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Momtowolf
05-31-2004, 12:04 PM
My hubby and I got the chance to ride on them about 6 years ago...they were FAST and a little freaky to me!! LOL

So why did they take them out? We had to wait in line for 3 hours to get on them!!! :-)))))

SCUBAbe
05-31-2004, 12:09 PM
from what I heard they broke down alot and the people mover track could not support the vibrations the vechicles made ...I loved the ride also..:)

CoasterMatt
05-31-2004, 12:37 PM
Instant Rocket Rod

Just have somebody push you in a shopping cart while you play with an electric toothbrush (for sound effects) - in most cases, you'll get more sustained speed in the shopping cart, and you probably won't have to worry about smoke pouring out of the back of the shopping cart. Rocket Rods was a horribly executed attraction, period.

ToursbabeC3po
05-31-2004, 01:00 PM
Rocket Rods was the poorest excuse for a Disney Attraction ever made. No theme, No thrill, and it never worked they way it was supposed to in the first place. It was SO FUN waiting in line for 2 hours and being told that the ride broke down for like the 5th time that hour. To bad Disney did not invest the millions of dollars into something that would have been more useful. Hmm, Like repainting Tomorrowland from that terrible gold color would be nice.

coastermatt!!! Instant Rocket Rod!!!!
ROTFL

Toursbabe

hbquikcomjamesl
05-31-2004, 02:11 PM
It was an attempt to do "Test Track" on the cheap. It failed. Miserably. So miserably, it ruined the Peoplemover track in the process of failing miserably.

KeithOfTerror
05-31-2004, 03:13 PM
I liked the rocket rods when they worked. They took them out because they wanted to make Tomorrowland look even more pathetic.

CoasterMatt
05-31-2004, 03:19 PM
They took them out because they were being asked to operate in ways they weren't designed to... Did you ever have the pleasure of riding around the track with SMOKE bellowing from the vehicle?

Bruce Bergman
05-31-2004, 04:18 PM
They took them out because they were being asked to operate in ways they weren't designed to... Did you ever have the pleasure of riding around the track with SMOKE bellowing from the vehicle?

You mean they weren't supposed to smoke? I thought that was something the Special Effects guys thought up... :p

Seriously, the Rocket Rods cars, track, and ride systems had multiple serious defects, and the ride had to be shut down for several long periods as they tried to fix them all. And they finally gave up trying.

The cars chewed up a set of tires a week from all the accelerating and braking - and we're talking two Michelin LT Radials per car at about $150 a pop, not counting labor for mounting/balancing/changing. The car controls would break, the electric drive motors or the electronic controller would burn up, the onboard computer in one of cars would lose communication with the Master Computers and trigger the whole ride into 'safe mode' at 2 MPH...

And both the old concrete track & the new steel center guide beam were coming apart from too much stress and vibration - the guideway was designed for the slow and sedate Peoplemover trains, and it simply couldn't take the shaking. Having a Rocket Rods car go straight at a corner (Wa-Ha-Ha-Hoooooie! :eek: ) or having a section of the concrete elevated track structure fail would be very bad, so they had to shut them down.

:fez: --<< Bruce >>--

EO's Glove
06-01-2004, 12:25 PM
You know it's too bad....... I rode RR's in 2000 and it did take three hours in line and in the end the ride was a disappiontment.

It was only bad because the stink'in ride had to break every second or so -
it never got up to speed, however the acceleration you got before it would apply the break was great! The rods them selves looked great and I liked the sound they made. Disney tried to get away with with an E ticket ride on the cheap - you can't do it. If you could, Disney would have lots of competition from other places other than Universal and we wouldn't even be on this board (we'd be taking about how great the Bubble's ride at Neverland is or something).

Poor Imagineers..... they had to try and figure out a solution to an impossible situation, and then get slammed when it doesn't turn and profit and is canceled.

I'd love to see them back........ with a proper track.

-EOG

Zigen
06-01-2004, 12:31 PM
How did the rocket rods work? I never got to go on it... Was it just like the people mover but faster?

Bruce Bergman
06-01-2004, 01:33 PM
How did the rocket rods work? I never got to go on it... Was it just like the people mover but faster?

I'll try to give you a capsule breakdown. They used the same concrete beamway from Rocket Rods, but ripped out all the stationary drive motors and thrust tires. They placed a 5" or 6" OD tubular steel guide rail down the middle (mounted on a 'fin' to leave room for up-stop wheels on both sides), with six busbars alongside - three for 480VAC 3-phase power, one for ground, and two for control signalling. Two tracks were created at the outer edges of the old guideway for the drive wheels to ride on, with that aggressive sand paint that they use on Aircraft Carrier decks for traction.

Peoplemover cars were in a four car train, carrying about 6 people per car at 2 to 5 MPH. Rocket rods were one car, 5 passengers, and variable speeds to about 25 MPH.

Propulsion (Educated guesses) was a 15 to 25 HP 480V AC 3PH inverter-duty motor, an electronic variable speed control (forced air cooling through a seperate blower motor for both), intermediate gearbox (planetary?), a big cogged blower drive belt, and a regular car-type differential and axle.

Braking: Air brakes to the rear rubber tires, electronically controlled by a solenoid valve onboard. Electric air compressor and small storage tank.

