the mountain climbers that had to lug that thing to the top.

Circa 1958 from TL Skyway station facing current site of Matterhorn.

Circa 1955. No Matterhorn. No hotel. One autopia.

Snow Mountain! Taken from TL side facing Fantasyland.

Dolly's Drop from the roof of the Yacht Bar

Under Construction in 1958. Taken from current site of TL Terrace.

[sfotfreak]

I just found this website it has some interesting things on it especially about the jungle cruise.

 

http://www.hiddenmickeys.org/Secrets.html

 

Hope you like thelink and tell me what you think about it

[socalMAN123]

I never knew there was a Snow Mountain before there was the Matterhorn! Those pics are really neat, thanks for posting them. I also knew about Dolly's Drop, kind of horrific.

---Brent

[ebl]

There are Matterhorn stories in David Koenig's Mouse Tales: A Behind-the-Ears Look at Disneyland. "Dolly's Dip" was mentioned in the book; that's how I learned of it, but I never knew exactly which part of the ride it was.

 

Koenig wrote a second book, More Mouse Tales. I don't recall if the second title is the exact one, but either book shouldn't be hard to find.

 

EDIT: Another thing, about the construction of the mountain itself...the cement work was done from top to bottom so that any spilled concrete wouldn't spoil what was already finished.

 

Eric

[Revolucion]

By the way, "Snow Mountain" was basically the dumping ground for the soil removed from the Rivers of America, Canal Boats, and Phantom Boats. When the Matterhorn was built they leveled off the top, but the Matterhorn was basically built over Snow Mountain.

 

I wonder where the name Snow Mountain came from. It wasn't very snowy! There were walking trails for guests that were added at some point.

 

AlpenHerr, isn't each bobsled now weighed to determine the proper dispatch interval automatically? What was the theoretical hourly capacity before and after the 1978 redo?

 

I know the Haunted Mansion tracks are pressurized, so I assume all tubular coaster track is pressurized to detect leaks at joints. Was this innovation first used on the Matterhorn?

 

What about the new sleds?

[montezooma]

What is "Dolly's Dip"?

[RIP Psyclone]

Dolly's Dip:

On January 3, 1984, 48-year-old Dolly Regina Young of Fremont, California

was thrown from a Matterhorn Bobsleds car and struck by the next

oncoming bobsled. An investigation showed that her seatbelt was found

unbuckled after the accident. It is unclear whether Young deliberately

unfastened her belt or if the seatbelt malfunctioned.

 

The "dip" is not fully visible here, but it's under the bobsleds that are visible, leading to that brick bridge.

Not a good or recent pic, but it's the best I could find

[Alpenguy]

AlpenHerr, isn't each bobsled now weighed to determine the proper dispatch interval automatically? What was the theoretical hourly capacity before and after the 1978 redo?

 

Space weighs its vehicles, Matterhorn doesn't. Space is 100% gravity, no boosters, and has much tighter timing between its midcourse brakes. It also has shorter brake sections that have to stop faster, so it has a maximum weight limit to prevent setting up more momentum than can be safely stopped. I think the total guest weight limit for the train there is ~2800 lbs or so, enough that loading 12 adults is generally frowned upon as too risky. If your train passes that limit you'll be turning to the left (maintenance bay) and getting reloaded.

 

Matterhorn probably should weigh its vehicles, not for timing but for proper parking in the station. Don't get me wrong here, the most flesh you can possibly cram into a sled is 100% safe on any e-stop, but the low speed hold zones in the station tend to overshoot (by like 18 inches at most in the curve in, and ~6 in the straight part) or overspeed (9 ft/s instead of 6-7 in Hold 3) just because the splashdown is the primary braking for the ride and has a pretty constant amount of kinetic energy transfer. More mass, less speed is lost on the splash. Oh and either of those events is a automatic ride stop of varying degrees.

 

It's also pretty much impossible to successfully push a really heavy sled out of one of the cascade stop zones.

 

Theoretical capacity with 24.5 average dispatch between both sides and 8 riders in each train is 2350. While we're being theoretical, B-side can run just fine at 24 seconds too with skilled operators so let's say an even 2400/hr. The most I've seen is ~1940, I don't think more than 1 dispatch was missed on either side for the hour, so that difference of 400 is entirely just singly filled seats. When not being extra tough on seating people together, a typical decent count would be around 1600. With Florida Space style sleds the theoretical would drop to 1800 but it will be easy to consistently hit very, very close to that.

 

I know the Haunted Mansion tracks are pressurized, so I assume all tubular coaster track is pressurized to detect leaks at joints. Was this innovation first used on the Matterhorn?

