A reported fire in the central cooling plant at the Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park has forced the closure of many of the top attractions at the Walt Disney World theme park this evening.
Disney World app right now: pic.twitter.com/x7kZHacysa
— Theme Park Insider (@ThemePark) July 12, 2018
A Twitter user reposted what appears to be a Reedy Creek alert blaming a fire in the central chiller plant affecting air conditioning throughout the park. Disney's Hollywood Studios was scheduled to close at 10:30pm tonight.
A Disney spokesperson said that the park remains open, though the app is showing only the Star Wars Launch Bay and MuppetVision shows as operational. Toy Story Land, Sunset Blvd, and Star Tours all are down.
Is anyone in the park today? What are you seeing?
Tweet
Much of Hollywoos Studios closed? Apparently the central chiller plant has been on fire since 2015.
LOL
Why did this affect Toy Story Land,?
The whole land was built without shade or AC queues
Got free passes to use a different day at any park, still got to go on every ride AND saw fantasmic. The 3 hours with no air conditioning was sooo worth it.
You had me at "Slinky Dog Dash - Now Open!... Temporarily Closed". Brilliant!
A cooling plant likely does more than power AC. Many of these types of plants provide steam that is used to power equipment, including but not always exclusively to AC. Can't officially say that't the case here, yet that could be why things that don't seem to be AC equipment may be down.
Email from cast member who wishes to remain anonymous (I have not verified any of this but am posting it to elicit comment from other CMs):
During the time of the cooling failure at Disney Hollywood Studios when multiple rides were shut down the staff in the kitchens were forced to continue working despite temperatures on the hot line reaching between 150 and 190 degrees. Chef Robert (the executive Chef over Hollywood Studios) and the general managers decided that staying open and making money was more important than the welfare and safety of their employees, despite the fact that even the safety manager was saying that the kitchen should be closed.
I would like to stay anonymous but felt this story needed to be shared.
Forcing people to work in these kind of heats is pure abuse. It shows disrespect for the core that makes the magic. I'm sure if the AC at the pencil pushers office was down they would go home. I hope these employees know that there is a lot of expansion going on up the road.
OT is right!
Except Universal Orlando HR has confirmed the same expectations are expected of UO Team members IF power and/or HVAC systems fail.
In that case, everyone should go work for Sea World. OH WAIT... they have the same expectation!
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Yep. Everything closed, no communication for at least 2-3 hours. Now all fast pass lines are so busy, it’s not worth using the ones we were given as compensation.