I'm sorry if this comes off ranty, just hoping to give everyone an insight into the madness that is operating an amusement park. There are probably layers of problems here. First, ride ops are almost never to blame for operational issues. Customer experience is a ride ops #1 goal, and we love to make it the best possible. Trust me, every ride op on Wild Thing today left frustrated. The managers are probably the ones to blame, but even then it probably isn't fully their fault. Haunt staffing levels get really thin, often just enough to operate and do lunches. So if someone called in sick on Wild Thing, or another ride, someone could have been shuffled so that another ride could operate and left Wild Thing without enough to go up to two trains. Sacrificed capacity at one ride to operate another. Additionally, Ride Ops have to be specially trained to run at two trains- if some of the Ops were newer, or subs from other rides,they may have not had the proper training. Or it could be mechanical- the third train takes a lot of time to get on the track, so if one train went down with an issue, they may have been stuck with only one. Heck, the whole issue could be because Andy (rides manager) got his math a little off when he first set up the staffing levels back in May.
When you're at Valleyfair, or any amusement park, and it's operating well, you're seeing a well balanced house of cards. One little thing- a down ride, a sick employee, a poorly timed lunch, and the whole thing starts to collapse. Operating an amusement park isn't like playing Rollercoaster Tycoon. It's like playing FTL. A mean rogue-like that teases you with success then laughs as it blows it all up. Enjoy it when it works, but feel for the employees when it doesn't. Remember that most of the kids there are working 12+ hour days for less than $10 an hour. When things go wrong it's even worse for them.
Again, sorry if this comes off a bit rant like or angry. I can understand that you posted this in a moment of frustration, and probably weren't thinking too clearly. But after 6 years of working bottom of the foodchain jobs I can't help but feel sorry for employees who get stuck in crappy situations, and had to sieze the oportuinity to educate on what you may not realize is going on.
TL;DR: It's a giant house of cards, and sometimes little things are enough knock the whole thing down.
I'm sorry, but there is no excuse for horrible operations and one train operation due to short staffing with operators that do not put much effort into efficiency. Every park has to deal with these issues, but it is important to see what parks handle it the best. If a park, like Valleyfair, is clear that they failed upon having decent operations on Wild Thing, it is the park's fault. While I do agree that it is not entirely the ride op's fault, I do feel that it is perfectly acceptable to say that the ride ops are doing an awful job.