Horrible Park Operations

[YoshiFan]

Dorney: 2 adults per car maximum on the Wild Mouse and the added seatbelts. Capacity is around 200 an hour with those rules.

 

Laser, assigned seating even if you are the only one on the train and added seatbelts which slow loading

 

Thunderhawk: trim on the bunny hills

 

Hershey: 1 train only on each side of LR, even on some days when the line is down to the ramp

 

Great Adventure: only opening water rides seasonally, Medusa not opening until 12:00

[signal]

Wonderland: Someone puked on a coaster (I forget which one, but I rode it after) and it took them 20 minutes to clean it up and get the ride running again. Luckily, we were near the front of the line, and nobody wanted those seats, so we snagged em'

[chemical_echo]

One of the worst was last year at King's Island.

 

My friends and I were in line for a night ride on Beast when it closed down for fireworks. The employees told us that the ride would be open for 10-15min after the fireworks if we wanted to go watch.

My friends and I left to watch but when we went back the ride attendants did everything they could to try and tell us the ride was closed and we couldn't ride. It turned into a pretty big argument between us, a few others dealing with the same problem and the ride ops/attendants. Finally after holding them up for about 5min they allowed us to ride.

Once we got off we went to Guest Relations to complain. That was the only time I have ever complained about ride employees.

 

Another bad experience, also at King's Island but back in 03. While me and my friends were walking through the Paramount Walk area an employee and his friends tried to pick a fight with me, for no reason. They just walked past me, stopped, and started talking shit to me; saying things like I looked at them the wrong way and they would F me up. My friends and I just asked what the hell their problem was, shook our heads and walked away. I wish I had got the employee's name so I could have filed a very strong worded complaint against him.

[pgathriller]

So from what I'm reading, a lot of people don't like SFA. I've never been there. Is it really that bad? And for the person complaining about Dollywood.... I'm sorry but I don't think it's possible to have a bad there

[cfc]

Hmm, let's see . . .

 

Fuji-Queue--Between the hours of 9:00 and 3:00, four rides (one with a three-hour-plus wait). Not impressive.

 

Yokohama Cosomoworld, Vanish--God, this irritated the hell out of me. They were running one train. Stop. Unload. People get stuff from lockers in station, then exit. Let in next group. Check their tickets. Open air gates. People crossover to put loose crap in lockers. Sit down. Check restraints. Finally, dispatch. You know, being as they don't let any riders into the station until the train finishes a circuit and the station is completely empty, why not get rid of the air gates? (It's not like they serve any purpose.) You know, folks, you could try checking people's tickets and letting them into the station while the train is cycling--would speed things up a tad.

 

SFA--yeah, they were a mess a few weeks ago (were OK last year).

 

BGE--Consistent train stacking and slow dispatches on Alpengeist. The way they run the Roman Rapids is pretty irritating, too. The ride uses a turntable, yet last season, they would bring two rafts into the station, stop the turntable, unload, load, check seatbelts, then dispatch. So, what's the point of the turntable? (I'm guessing there must have been some sort of "incident" to explain this.) It's not much fun to sit there on the lifthill while soaking wet, waiting to get into the station.

[downunder]

La Ronde in 2005 was pretty bad, the ride ops were asleep just about, they made Six Flags in the US (which were generally bad at the time) look great. I guess it must be a French thing to smoke anywhere, irrespective of whether it's a no smoking area or not.

[VivaLaVibora]

For Six Flags America, in June 13-14, 2007 which is "summer time", rides like Pirate’s Flight, Teacups, Falling Star, and Avalanche opened later than the rest of the park which is ridiculous considering the number of rides the park has. The Octopus, Two-Face Flipside (roller coaster), train, antique cars, and Power of Doom never opened. Skull Mountain would open and close periodically. On one day, Avalanche didn't open at all.

 

Spanish people were going to the row of seats in which they were in line for, and than you have black people wrestle them out of the seats. The workers didn't do nothing, and just weren't aware, and didn't care.

 

I don't think that trains dispatched that long except for Batwing though as in how fast they were, but rides not being open, and the incident in which the workers didn't do nothing just ruined my experience.

 

They need more real police for Six Flags parks that need it from the city they are in instead of just the Six Flags hire a cop police. This was the park that someone was shooting a gun in the parking lot. I think people would be more scared of the real city police than the people that Six Flags hires so the gangs won't go to this park.

[JimBeach]

Back in the day, Six Flags Magic Mountain introduced Colossus as an old fashioned twin racing roller coaster. I have never been there when they released both trains at the same time. Yeah they run both trains but never have I seen them race.

[Erik Johnson]

I too vote for Six Flags America. Both my visits (two years apart) were quite bad.

