Rise of the Resistance - Failure Modes and Reliability Breakdown discussion...(SPOILERS!)

[ironband74]

Yes. 2 up lifts and 4 down. There are 4 going down because it has the motion simulator screen portion so lasts longer than the going up does.

Makes perfect sense. Those seem like the kind of system that can be improved upon and made more reliable without too much difficulty. I mean...elevators..not exactly new technology.

 

[socaldisneylover]

The ITS ship has 3 compartments on it. One in load, one in unload and one in show.
The biggest issue from my understanding has to do with the lifts and if it breaks down how the lifts are reset.

I wonder if the problem is with the Up lifts or the Down lifts....or both. It surprises me that they would have problems with a lift, given how complex a lift is used for Tower Of Terror/GOTG, and it does not have these kind of problems, and take forever to reset. But I've only been on the ride once, so I didn't notice whatever might make these lifts so unique that they would have constant problems.

 

[SG131]

I was wondering this same thing when I rode Thursday. I tried to avoid all spoilers, so if part of my ride was the “B” version I wouldn’t have known. But now that I’ve ridden I’m curious if I got it all and what the potential issues are.

 

[ironband74]

I wonder if the problem is with the Up lifts or the Down lifts....or both. It surprises me that they would have problems with a lift, given how complex a lift is used for Tower Of Terror/GOTG, and it does not have these kind of problems, and take forever to reset. But I've only been on the ride once, so I didn't notice whatever might make these lifts so unique that they would have constant problems.

Well, the down lift is a little bit complex. The door has to open, the ride vehicle has to go inside, the door has to close, the vehicle has to dock, the drop has to happen, the motion simulator has to run its program, then the vehicle has to undock, the door has to open, and the vehicle has to proceed out, and the lift has to reset.

Dollars to doughnuts the tricky bit is the fact that you have a ride on a ride on a ride - an autonomous vehicle in a motion simulator on a drop lift.

Rideception!

I could see something getting sticky here. However, I don't see why this system would need 60-90 minutes to reset. Additionally, with four lifts, it would seem that the attraction could operate at half capacity if one of the pairs went offline.

 

[brightlined]

I'm not sure I'm going to articulate this well, but I keep wondering if it has a Test Track problem.

By that I mean:

A few years ago, I spoke to one of the original Imagineers on Test Track.

(For those who might not remember, Test Track was supposed to open in May of 1997 and opened a year and a half later due to all of the technical problems with the new ride system.)

As he explained it (and I'm not sure I entirely followed), one of the major problems with Test Track's system is that the cars have a built-in safety system: if two cars get too close to each other, the entire ride shuts down. (If anyone's ever been on it when it happens, it's unpleasant.)

Once the ride was built and open, there wasn't a way to permanently fix the problem without ripping out the entire track and starting over, so they just patched it as best as they could. Hence, it still breaks down on a regular basis.

My quasi-inarticulate uninformed speculation: I'm wondering if it's something like that, where the timing between the various elements has to be close to perfect, and one thing going wrong and/or falling out of sync drops the whole system for safety reasons. If that were the case, any one section/element being out of whack for one reason or another would affect every other section/element. Every element would have to be re-initialized back to its A position, then verified to make sure it was working properly. Even with the staff they have on hand, it would theoretically take an extensive amount of time to go through and verify.

 

[Kenshin21]

I believe the attraction was delayed because of the trackless system, and I think I read something about wifi issues with how the vehicles are connected and moved throughout the ride. I’m guessing it’s that combined with the safety concerns and failsafes mentioned by @brightlined that causes the ride to reset zone by zone, which would explain the 60-90 “reset” time

 

[midnight star]

I was wondering this same thing when I rode Thursday. I tried to avoid all spoilers, so if part of my ride was the “B” version I wouldn’t have known. But now that I’ve ridden I’m curious if I got it all and what the potential issues are.

