Entertaining, funny ride ops.

[AWill961]

I like the dude that keeps saying...

 

"Tat.....suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu" at Tatsu.

[AGLOIATHPENGUIN123]

i Like the workers at ninja who say welcome to ninja HIYA! But I also like it when you repeat it then they repeat it over and over again, and then the coaster pulls into the station and your still arguing HIYA until you leav the ride. Once when that happened, i rode it again and he remembered me. . But My favorite time was at Knotts Berry Farmand i asked if i could talk through the worker who checks restraint's microphone that talks through the whole station. He let me. I gave a shout out to y friend.... who was sitting right next to me.

[Six Flags Enthuseast]

^I remember that too! Except the ride-op for my last Ninja ride back in 2007 wasn't as enthusiastic as yours was.

[braztaz]

A ride-op at i305 used the speakers up the lift hill to talk to us.

 

He engaged in casual conversation (lol), then when we were about to go over the first drop, he said "whoop, goodbye!"

[Mr Stratosphere]

I believe this thread deserves a bump.

 

I can totally agree with some of the posts about the Tower of Terror attractions, I absolutely love when they are in character and completely entertaining.

 

Totally love when things like that add to the experience.

 

What I cannot stand is when employees are joking around on the PA systems, and being totally obnoxious.

 

Ride attendants can have a ton of fun with S&S Space Shot towers and launched coasters with fake countdowns etc.

 

So since this thread hasn't been active in 3 1/2 years, what are your recent experiences with entertaining and/or funny ride ops?

[SingleRiderCam]

The operator for Full Throttle during morning ERT at West Coast Bash was funny. At sometimes, she would countdown when people are loading and when she says that there will be a countdown, she counts from 5 really fast when there is 1 second left until launch.

[Moose]

I can still remember a really cute ride op running mean steak back in '01 saying "welcome back streakers, hope you enjoyed riding our woodie".

 

He was adorable.

[Nrthwnd]

Our "guide" for the Tokyo Disneyland Jungle Cruise hardly stopped talking, and we were

giggling, wondering if even the locals understood him, he talked soooo fast!

 

This is near the end of the Cruise...

 

[coastertube]http://www.themeparkreview.com/coastertube/play.php?vid=MVI_2759_hr8l[/coastertube]

[azza29]

There was a great ride op running Boomerang at SFDK earlier this year, entertaining the waiting guests with some Taylor Swift karaoke. Hilarious!

[gerstlaueringvar]

Outlaw Run's operator talk about some jokes. Not even funny but just make you want to lol.

[yay101]

Drop Tower-King's Dominion

 

"I'm sorry but the Drop Tower has broken down. Please wait while we..." THACHUNK

 

I also remember the first time I rode the Demon at SFGAm, the ride operators were asking random people's names, and they were wishing them a Happy Birthday.

[coasterbill]

The two parks that really come to mind are Dollywood and Cedar Point.

 

Cedar Point is great. I can't think of another park where they have someone walking around with a headset making jokes and constantly talking about the ride. The Raptor and Millennium Force crews are awesome, though the Dragster guy was pretty funny too. He's clearly an enthusiast and kept referring to TTD as the "World's best strata coaster" while later telling everyone to "Enjoy their ride on Kingda Ka". The Millennium Force guys were really adding to the experience talking about how it was the best coaster in the world and mixing in some jokes that were so corny and terrible that they were actually pretty good. "Hey what's my favorite color? Clear."

 

At Dollywood, everyone is just ridiculously nice. The operator on Thunderhead was an older woman (probably in her 70's) and at one point she had everyone singing happy birthday to someone in the train and then at the end said "all right well we're gonna let y'all have some fun now" and dispatched the train. The crew on Tennessee Tornado was great too, they kept talking about how much better the ride was than Wild Eagle and since crowds were light and they were running one train they asked everyone in the station where they were from and what their favorite ride was. They would then proceed to explain why you were wrong if you said anything other than Tennessee Tornado.

