Sea World maintenance

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

this is usual for new attractions - open it, run it for peak season, close it down and check everything to make sure nothing moved, changed or shifted, make sure nothing leaked etc. - its kind of how a new car is run in, and then brought back to the dealership after about 1000km for a service and check up.

i'm sure they also want to make sure it is tip top before the busy summer holiday season, where it's going to get quite a workout.

[Levithian]

It's already been through all that before it's commissioned. If it's closed outside of scheduled maintenance, it will be closed for a reason, not just a check up.

[Brad2912]

And as the Head of Maintenance at SW you must be acutely aware of that fact..

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Every major ride installed by every park on the coast generally opens for a peak holiday season as the premiere. it runs for that season, and then goes down for maintenance. every. single. time.

[Levithian]

You don't close rides outside of scheduled maintenance, quite simply there is no reason to close the ride for any inspection outside of what is specified. It's not a case of run it for a brief period, then close and inspect components and track. That is what is done during commissioning of the ride. Once it's open, it's good to go and you won't normally see it closed until it's yearly maintenance is completed. If its outside of the yearly overhaul, then it generally has to be a good reason to close.

Downtime is the worst possible word at a theme park. As daily, weekly and monthly checks are usually completed when the park is closed, the only lengthy period of down time is when it's closed for yearly maintenance. If you take notice, that pretty much NEVER occurs during the christmas holiday period (which started this week) as it is the busiest time of the year. It's the time when rides are normally operating at full capacity with extra cars/trains, not closed. If green lantern wasn't still closed at movieworld, you would see all attractions open now with extra trains/cars added to road runner, scooby doo, superman, wild west and justice league this week to handle the additional capacity.

Hell, it looks like they are even smashing out the rebuild of carousel. Was there yesterday afternoon and it looks like they have done repairs and are putting it back together while the park is open.

Edited December 9, 2015 by Levithian

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

But carousel isn't listed as annual maintenance, so why should it be closed?

 

As the coaster is a brand new attraction, it doesn't yet HAVE a schedule for annual maintenance. I've said it twice now, and i'm going a third time, but i promise this will be the last.

 

EVERY.

NEW.

RIDE.

DOES.

THIS.

[Levithian]

Pretty sure a carousel has no annual maintenance. Neither do most of the carnival type rides. It's only when you come across something major that forces it to close for repair that you see something occur. Given they completely dismantled every single part of carousel right down to the decking, it's a pretty safe bet that wasn't just regular maintenance and something major came up. Especially since it wasn't scheduled for anything either.

Every ride has a schedule for maintenance before it's even commissioned. It's the manufacturer that provides you with a check list for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly inspections and maintenance, it's not generated by the park. The time frames generally begin when the ride is commissioned, and is inclusive of long periods of inactivity (so the inspections keep coming even if your ride is closed). You can perform annual maintenance early to fit into your schedule to make sure the attraction is not down during your busiest periods. It is just not to exceed the guidelines they specify.

Nobody will ever schedule maintenance that incurs downtime during these holidays if it can't be managed elsewhere. Not going to happen, ever. You can't account for unscheduled downtime though, like what happens when something breaks or you find issues during regular inspections. At this time of year, pretty much the only way you'll see something closed is if it wasn't expected. They don't even give a specified time for sponge bob coaster to reopen. Just that it's closed for maintenance.

Im not saying it's having major issues like green lantern evidently was/is, just that you can be pretty sure it's not intended to be closed and wouldn't be part of annual yearly maintenance to see it closed during the peak business period.

Edited December 9, 2015 by Levithian

[Original]

Alex B is right, every ride closes a month or two after opening for a check up. Just like the car analogy he gave. It's to check that when it was commissioned everything is still working as it should as these are new parts wearing in. I think you'll probably find nearly every piece of machinery has to go through this. 

Whether this is the break-in maintenance check or something else, I don't know.  But go back through every ride opening and you'll all find they went through a brief check up. 

 

Also the carousel, that could just be a complete rebuild, we've seen a lot of rides go through it and even when coasters are down their cars go through rebuilds.  

[Levithian]

Name another ride that was closed during the peak period for a "check up" months after it was installed?. Aside from wear related to tracking/alignment, anything else generally requires non destructive testing or dismantling to see if there is issue with components and structure that are considered major failure items. That means pretty much overhauling everything you just put together. You don't plan that sort of maintenance during your holidays. It's just not going to happen.

