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"Take emotion out of it and think about it logically". You are arguing to take emotion out of something while injecting a healthy amount of it into the discussion by saying the kids aren't worth what they are being paid, while giving no real evidence of anything. I'd argue that these employees are ABSOLUTELY worth what they are being paid, because the other option is for the parks to not be open. You are also comparing these raises (50-100%) to cost of living adjustments (2%, your stated figured) for something that is apples to oranges. These are seasonal employees for the most part, who made minimum wage before. This 50-100% increase isn't someone going from 60k to 120k a year in a career-type job. It's way less, and, again, it's seasonal for the vast majority. It doesn't take an economist to see that this is basic supply and demand and employees are very much in demand. Without them, the parks have no profit. And yes, you are crapping on them. Which is fine, I guess, but at least own that's what you are doing.

There's no such thing as unskilled labour. Every job requires skills. Customer service is a skill like any other, and the above lamenting of the longtime employees not coming back tells you exactly how important customer service skills are. And your assertion that unemployment payments were the thing that was keeping people from accepting work is belied by the labour force participation rate not increasing in the states that removed the federal unemployment benefits. https://www.epi.org/blog/there-is-no-justification-for-cutting-federal-unemployment-benefits-the-latest-state-jobs-data-show-the-economy-has-not-fully-recovered/

As a just retired teacher and parent of an 18 year old that has worked at SFSTL for the last three seasons I can tell you that teens working traditional teen or summer jobs has been on the decline for a long time, the pandemic just exacerbated it. The parks were already having trouble filling spots before the virus hit. Many suburban teens are being pushed to spend summers doing extra classes and unpaid internships, in my opinion to their detriment, in order to beef up college admission resumes. Unfortunately, they are missing out on real world skills that no amount of extra classes can give you. But it has become a bit of a "looked down upon thing" to work that summer type job a lot of us did as kids. I actually had parents in my neighborhood quite shocked that I was "allowing" my son to work. Crazy. I don't think a lot of them can see that we are raising a lot of people that look good on paper but cannot handle day to day challenges. And for some dumb reason they cannot seem to make the connection of continual school/too many activities with the fact that we had two successful suicides and and multiple attempts at our very well off, large suburban high school. On the other hand students in very poor areas, with few job opportunities, that could really use the money; have a very difficult time actually getting to the park. Let's face it, parks in large metro areas are not usually near the more inner city neighborhoods. I worked in a very poor district but it is easily a 40-50 min one way drive to the park IF you don't hit traffic. Not feasible for most. SFSTL has a bus that brings employees from one of the metrolink stops in a disadvantaged neighborhood to the park BUT not only is it a hell of a long ride, the employees have to pay for it which cuts down on their paycheck. I know that is a long winded answer but the changing morays of teen life and the realities of the economic divide all affect staffing at the parks. Would a pay raise help? Sure. Somewhat, they did raise the pay a bit here, but the problem is too complicated to be solved that easily.

I'm absolutely not here for assigning blame or fault.. just compiling the stories that made headlines. Clearly Holiday World was not at fault, it's just something that happened. The King's Island fights shut down the park and resulted in 6 criminal indictments... that's definitely a significant incident. Also... don't crap on theme park employees finally making decent pay for one season by saying they aren't worth it. That's gross and so disrespectful, especially in a freaking theme park appreciation message board.

I will GLADLY pay more for a meal at a theme park if it means that the staffing is at a level where the line to get said food is not an hour + line. if Dollywood really is only paying $10-$12 an hour for their employees? yeah, they need to up the pay, immediately.

Current situation...