Watch youtube. The parts that I've heard the most not working are the space ship with that alien before the first order gets you (sorry, I don't know Star wars names very well lol). When that happens, the ride doesn't make too much sense.

 

[dina444444]

I was wondering this same thing when I rode Thursday. I tried to avoid all spoilers, so if part of my ride was the “B” version I wouldn’t have known. But now that I’ve ridden I’m curious if I got it all and what the potential issues are.

The main thing with b mode once you are in the ride vehicle is if the animatronics are not working. They have a b mode version for that. The ride itself is still physically the same.

 

[ironband74]

I'm not sure I'm going to articulate this well, but I keep wondering if it has a Test Track problem.

Once the ride was built and open, there wasn't a way to permanently fix the problem without ripping out the entire track and starting over, so they just patched it as best as they could. Hence, it still breaks down on a regular basis.

My quasi-inarticulate uninformed speculation: I'm wondering if it's something like that, where the timing between the various elements has to be close to perfect, and one thing going wrong and/or falling out of sync drops the whole system for safety reasons. If that were the case, any one section/element being out of whack for one reason or another would affect every other section/element. Every element would have to be re-initialized back to its A position, then verified to make sure it was working properly. Even with the staff they have on hand, it would theoretically take an extensive amount of time to go through and verify.

I think you articulated that just fine. This, though, is the beauty of the trackless system. There is no physical track, just positioning beacons. The only physical coupling of the vehicle to the attraction is the tires on the floor. So the track itself can be reprogrammed in software.

Now, I get that there are timing elements and that you can't have one pair of cars get too close to another pair of cars, and you don't want a car colliding with a show element like the big cannons. But, because they are not on a physical track, the software can be adjusted to slow the progress of the cars in flight and delay sending a new car until spacing has been restored. That is part of the benefit again of the trackless system - there is no track and each vehicle is decoupled from the vehicles in front of or behind it. A robust system should be able to adjust that on the fly.

And that's where I get stuck on the reset as well. I get that there may need to be a visual inspection on various elements to determine whether A mode is good to go or B mode is needed. But really, if I'm building an attraction in 2019 with however many millions of lines of code this thing runs...I'm going to include a reset subroutine that puts everything back where it needs to be, allows me to do the visual checks, and get on with my life.

I believe the attraction was delayed because of the trackless system, and I think I read something about wifi issues with how the vehicles are connected and moved throughout the ride. I’m guessing it’s that combined with the safety concerns and failsafes mentioned by @brightlined that causes the ride to reset zone by zone, which would explain the 60-90 “reset” time

So this makes a lot of sense. If a vehicle stops responding, that is going to bring everything to a grinding halt. That's why some of my conjecture above was about charging. But if it isn't a charging issue, and it is really just about vehicles losing their connection to the attraction and not knowing where they are or what they should be doing...that again is mostly software with antennas and transmitters as hardware. I could see 60-90 minutes being needed to take a vehicle out of service that loses its way near the middle of the ride where it is difficult to manually get the vehicle to wherever they maintain those things. When that happens, they gotta turn on the lights in that part of the building, and everybody who is behind them gets evacuated, and that takes time as well. But, I have to believe that they put a reset button on each vehicle that reconnects it with the network and, barring a mechanical failure, get the darn thing moving again.

I guess it is possible that they built this state of the art attraction and used 1990s physically connected ride vehicle logic to program it, but somehow I don't see that happening. I mean, you guys have seen stickman and stuntronic, right? WDI knows the bleeding edge and how to use it effectively.

I guess part of me is just hoping that a lot of this is just software bugs that will get worked out over time, and not some hardware issue that is embedded in the floor and will require a massive refurb to fix.

 

[matthewthompson87]

"You have to understand, it's a giant complicated machine sitting on top of, like, a 46-foot tall tower in the middle of a finished building. So, it's really hard to fix, but we are working on it. And we continue to work on it. We have tried several 'things', none of them quite get to the key, turning of the 40-foot tower inside of a finished building, but we are working on it... I will fix the Yeti someday, I swear." - Joe Rohde

That’s awesome. And the boundaries they continue to push are astonishing. But that quote is not a counter to the idea that whatever elements of RotR that are the downtime culprits may end up inoperable, for years and years, if they don’t get working within the next few months.