 

Also, we marathoned the heck out of Wild Eagle and the ride operators got to know us. On the last train of the night we were the only ones riding and one of them took a picture of us on the train with my phone in the station and after we got off the ride and made it all the way to the gift shop we heard one of them yelling for us behind us. He thought we had left a souvenir cup and he ran all the way down the stairs to give it to us. We told him it wasn't ours but thanked him and he said "okay well here's a free cup then, thanks for coming to Dollywood!". I wish I got his name because the higher ups at Dollywood need to know about this guy, he's awesome.

[phantomfan93]

^As a ride operator for Raptor, this makes me proud!

[screaminkid2005]

 

Ride attendants can have a ton of fun with S&S Space Shot towers and launched coasters with fake countdowns etc.

 

 

I love doing things like this on Scream at SFNE. But something that always put a smile on my face and everyone else that was working riding the ride was when the ride was in Turbo (Drop Mode) and we switched it to Shot without them knowing. The attendants always knew because you could hear it but it would scare the crap out of guests which is always fun and made them happy.

[MayTheGForceBeWithYou]

I remember this one from Xcelerator:

 

Frantic individual: I'm so scared! Can you tell me when it's gonna launch?

Op: Sure

*Train rolls back*

Op: 10, 9, 8

*LAUNCH*

OP: Oops.

 

The woman riding wasn't very happy when she got back to the station.

[gerstlaueringvar]

The ride op of Mad Cobra at Discovery World...

 

-All right people, get ready for it! Let's count down for the launch!

(After a while) -One

 

The train launched.

[DBru]

The two parks that really come to mind are Dollywood and Cedar Point.

 

Cedar Point is great. I can't think of another park where they have someone walking around with a headset making jokes and constantly talking about the ride. The Raptor and Millennium Force crews are awesome... The Millennium Force guys were really adding to the experience talking about how it was the best coaster in the world and mixing in some jokes that were so corny and terrible that they were actually pretty good. "Hey what's my favorite color? Clear."

 

Thank you, thank you...

[Seddy]

I absolutely love this thread!!

 

Acrophobia's operators are by far the best at SFOG, believe it or not, before the park opens for the season one of the jobs given to the Foreman (or Lead) is to come up with 10 songs to sing to the guests before the drop.

 

During my time at GASM that 'Lose Control' song by Missy Elliot was pretty hot. So every once in a while I would bust out with a verse or 2 over the mic and my crew and I would do some dance moves.

 

We also used to have 'screaming contests' where we would ask the guests in line to scream as loud as they could on the count of 3. Sometimes I would call over to Ninja and the guests in our line would battle against the guests in Ninja's line for the loudest scream.

 

I worked at Splash Waterfalls for a little bit in 2006 and would always joke with the guestd by saying stuff like 'you will not get wet, the water is just an optical illusion'. That season that allowed us to bring our cell phones in the park and I would say stuff like 'Welcome to club Splash!' and play MP3's over the mic from my phone.

 

One of my good friends (still to this day) was the Assistant Foreman at Ninja and got wrote up for playing 'Feeling on your booty' By R. Kelly over the mic. I'll never forget that.

 

Ugh... I wish I was a teen again. I miss those days at SFOG.

[coastercoaster5]

Sometimes the guys operating Tatsu at SFMM. If you are lucky they will rap the whole time.

[Aceattack52]

The Ride Op for Wicked Twister is always hilarious for me. He asks riders if their ride was magically delicious and speaks random phrases like dippin dots before launching them out of the station.

There seems to be a chance that this guy was a little over weight if he was walking about food most of the time.

[rcjp]

I remember, when waiting to ride Blue Streak at CP the ride op said something like: You will climb 78 and hit a top speed of 40 mph! That's bad! You will go upside down a total of.... ZERO times!. I can also recall the guy who was giving the instructions (about loose items and so on) on Gatekeeper, he was kind of rapping and would just shout so hard that his face was completely red. He indeed seemed very motivated. Overall the guys at CP were funny and would often make jokes related to the rides.

