How do Giant Drop cars get stuck?

[coasterkid94]

Whenever I am at Six Flags, it seems as though one of Giant Drop's cars is always stuck somewhere in the middle of the tower. How does this happen, and how come they can't get the car down?

[Nystagmus]

As a former operator of the ride, let me tell you a two things.

1. They can get the car down (just a simple push of a button or two)
2. Maintenance has the ability to move individual cars. Most times (from what I remember) maintenance will attach a platform to one of the cars so they can inspect the exterior part of the tower on that particular car's path.

[BP317]

Having used to do this every night i'll chime in....

Turn the ride into maintenence mode, press "car _ wagon up", "ride stop", "section stop", then "ride start", flip it back into auto and your good to keep operating.

When putting the ride away at night its much more of a pain, first someones gotta attatch the maintenence cart to the catch wagon then jog it up and turn the rides power off.

As simple as that.

[RagingBullFan]

The cart is no easy beast to wrestle especially when the ground is wet and slippery, as you have to hold its weight back when its being lifted by the 2 cars around the car your going to put it onto. Don't want it to smash into the top of it .

That and climbing onto it to put the pins in and grabbing the grease rail. That sucks.

[coasterkid94]

I have two more things.
In this picture, is the platform seen above what I think is the catch wagon the maintenance cart?
And if it isn't that hard to get down a car, how come at least one car is frequently stuck?

[rcoaster]

/\ /\ /\
1. That's not our giant drop (although i think you know that) and its problably maintenence although on this one I think that it's permanantly there, unlike the one on giant drop at sfgam.
2. My guess would be to close the cart off or something..... but I don't really know????

[BP317]

And if it isn't that hard to get down a car, how come at least one car is frequently stuck?

Its not "stuck" its purposley put there because its not in use because its not behaving. The cars that arent in use will be placed at the top most of the time so the cables are on the inside of the tower not blowing around.

The maintenence cart is a basically a wooden box with a rail.

[coasterkid94]

Thanks for all of your help.

[rcoaster]

What happens when the ride gets stuck on top? Do they bring it down slowly and did it happen to somebody here? I was up there for 20 seconds, and I'm not saying that because that's what it felt like, but I counted and I counted to like 23 (off by a few, but I was doing the mississippi counting). It was funny because people were yelling and screaming and they thought we were stuck.

[coasterkid94]

^That sounds interesting. One reason why you may have been at the top for so long could be that one of the cars was taking extremely long to get to the top, and once all of the cars are at the top you must wait several more seconds until they all drop. But really, my guess is just as good as anyone's.

[Mr.SIX]

I got stuck on Giant Drop for like 15 mins don't really know what happened but we stopped like a couple feet before the top it was fun because I was singing songs while the rest of the people were having a heart attack on the ride. But in they didn't lower us down the dropped us. It scared the crap out of everyone on the ride.

[rcoaster]

^ Ha thats really funny
No, all the carts were up I believe Because only three were running, and we heard voices on both sides. The ops acted like nothing happened, so I guess they must have pressed something that they would want to let them boss know about.

[zjohn1988]

What happens when the ride gets stuck on top? Do they bring it down slowly and did it happen to somebody here? I was up there for 20 seconds, and I'm not saying that because that's what it felt like, but I counted and I counted to like 23 (off by a few, but I was doing the Mississippi counting). It was funny because people were yelling and screaming and they thought we were stuck.

If any of the 3 ride ops hit a ride stop, the cars can be manually lowered together and reset. If it troubles, maint. has to come lower them.

[rcoaster]

^ But they don't always lower them, they drop them and its scary to be up there and waiting for a drop without warning!

[RagingBullFan]

The operators have no control of when the riders will actually drop.

The only way it may seem that they have "control" of that is if they hit a ride stop once all the cars are at the top. Once they are done disciplining whoever they needed to, they just hit a ride start button again. The ride then resumes where it left off from. They don't have a magic "Drop Now" button.

[rcoaster]

^ For some reason in my head, I believed that they did have that magic "Drop Now" button to torchure us on when we're gonna fall.