DLR Attractions Closed Due to Violations

[Main Street Jim]

Disneyland Resort Attractions Closed Due to Safety Violations (http://www.dir.ca.gov/dosh/citations/The_Walt_Disney_Company_DBA_Disneyland_Resort_%20I MIS_315531715.pdf#zoom=100)

Three E Ticket attractions at the Disneyland Resort have been suddenly closed this weekend. The Matterhorn, Space Mountain and Soarin' Over California are now closed indefinitely, after state DOSH investigators on Friday disciplined Disneyland for the accident last November where an outside contractor cleaning the Space Mountain roof slipped and was slightly injured. The closed attractions all have at least one backstage area that don't meet the state requirement of harnessed fall protection for any employee walkway with more than a 30 inch drop opposite a hand rail. Disneyland is rushing to find quick fixes for these backstage areas this weekend to satisfy DOSH, and several other E Tickets were delayed in opening by several hours Saturday morning for inspections. The rest of the Anaheim attractions will be inspected for DOSH compliance in the next few days, and more temporary closures are possible.

[Coleby]

Wonder if this could happen to Soarin' in WDW?


I am all for safety, but I wonder if they had been warned on these attractions. Especially since one of them is so old...

[Disney4us2]

We were at the park today. The attractions mentioned were indeed closed. One CM told me that Matterhorn will be shut next week Monday to Thursday. He said it should be open for next weekend. He cited they were doing a small refurb on it. Don't know about the others. Didn't even pass by Soarin over California.

Will be going next Saturday again. It will be interesting to see if they are still shut down.

[BrerGnat]

"Shut down indefinitely" is a bit of an overexaggeration. You can read the actual citation online, and they have a VERY small window of time in which to remedy the violations (like, 15 days or something). If they do not fix it by then, they will be slammed with even more fines, so I am sure they are going to get right on it. Most of these violations can be fixed in a day (easy stuff like fire extinguishers needing to be replaced, moved).

All violations pertained to Space Mountain. However, I assume they have closed the other attractions in order to inspect them and make sure they meet/exceed DOSH requirements so this doesn't happen to them again. To be honest, reading through these, seems like they were quite negligent on Space Mountain, and apparently, a worker suffered serious injuries in November 2012 as a result of this. :(

[Tekneek]

Amazing that a company with such resources didn't bother to make sure they were compliant. Surely the legal department knew the contents of the regulations since they likely spent a sum of cash on lobbying when the regulations were being drafted.

[Mrs Bus Driver]

I noticed they waited until after the Easter crowds to close these rides. Just saying, Disney is a big employer and brings a lot of money to the area but they should still have to maintain safety standards. It has been more then 3 months since the Oct and Nov accidents. :confused: Don't employees deserve safe work environments?

[Main Street Jim]

Don't employees deserve safe work environments?Thank *you* :mickey:

[Roger's #1 Fan]

Looks like Disney needs to re-read the working from elevated platforms standard. I work in the manufacturing industry and just had OSHA on site for over a week. They have updated part of the elevated platform standard and even we were caught off guard by some of the new parts of the standard. Enclosed ladders, complete railings, and other means of fall protection have been standard for years though and that's probably why some of these items were flagged as Willful. This means they were aware of the hazards, had some procedure in place to mitigate them, and did not follow it.

Hopefully they can get their act together. WDW better watch out, especially if the same conditions exist in Florida. These would be considered repeat violations (same company) and they would be hit with much larger fines.

[Ian]

In fairness to Disney, Matterhorn and Space Mountain are both old attractions. I'm sure they were built well before many of these OSHA standards were in place.

[BrerGnat]

In fairness to Disney, Matterhorn and Space Mountain are both old attractions. I'm sure they were built well before many of these OSHA standards were in place.

That is true, Ian. However, they have also recently retrofitted some attractions that were not up to code. Alice in Wonderland underwent a semi-major refurbishment due to that elevated track. It now has railings on it, and honestly, that wasn't even that high off the ground. So, to see that they were allowing workers to clean the outside of Space Mountain using makeshift anchor points for the cleaning platforms...is honestly shocking to me. I can't believe that this was not addressed a long time ago.

And really, there is no excuse for having fire extinguishers that were last inspected 7 years ago...that is just laziness on their part.

They deserve every penny of that fine.

I honestly think the Matterhorn shut down was coincidental...that ride was just completely refurbished.

