I wish some of your designs would be added even now. Or at least a people mover here or there in the new parks.

I know Walt was fascinated by transport and so you are one of his greatest legacies. Blessings!

ha, ha! Yeah. I guess I’m a bit of a Tony Baxter when it comes to other people’s marvels of engineering.

This made me think of you (or maybe you made me think of this?):
http://www.hulu.com/watch/19280/saturday-night-live-debbie-downer-birthday-party

No, of course not! Compare that to Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls. In 2000, a 40-year-old woman was injured on the last drop, when she was propelled out of the seat and slammed back down hard. The ride was actually stopped for a few hours and she was taken off of the ride by paramedics. She sustained a fractured coccyx, herniated cervical discs and other injuries. Because of the numerous injuries that followed, in 2007, they installed a buzz (lap safety) bar on the ride. I couldn’t find a single incident report since. Now, the ride is nowhere as good as Splash Mountain, but a little extra safety makes all the difference in the world and the ride runs fine. There are guides on the side of the logs, and they slip into guides on the coaster track on the main drop. It keeps the log slightly above the water trough, so that there is no hydroplaning or resistance – thus, the log can attain maximum speed. This is why if there is downtime, because of the coaster wheels underneath the water on the log, the ride can actually operate without water on the jumps. It could also come off of the hill if all conditions were right (wind, angle, water, etc). This also means if the brakes fail, it could easily hit the car in front since the modern flume ride is more like a roller coaster. Since it is nearly unheard of to not have restraints on roller coaster cars, why not on flume rides with roller coaster tracks? When people started to expect log flumes to become more like “shoot-the-chutes”, it should have occurred to George and other Imagineers that they weren’t building WRE, but something with a lot more thrills. In fact, because of a death at Knott’s Berry Farm, Perilous Plunge now has a 4-point harness system.

Hey, I was on Splash Mountain and it got stuck for ten minutes right on the part where the rabbit is tied up and about to go down. I had to ponder that if the brake went lose, I would have slammed a ~30 ft. drop hitting the car behind me at the bottom. With no support holding me, even with an emergency brake, and being squished in the seat, I could have had whip lash at the least. Little kids that go on that ride could have been launched out of the vehicle and broken their necks. There were stairs nearby and I was the only one sitting in my row, so at the time, I had to think if I should sit perpendicular and jump out onto the stairs if the ride started to fall backwards. And if I was sitting perpendicular, how safe would I be in that position if the ride all of the sudden jeered forward and fell down the falls. Now, it is unlikely because of the safety precautions on the ride track. But why aren’t there safety precautions on the actually car? I know it might be unlikely to have problems given that the ride reacts as planned. But I don’t know how much thought went into the idea behind the car malfunctioning, or as it has been common at Disney, kids riding the ride that are clearly under the minimum height, standing on the seat during the ride, or facing backwards. A simple safety restraint could have prevented a lot of irrational behavior and kept people safe.

There was a report that an elderly woman fell as she tried to exit her boat at the load area. Another report said that a man died on the ride: http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/11/05/disney.death/index.html

Now, I hope George has a nice birthday, but if I got two seconds of his time, I’d like to have an answer.

Android — did you really just criticize the guy’s work on a blog post wishing him a happy birthday? That’s pretty low man. Pretty low indeed.