Seriously though, it's hard to remember everything but here are a few things from just the last few years: - Quimera derailed and killed 2 people - Two frisbees overseas broke apart and killed a bunch of people - Valravn crashed in the station - Boulder Dash crashed in the station - Top Thrill Dragster was closed for half the summer in 2019 and a year or two prior it basically vaporized a brake run and was closed for a month then too - Steel Vengeance trails collided on opening day - Hersheypark and Kennywood are determined to have one or more coasters closed for entire seasons at a time because they suck basically every year. A band new hypercoaster is closed for an entire season+ - Xcellerator closed for half-a-year - A frisbee at the Ohio State Fair broke apart and killed people - An inverted coaster in Scotland totally derailed and crashed into a nearby kiddy ride - The Smiler accident, people lose limbs - Daytona Beach coaster derails because of an elaborate cover-up to hide all maintenance issues - Tons of people drown in wave pools - Tons of fights every Halloween everywhere - Disney Skyliner crashes a hilarious number of times - El Loco at the Adventuredome throws a rider - Crackhead builds a waterslide that decapitates a child in Kansas City - Castle Park log ride did exactly what Great Adventure's just did - Timber Mountain Log Ride did exactly what Great Adventure's just did - A kid died on Hoosier Hurricane because of a pre-existing condition - Star City burned to the ground entirely - An entire section of Europa Park burned to the ground - Six Flags over Georgia's train bursts into flames ... and I'm forgetting a ton.

This... 100% this. The only thing about this year that seems totally unprecedented is the staffing situation. There are horrible accidents that kill people every year and chain lift snaps and cable snaps are even more common, it just so happens that right now some of them are on high-profile rides. Demon at Great America has been closed for weeks with a chain snap but it’s not on the list because literally nobody cares.

Bizarro good example. People say Bizarro dumb and stupid. Then Bizarro get his own coaster, now people love Bizarro. Black Adam get coaster too, be Bizarro friend.

It has gotten a bit better but I know they are still having a high turnover rate. I didn't mean it as a criticism to the park just that I know they have been having a very hard time staffing like they need to. I just posted on this over on the Dollywood board where it was stated that just raising the pay and getting rid of the enhanced unemployment would solve the problem, that it isn't that simple. Teens just don't work traditional summer/part time jobs like they used to. This is what I posted there: As a just retired teacher and parent of an 18 year old that has worked at SFSTL for the last three seasons I can tell you that teens working traditional teen or summer jobs has been on the decline for a long time, the pandemic just exacerbated it. The parks were already having trouble filling spots before the virus hit. Many suburban teens are being pushed to spend summers doing extra classes and unpaid internships, in my opinion to their detriment, in order to beef up college admission resumes. Unfortunately, they are missing out on real world skills that no amount of extra classes can give you. But it has become a bit of a "looked down upon thing" to work that summer type job a lot of us did as kids. I actually had parents in my neighborhood quite shocked that I was "allowing" my son to work. Crazy. I don't think a lot of them can see that we are raising a lot of people that look good on paper but cannot handle day to day challenges. And for some dumb reason they cannot seem to make the connection of continual school/too many activities with the fact that we had two successful suicides and and multiple attempts at our very well off, large suburban high school. On the other hand students in very poor areas, with few job opportunities, that could really use the money; have a very difficult time actually getting to the park. Let's face it, parks in large metro areas are not usually near the more inner city neighborhoods. I worked in a very poor district but it is easily a 40-50 min one way drive to the park IF you don't hit traffic. Not feasible for most. SFSTL has a bus that brings employees from one of the metrolink stops in a disadvantaged neighborhood to the park BUT not only is it a hell of a long ride, the employees have to pay for it which cuts down on their paycheck. I know that is a long winded answer but the changing morays of teen life and the realities of the economic divide all affect staffing at the parks. Would a pay raise help? Sure. Somewhat, they did raise the pay a bit here, but the problem is too complicated to be solved that easily.

I didn't mention that since it was awhile ago but I absolutely thought of the year that New Texas Giant threw and killed someone and RMC shut down all of their coasters following the incident, then the next day a Shoot The Rapids fell all the way back down the lift hill, flipped over and then held a boat full of people underwater in restraints that they couldn't get out of. It's a miracle nobody died from that.

