Dan@Disney

Again I missed a day, sorry! Must do better!

The last 2 days have had a similar theme, we started with our second trainer – Stephanie who was going to show us the more technical positions involved in running Thunder. We started with some of the opening procedures, the first day was spent walking the track and starting the various ride components as well as checking various track side equipment. Today was spent in ‘Tower’ – the control station for the attraction, both roles work together down checklists in order to start the attraction.

Yesterday we had another 101 and we got to practice evacuating a train from BZ4 which is the brakes just before the station. It was then on for another reset – we have had quite a lot of practice now and many of the people who have been there a while have said we are so lucky and many of them did not get to do a real reset until after they had been working there for several months.

Today we looked at cycling out trains which is what happens if we experience inclement weather, which is pretty common at this time of year. This is where we move trains into storage so that we can stop running trains without having to shut the mountain down which would make restarting it much, much slower.

The rest of both days has been spent working around the various load and unload as well as queue positions so that we are familiar with their responsibilities and in the case of dispatch and unload the control consoles involved. I think I have started to get the hang of how the mountain works in theory I just need to remember which doors are where and exactly the procedures used to start and stop the mountain. Luckily on Thursday night after close we have the chance to run around the mountain and get to know it a little better and I still have 2 more days of practice before my assessment on Thursday.

Yesterday evening I was meant to go to EPCOT with Alice but unfortunately they messed up her schedule, so that she was in until 10pm instead of the 4.30 she had originally been told, and could not come – I had forgotten how rubbish some of the scheduling is! I still went with Luke and we did a bit of Future World with really short lines – 5 mins for Mission:Space – and then watched Illuminations which unfortunately was a reduced show due to some quite high winds. But none the less a good time was had by all involved.

I have to be at MK for 6 tomorrow morning so I think it is going to be an early night for me. Thankfully, assuming I pass my assessment, my schedule for next week is all closing so I can stop these horrible early mornings!