Guests "Stranded" on "Pirates" at WDW

News out of Orlando has it that some guests were caught on board Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" for at least an hour Sunday night. Some guests are reporting the ride stopped running sometime around 10:30 p.m. on September 4 resulting in an hour to two hour wait before exiting the ride was made possible.

Disney has said it attempted to automatically restart the ride; eventually, the ride was started manually. An apology to all riders affected by the delay was issued by Disney, and the company is working on settling any guest inconvenience on a case-by-case basis.

"Pirates of the Caribbean" has not experienced any major mechanical issues in the past.

Source

Mase wrote on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 16:52:

Mase's picture

Weird... Wonder what caused it...?

Trueblue63 wrote on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 19:00:

Trueblue63's picture

I think it's just the nature of the rides. What I wonder about was the length of the delay. I would think that after 20-30 minutes of not working, they'd go into ecvac mode, especially if that was at 11 PM.

I suspect that someone dropped the ball and delayed evac by 30 minutes or so. Also, unless someone was timing it, people have a tendency to overestimate the time they are waiting.

Connie wrote on Thu, 09/08/2011 - 15:46:

Connie's picture

We were stopped on POTC once and had to wait about 20 minutes before being let out of the boats and behind stage to the exit. Cast members wearing waders put planks from the dock over to the boat and helped us across. We all received a fastpass for the ride to use later in the day. We never got to use it since it was so late in the day and we weren't planning on going back to the park. Love this ride, but being stuck and having to listen to an endless loop of singing and watching Jack's head going up and down in the barrel over and over again was agonizing.

JoAnn C wrote on Thu, 09/08/2011 - 23:47:

JoAnn C's picture

I'm curious about this statement - "Disney also says that there were no serious injuries." Does this mean there were injuries, just not serious ones? I didn't see any other mention of injuries.

Melinda Gregory wrote on Fri, 09/09/2011 - 12:39:

Melinda Gregory's picture

@ Mase - there were no mentions (that I could see) of what caused the delay. I think TrueBlue has a good theory!

@ Connie - I'll bet those 20 minutes seemed a lot longer listening to the song over & over :) The guests on this ride said the workers turned the song off after 15 mins or so.

@JoAnn - good catch on that; wondering if it's just some ambitious wording in the original story to amp up drama???

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