Just adding to what most of you have said, yeah, this is not out of the ordinary at all. Roller coasters are giant big machines and there are more and more of them so there will be more of them breaking down or having issues. Throw in the supply chain issues on top of everything else mentioned and yeah, that's where we're at. Can't wait till 2025 when we look back at this thread from whatever horror is going on then and laugh!

Four weeks until we are at Phantasialand for three days, staying at Matamba! I'm so excited for FLY. And to be back on Black Mamba and Colorado Adventure, eventually. I hope it's warm so we can enjoy the raft, too.

In the states where they terminated the UI, there's not any evidence yet of improvements in labor availability. Old people who were on the cusp of retiring or working part time are done now (or more pessimistically, dead). There's few foreign visa employees because of restrictions for entry and those that are here are arriving very late. The labor shortage in the US has been reported about with frequency in the United States since at least 2014 if not prior. It simply was able to be glossed over for most. Not any more.

Off topic on a lighter note a Storm Chaser friend of mine unveiled his new license plate today which I pointed out to him that it fittingly matches a certain popular rollercoaster at Dollywood. He loved it and laughed.

Yes! And if the boss doesn't want to do that, well, we know what to do.

Just to build off of what Kim said above, I'm going to link to a post I made a while back on the subject. The comments are pre-COVID, but it's still speaks to her points: Short answer: more and more teenagers are focusing on their education, including an overall increase in college enrollment and an increase in students taking summer classes. As someone previously stated, the days of a bachelor's degree being enough to stand out in a job market are long gone (hell, I'm kicking myself for going straight to grad school and getting a generic MBA instead of waiting and choosing a more specific masters degree in my field to help my resume stand out more). Are there lazy kids out there? Absolutely, but that’s no new thing - I worked with plenty of other teenagers growing up who had questionable work ethic. It’s important to avoid the rose-tinted glasses when discussing this subject. I myself am one of those middle-class adults who tends to wax nostalgic about my summer job experience and used to have pretty strong opinions on "making sure my kids grow up right, know the value of a dollar, understand the meaning of hard work, blah blah BS BS yadda yadda". However, facts and statistics don't lie, and, once my kids are old enough, I'll need to consider what the culture, education environment, and job markets are like in order to figure out what's really best for their future before I choose to “gift” them working papers on their 14th birthday like my mom did to me. In fact, recent statistics are showing that there may be a reversal of that trend, with many teenagers opting for summer employment again. Teenage employment is currently at its lowest rate since 1953. Again, as with my post from a few years ago, there'll always be a group of kids one can point to in order to help support whatever pre-conceived notions we already have about "kids be lazy, man". Gotta look at the macro level, though.

I'm really shocked that no one has mentioned the thousands of car accidents that have happened this year shockingly involving people traveling to theme parks. It's shocking. This summer has been horrible. I'm shocked.

Why would teens want to work at a fast food restaurant or a theme park for pennies? Doesn't make sense vs. investing their time in academic or athletic pursuits that are likely to result in much greater returns through college scholarships/admissions. Besides, can't just rely on 14-17 year olds to make Taco Bell food or ring up groceries at 1AM on Tuesday nights. So hours are shortened and more like they were 20-30 years ago. Also LOL yeah I bounced around a little when I was younger doing minimum wage jobs. That's what's supposed to happen, isn't it?

Huh...seems like writing might be skilled labour too.

Maxair has yet to open for the season and Dragster is broken broken. Keep an eye on Gatekeeper, give up on those two.

Please, keep this discussion on track and don't argue about stuff we've been arguing about for over a year now, thanks.

If we're going to argue about minimum wage, can we at least throw in some COVID safety arguments, too? I long for all of this. If only we could find a way to add abortion and gun right debates into the mix. We can make it relevant, because one correlates to the amount of potential customers, and related to the christianity undertones throughout the park, and the other is related to park safety. Who's up for some international tariff arguments, since it may be related to the cost of building materials?

I do not see any of these issues being an Anomaly in 2021. If you want, you could list every incident from every year and find just as much, if not more, incidents to deem it a "summer from hell".