The mast was completely removed from carousel, there was literally nothing left but a pile of parts scattered around the area. Sounds a bit more than a rebuild, again, especially since it is running into the holidays and they are putting it together during opening hours with trucks and stuff int here. Wouldn't be surprised at all if it was damaged during use at fright nights. People were jumping up and down on it during the terror tour, considering they won't even normally allow adults to ride because it can damage the ride, It couldn't have been too healthy.

Edited December 9, 2015 by Levithian

[Original]

I really wouldn't classify us in the peak period yet. Boxing Day is when you hit the peak period time through to the rest of the holidays. In fact Friday is the last day of school for QLD and next Friday for NSW. Otherwise I'd ask why didn't DW start work earlier on Cyclone and the V8 area earlier to have it open for right now, the peak period. I didn't say a check-up was why the coaster was down, it could have already been through that, simply that shutting rides down not too long after opening is standard procedure. 

 

With the carousel, pulling it down so there's just a mast left does sound exactly what you'd classify as a rebuild, pulling it down to its bare bones and putting it back together and yes Fright Nights could have triggered that. What I am surprised at is the ride not being on the website as being down because even though you might call it a carnival ride there is one at every single theme park here on the GC and even the Disney parks, so I'd also classify it as a theme park staple.

[rappa]

This is off peak. A small break between schoolies and Christmas. 

There is nothing to say this ISN'T scheduled. Just because they didn't put it on the website. 

 

Yea you commission a ride. But it only makes sense to do an inspection once it's been open to check everything is good, parts are wearing at the expected rate, etc. 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

@Levithian, you now have several people, some of which are either current or former employees of theme parks telling you that what i'm saying is correct.

Most major attractions open Boxing day. they run for January, and go down in february once everyone is back in school. In the case of september openings, they do the same thing between Schoolies and Xmas. I don't have dates and facts, but i've worked in a theme park, and i've watched our GC parks for many years and this is ALWAYS the case.

As for your argument:

17 hours ago, Levithian said:

Every ride has a schedule for maintenance before it's even commissioned. It's the manufacturer that provides you with a check list for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly inspections and maintenance, it's not generated by the park. The time frames generally begin when the ride is commissioned, and is inclusive of long periods of inactivity (so the inspections keep coming even if your ride is closed). You can perform annual maintenance early to fit into your schedule to make sure the attraction is not down during your busiest periods. It is just not to exceed the guidelines they specify.

If the parks always did the annual inspections precisely a year after they were installed, everything would close on boxing day. the parks already have a maintenance schedule in their calendar for every attraction in the park. The manufacturer can't dictate WHEN the park does annual inspection, only that it is done every year - it is up to the park to decide where in it's current maintenance schedule it will fit. Of course that doesn't mean the park can do away with an inspection in the first 12-18 months until they can find a slot to fit the ride into, but a new ride won't settle into a 'regular' spot for its maintenance in the first year or two.

There are threads on this forum that will also prove my point - go back through the construction topics for Green Lantern, Storm Coaster, Buzzsaw etc - there will be discussions that tell you when the ride opened. now fast forward into the next quiet period, and I guarantee you will find discussions of it going down for maintenance.

[Spotty]

Batwing SpaceShot did the same thing too... opened for a few weeks. Then shut down again to be commissioned if i'm not mistaken. That ride had quite a few issues when it first opened though... I'm sure there is a thread somewhere burred in the forums about it.

[rappa]

Like any incredibly complex piece of process machinery (which is all any ride is, pretty much a factory assembly plant turned into something cool), they are all a 'one off' (even if it's a clone) and build by hand pretty much. Often the software code will be slightly tweaked for each parks unique requirements. The climates they operate in are all different. 

Inevidably there will be 'bugs' that require test and adjust and you won't find these until you run the attraction in real world with guests and relatively non technical operations staff. 

 

You don't just want to go making drastic changes to fix these bugs and then just chuck guests on and hope for the best. So a small time period of downtime is the best way once you've found all the bugs that need correcting. 

[jhunt2]

Storm Coaster had moderate technical difficulties on Monday afternoon. We noticed that multiple empty cars completed the circuit early in the day, and were asked to leave the line for the ride shortly after lunch due to a "technical glitch".

They ran several more empty runs, and a few mechanics climbed the lift hill and inspected. One car was stationary about halfway up the lift hill for almost half an hour. The ride reopened before the end of the day, but there was a dramatic decrease in lift hill speed, particularly right at the very top. Hopefully, this was just a minor glitch, especially going into peak season. I don't think a lift hill going at less than half full speed is going to be convenient when the tourists roll around.

Also, Ray Reef is apparently getting "Bird-Proofed". The whole exhibit was closed, and some sort of piping was evident inside the fenced-off zone.