[The Horned King]

Ian is absolutely right about the older rides bieng built before regulations changed. I seem to recall reading about Walt testing the matterhorn personally before it was even finished, having the train landing on a pile of hay bales. It's hard to regulate things that havent been done before, and at the time space mountain and matterhorn were originally built there were very few rules as nothing mlike that had been done before. Pioneers set the rules!

As for the fire extinguishers. Very disappointing..

[Mrs Bus Driver]

Thank *you* :mickey:

Your welcome.

[Tekneek]

I have never worked at a company that didn't do a full safety compliance review after a workplace accident. The most astonishing part is that Disney seems to have not conducted such a review.

I have compassion for small enterprises that cannot afford the compliance staff and cannot really afford any required retrofits. I don't feel bad for a company that posts the profits Disney has and cannot get fire extinguishers inspected on a regular basis. They're probably still getting off easier than they truly deserve.

[Roger's #1 Fan]

I might also be willing to cut them some slack if they needed to address items with an extended outage, but they clearly just came through refurbs on two of the rides that are currently shutdown.

Seems like someone either dropped the ball regarding these items or they were not considered a management priority. I hope it was the former since I would hate to believe that Disney would not address safety items as the highest priority.

[Tekneek]

Seems like someone either dropped the ball regarding these items or they were not considered a management priority. I hope it was the former since I would hate to believe that Disney would not address safety items as the highest priority.

There have been growing suspicions out there that safety and maintenance were being given low priority in favor of profits for quite a while. On the maintenance front, guests have seen ample evidence in the parks. Maybe this is an example of what has been happening on the safety side.

[JRocker]

There was somebody at Disneyland, whose primary job was overseeing safety. In my mind, one of two things happened here.
1. That individual failed at their job.
2. The company refused to implement safety improvements because of cost.

Either reason is inexcusable. A lot of safety precautions seem over the top, at times, but their primary purpose is to make sure employees leave in the same condition they arrived in.

As far as if it was reason 1 or 2, well, there's a job posting for Disneyland that hit the wire today:


Responsibilities
The Principal Safety Services Professional for Facilities and Operation Services serves as a key safety resource by providing technical expertise in or for Safety field services. S/he is responsible for developing, implementing and sustaining all aspects of programs and assignments and driving continuous performance improvement using audit results, incident analysis, review of source material (rules, codes, laws and standards) and industry practices.

[Main Street Jim]

There is no excuse for having fire extinguishers that were last inspected 7 years ago...that is just laziness on their part.


As far as the fire extinguishers go, at least at WDW's attractions, part of the Pre-Opening procedures is for someone to go around and *check* all the fire extinguishers. I *know* I made sure that my attractions had up-to-date FE inspection tags on them.

*However* - a LOT of hourly CM's - ride operators - do the bare minimum when it comes to doing opening procedures. The paperwork/checklist may say only "Check fire extinguishers", and MOST CM's will just check it off the list if there's just a fire extinguisher in place. They don't bother to actually *check* them; meaning, check the inspection tag, making sure it's not out-of-date.

[Tekneek]

They don't bother to actually *check* them; meaning, check the inspection tag, making sure it's not out-of-date.

This is a problem with the culture. If safety is made a top concern through awareness programs and routine oversight, everyone will be more diligent about it. It takes a commitment from high above to do more than the minimum, though.

I work in computer security and you can't succeed without getting everybody on board, and that means having a director/executive to drive awareness and audit programs throughout the entire enterprise. I am sure the same is true for safety.

[BrerGnat]

As far as the fire extinguishers go, at least at WDW's attractions, part of the Pre-Opening procedures is for someone to go around and *check* all the fire extinguishers. I *know* I made sure that my attractions had up-to-date FE inspection tags on them.

*However* - a LOT of hourly CM's - ride operators - do the bare minimum when it comes to doing opening procedures. The paperwork/checklist may say only "Check fire extinguishers", and MOST CM's will just check it off the list if there's just a fire extinguisher in place. They don't bother to actually *check* them; meaning, check the inspection tag, making sure it's not out-of-date.

I hear what you're saying, but 7 years??? More than a "couple" CMs dropped the ball here.

In one instance, the fire extinguisher that was supposed to be in a "readily available" location was found in a closed, unlabeled box on the ROOF! Glad it was never needed...

[Melanie]

I am sure the same is true for safety.

Honestly, this is one of my fears with airline safety. :unsure:

[Ian]

This is a problem with the culture.ALL of Disney's current problems are cultural problems. There is such a massive divide between the suits and the front-line CM's that it's amazing anyone in a guest-facing role bothers making anything above the minimal efforts.

