I worked Inny and Space and whenever we heard a unusual sound coming from the Jeep or Rocket, we removed the guests an either cycled it empty till we could remove it or facilities could check it out, or removed it immediatly.
In March of 02 I was doing Space Pen testing, (Penetration testing for the breaks. It is required to re calibrate every single break after the attraction has under gone a major rehab, or there has been break failures. As RO, we just cycle rockets and ran the tower for 12 to 18 hours and facilities acctually calibrated the brakes and we assisted in moving the rockets out on the track.) but back to the story, we were just getting ready to close up for the night, running the last of the rockets through when there was this REALLY loud hissing sound comming from inside the mountain. So we stopped cycling and walk the track to see if we could figure out what had happened. Apparently, one of the rockets sound box had a cable hanging off, which mind you it wasn't uncommon for them to be disconnected becasuse they didnt all work, and the cable had cought some equipment facilities has left out on the side of the track for the next day. This then got cought on a high pressure air pipe valve that supplied all the air to TL attraction and snaped off the valve and part of the pipe. It took facilities almost an hour to shut it off because none, I repeat, none of them knew where the freakin main shut off valve was.
We didn't know at first what had caused it. It wasn't till about an hour after it happened when I was walling into the pit did I notice all the wires hagging off the back of the rocket and we put it all together.
Isn't that quit reasurring to know. I am really timid to ride space after the rocket 8 accident and after the zone 14 and 15 failure that caused 2 rockets to smash into each other. And that just put the icing on the cake. I really hope the "new space" will be better.
We did test a new rocket while I was atill working there, but we never got all new ones. I hope the new ones will be there when it reopens.
Despite all that, it was still my absolute favorite ride to work. Best day ever was 11 downtimes in an 8 hour shift. YEEEEH HAAAAH, and most it them I was at belts!