Mine was when I worked at the Jungle Cruise, I was working Parade Audience Control on New Years Day, the busiest day of the year at the Magic Kingdom. I was in Liberty Square when a warning came along. At the Liberty Belle dock, there is a pipe connected to the sewers (I don't understand why it is there) but early in the day, it started leaking. This happened before, and like before they fixed it.
Then about 40 minutes later, all of Frontierland from the Little Mississippi to Pecos Bill was flooded with sewage.
Remember, we are at capacity, around 80,000 guest who need all the space they could get. Instead, we close the major thoroughfare to both Splash and Thunder, causing all that traffic to go through Adventureland.
On top of that, all the restrooms on the west side of the park were closed...
On top of that, the sewage access point was smartly placed in the patio of Pecos Bill, so we taped all the windows of the restaurant with black costuming fabric so the diners wouldn't be repulsed by the men diving in and out of the manhole covered in...stuff.
On top of canceling the day parade where 30,000 people were lined up do see because we couldn't sweep up and sanitize the street fast enough, and we had a mob of angry 30,000 people to whom we couldn't explain what was happening and to five angry guest bands who couldn't perform.
On top of that was because if all the secrecy of hiding the patio, blocking picture taking at all of the executives (I got to meet some pretty high up people that day) a lot of the guest thought some one died.
The candle on the cake was that Splash would leak animatronic fluid into the ride water and would have to be shut down for half the day.
Tweet
We arrived at the front gate of Universal Studios, tickets-in-hand, about 30 minutes prior to opening. I like to get places early - a byproduct of my former military lifestyle. When we arrived, I could sense it would be a great day from the mild weather and particularly the lack of any real, sizable crowd stacking up at the still-closed turnstiles. With my McDonalds coffee in hand, Eric and I started chatting up the turnstile attendant. As the minutes passed by and the conversation grew more and more comfortable with this staff member, we began sharing random, benign anecdotes to pass the remaining minutes until opening. I causally leaned against one of the turnstile assembly boxes.
The turnstiles back then were not the high-tech, CIA-biometric-start-trek things they have there now. They were simple chrome metal boxes, wired to take an electrical count of each time the turnstile bar went 'click' and nothing more. I leaned more body weight into the metal box as the staff member told us about the new IoA and how grand it was... I was rather excited. SO excited, in fact, that while leaning against the turnstile assembly, a casually slapped another adjacent assembly in a slightly forced display of excitement...
WOW
Immediately it felt like I stuck my finger in an electrical outlet. Alternating current shot up my arm like a damned bullet train. I howled like some animal off of wild kingdom. This elicited confused and somewhat frightening stares from all cast members and the few guests within earshot. I figured an explanation was in order.
"Dude!" I told him, "I'm pretty sure there is a short in here somewhere!" At first he seemed rather skeptical as he simply swatted his hand quickly at the apparently offending machine and received what appeared to be no shock whatsoever. "Are you SURE?" He asked? I replied "No no... touch BOTH of these at the same time."
He did, and he leaped back in surprise. "Jesus, I gotta call someone!" he said in a rather quiet, 'just-between-me-and-you' voice. I told him to do whatever he had to do and gave my word that I would not allow anyone near them until he rounded up the appropriate superior, which frankly only took him a minute or two.
What followed was a rather humorous bureaucratic display of supervisor, head supervisor, head HEAD supervisor, ad nauseam approach the turnstile, question the veracity of the electrocution claim, be told by the previous-tier employee "touch both", them touching both, and getting the crap shocked out of them. Finally a high-up-enough decision maker decided that the entire string of turnstiles in that area would be shut down for the day so that maintenance could work on solving the problem.
Afterwards, Eric and myself were escorted to a disguised side-room in the amusement park facade by two well-dressed gentlemen who wanted to speak with us about the incident and acted quite concerned for my safety. In retrospect, I clearly realize that this was lawsuit damage control of the highest caliber... but seriously, what was I gonna cry about? I wasn't injured, nothing serious happened... frankly it was rather funny. I simply told the gentlemen it was a non-issue and I was only glad that it happened to me and not a small child or an elderly person with a pacemaker. They nervously agreed, asked once more if I was fine, and set Eric and I loose in the park.
...only now I realize, I DEFINITELY should have tried for a lifetime pass. Oh well. :-)
Well, that didn't go so well. I don't want to tarnish Universal's sterling safety reputation, and I did not attempt to bring about a lawsuit in this situation, but let me tell you, things went from bad to worse. Quick. It's lucky nobody was hurt. Universal jeeps were damaged. There were electrical problems. Dinosaurs that had no business being placed in proximity to guests were loose and causing chaos. Thank God for the waterfall in the ride building because we were very nearly eaten alive by an unconfined Tyranosaurus Rex. This could have gone very badly for Universal if even one guest had a bad reaction to the venom spit by a loose dilopiosaurus.
I was the administrator for the admissions control system at UO back in 2002...one fine morning while sitting at my desk (probably reading Theme Park Insider) and waiting to see when they would start letting people in the park for the day, my desk was suddenly surrounded by some very ashen-faced technicians. A herd of them, in fact. And the phone started ringing. All the lines.
The first one finally managed to get out the question, "Did you do something to the turnstiles?". Keep in mind that my desk is about a mile from the turnstiles and most of my work was done on a PC, so the question was a little bemusing. I asked, "Like what?".
"Well, did you do something because the turnstiles are giving the guests shocks??"
Ok, I have to admit to having two reactions, one of which would not have been considered guest-helpful. I said, "Yes, of course, that is a feature of the system. I just bring up my little console and pick which turnstiles and check the flag "zap the guests". Isn't that nifty?"
After a few moments, as it was slowly dawning on these poor guys that I probably really was kidding, I suggested they might contact maintenance who control the power to see if perhaps some work had been done in that area overnight.
Anyway, sure enough, maintenance had not quite gotten all the grounding correct after some work, resulting in a bank of turnstiles that was really energizing, so to speak.
I'm still amused by the thought that a few of our cast really did think it was a feature...after that I tried to get the developer to add it in, but no such luck :-)
Thanks Mike.
Get out of here! You were supervising when that went down? That's hilariously awesome! It sure made for a great story.... and electrocution or not, UO is still one of my favorite places to spend an afternoon in Orlando. Cheers man.
:-)
Oh you...
XD
This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.
