I was at the launch point, on the midway, and saw the cable snap. Let me add some things to this conversation and hopefully reduce senseless speculation.
First of all, the riders were in no danger. The train just started moving when the cable snapped. The cable sort of moved forward and up and down in a wave like motion. Most of it just hung limp from the middle of the tracks, though the cable at the guide wheels, where it goes into the drive building, was a bit tangled up around the guide wheels and track. The part that snapped lay on the ground just forward of the entrance tunnel. The ends were ragged and frayed. The tensioning wheel, at the launch point, extended fully when the cable snapped and triggered a switch placed there for just such an occurance. Just guessing about this, but I would think triggering the switch puts the ride in a Estop mode, as the brakes extended on the launch track, and the launch motor seemed to stop. The ride was venting air from a point close to the entrance for a fairly long time. Either the end of the cable cut an air hose, or it's part of the Estop routine. If it was a cut air hose, it's comforting to note that the brakes stayed up even though air was venting.
CP maintenance people, and a gentleman from Intamin, were quickly on the scene to inspect what happened. They cleaned up some of the cable, and started to free the train from the push car. After the train was clear, they started to manually move the push car in the directon of the station. Why isn't clear to me. As I was leaving for the evening, I noticed that something was sparking and being cut. I bet the frayed end of the cable was being cut off and cleaned up.
Some armchair engineering is next. It seems to me like the cable snapped pretty close to the push car. If that is the case, and it's not badly kinked someplace, they could just attach the end to the push car again. There probably is enough extra for that to work. Seeing the sparks of something being cut made me hopefully that they are doing just that. If that is true, downtime might be short. If it broke somewhere in the middle, they would have to get a new cable, or maybe splice the cable back together. No way to tell if they would want to splice, or if it is even possible to do that on TTD. I would think that if they would have to order a new cable, we might see some longer downtime. I looked closely at the track and brakes from the grandstand, and it didn't seem like the cable damaged any of that. I hope that is the case, as it would speed repairs.
So that is what I saw today. It's not gloom and doom, it certainly doesn't mean there is anything fundamentally wrong with the ride.
They got the ride running again last night. 
