Park News - (5/3/10) According to an insider, my hunch about why Cat In The Hat is no longer spinning is said to be true. Speaking with us only as an anonymous source, they reported that there was a minor incident involving a family with a small child on the ride. At some point in the ride the adults were not paying attention to the child who apparently got a little scared and slide down to the cars floor under the lapbar. Upon approaching the revolving tunnel scene, the couch began its usual spin sequence, which resulted in the child being ejected from the ride car.
If Im not mistaken, there are warning in place to parents to keep their children seated at all times on this ride, but as expected the family isnt taking responsibility for their childs actions. Meanwhile Universals ride crew also failed to spot this on the security camera feeds and press an E-Stop as well. Honestly though, I would think it would be very hard to catch something like that on a battery of security monitors while as a parent I keep an eye (or hand) on my younger children on rides at all times to ensure they stay put and arent freaking out and trying to jump the ship.
So for now all spinning has stopped on the ride until Universal Creative and the engineering team come up with a fix to prevent this from happening again. This could involve adding some kind of doors to the sides of the car, or it may involve adding an individual lap bars system like they have on Men In Black, which uses the exact same ride system.
While we dont know the exact day of the incident, we were supplied with a copy of a work permit from the city to Universal Orlando signed on April 13th, 2010 for a Backstage Technologies, Inc. to come work on the UIOA Cat In The Hat Rotating Room Effect. So Ive got to wonder if something was damaged in the incident and quickly repaired. The first report I received about the non-spinning version of the ride was on April 24th, and at that point I was told that it had already not been spinning for more than a week, which fits right into the week the work permit was filed.