[Aceattack52]

I absolutely love this thread!!

 

Acrophobia's operators are by far the best at SFOG, believe it or not, before the park opens for the season one of the jobs given to the Foreman (or Lead) is to come up with 10 songs to sing to the guests before the drop.

 

During my time at GASM that 'Lose Control' song by Missy Elliot was pretty hot. So every once in a while I would bust out with a verse or 2 over the mic and my crew and I would do some dance moves.

 

We also used to have 'screaming contests' where we would ask the guests in line to scream as loud as they could on the count of 3. Sometimes I would call over to Ninja and the guests in our line would battle against the guests in Ninja's line for the loudest scream.

 

I worked at Splash Waterfalls for a little bit in 2006 and would always joke with the guestd by saying stuff like 'you will not get wet, the water is just an optical illusion'. That season that allowed us to bring our cell phones in the park and I would say stuff like 'Welcome to club Splash!' and play MP3's over the mic from my phone.

 

One of my good friends (still to this day) was the Assistant Foreman at Ninja and got wrote up for playing 'Feeling on your booty' By R. Kelly over the mic. I'll never forget that.

 

Ugh... I wish I was a teen again. I miss those days at SFOG.

I think we need a thread for ride op stories because I liked these.

[ajfelice]

I remember, when waiting to ride Blue Streak at CP the ride op said something like: You will climb 78 and hit a top speed of 40 mph! That's bad! You will go upside down a total of.... ZERO times!. I can also recall the guy who was giving the instructions (about loose items and so on) on Gatekeeper, he was kind of rapping and would just shout so hard that his face was completely red. He indeed seemed very motivated. Overall the guys at CP were funny and would often make jokes related to the rides.

 

My short stint on GateKeeper this past September and October redefined what I call good spiels. If the person you are describing is who I think it is, they are easily one of the most enthusiastic and passionate about his job person I have ever met. GK was a privilege to work partly because everyone was so proud of what they were doing and excited to bring their excitement for GK to the guests. I loved the guest interactions in terms of entertainment so much on GK that I'm in the process of again rewriting spiels for coasters in my main park of work. I hold a theory that the more fun, entertaining, and passionate you act towards guests, the more cooperative they tend to be with park rules and safety measures. Even beyond GK, Cedar Point is the model of fun guest interactions by the operators in general. The only other parks I have seen come close to that level of that amount of enthusiasm were Fun Spot and actually Hard Rock Park.

 

Disney, Universal, SeaWorld, and Holiday World may have all been the "nicest" ops I have seen, but they are nowhere near the level of entertaining as CP ops tend to be.

[no_brain_er]

Acrophobia's operators are by far the best at SFOG, believe it or not, before the park opens for the season one of the jobs given to the Foreman (or Lead) is to come up with 10 songs to sing to the guests before the drop.

100% truth. I love most of the songs and rhymes the Acrophobia operators sang. The most memorable one I remember hearing was to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song. The last line the ride op would sing was something along the lines of "If you have Acrophobia then hold on tiiiight. Hooooold ooooon tiiiiiight" and the riders would drop as soon as the ride op was done singing, sometimes after the word "Hold."

 

Acrophobia is just as fun to watch as it is to ride, and a lot of the reason why is the ride ops.

[Randomman295]

Cedar Point has some great ones.

 

When the park slows down on the midweekdays in the evening, things get pretty funny sometimes.

 

I heard one guy on Magnum XL-200 say "As you know, Lake Eerie is home to many different kinds of insects. And since Magnum XL-200 goes 72 miles per hour, please, enjoy your meal."

 

On Wicked Twister, since the train launches directly out of the station, the countdowns have plenty of opportunity for hilarity. One one occasion I recall the ride operator saying "Launching in 5... 1." It took my dad and I completely by surprise and it made the ride one of the better ones of the night.