Let me tell you what is happening now at Dollywood, most likely because the pay is only $10-$12 an hour. The staff is very young, they are untrained, unfriendly and sometimes downright rude. The two new people working on Drop Line are a prime example of who should NOT be on the Dollywood staff, at least in a position that deals with the public. They are both rude, never smile and act like they don't want to be there. There should be a supervisor walking around and correcting these issues instead of letting these two "kids" make such poor examples of Dollywood employees. Chik Fil-a, right down the street, is staring people out at $15 an hour and Cedar Point is starting people off at $20 an hour without raising any prices other than typical annual price increases we see everywhere. And so what if they have to raise prices. People don't want to wait in line 30 minutes for a drink refill or an hour for a hot dog. Adding 25 cents to the price to get more staff at a restaurant would be worth it to most people. People are not taking low paying jobs anymore when they can go down the street and find one that pays more. Dollywood is raking in the cash and they surely can afford to pay their employees a living wage.

Theme parks in this country have been running low on staff for years and overly reliant on foreign labor since at least the 1990s. The pandemic and the lack of imports just excacerbated the problems the industry created for itself for its "rightfully deserved" (LMAOOOOOOOOO) profits. I too have thought about it, so much so I've written about it and researched about it using stuff like the Department of Labor's statistics. This was inevitable, especially as parks extended their seasons and hours. Anyways, I was thinking of posting something because I haven't enjoyed going to parks this year. It feels like opening day every single day, which is to say "a hot mess". Combined with some existing COVID restrictions at some parks and or just flat out insane guests since people forgot how to interact with each other in person, and I have little or no desire to go to more places this year. The only park/park resort in the country that feels normal is Universal Studios Orlando.

Every time you remove the racism from a Disney ride, an angel gets its wings. And the ride looks great too! Will definitely ride this next time I'm there

Fixed that for ya.

Well would you look at that... https://www.cedarpoint.com/live-video

I'm not married to anything on the Jungle Cruise. Whatever the catalyst is, if it ends up with them updating the animatronics and modernizing it then I'm 100% on board. Plus, yeah... the last time we rode it there were some "How is this scene still a thing?" moments. It's not like everyone didn't see this coming.

I’m still sticking with my original thought of either: Dollywood, SDC, or Holiday World. In rough order of somewhat likely to least likely. Someone mentioned Morey’s a while back. I’m agreeing with this as a fun wildcard. But at the end of the day. Until a park starts showing some signs of construction or a tease campaign there’s nothing concrete to go off of.

That's a pretty neat coincidence! Too bad Blount County isn't called Dollywood County, it would fit even more then!

After a long, covid filled winter (all theme parks in Germany closed from the end of October until May), we went to Heide-Park and Holiday-Park an I will end my TPR hiatius! Expect new trip reports soon!

As reported by the "Schwarzwälder Bote", there are now concrete indications of the new coaster. According to the report, the local council of Rust has plans of the new ride. These show that it is to be a further developed version of "Big Dipper". The first ride of this type was opened at the Walibi Holland theme park in March 2016 under the name "Lost Gravity". On this ride, the short trains will use LSM to reach speeds of up to 80 kilometres per hour. They said that it will have nearly the same capacity as Silver Star and be shorter than Blue Fire which leads me to believe that the next generation of Big Dipper actually will feature trains instead of the single cars. Also, Mack had announced that a new themed area would also be built with the new roller coaster. This is to be built near Greece and Russia (behind Euro-Mir, next to Poseidon). The theme is currently unknown but the rumors have it that it will be themed to Croatia. We'll have to wait and see as there's no build permit as by now. Nevertheless, I'm excited for what's to come.

If it's say, $100 a week plus the 300 federal = 400, that's equal to Dollywood's starting $10 an hour and at $12 that's $2 an hour over staying home, not counting expenses. There may be people higher up the pay scale that can't get anything suitable, but for theme park employees how can it not be relevant? That article says Tennessee is one of the states cutting benefits, so we'll be finding out. This has been going on for long enough I think they should have been able to figure out how much people actually need and isn't giving them a raise. I worked all last year, in person, for less, so not sympathetic.

