The Haunted Mansion (and other Omnimovers)

Image: Disney As I’ve previously discussed, The Haunted Mansion wasn’t the first Omnimover that Imagineers built – that honor goes to Adventure Thru Inner Space – but it is the oldest one still in operation. And the problem with Omnimovers is simple. The giant apparatus tethers all the ride carts together. When any part of the ride cart tears up, everything does.

For this reason, riders often hear the sad announcement from the Ghost Host that the Doombuggy will stop for a while. Sometimes, this happens because of an important reason like helping someone exit the ride. In other instances, it’s because of a serious technical issue that can take the ride down for hours. All Omnimovers are susceptible to downtime of this length due to their interconnected construction. The way that you know Imagineers are amazing at their jobs is that it doesn’t happen more often. You can imagine the difficulty in keeping contraptions this large functioning at optimal capacity.

Indiana Jones Adventure (and Dinosaur)

Image: DisneyAs I mentioned in the Behind the Ride for Indiana Jones Adventure, Disney had to create and build a special Enhanced Motion Vehicle (EMV) for this attraction. And here’s the thing about manufacturing. The prototype for something is the hardest piece of equipment to make operational. Once something is working and available for public consumption, it becomes easier to maintain. When a vehicle is built in high volume, lots of people look at the various parts and find ways to improve or possibly even perfect each one.

The EMVs at Indiana Jones Adventure haven’t had this advantage. Instead, they only exist at Disney theme parks, specifically Disneyland, Tokyo DisneySea and Animal Kingdom. Due to their scarcity and the novel nature of the vehicles, they are EXTREMELY difficult to maintain. When these EMVs malfunction, they have a tendency to take the entire ride area down with them. It’s not like the EMVs can pass each other on the road or anything. And that’s why the brilliant creation that is the EMV is also the reason why Indiana Jones Adventure goes down so much. Since Dinosaur uses the same vehicles, it faces the same challenges and has similar uptime issues.

Space Mountain

Image: DisneyDisney began what has since become an industry standard with Space Mountain. They built the first computerized roller coaster, an idea so profound that it wasn’t even technically possible when Imagineers came up with it. Disney had to wait a decade to finish what they started, and that futuristic design remains in place more than 40 years later. There’s just one problem with it.

Space Mountain’s coaster carts exit the station based on precise timing. They computerized system knows where each vehicle is on the track, and it can signal when a coaster cart is clear to depart. What happens when the computer signals aren’t working correct, though? You guessed it. The sensor malfunctions are the cause of the frequent shutdowns. The attraction simply cannot work when the timing is off. It would be too dangerous.