I rode RotR and everything was working, and it was amazing. I also got to ride Everest very early on with the Yeti working and it was nothing short of spectacular. (Something that big moving that fast at you!!)

Fingers definitely crossed... both those attractions are works of art and deserve to be seen at peak performance by as many people as possible.

 

[Mark_E]

On my fourth ride, as we came into the bit with all of the screens on the right hand side, looking outside, we stopped, and then about 20 seconds later went through the sequence, we stalled again before the room with the second Kylo animatronic for another 20 seconds or so and continued with slightly delayed audio. After this, again another delay before we went into the “drop lifts” so I’m guessing there may have been a back-up of some sort. I believe the ride went down again shortly after.
Definitely two sets of drop lifts as I’ve taken both left and right hand side.

 

[ironband74]

That’s awesome. And the boundaries they continue to push are astonishing. But that quote is not a counter to the idea that whatever elements of RotR that are the downtime culprits may end up inoperable, for years and years, if they don’t get working within the next few months.

Agreed. My point was that the engineers who design this stuff obsess about these things, even after management tells them to let it go. One way or another, the imagineers who worked on ROTR will want to see it fully armed and operational.

 

[ironband74]

On my fourth ride, as we came into the bit with all of the screens on the right hand side, looking outside, we stopped, and then about 20 seconds later went through the sequence, we stalled again before the room with the second Kylo animatronic for another 20 seconds or so and continued with slightly delayed audio. After this, again another delay before we went into the “drop lifts” so I’m guessing there may have been a back-up of some sort. I believe the ride went down again shortly after.
Definitely two sets of drop lifts as I’ve taken both left and right hand side.

So that confirms that the sequencer can adjust for capacity issues ahead of a ride vehicle. I wonder if in the case you mentioned above if one pair of drop elevators went down and so it had to single thread. In that case, it would be a software glitch that would make the audio out of sync, possibly playing the audio intended for one side while executing the other.

Curiouser and Curiouser...

 

[montreid]

My guess it's with the drop simulator. That's the new piece of complex machinery that Disney doesn't have significant prior experience.

I can't imagine the second portion (shuttle) being complex to stop things for an hour routinely or the trackless system to jam up for so long or out of sequence.

But, a entry system, clapping, drop and simulate, and exit system? Yeah, that's complicated just typing it out.

 

[ironband74]

My guess it's with the drop simulator. That's the new piece of complex machinery that Disney doesn't have significant prior experience.

I can't imagine the second portion (shuttle) being complex to stop things for an hour routinely or the trackless system to jam up for so long or out of sequence.

But, a entry system, clapping, drop and simulate, and exit system? Yeah, that's complicated just typing it out.

That seems like it is a likely culprit. But at the same time, Disney does have a lot of experience with motion simulators on different platforms (Indy - motion simulator on a car, and MFSR, motion simulator on a turntable...)

But, the clamping mechanism is a safety interlock consideration. If that doesn't happen, it's a hard stop for sure. But we have a locking mechanism in TOT in DHS, which does use an early iteration of a trackless system.

But, yeah, it is complex and might require some fine tuning.

 

[ironband74]

Also, curious to see how it does with the rain tomorrow, with the inside, outside, inside, outside nature of the attraction. Also interested to know if rain gets into the unloading area.

 

[dina444444]

Also, curious to see how it does with the rain tomorrow, with the inside, outside, inside, outside nature of the attraction. Also interested to know if rain gets into the unloading area.

Even though the unload is open air, it’s completely covered. The ride has been fine in Florida with the near daily rain.

 

[ironband74]

Even though the unload is open air, it’s completely covered. The ride has been fine in Florida with the near daily rain.

good point!