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Why is Orion always down??


AtomicFlea
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I have been to the park 83 times since Orion has opened, and it has been only down for short amount of times 3 of those visits. Orion is the most sophisticated roller coaster in Ohio. It has the most technology ever available to run it, and more safety measures then any other coaster. A lot of the "downtime" is that has been experienced it due to computers.

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It went down when we are on it one night, we were ready to dispatch, and they opened the restraints and put us back in line. One of the seats in row 6 wasn't registering that the restraints were closed. You could see the restraint was clearly closed, but was showing red on the screen in the station that shows the restraint status. Maintenance showed up, must have done a reset, and they ran each train empty for 2 cycles, and we were allowed back on. I would say 99% of its issues are electrical/computer issues, and nothing mechanical.

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I would venture a guess that Maverick is currently the most sophisticated coaster in Ohio.  

You also have to consider that there was a shortened season in 2020.  Most coasters, even B&M's, take longer than that to get over their bugs.  I would think that some of that time trickled into 2021 for Orion.  I trust B&M and by next season or 2023, it should be on par with DB and Banshee for lack of downtime.  

I'm with Brad, I've seen it down a few times, but nothing more than 15-20 minutes, mostly ghost trains during my visits.  

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Orion has had some issues.   All modern roller coasters are marvels in physical and computer engineering.  All operations are controlled by the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), essentially a large computer located under the loading platform in a climate controlled room.  
 

The default response to any problem in the PLC is to stop operations and have maintenance review the issue.   Keep in mind there are over 300 separate inputs and any one wrong input can trigger a fault.  The trains will advance as close to the station and stop there.  Braking systems are fail safe closed; they need power to open rather than close.   The brakes are located in the track, not on the train.   Needless to say Orion is 100s of times safer than driving to the park in a car.  
 

All Orion faults are attended to by both area supervisors and maintenance personnel.  Both groups have to clear the ride for operation before guests are allowed to ride.  Kings Island has a seasoned team well versed in the particulars of roller coaster operations. 
 

Ride operators are told specifically not to tell guests what is wrong with the coaster (the majority of times they really don’t know!).  But be patient.   The first priority is always to get guests off the ride, the next is to determine what has happened and prevent it from happening again and the third is to resume operations.   
 

In my experience downtime is kept to a minimum as the maintenance and operations teams work quickly to resume operations.   

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