Under the Sea with Little Mermaid - Broken Pipe Floods Disney's New Ride
Anaheim, California - Disney California Adventure theme park suffered a major setback early Sunday morning when a pipe was damaged after a pump failure. No injuries were reported but the accident allowed water to flood the recently completed Little Mermaid ride.
Officials were still trying to piece together what happened but it appears that a damaging "water hammer" pressure wave occurred when a pump motor lost power. This was during normal circulation from the Paradise Pier lagoon to the Grizzly River Run storage reservoir.
The Little Mermaid ride was built below ground level to allow guests to experience the sensation of going below the water surface. Unfortunately the ride was near the burst pipe and the entire lower section of the ride was flooded under 5 feet of water. There are dozens of animatronic figures in this area which were also submerged.
"Fortunately this happened at night when the ride was not operating", said Disney technician named Eric King. "I and one of my co-workers went down there in a boat to see if the animatronic figures could be salvaged. But they were almost all under water and we could not disconnect any of them."
The ride "Little Mermaid: Ariel's Undersea Adventure" officially opened at
Disneyland Resort on June 3, 2011. There is a similar ride under construction at Walt Disney Resort in Orlando, Florida. Disney imagineer Michael Sebastian said that his team is already at work reviewing construction in Florida to see if a similar event could occur there.
According to Mr. Sebastian, imagineers are looking closely at the materials of construction used in the pump casing. The pump was built by Triton pump company. The pump company's public relations director Ariel Singer said, "I am speechless".
April 1, 2012
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