Sunday night I had an amazing opportunity to shadow the third-shift Engineering Services crew at Spaceship Earth in Epcot. They work all night, every night of the year to ensure that the attraction stays safe and fully functional, maintaining both the ride system and show elements.
Spaceship Earth is Epcot's iconic flagship attraction, located inside the geodesic sphere (golf ball) that stands at the entrance to the park. The building stands 180 feet tall and is covered in 11,324 triangular plastic and aluminum panels. The ride itself is an omnimover, running a continuous loop of vehicles (somewhere around 240 I think), which allows the ride to be loaded and unloaded without ever stopping, giving it a very high hourly capacity (hence the -mover). It's called an OMNImover because while one set of wheels holds the car on the track, another follows a cam path that causes the vehicle to turn wherever the designers want you to look. The vehicles in Spaceship Earth face forward while ascending and turn around backwards for the steep descent.
When he heard that I was an engineering student, my manager arranged this gig so that I would get a good look at the mechanics of another attraction other than my own and see what goes into maintaining just ONE of our attractions at Epcot. I went with one of my co-workers who is also an engineering student on the college program. We arrived at Epcot about 11pm and headed over to the base of SSE. The front column under the ball is usually flush and covered in tall mirrors, but as we approached we could see that the panels had been opened up to reveal a large freight elevator.
The freight elevator is located in the mirrored column in the front center of SSE. It serves five levels, from the ground all the way to the highest track elevation, 163' up.
Up we went, to the 4th floor. We walked out into a big bright room. To our left was a tool storage area. To our right, the ride track (with vehicles on it). Ahead and to the right of the track was a lot of rock work, indicating that we were at the point in the ride just before we see the cavemen. After meeting the foreman and his team, we watched as the guys removed the metal skirts from the front and rear of a single vehicle, unpinned the upstop wheels, and screwed in eye-bolts to the floor of the car. They used an electric hoist to release some of the pressure on the car, then disconnected the car from the loop. They used another hoist mounted on a track on the ceiling to lift the car from the track and place it on a dolly on the floor. One of the guys then rolled the car into the elevator and disappeared with it! Our foreman explained to us that they remove three vehicles each week from the loop and replace them with cars that have been in the shop for a week. This is entirely preventative maintenance, whether the car needs it or not, though they still do frequent inspections of all the vehicles and track (Fun Fact: many attractions at WDW with tubular steel rails run compressed air through the rails. If the rails are ever compromised, the computer will know instantly when the air pressure drops). Watching the guys work reminded me a lot of hanging out in the driveway with Dad when he's working on a project.
The ride system is a continuous string of these vehicles, interrupted only by "spacer cars" (cars that don't hold passengers, only electronics) and one maintenance car. They can rotate backwards during the last portion of the ride before they descend.
After watching a couple of vehicle change-outs, we took a coffee break (in a Christmas tree-lighted cave beneath the aforementioned rock work). There we overheard two other maintenance guys talking about the Audio-Animatronics figures that needed work that night. I immediately perked up and asked if we could tag along on their next repair, and they agreed!
This is the figure we watched them repair. Sitting on that stone wall for an hour, I really noticed a lot of details in the theming (like the melting ice and grime on the sidewalk) that you wouldn't notice even after riding many times. The figure itself was pretty detailed as well: it had a full face with a moving mouth and eyes. There are several theories as to why it now faces the wall and not the ride vehicles.
We walked up the track from there, all the way past the Gutenberg Press scene. The guys pointed out that the little paperboy who stands in the corner had a hydraulic fluid-soiled sweater (something you would never see from the ride with the worklights off), indicating that there was a leak somewhere in the figure. So, the clothes come off, and soon we're looking at a clear plastic exoskeleton filled with many tubes and wires that cause all of the boy's movements. They proceed to take apart his arm, and soon find a small steady drip coming from a hose connection in the boy's elbow. The guys eventually determined that the leak was caused by an old o-ring, about the same size and shape as an orthodontic rubber band. They swapped out the ring, and no leak! The whole process of taking apart the figure, troubleshooting, and reassembling took about an hour. We were able to test the figure's motion with the technician's laptop, which told the main show control computers what we wanted the figure to do. It was fun to twist the knobs and see what motion resulted. I would love to shadow the guys who work on the AA's in Dinosaur.
I wasn't going to risk my job by taking pictures that night, but I did find this photo online of a Pirates of the Caribbean AA from Anaheim. Normally the whole figure is encased in the translucent plastic (see the pirate's right leg), which gives is a human shape and protects the costume from the innards and vice-versa. Over the plastic there is a simple jumpsuit that really just protects the costume, and then finally the actual costume goes over that. The maintenance guys aren't allowed to put the costumes back on the figure (regardless of their fashionable tendencies), a cast member from costuming must be sent out in the morning, lock out, and enter the ride to replace the costume.
We did some more exploring of the ride before our evening was up, so if you want more details, feel free to ask. I'd love to talk about it more. This was a great experience that I will keep with me, regardless of the career I eventually end up with. It's amazing to me how much work goes into just keeping ONE relatively simple attraction running smoothly day in and day out all year long.
