Five Lessons from a Career Inspecting Theme Park Rides

By Haley Cowans

In this episode of Chat NDT with ASNT, ASNT Content Strategist Haley Cowans talked with Ricky Morgan about their mutual love of theme parks. Ricky is an ASNT Director at Large and Past President who has done several inspections of theme park attractions and assets in his NDT career. Throughout their conversation, Ricky shares some of his most memorable inspections, how he built up his theme park résumé, and what NDT inspectors should know if they are interested in a career inspecting theme park rides. Here are five lessons from Ricky’s career in theme parks adapted from this conversation:

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1. Fantasy versions of real-world things still need real-world inspections.

Theme park rides often replicate real-world transportation systems, from submarines to trains to pirate ships. In one of Ricky’s first theme park inspections, he was brought in to inspect the Mark Twain Riverboat and the Sailing Ship Columbia, two ships that “sail” on the Rivers of America in the Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California. Even though these ships sail on an artificial river, Ricky inspected them as he would any other ship.

“I was working for a commercial diving company that was also an NDT company. Our company was certified to do American Bureau of Shipping surveys, and [the ships] were insured through the American Bureau of Shipping, so they had to do a survey on the thickness gauging. So we just did thickness gauging on the hull and we generated a report,” said Ricky.

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2. Everything looks different backstage (but that’s part of the fun).

In another memorable inspection, Ricky was asked to inspect the animatronic T-rex in the finale of Jurassic Park: The Ride at Universal Studios—the one who pops above guests right before they plummet down the log flume.

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“And he [the T-rex] had actually overextended past his stops, and so they had re-put him back where he belonged. They just had me do some MT in certain areas to make sure that he didn’t do any stress to his steel neck,” said Ricky.

“You’re in the head and the neck area from the backside—what’s amazing about these parks is that everything in the front looks great to you, but everything in the back is mechanical.”

And although inspecting the animatronic wasn’t quite the same as performing dental surgery on a real T-rex, “you did see the teeth from the inside out, so that was kind of disturbing in a way.”

However, getting to see the inner workings of these attractions hasn’t spoiled their fun for Ricky; if anything, its enhanced his experienced. He remembered riding on Universal’s “Earthquake” attraction after having inspected some of the welding for the frame portion of the ride. The ride simulated an earthquake taking place while riders are in an underground subway station, through a table mechanism that tilts the tram riders were in.

“It’s really neat when you see the whole part come together. When you see the ride and you just see the one little piece of frame you’re working on, and then you actually go in the ride and you see the actual table work, and you see the water falling in and all the special things they do to make it look realistic and feel realistic. It’s really exciting to see those kind of things when you get to actually be on [the ride you’ve inspected].”

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3. Many different methods are required to inspect rides.

Because there are so many different kinds of theme park rides, the NDT methods used to inspect them are just as varied.

“It really depends on particular rides. Certain rides that may have a lot of cabling, they’ll be doing eddy current or magnetic flex leakage on checking cables. If it’s structures, it’s going to be UT, MT, PT, and visual. There are other parts that get tested that I’m not as familiar with that do some other electrical testing and they verify that they’re getting the right flows and all that kind of thing that occurs. But I would say primarily its eddy current, visual, UT, MT, PT, and RT. But really, everything’s on the table for them, because it’s important that they inspect things properly for whatever service it’s in. So they may actually have some acoustic emission done occasionally on certain things that may need it,” said Ricky.

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4. Theme park NDT will take you around the world.

A huge part of this conversation, of course, had to be Ricky’s time spent doing inspections during the creation of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, a themed land in both Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida. The land includes an attraction based on the famous ship from the franchise, The Millennium Falcon. During the experience, Ricky traveled to Hong Kong and Zhuhai, China, while components of the attraction were being built.

“When I was working on that, I was [in China] for a couple weeks working on Millennium Falcons—two of them, one for each park,” he said.

“And the way it all happens, it’s a pretty concerted effort in terms of logistics when you’re doing two parks at the same time. We were based out of LA, but we were actually having team meetings every week with the people in Orlando, and we were comparing our notes and what we were doing with different fabricators.”

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5. NDT is crucial to keep these spaces safe and fun.

Theme parks are designed to be an escape from the real world, a place created for you to relax and enjoy your time with your family and friends. But that doesn’t mean accidents can’t happen, and NDT is essential to making sure that these spaces are not only fun, but safe.

“I mean, that’s where you take your family. Being a big fan of amusement park rides, whenever I inspected something like this, I thought of my family riding it, I thought of me riding it, and everybody I know that would want to enjoy the park. It makes it really easy for me to do my job with that background in my head—you have to make sure it’s right,” Ricky said.

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Listen to the full conversation on below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

ASNT members can also revisit Ricky Morgan’s presentation for ASNT’s Virtual Section, “NDT and the Amusement Park Industry: Safety and Service Life.”

You can also listen to Haley and Ricky’s first conversation about his time working on the High Roller Observation Wheel in Las Vegas also available from the ASNT Podcast page.

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Haley Cowans is the Content Strategist at ASNT, hcowans@asnt.org.

Share your ideas for future podcasts with Debbie Segor, CAE, Marketing and Communications Manager at ASNT, dsegor@asnt.org.

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