[dpxtreme]

Spanish people were going to the row of seats in which they were in line for, and than you have black people wrestle them out of the seats. The workers didn't do nothing, and just weren't aware, and didn't care.

 

Wow, let's try to me just a little bit more damn racist next time. Sorry, but what you just said is messed up.

[adeuce02]

cp on tuesday didnt have the best day for operations. Maverick was down till 430 dragster didnt open ip till 630 and they were only running the 1st 3rows. Plus magnum and mean streak had half there rows block off.

[larrygator]

It's a toss-up between Mount Olympus and SFA for all the reasons people have stated already. I'll pick MtO because no one seemed to care, at least I've encountered some good employees at SFA.

[coaster05]

MTO is a hole and I guess i didn't realize how lucky we were last year at SFA.

[Wood Dragon 1988]

Spanish people were going to the row of seats in which they were in line for, and than you have black people wrestle them out of the seats. The workers didn't do nothing, and just weren't aware, and didn't care.

 

Wow, let's try to me just a little bit more damn racist next time. Sorry, but what you just said is messed up.

 

It was really messed up, I agree.

 

But then I thought about it, and I am wondering if racism has a lot to do with SFA's bad reputation.

 

I know SFA is bad. But I have only been to 12 parks. I can't imagine SFA is as bad as much more experienced people are saying. In fact, I remember when about 20 TPR members went to SFA last spring, they reported that their experience was quite good.

 

Again, I'm not saying the park is pristine, but I think if you go in with low expectations you will find that about half the coasters are very good, and about half the crews are at least acceptable. Basically, it's not far off the other Six Flags or Cedar Fair operations I have encountered.

[EuroTre]

Huh. I guess I've never really noticed that Mt. Olympus had bad employees.

 

:thinks:

 

Oh yeah. I've seen some pretty unhappy operators there. Like on Hades sometimes they don't open the gates for 5 minutes.

 

And who said Hades has lost steam? It's still an insanely awesome ride.

[coasterfreak101]

Six Flags America for the Nth time:

 

Batwing operators are simply the worst I've ever seen. One train every five minutes would be an improvement for them. Sometimes they smoke, sometimes they text, sometimes they cuss. It takes them forever.

 

I'd say that nothing else gets any better, but the Sunday of opening weekend they really were doing a great job. Joker was dispatched quickly, which doesn't always happen.

 

Superman, though, has lost a red train. Anybody know where it is?

[Coasterlvr_nc]

Some of the biggest complaints I have had about parks:

SFA- on my visit in 2002 everything was running 2 trains, except for S:ROS. Mind Eraser's trains were going out with 5-10 people on them. Yes, they did eventually run 2 trains on ROS, but it should of ran them at opening.

 

SFFT- On both of my visits (2002 and 2006) they were running all three trains, but they only had 3 people running the ride (Op and 2 attendants). In 2002 they were dispatching about every 4-5 mins, so all three trains were stacked, but at least they improved this in 2006 but they were still stacking because 2 attendants are not enough to check quickly (and they were checking as quick as they could). I even read about this subject on the SFFTnet website, where an operator said you can not "safely" put more than 3 people operating in the station. Give me a break.

 

Wow,

At Afterburn in Carowinds we had 3 op operations on a saturday, and we were able to finish checking each train just as the other was hitting the safety brake, which is the brake before the turn.

[Wood Dragon 1988]

^^According to SFAFANS.com, they believe it is still getting work done off site. They hardly ever run two trains anyway.

 

I agree about Batwing though. I've never really noticed the cussing/texting/etc, but it just seems that the ride is either always down or runs a horrible capacity. I've never seen more than one train on any of my three visists from 2003-2007. In fact, I've never seen one whole train; a row or two is always roped off! The line jumping is completely out of control on Batwing. It seems like SFA never has many long queues, but when they do, the general patron's mindset is that line-jumping is completely tollerable. SROS seems to always have a bad crew, but as Larrygator said, they do seem to employ SOME decent human beings.

[Jew]

MTO is a hole and I guess i didn't realize how lucky we were last year at SFA.

 

You're not the only one Rich. I had absolutely no problems at all when we were out there for the TPR meet. I remember asking Robb and Elissa "I thought this place had a bad reputation?" The only damper was pass processing was a little slow, but inside the park everything was fine.

 

As for me...

 

Two really stand out: Cedar Points awful rain policy and Fuji-Q in general. In 6 hours, we were able to get 3 credits thanks to the horrible rain policy. At Fuji-Q, even the kiddy coaster was a 45 minute wait. Expedition GeForce was pretty bad when we went in 2005. One train and taking their sweet ass time. Tatsu is close behind, since I don't think I have EVER seen anything less than a 5 minute dispatch. But that doesn't bother me as much because I barely go on the rides at SFMM anymore.