Correct. The area is called DC Universe, and the new ride's footprint will be sandwiched between Batman: The Ride and Riddler's Revenge. So it's definitely going to be a DC character Personally I think Flash and Wonder Woman are the most likely options. WW especially, since Six Flags already has all the logos and stuff pre-made. I was hoping for it to be Joker, but it makes sense that the park would want to expand beyond Gotham City since they purposely rebranded that area a few years back from Gotham City Backlot to DC Universe.

I mean neither is Bizarro, and he got a roller-coaster when I don't think he's ever made a real live action appearance, has he? I'm sure someone will quote one of the 90s Superman tv shows at me which basically just used the name and the likeness ends there. Black Adam doesn't seem a bad guess. Only other yellow character that comes to mind is the Reverse Flash, since the Flash movie is also coming. I don't actually know the layout of this park at all, but I'm assuming it's in a DC themed area which is why everyone is guessing characters and the ride not getting any name?

And jokes on you if you think it'll open in 2022. See: West Coast Racers.

I rode the updated Jungle Cruise a couple times the other day. I think the changes are awesome. It's just nice to see some updated scenes and great animatronics. Jokes are great as always.

They should take a page out of Fast & Furious' book and just name him Samoan Thor.

$20/hr for that sort of unskilled labor? Might entice a few but then ticket and food prices will increase a lot to cover such high labor costs. The problem with the government paying more to sit at home and do nothing. At one point here it was equal to $15/hr for a 40hr week (more if you include taxes which generally wasn't deducted), For part time people with only 30 hrs it was like $20. $20/hr is more than my son makes as a mechanic for the city (not unskilled labor).

I like how Disney has "plussed" the Jungle Cruise over the years. It's a classic attraction, but it's always had some "problematic" scenes. The new scenes look great, and I'm looking forward to riding it in November.

if I had to guess? Black Adam themed (or whatever they are gonna call him in the film) Yellow track/black supports.. very striking. and they can use the tag along the lines of "ride the lightning" just my guess tho.

That would be me! It was great to finally meet you two on Saturday. That TPR poncho is definitely on it's last legs. "Red Racer went down, then Blue went down, then both came back up but with two trains on blue/ one on red, so not always racing)" To add to the Racer saga, after all that happened, both went down again, then red finally reopened on it's own, running only 1 train.

Saint Louis Zoo has a great train. It gets you pretty close to the animal enclosures and there are several long tunnels.

King's Dominion 7 pm fireworks Not just Carowinds Bigger problem

Just a quick post, but I visited Universal Studios the day after the Memorial Day weekend just for a quick visit. The park experienced lines significantly above an hour for most of the day in spite of the capacity cap. Something that I found rather interesting that there was a much lower willingness by guests to observe social distancing guidelines at this park than at Disneyland, which I had visited the previous days. Onto the rides (that were new to me): Last time I visited, Kung Fu Panda was still the Shrek show. This was the only ride / show in the park that never passed a half hour wait time, and I can see why. Not only were the social distancing restrictions more lenient than I had expected given how other rides were spacing guests - the ride just isn't very good. It feels like the movie was designed for a simulator attraction until the ending happens (which has the only cool effect of the entire show). Then again, I don't remember particularly liking the Shrek show so at least I can't complain about it replacing something that I like. Speaking of which, for the updates to Jurassic Park the new animatronics in the lift hill portion of the attraction are super impressive, but I think that I prefer the old version. There was a deliberateness in how show scenes used to be arranged and paced for dramatic effect in the old ride that is simply absent here. I'm impressed by how many animatronics the Secret Life of Pets ride has. It's a cute ride, and due to the ride system, it basically had normal-ish operations even in the face of social distancing guidelines.

Velocicoaster last week...and KT got on it with some friends on Saturday too!

Parks have been open 10+ months, some with and some without masks rules. No indication of any spread at any of them. I did not boast about anything. I followed their rules and commented on it like folks have done for 10+ months now.