if it wasn't for the pesky government, cm's would be a hell of a lot cheaper then those expensive sand bags.

LibraryVixen's link shows that they are CM previews.

It says preview/testing. This isn't like, say, the ToT CM preview where they had tickets and could bring non-CMs with them. This is purely backstage, no "civilians". Not an official preview.

The piece of equipment we saw appeared to be some sort of lift. It was a little odd to see it just sitting there with nothing to obscure it from either the RRPP outside seating or the HISTA queue.

I suspect that they might be in a "do whatever it takes to get the damned ride open" mode. So, some shortcuts that normally would be verbottën are probably now being overlooked.

Remember, they shaved four months off the original schedule.