Amusement Park tales

I saw that and laughed. Probably had something to do with it because they were new when we started. Yogi was the best.

 

The Beast?

 

The Grizzly River Rampage at Opryland was one place where benevolent agents of chaos worked. At first, I didn't realize how much control they had over each raft's experience. Small children and their grandparents were given a ride that was just the right mix of gentle floating by the prettier parts and enough of a rush at other points to make the littles feel like they'd experienced a big kid ride.

One afternoon, I sat with them to watch them work. A couple and her parents spent their entire time in line ridiculing other people for their weight, clothing, and anything else they could think of. I had a feeling they were toast. By the time their raft eased into the loading port, everyone was wet and bedraggled. The GRR guys made them sit and wait while other boats unloaded. A couple of inches of water stood in their boat. Some of their linemates gave them the side-eye and a smirk as they walked past.

 

I worked at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey, which had a nice, long log flume ride. They had attendants at the top of each hill -- one at the beginning of the ride, and another deep into the backstretch. The latter was about four minutes into a five-minute ride, and took 10 or 15 minutes to walk out to. I think it was there because there was a small lift hill, and someone had to be manning it in case they stopped the ride for some reason. Other than that, which might have happened a couple of times a shift, there was nothing to do.
Naturally, it didn't draw many visits from supervisors. Just as naturally, it was a favorite posting for tired and hung over ride operators in need of a quiet nap.

 

Opryland had a similar setup. One summer, we had an operations supervisor whose favorite phrase was, "Shit Happens." That year it was all over everything except Witness Wear. The flume got stuck and a family ended up spending twenty minutes at the top of one of the hills. When they were rescued, the parents were furious and wanted to speak to someone in charge. While they were up there, they asked the ride guy about an eta for getting back on solid ground. When he told them, they sighed and the worker reflexively shrugged and said, "Shit happens."

My boss went to talk to them. He said the family's trio of small boys were still boggling at the kid. They seemed to think he was heroic for saying "shit" to Mom and Dad.

 

Not exactly amusement park, but - For a couple years, I co-hosted a podcast with two buddies on pre-2000s video games. One of them worked in an arcade near Atlantic City in the 2000s, which went about how you'd expect. Lots of free games, lots of pot smoking and so on. He was pretty adamant that you should NEVER eat the food in places like that though, since they would clean the ice cream machine like once a week. Also,the daily / weekly cash was clearly taken in by mob associates.

 

Did they get to do an evacuation? We never got to do one and I was always a little jealous when I heard the stories of operators who did.

 

The coaster I worked on was the park's new ride that summer, and as such had a lot of bugs to work out. One of them was a penchant for getting what amounted to a flat tire just about every day.
The coaster had three sets of polyurethane wheels, and after a few hours of running on a hot metal track one of the sets would start to break apart. Once we knew about it, it wasn't a big issue. You kept an eye on it in the afternoon and called maintenance when you started seeing missing chunks. It took them about 15 minutes to swap out the wheels, which meant guests getting antsy when the line stopped moving. We were told not to tell them what was happening so as not to scare them, but after a couple of times I think we did anyway.
I scared one of my co-workers shitless one time because of it, though. I was at the operator's station and he had his entire head under the train to check on the wheels. He was taking forever to do it and I got bored, so to mess with him I gave the verbal command (without being anywhere near the button to actually do it) to advance the train. I think he jumped about six feet backward and gave me a death glare I can still see to this day.

 

No tales of death yet.

 

They did. I don't remember the hows or whys of it, but there had to be certain personnel present if someone was taken off a ride. The Flume Zoom* had stairways at every incline and seemed to get stuck at least a few times a week. Guests were led to the stairs and helped down. Unfortunately, if the ride attendants were not cleared to bring them down, they had to sit until someone gave them permission.

*I can't believe I remember that name.

 

THAT WAS YOU?!!!