Designer Times
Page 2 of 2
Sky Ride - Disneyland wanted to increase the ride capacity of the Sky Ride by doubling the number guest seats from two to four, but without raising the total car weight more than a few pounds. Disneyland ride engineer Jack Reilly gave me a car weight target of 314 pounds, so that the existing Von Roll cable carrier could be used to transport the new car. So now I was getting another education in weight saving techniques while learning more about efficient structures and manufacturing tricks.
We would use the new ABS material and try stainless steel tubing for some of the framework, but stainless, while nice for appearance was expensive to buy and somewhat hard to weld. I also wanted the four person car to be free from a simple center post like the old buckets. This meant that I had to support the bottom of the car from (4) exterior posts, then connect the posts to an overhead spider-like frame for attachment to the cable carrier. This was like figuring out high stress aircraft parts. Not only must I look at stress levels, I needed to smooth out the minute load deflections.
To be ready for any potential catastrophic structural failure, I designed a safety cable arrangement that passed inside all the frame parts from the carrier down around the bottom of the car. The idea was that you could cut up the whole frame and it still could not fall to the ground. Acted like a giant cable necklace strung with chopped up steel bits like beads......pretty safe.
But when you design light weight structures, you must pay attention to load deflections. With an overloaded car the doorway would squeeze in a bit on the door and cause a jam. We found that when we formed the curve in the vertical posts, there is a little bit of "memory spring back" in the finished steel part. But by back bending the finished parts after the frame had been welded up, I could reverse the existing residual stresses just enough to prevent the overload door jam condition. Ever see a highway trailer unloaded? It bows up slightly, but when loaded it flattens out. It's a common trick.....camber the frame up into the direction against the load.
Over the years we learned that ABS had a tendency to distort and fatigue crack with time in the presence of sunlight and load cycles. The unpainted base colors would also fade from ultra-violet rays. Body panels on some ride vehicles were later changed to painted fiberglass.
New Astrojet - Disneyland's rotating ride, called The Astrojet, was actually a German ride sold as the Rotojet. The story was that a German WWII anti-aircraft gun manufacture had all these big ball bearing gun turrets left over and built them into a ride. Disneyland bought one but after a couple of years the ball bearing wore out. The bearing was good for a short war but not for the 16-hour days at Disneyland. We had to have a new bearing custom built to our design which then lasted a long time.
The Astrojet was to be improved for the 1967 Tomorrowland with all new bodies, again to be made of ABS. We also wanted to improve the guest control experience a bit with some new air valves operated by the cockpit control stick. To see what we could get away with I used our infamous AR-240 strong motion accelerograph recording device to measure the ride motions. I actually got the test car bouncing too much and almost flipped the instrument out of the cockpit. I was trying to get a divergent vertical oscillation by bouncing the car with the control valve stick......I found the safe limit which we incorporated into the redesign.
We built the new rocket-like two seat cars to look somewhat like the then- popular 1960's space vehicles. I put a big headlight in the nose cone and a glow light in the rear rocket nozzle between the three tail fins. I patterned the control stick handle after an early English WWI biplane fighter aircraft. It makes a great circular handle to hang onto as you spin around. Some of these design features were later used on the WDW Starjets. Today, Disneyland's 1998 Orbitron ride uses the same 1966 two seat vehicle restyled in a Jules Verne sort of way.
oOo
Next month: The Omnimover Ride for Monsanto and Haunted Mansion
Discuss It
Related Links
-- Bob Gurr
Bob Gurr began working with Disney in 1954. He retired in 1981 but occassionally consults for the Company. Since Disney he's worked on the sinking ship at Las Vegas' Treasure Island, Universal Studios' King Kong, Godzilla for the film by the same name and much more. Among his proudest accomplishments he lists "making Walt tickled pink that some of the things he wanted to build actually worked. You could tell how proud he was when he would show off things to his friends and the press. Lincoln and the Monorail were two big ones for him."
Designer Times is normally posted the second Wednesday of each month.
The opinions expressed by Bob Gurr, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future of Disneyland and the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
-- Posted September 10, 2002
Advertisement
MouseEarVacations.com
Where Magic Begins!
Concierge Style Service
at No Extra Charge!
Visit our website for more info!
Disneyland Attraction Posters at
The LaughingPlace Store
The LaughingPlace Store now carries a Disneyland Attraction Posters from Sanders CC Gallery
Now Playing
Wunderkind
Alanis Morissette / The Chronicles of Narnia: The
LP Live Recent Picture
Posted: 10/11/08