Controls: Each car had an onboard computer that communicated with the Master computer by either a communication rail on the track, or a radio modem and antenna on the car. Location was determined by coded metal flags on the track (near the communications rails) and an optical pickup under the car, and the motor controller counted every revolution as another check of distance travelled.

Front wheels and trucks: Urethane roller-coaster style wheels on top and sides of center rail, lower "up-stop" wheels below the centerline canted up. And the whole front truck was mounted on a swing-arm with an air cylinder actuator, so the car could "pop a wheelie" on command.

One of the biggest problems was simple geometry - the rear axle swiveled on small urethane guide wheels following the center guide beam. But the geometry wasn't quite right, and the rubber tires scrubbed in all the corners, causing the fast tire wear. They needed to come up with a steering linkage to compensate for the thrust angles, but never tried.

If communications links dropped from the Master Computers to any of the car computers, the whole system went to "Safe Mode" and went to about 3 MPH until all the cars checked back in and confirmed their location via the coded track flags.

And the guide rail could not take the stresses and was cracking on it's mounts. If it broke, that would be very bad. They slowed the cars down in the corners and welded the cracks, but between the guide rail and the concrete track & supports cracking they sealed the ride's fate.

:fez: --<< Bruce >>--

EO's Glove
06-01-2004, 01:54 PM
It's just too bad.

Imagine the Rods going all the way around the park, just like the train.......

That would be GRAND!!!! "DisneyLand in a Flash".


Oh, well.

-EOG

HorizonsA
06-01-2004, 02:49 PM
My hubby and I got the chance to ride on them about 6 years ago...they were FAST and a little freaky to me!! LOL

So why did they take them out? We had to wait in line for 3 hours to get on them!!! :-)))))


The Rocket Rods DID NOT ruin the People Mover track and it wasn't becasue of smoke!

The REAL reason RR was removed is because it was the most expensive attraction to maintain. The wheels on the rods had to be replaced every month and each wheel cost $500+. Multiply that by how ever many rods they had and the price goes up. In 2000, Disney had a low bugdet and just couldn't keep up with the costs of keeping the ride open.

P.S. Rocket Rods was a GREAT ride!

RStar
06-01-2004, 04:09 PM
Frankly, I did kind of like the ride (but it COULD have been so much better!), and it did have a loose theme (The Disneyland Transit Authority transportation of the future). One thing I did like was that you could see Walt in film in the queue at the park.

And while the sound they made was kind of cool, it was just too much, it spoiled the atmosphere in that end of the park. They just got to be a loud annoiance after a while.

ToursbabeC3po
06-01-2004, 06:34 PM
posted by HorizonsAThe wheels on the rods had to be replaced every month and each wheel cost $500+. Multiply that by how ever many rods they had and the price goes up. In 2000, Disney had a low bugdet and just couldn't keep up with the costs of keeping the ride open.

Maybe if Eisner would have not taken such a BIG bonus that year we could have afford to keep that attraction open.

JTCarrey
06-01-2004, 08:44 PM
I like that idea of having Rocket Rods on the ground or some kind of track going around the whole park, that would be really really cool!! or at least going around Tomorrowland. I miss that ride, I was never on it when it was slow or breaking down, so I never knew about what bad shape it was in, they should bring a ride like that back. AND they should bring back the Peoplemover!!!

Cloud Buster
06-01-2004, 11:42 PM
One of my current co-workers was a lead during the entire lifespan of the Rocket Rods, and about 3 weeks ago, we were talking about them, when I asked him why the rocket rods had to close.

He explained to me that due to the nature of the ride design (as someone has explained very well) the computer had to keep constant track of the position of each vehicle. This was not done in an incredibly sophisticated way, but in the way of sensors in certain positions on the track. When a ride vehicle crossed the sensor, the computer would know that the vehicle had crossed that position and the previous segment of track was clear for the next vehicle to pass through. In this manner, the computer kept track of all the ride vehicles' position on the track and anticipated its arrival at the next sensor.

The major problem was, these sensors got very dirty, very fast, and that interfered with their operation. When a sensor became too dirty, it wouldn't make proper contact with the ride vehicle, thereby not sending a signal back to the computer telling it the vehicle had crossed, effectively causing a vehicle to become "lost" to the computer. As soon as this happened, the computer would initiate an automatic E-Stop and return the error message "VEHICLE TRACKING LOST" to the operators.

It was an issue that was worked on by engineers at great length, but as the person who worked it told me, they simply couldn't stop the sensors from getting too dirty.

This, however, was only part of the problem. Apparently one day while the ride was being inspected and reset from a tracking lost E-Stop, one of the maintainence workers during a conversation with a ride operator explained the problem and its causes in great deal. The long and short of it is, the ride operator learned of a way to cause this problem. He shared this knowledge with some of his co-workers, and soon after, they began occasionally "sabotaging" the ride. As some here do recall, the Rocket Rods had a very long queue, and as this person tells me, it was a high demand for those working load / unload. When the day got really busy, the ride would suspiciously go 101 due to a tracking lost error, usually requiring at least an hour to inspect and get reset, which was a nice break for many of the CMs working the ride. I'm told that this got out of hand, and the tracking lost errors were happening at least once just about every day.

The CMs working the ride knew that at some point, the errors half real sensor errors and the rest being somehow caused by those who knew how to "sabotage" the ride. This former lead tells me the most of the CMs on the ride knew, and he was never sure if management knew that was going on. At any rate, the ride was simply too problematic and too expensive to operate, ultimately leading to its closure.