The shotgun gates for Orlando are finished, packed and ready to go. Work started towards the end of May and has progressed smoothly and all of the final FAT testing (Factory Acceptance Testing) has been completed too. The testing itself has been interesting and has produced some interesting numbers.

• They ran faultlessly for 11,000 cycles which is the equivalent of one full month in the real world
• The build quality has been to a design standard that will see the gates fully operational for a twenty-year life
• What this means is that they will run for 2,640,000 cycles each.
• There are 16 gates in the system, which means they’ll see up to 42 million happy customers, safely into their ride.

Part of the design specification from our end was to design the system to ensure it was easy to transport. This is an important consideration in the design, but one you overlook at your peril.

After the shipping, which takes around 30 days, the gates will be installed by two of our engineers who will fly out to meet the container and oversee the unpacking and complete the installation. We will have some more pictures of this work when we are on site, but our work will be completed before the end of October for the ride opening in December.

When we pack things, we pack them well. Here are the gates wrapped and ready to go.

One of the reasons they are mounted onto steel beams is to keep them safe, secure and in position during transportation.

All packed and ready to go for 20 years work in Orlando

It’s tightly packed and strapped down and approved by the client for shipping

The truck reversing into the site for the pickup

The Garmendale site is a little tight when you have a 60-ton crane and a 40ft container lorry reversing into the yard. But under the control of Engineer Pete, it all runs smoothly.

It always seems to rain on a loading day, but luckily it stopped at just the right time

Fixing the chains to the top of the container makes you realise quite how light they are in comparison to the scale of the container. It looks even more apparent when it’s high up in the air being lifted over the buildings to be loaded for transportation.

And it’s lowered onto the truck bed to depart for Orlando

So, next time you see this container, it’ll be Stateside.