Well E-stops on Thunder Canyon at CP are quite a production. It's so complicated to explain but every single person on the crew had a different task to perform depending on where they were sationed when it occured. An e-stop was very rare on TC though. We had a few though this last summer.
If you were in controls and hit the button, you had to hit a buzzer three times to signal the crew on the ground to get their butts in gear. Then you have to call maintainence, and park op. The E-Stop button stops the turntable, conveyor belt, lift, guysers, waterfalls, wave maker, and water pumps. It shuts off the entire ride.
If you are on the turntable, and are closest to the diversion gates, you have to peak around the corner and make sure there are not rafts coming in and you have to throw the levers to route all incoming rafts into the storage flume on the peremeter of the load flume. That same person was also to stay on the platform and work crowd control. All guests on the platform were told to exit onto the concrete ASAP. Guests in rafts engaged on the table were to remain seated.
All other emplyees on the platform had to run AS FAST AS POSSIBLE up the lift and down around to the storage dock. The first person to reach the dock had to pull the drains open, to allow the water to run back into Lake Erie, and drain out the ride. The other employees have to run all the way to the farthest available boat hook. That would be the hook closest to the boats being diverged into the storage flume. they have to form a line along the dock, and as boats float in, you have to use you hook and pass the rafts along down the line until the reach the other end and can be secured. These people are also instructed to stay seated. If you were the last person up the lift and a boat is on it with passengers, then you must stop and stay with that raft and keep the passengers calm.
The person sitting out in what we call "field" (the person out in the chair in the woods monitoring the ride) has to run along the path through the woods and make sure no rafts dry flume. If a raft has just passed the lift, the flume will drain faster than the raft floats causing it to run dry and the boat is stranded in the flume. If there are any dry flume rafts, then you have to tell the people to remain calm, run to the phone at the field chair, and call it up to control that you have a dry flumed raft, and where it is located. Ususally the person in control can see it on the monitors in the control tower, because the entire ride has only about 50 ft. of blind spots to the cameras. Then they must return to the raft and keep the passengers calm if there are any passengers on that raft.
There is a short run of catwalk along the approach to the turntable, and if rafts don't get diverged into the storage flume soon enough they will wedge and start stacking. The pressure of more than three rafts against eachother can cause the boats to capsize, so if the crew sees this coming then we avacuate onto the catwalks EMEDIATLY.
Once all that chaos is over, we have to go and close off the entrance, and stand out there and tell people we are down for an unknown amount of time.
Usually we have to wait for managment to show up and remove guests from rafts, and send them out out the special access entry from the storage flume. Dry flume guests get to climb up a nifty little ladder and walk through the woods back into the park.
The process of restarting, filling, and cycling the ride to reopen can take a good half hour or more and that is only once the problem is solved.
You get 16 rafts floating around on the ride, and there is very little time for error in an e-stop. They can stack up four rafts in about 30 seconds, so you have got to HAUL. It is just insanity. Good adreniline rush though. I'd say it beats Dragster for excitment.
summer. . .
ACROPHOBIA-------------- 
. I suppose if something mechanical goes wrong it is a good thing but if there were actually an EMERGENCY with a rider or something it seems like just finishing the ride cycle and stopping the ride as you normally would is the best option.
When a sensor screwed up and the train was running its course...ops have no way of resetting without second key...people slamming into the brakes at the end of the ride...OUCH! 65mph - 0mph in hmm, 1.5 seconds...it hurts.
Linear Mode
