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Test Track WDW Saftey Feature

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dropthefloor93

Hyper Poster
Alright so for those of you that have been on Test Track at WDW Epcot, you may remember a portion of track, right before the outdoor hi speed segment, where the BMW accelerates towards a wall, and at the last moment, the wall opens sideways, and you speed away. What is the safety feature in case the door does not open? do the doors open on a hinge instead, or break away? or does the car just come to a dead stop against the door? I have been wondering this for about 5 years now...
 
I don't know the actual answer, but I'll try to give one that sounds sensible.

The door's default position would probably be open. Therefore a failure of the motors etc would just cause it to sit in the open position. Don't forget, there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of sensors on the ride. They'll be constantly feeding information about the cars position, speed (uncertainty principle :lol: ) and information about all the effects and devices along the way. The door is probably monitored and ready to open, so when the car starts accelerating the system knows the door will open. IF something goes wrong with the door after the car starts moving, a sensor probably just stops the car. I think you'd be surprised how quickly they'd be able to stop.

So there's quite a lot of waffle in that answer, but hopefully it made some sense. Hopefully someone who know how the system actually works will be able to explain it, but for now that seems like a pretty reasonable guess.
 
I agree with Hixee. I, personally think, in the worst case scenario, the car would just stop. The sensors would feed the info back to a central control centre, that would then feed the information back to the car.

To be fair, I have also wondered this many of times now!
 
I wondered this as well. Although the doors do open when you're pretty close to it so you'd have to instantly stop dead to avoid crashing into it. I thought there would be some manual lever under the track that the car pushed or something so they didn't have to just rely on sensors. I know that's not what happens though. :p
 
I remember reading at one point that the doors are just made of a lightweight material that breaks on impact (I guess foam, or whatever it is they make the fake pedestrian cut-outs you see on TV when they are showing a driving course/road saftey story.
A new set of doors can be fitted rather quickly apparently.

where the BMW accelerates towards a wall
Click to expand...
It's a GM, not a BMW, hence this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TestTrackEpcot.JPG
 
^I think you might be surprised how quickly they'd be able to stop the cars. Having said that, I've only ever seen POVs of it, so I can't actually comment on the speeds and distances as easily.

If the cars do get really close, it would almost suggest the fail-safe 'open' system, where the doors are held closed by motors or whatever, and released when the cars gets near. That way, if there was any sort of failure last minute (that the sensors wouldn't have picked up in time), then they'd open.

Actually, on reflection, it's probably just all on sensors. When the cars pulls round, just before accelerating off, the system will probably check the door is still working. Then as the car shoots forwards the system knows it's not going to have to stop the car.

Oh a side note, what is the door likely to me made from? If it was simply some cardboard style wall (painted and tarted up obviously), then it might not even do that much damage to riders if the car bumps it.

EDIT: Gazza seems to have beaten me to it!
 
I've been stuck on that little section waiting to launch for about an hour before, that was scary when it actually started up hoping it wouldn't break again...
 
yea the doors don't look real on the launch section of track so I started to think they are probably some lightweight foam that wont hurt the rider at 40 mph. I mean you would get more injured getting hit by a soccer ball 20 feet away than hitting a foam door at 40 mph.
 
I always thought that it would be linked up to the track in some way, so when the car moves closer the doors open?
 
^Well that is what is being discussed. I don't think it's purely mechanical system (ie, the cars run over a lever that physically pushes the doors open), and what we've been discussing is an electronic system and what would happen if that failed.
 
I've been on that ride three times, and have always thought the same thing. Most likely, it would just come to a stop.
 
I'm pretty sure I read somewhere a while ago that the doors are just made from polystyrene (or some other lightweight material), and so even if their was a failure with the ride, the car would just break through easily anyway without too much harm to anything.

According to this impossible-to-read site: http://www.hiddenmickeys.org/WDW/Epcot/ ... Track.html
The crash doors right before the ride's climax are designed to open (obviously) as a car trips the sensor. Every few months, or so, the sensor fails (which now causes a zone stop). During early testing when this happened the car would just barrel through it. But not to worry, the doors are constructed of a very lightweight poly-foam. They're actually built on hinges overhead just in case that happens; they just swing out. There are replacement doors in a closet no more than fifteen feet from the sight, and it only takes maintenance 20 minutes to hook a new one in.
Click to expand...
 
^I didn't know what you meant at first by the 'impossible to read' comment, but as soon as that link opened... how the hell do they think that's user friendly?! :lol:

Thanks for the link anyway though.
 
Hixee said:
^Well that is what is being discussed. I don't think it's purely mechanical system (ie, the cars run over a lever that physically pushes the doors open), and what we've been discussing is an electronic system and what would happen if that failed.
Click to expand...

The cars will pass sensors on the track, which are wired back to PLC's at the rides control panels, when the sensor is passed it's circuit is completed and it signals to the mechanism driving the doors to operate, they will either be on a time delay for closure, on external to the doors theres another sensor, that does the opposite when the train passes.

No mechanical levers operated by the train, it's all electronic.
 
^Yes, I think that's what we'd figured out, but we'd then asked what happens if the sensor/motor fails and Mike seems to have answered that part for us too.

:)
 
Wow, I've always had that "what if" thought in the back of my head during that section. Thanks for the info!
 
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