The track is still pressurized just as in the original version. As far as I understand from the Ed/Karl book, it's mostly for convenience, though they were worried about union disputes from installing electrical systems in the other rail. Along with everything else pneumatic at Disneyland, it runs off of the mega-redundant park air supply with an hour's worth of backup in the mountain's accumulator in case that should somehow fail. The closest thing I've seen to that was a 5psi dip for a fraction of a second that sent every mountain into an e-stop as the computers caught it. Fun day for City Hall I'm sure.

 

Full layout will be done tonight unless I get sidetracked.

[SeaWhippet]

 

Full layout will be done tonight unless I get sidetracked.

 

Hey, Alp --- Looking forward to the completed layout. Any chance you can provide that crucial (for NL re-creations and general curiosity) side-elevation view of the dual courses? Even if you had to do it in sections, it would be nice to see a representation of the layout without the mountain/steel supports.

 

Thanks,

-S

[kidaftersunset]

 

Space weighs its vehicles, Matterhorn doesn't. Space is 100% gravity, no boosters, and has much tighter timing between its midcourse brakes. It also has shorter brake sections that have to stop faster, so it has a maximum weight limit to prevent setting up more momentum than can be safely stopped. I think the total guest weight limit for the train there is ~2800 lbs or so, enough that loading 12 adults is generally frowned upon as too risky. If your train passes that limit you'll be turning to the left (maintenance bay) and getting reloaded.

 

Just for clarity, the heaviest rocket that can be sent in at space is 5198lbs. We do frequently load rockets with 12 adults ... just not 12 BIG adults. Heavy rockets happen all the time, we usually are able to pull two people out at dispatch unless we're at 11 ... then the rocket goes into the blue room.

[Alpenguy]

^ It seems to me like there's quite a step out of the rocket at Dispatch, considering bars is a bunch lower just like all the Matterhorn positions. I imagine that plan goes awry with confused guests fairly often?

 

Yay! The layout is complete, with all the brake zones and proper overlapping. I haven't put in the black lines along the paths yet since I won't be able to easily adjust the paths once I do so, and there are a few small changes I need to make. They should make it MUCH easier to figure out what's going where. I'll also have several transparent mountain layers so it's clear where tunnels are and whatnot, and zone numbers.

[SeaWhippet]

^ It seems to me like there's quite a step out of the rocket at Dispatch, considering bars is a bunch lower just like all the Matterhorn positions. I imagine that plan goes awry with confused guests fairly often?

 

Yay! The layout is complete, with all the brake zones and proper overlapping. I haven't put in the black lines along the paths yet since I won't be able to easily adjust the paths once I do so, and there are a few small changes I need to make. They should make it MUCH easier to figure out what's going where. I'll also have several transparent mountain layers so it's clear where tunnels are and whatnot, and zone numbers.

 

Excellent work, A! Now I know where all the blocks are. I'm constantly amazed that the Arrow boys managed to fit such a complex ride into THAT pre-determined steel framework. Bloody brilliant!

 

Now if we can just see that profile ...

 

-S

[ebl]

^^ Very nice! Thanks for doing that, Alpenguy!

 

Now it's time for me to get to work doing an AutoCAD version. I think I'll add arrows to assist in following the layout.

 

Eric

[kidaftersunset]

^ It seems to me like there's quite a step out of the rocket at Dispatch, considering bars is a bunch lower just like all the Matterhorn positions. I imagine that plan goes awry with confused guests fairly often?

 

Most definitely! LOL, that's why we cascaded today! It's the best when guests refuse ... OR when we pull people out of row 4 and then their family freaks out thinking that their party fell out and we have a lovely Manual-E

 

And btw, that layout is amazing. I wish I had a program to make the Space one! I would love to learn the rock ... everybody i've talked to has said it is much more physical then space. Space is supposedly quite a bit easier to break down so I guess it's more mental. LOL.

[sfotfreak]

Wow how long did it take you to do that?

[Revolucion]

It's also pretty much impossible to successfully push a really heavy sled out of one of the cascade stop zones.

 

Would it be feasible to install a special boosters to push the sled "over the hump"? I guess the booster would need some sort of manual override switch to be powered on after an e-stop. Even a small motorized wench would probably be practical.

 

When Pirates got new bateaux in the late 80's they had to temporarily staff a position at Drop 2 because the boats repeatedly got stuck. The eventual solution someone came up with was to add a slingshot mechanism that would push boats over the drop. After 30 years of double sleds you would think that the park engineers would come up with a solution for difficult stop zones on the Matterhorn. Ever since it became an ACE landmark I hear the sleds are much harder to push.