Just though y'all would be interested, since this is a topic on Sea World maintenance.

[Levithian]

On 9/12/2015 at 6:28 PM, djrappa said:

This is off peak. A small break between schoolies and Christmas. 

There is nothing to say this ISN'T scheduled. Just because they didn't put it on the website. 

 

Yea you commission a ride. But it only makes sense to do an inspection once it's been open to check everything is good, parts are wearing at the expected rate, etc. 

It's the start of peak season exactly now. Additional trains and cars added for the first weekend of the school holidays.

I think you guys underestimate just how big a deal the christmas school holidays are and how much planning (and demands) goes into trying to get everything running at full capacity. Take a park like movie world, any other time during the year, a busy day might nudge 10-11000 people. During these school holidays you can add another 5000 people in the park.
 

Edited December 11, 2015 by Levithian

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Its so cute how you think you know more than others.

[Jobe]

Wow.

[Levithian]

Go to any of the parks today. Tell me what I just said isn't true.

[joz]

Today's crappy weather aside, it's not true though.

 

With all the VIP passes there is these days, got do see a bigger bump in attendance before Christmas than what there used to be, but nothing near what you get on Boxing Day onwards.  

 

Freakish one off days aside, the busiest day of the year is traditionally the in the first Monday Tuesday or Wednesday after Boxing Day.  Not only that, but the entire month after Boxing Day is significantly more crowded than normal.  Peak season is most certainly coming, but it's not here yet.  

[Levithian]

It starts when dictated to by operations. That is always during the holidays and is when all attractions are expected to be open and able to run at full capacity regardless of how many people you might actually have in the park that given day. This has now happened as evident by additional cars/trains being added. It's hit and miss with attendance, but even quiet days are up during the same period and has nothing to do with what I said.

Edited December 12, 2015 by Levithian

[pin142]

Went to Movie World today, around 10 minute wait for Arkham and less than that for Batwing when I got there at 4pm. If it was peak I would expect the queues to still be longer even at that time of the day.

[Santa07]

18 hours ago, joz said:

Freakish one off days aside, the busiest day of the year is traditionally the in the first Monday Tuesday or Wednesday after Boxing Day.  Not only that, but the entire month after Boxing Day is significantly more crowded than normal.  Peak season is most certainly coming, but it's not here yet.  

I often find that New Year's Day is really quiet at the parks, especially in the morning. I've done all the parks except Sea World that day for the past few year's, and DW, WWW, and WnW all had very short queue's (WWW and WnW's started to grow as the day progressed but DW's stayed tiny the whole day). MW attracted a lot of family crowds and wasn't amazing, but it was still better than usual.

After that though there is a boom in attendance.

[Theme Park Girl]

Sorry Leviathan, but as a former Sea World employee twice over I gotta second what others are saying here about the busiest period being POST Christmas. I recall it was always Boxing Day & the following day (26th) which were expected to be - and usually were - the busiest day for theme parks ☺ I did 3 Christmasses with them in total, and it always went nuts from the final week of the year.

In fact last year, Sea World didn't actually roster me to start my seasonal stint with them until the 19th December, and my week of training followed that! They also got me to finish up on 18th January, so according to them that was the end of the busy holiday period.

Mind you, their busiest days last year (26th/27th) crashed because of heavy rain, so maybe that early finish for seasonal staff was due to the "downturn of seasonal attendances" as well ??

Edited December 12, 2015 by OceanGirl

[Levithian]

Im not talking about when you have the most attendance. I'm purely talking about operation. From the first weekend of the holidays you will see all trains, cars and boats added to handle the expectation of additional capacity through the holidays. You can talk about attendance as much as you want, but that is not what I said at all.

I said that with the start of the holidays becomes peak season and it is expected that all rides and attractions will be open and expected to run at full capacity. That's not your expectation of when people might turn up in the park, it's targets set by operations which dictates when this happens. It is evident in the additional capacity now running, regardless of how many people might be in the park. It's to cover you in the event you need the additional capacity from a surge of guests. It's not a simple task of being able to go back over and perform daily checks while in operation to add additional cars/trains to cope with the added capacity. So it's planned on purpose even if you think it might be a little quiet that day.

Downtime at any period is a bit of a dirty word, but during these periods there has a be a pretty good reason why an attraction is not running, or is running at less than capacity. The most common reason is because something was found during daily/weekly checks that requires repair. You don't schedule down time during the peak season when the maintenance you guys were talking about can be managed at any other point, outside of this period.

Edited December 13, 2015 by Levithian