The entire culture at Disney is corporate suit, profits above all else, appease Wall Street at all costs. There is zero emphasis on maintaining good show, guest experience, and (it appears) even safety has taken a backseat to profits.

Time for a new CEO and a complete and total house-cleaning.

[Hammer]

Honestly, this is one of my fears with airline safety. :unsure:

Mel, I bought my home last year from a guy who was a maintenance supervisor for USAirways. This guy left in burned out light bulbs, did not know that the front door key opened the door from the garage to the house and did not bother to change the battery on the garage door opener. He said at closing that he was not sure why the opener didn't work and I should buy a new one. Purchased a $5 battery and voila, the opener worked. I made sure I had a thorough inspection from an inspector who was also a structural engineer prior to purhase as I wanted to make sure there weren't larger issues (there weren't, thankfully).

I think about that when contemplating which airline to take to Florida :) .


ALL of Disney's current problems are cultural problems. There is such a massive divide between the suits and the front-line CM's that it's amazing anyone in a guest-facing role bothers making anything above the minimal efforts.

The entire culture at Disney is corporate suit, profits above all else, appease Wall Street at all costs. There is zero emphasis on maintaining good show, guest experience, and (it appears) even safety has taken a backseat to profits.

Time for a new CEO and a complete and total house-cleaning.

Ian, this is the culture of the vast majority of companies, not just Disney. The odds are slim that they could find a new CEO who would not put Wall Street first before all else.

[Mrs Bus Driver]

IMHO is down to cost cutting, the bosses will say they are for safety but encourage an atmosphere of doing as little as possible. This would include safety checks. When employees report such things they will be treated as trouble makers. Since most don't make much money they don't want to bother fighting the system. The problem for the employees is that they sign off on the paperwork, the company gets a pass because it is now the employee's fault for not doing their job. I saw this same thing on my job and I used to work for a school dist. Eventually it will catch up with them but rarely are the people responsible held accountable.:mad:

[Tekneek]

Eventually it will catch up with them but rarely are the people responsible held accountable.:mad:

The dancers change but the song remains the same.

[2Epcot]

Mel, I bought my home last year from a guy who was a maintenance supervisor for USAirways. This guy left in burned out light bulbs, did not know that the front door key opened the door from the garage to the house and did not bother to change the battery on the garage door opener. He said at closing that he was not sure why the opener didn't work and I should buy a new one. Purchased a $5 battery and voila, the opener worked.

Sounds like when we bought our house. It was a short sale, so many things were not going to be fixed. We were told the AC didn't work, turned out all it needed was a simple thermostat replacement.

[AgentC]

I'm seeing reports on Twitter that Space Mountain will be closed until 5/28.

[ValenciaCalling]

I wasn't the least bit surprised when I read this article. If you've been backstage, you know some of the unsafe and unsanitary conditions CMs have to encounter.

[Elias1901]

PLEASE keep us updated on when these attractions re-open! We have a trip booked for August and I really hope they don't have them still closed at that time. How long are the estimating their closure?

[Main Street Jim]

I'm seeing reports on Twitter that Space Mountain will be closed until 5/28....at DisneyLAND.

[Roger's #1 Fan]

Well, if some of the information I have just been reading is true, and I have no reason not to believe it, then Disney definitely is committed to safety and went above and beyond what is currently being asked of them. It seems that many of the closures from last weekend were more "self-imposed" to make sure that the safety of their workers was being addressed. Although their rides are grandfathered into the new fall protection standards, it seems they have taken the position that they will do what is necessary to meet those new standards.
One unfortunate casualty it seems is Space Mountain which has many more issues than some of the other rides with regards to open platforms.
Having worked in New Jersey all these years, California is seen as our model for the state run safety programs since they run ahead of even OSHA in many respects. That is why the duplicate rides in Florida are not getting the same attention as their Cali counterparts.
I am glad to have now gotten the whole story on these events. :mickey:

[Elias1901]

Here's hoping they come up with safe resolves in a timely manner. I am always dissapointed when a ride is sick. :ill:

[Elias1901]

Does anybody know if any (and which) of these attractions have re-opened yet?

[BrerGnat]

Having worked in New Jersey all these years, California is seen as our model for the state run safety programs since they run ahead of even OSHA in many respects. That is why the duplicate rides in Florida are not getting the same attention as their Cali counterparts.


Cal OSHA is definitely much more stringent. However, I would assume that the reason we are not seeing similar issues in Florida is due to differences in the backstage infrastructure. While the rides share the same name (Space Mountain, Soarin), that's about where the similarities end. The buildings and backstage areas (where these issues are) are very, very different.