[Absimilliard]

La Ronde in 2006 on the Vampire...

 

Me, my cousin and his girlfriend were having a good time. Ride ops were kinda efficient and everything was running 2 trains... At around 3-4, the ride ops were getting tired and decided to remove the second trains from every ride that had one! We waited nearly an hour in line for the Vampire at that point and when we got to the station, I saw why. The 2 idiots that checked restraints took 3-4 minutes every time they saw a cute teenage girl on the train to flirt with her! People were starting to grumble and mumble and one guy asked me: What are those guys doing? I answered, it doesn't look like they care about us! The guy then raised his voice to be heard and then asked what they were doing and commented that we were waiting in line for nearly an hour! The ride op turned around, loudly commented that he was doing "Customer Service" and then asked the girl at the dispatch console to call security! Security comes in, he makes up a big story and it ended with the guy who dared say something getting escorted out of the park!

 

Seeing how stupid they were, I didn't say anything, gave them some dark looks and then got their names and found the most important manager in the park and gave him the situation as it happened, as I didn't trust the customer service employees to do anything.

[VivaLaVibora]

Spanish people were going to the row of seats in which they were in line for, and than you have black people wrestle them out of the seats. The workers didn't do nothing, and just weren't aware, and didn't care.

 

Wow, let's try to me just a little bit more damn racist next time. Sorry, but what you just said is messed up.

 

I don't care what color the people were. If they were white, I say the same thing. The park didn't have that poor of operations as in efficiency of the rides (that actually were operating) operating except Batwing, and the workers didn't care what happened when this did happen on Superman. It had bad operations of the rides that were not operating which bugged me a lot.

 

You could believe me or not, but good luck going to the park, and having everything open in June.

[Scaparri]

[Deleted]

Edited May 12, 2010 by Scaparri

[Guest]

Another vote for Mt. Olympus. Operations were slow, employees were rude, and as Will said, the only rule they seem to enforce is no adults on Little Titans. Oh, well, there was one other. They also strictly enforced.....No rerides even if no one is waiting for your row.

 

Saw employees sitting in track pits, not checking lap bars on Zeus (not during an ERT time, during regular park time with little kids on the train), stepping across tracks, and nearly running people down on their scooter things. They do have a cool place there with a lot of unique and fun rides, but they really need to work on ops.

Yay Mt. Olympus.

 

 

On the other hand, Timber Falls just up the street has some of the nicest employees I've ever dealt with. If you've read any of the Midwest Trip TRs you know that the coaster got hit by lightning the night before we went and they ended up running it in manual mode for us which was great. On top of that, they let you wait on the unload side of the station for empty rows or to take pictures. Great, genuinely friendly place there, and my favorite of the Dells.

 

I'd also like to add while they aren't the worst by any means, I think Holiday World could do a bit better with their operations, especially with the reputation they have. I understand safety is their greatest concern, but stacking a 3 minute long ride like Voyage with only two trains is a bit ridiculous to me. I think even Legend should be able to make the dispatch interval fine, as I've seen much shorter rides run multiple trains without any problems. Raven I understand the stacking as it's such a short ride, but Legend should be fine, and I really can't think of an excuse with Voyage.

[haiderodes]

BGE--Consistent train stacking and slow dispatches on Alpengeist. The way they run the Roman Rapids is pretty irritating, too. The ride uses a turntable, yet last season, they would bring two rafts into the station, stop the turntable, unload, load, check seatbelts, then dispatch. So, what's the point of the turntable? (I'm guessing there must have been some sort of "incident" to explain this.) It's not much fun to sit there on the lifthill while soaking wet, waiting to get into the station.

 

The two times I rode Kali River Rapids at Animal Kingdom they did that. I'm not sure if its standard operations, but they stopped like three boats on the turntable. Loaded and checked seat belts and then gave a thumbs up. Really defeated the purpose of a turntable.

[haiderodes]

My complaints...

 

SFMM - Operations have seemed to improved, but once it gets crowded they seem to have a hard time with crowd control. On two of my visits this year, available queue areas havent been used meaning lines became disorganized and spilled onto the midway. Biggest offenders Viper and Ninja. Both have the switchbacks but they were not set up to handle the crowds. And for the love of God, there are two lines once you get into Ninja's station...why not use both as they have in the past?

 

SFDK - One train operation on Kong means an inherently slow line...especially if they only have 2 ops. The controls op has to stand at the panel during the entire cycle so they dont let people in until the train has returned to the station. The airgates are pointless because they let the flashpass people in and open the airgates and then just count however many people from the line to fill in the space. Empty seats? Oh well. The line basically only moves once the train dispaches which is every 3 to 5 minutes.