 

I was at the park today and it looks like they took off that stupid little teacup handle that was added when they plugged up the Skyway holes. When did they take that out?

[Alpenguy]

I wish I had a program to make the Space one! I would love to learn the rock ... everybody i've talked to has said it is much more physical then space. Space is supposedly quite a bit easier to break down so I guess it's more mental. LOL.

 

It's pretty easy to learn if you know anything about bezier curves. I'm using Inkscape which is 100% freeware and very intuitive. Then again, I could just make one for Space too.

 

I think Space is much, much easier to break from a small delay, whereas Matterhorn is far more likely to break down from the ride system. Matterhorn can eat delays no problem and flat out will not cascade ever with experienced people at the ride, or with only 9 sleds and a crew that's not completely zoned out. Station stops are really risky though since Hold 4 at Matterhorn advances really slowly and shouldn't be used with anything approaching behind it. Not that there's much time at all to recover them at Space, but then people can't jump out anywhere in 8 station zones at Space and they advance to normal in 5 seconds. There are also a lot more easy ways to be unsafely riding on the Matterhorn lift than Space.

 

Matterhorn seems a lot easier to screw up a cycle-out though, it's very physical with unspoken teamwork being essential, especially when a bunch of petite girls are in the station. Everything also hinges on the ready table getting out quickly. As I'm sure the case would be at Space if it could unload in Hold 1, people are a lot more likely to get out quickly when told if they've already ridden. At ready, one stop forward from load... issues occur. A Space cycle out sounds pretty insane in the sheer speed sense though and crammed full blue room. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about in this whole paragraph, it can be explained another time.

Would it be feasible to install a special boosters to push the sled "over the hump"?

There are 2 already. It's just a really weird dip/turn thing that eats up energy, plus the hill actually being slightly higher, plus the short pushing area ending in a precipitous drop into the Fantasyland side splashdown pond. The main culprit is the train not clearing the hill fast enough to satisfy the computer it won't roll back, which results in the brakes on the crest activating in an automatic emergency stop. There's not a ratcheting anti-rollback there since there's no point with the intelligent and redundant brakes there anyways.

 

 

 

Ok, the layout is basically done, so looking back to the first post:

Some possible future topics include: Avoiding backups with 8 parking slots, 10 trains and a complete on the spot seatbelt replacement at dispatch; B-side brake zones; Control consoles and panels; Resetting from a complete loss of power; General wacky stories; Similarities to Space and other DLR attractions.

I'd say brake zones and similarities to Space are thoroughly covered, so remaining topics I could explain at length would be:

"Transfer tables and station backups, hand in hand."

"So you've pushed the big red button, your life of evacuation and reset."

"Consoles: Why the Load panel is totally better than the PS3."

"Sit DOWN!: Wacky guest stories."

 

Also, obscure '78 construction pictures to come.

[ebl]

^ I look forward to those construction pictures.

 

"Space is 100% gravity" (Alpenguy)

 

Does anyone else see the humor in that statement?

 

Eric

[Guy T. Koepp]

^I salivate in anticipation!

[BrownStreak]

This may be a "breaking the magic" question, but is there a door at the very top for Tinker-bell to use to attach to her guide wire? (She really flys- the wire is just there to tell her where to go).

 

I got to go up into Tinker Bell Tower at MK once and it was a cool view and neat to see how it worked.

[Skramp]

This thread is incredible. Exactly what this site needs. Alpen, are you able to cover any other rides too?

 

After doing some searching, I found these pics from the USC library archives showing a little bit of the construction. Was the Matterhorn track installed while they built the mountain? (like Everest) Or was the track installed after the mountain was built?

[SeaWhippet]

This thread is incredible. Exactly what this site needs. Alpen, are you able to cover any other rides too?

 

After doing some searching, I found these pics from the USC library archives showing a little bit of the construction. Was the Matterhorn track installed while they built the mountain? (like Everest) Or was the track installed after the mountain was built?

 

Beautiful pics! Wow, it's hard to believe they were able to fit two complete rides in THAT. Simply amazing. I wonder if anyone find other angles of this time of image? I'd love to see some film footage of rockets testing before the exterior was applied. It must exist out there somewhere ...

 

-S

[dougr]

This may be a "breaking the magic" question, but is there a door at the very top for Tinker-bell to use to attach to her guide wire? (She really flys- the wire is just there to tell her where to go).

 

I got to go up into Tinker Bell Tower at MK once and it was a cool view and neat to see how it worked.

 

Now that is quite the job, sliding down a zip line hundreds of feet in the air. Sounds worse than window washing, IMHO