Discover Top Posts Tagged with #ride op

I love my job

#cedar point #roller coaster #employee #guy #me #ride op

You mentioned being a ride op in a tag, what ride(s) did/do you work on?

oh hello! well okay so I’ve been a ride op at an amusement park for three years (I won’t say where bc Internet Safety) but I’ve worked quite a few rides there! Just to name a few, I’ve worked the frisbee ride, the roller coaster, the Ferris wheels, the pirate ship, kiddie rides, the teacup ride, the bumper cars…so on and so forth. Basically, I’ve worked flat rides that are pretty common in other amusement parks around the United States. I’ve seen a lot of…stuff at my job lmao being a ride op is really wild

#ask #anonymous #ride op

2018 Intro

I am back as a lead this year. At the end of the year, there is a rehire party for anyone planning on coming back the next year. For rides, we get to put down our top 3 choices to operate the coming year. The last 2 years, I was in area 2 (the park is divided into 4 areas, the 4 corners of the park), so I probably wasn't going to be back there again. My 1 supe last year, D, was interested in taking me to area 4 with him. I liked having him as a supe, but I also liked having J (not the same J from the bag story) as a supe, and he was going to area 3. (M was staying in area 2.) I liked the idea of working our LIM coaster, because I could trick people about when they'd launch. I put that as my 3rd choice (area 3), our sky coaster (area 1) as my 2nd choice (I got trained as a flight suiter ther at the end of the 2016 season, and it was pretty cool), and an inverted coaster in area 4 as my 1st choice, since I knew D was interested in keeping me. At least the head supe of each area is in a room and gets to "fight" over who they want in their areas. J got me. I didn't get the LIM coaster though. Instead I got my favorite flat ride, a 4D interactive ride. You sit in the car with 3D glasses. The car moves along the track and moves with the action so you feel like you're actually there. And you shoot the bad guys. We're supposed to have a scrambler type ride paired with us, but something was wrong with the cars, so they had to order new ones. (The 4 of us leads got trained on it before we opened and before they knew about the cars.) We've been open about 6 weeks now, and it was only supposed to take a month. But we've already been wondering if it will even open at all this year. It is pretty old. It's been in the park I think since the early '70s.

#work #ride operator #my post #ride op #work placement #lead

“Ma’am why were you videoing someone else’s kid?”

So since we’re still trying to get some traffic on this blog, I figured I’d start sharing some of my own ride op stories.

I work at several different rides in my park, and on this particular day I was at the bumper cars. Normally we only staff this ride with one operator, two if its going to be very busy. The second person usually just helps more the cars, since they have to be out of the way if they aren’t being used.

Now on this day it was rather busy and we really should have had two people there, but alas I was by myself. About thirty minutes into my shift my supervisor comes up to me and tells me that I’m going to be getting a trainee in about thirty minutes. So not only do I have to deal with a fairly long line, but now I’ve got to try to teach as well.

My trainee shows up about thirty minutes later as promised. She was, fortunately, really nice and learned very fast and we’re actually friends.

But that wasn’t my problem that day.

So naturally the bumper cars has a height requirement, but a lot of guests seem to think that anyone can ride since its a kiddie ride. I’ve had parents try to bring actual babies on the ride. Anyway, my trainee and I are checking kids heights, and since there’s two of us its pretty much impossible for both of us to miss a short kid. This lady comes up with her son, and he’s too short by like a solid three inches. I tell her politely but firmly that her kid can’t ride.

Now normally this is when I’d expect to hear “Please?” or “But he rode this other ride!” but that’s not what I got. This lady straight up told me that I had let another kid on the ride that was even shorter than hers and that she had video evidence of it. I’m presuming that she did this to try to scare me but honestly at this point in my day I gave no fucks. I even told her that she could go to guest relations and tell them that I sent her. I never heard about it again so I’m assuming that either a) this video didn’t actually exist or b) guest relations told her that it didn’t matter because her kid still wasn’t tall enough.

Oh and to top the whole day off whoever was supposed to relieve me for my lunch never showed so I had to call my supervisor and have him relieve me.

-Mod J

#mod j #stories #theme park #theme park stories #ride op #ride operator #disney #six flags #cedar point #cedar fair #theme park employee #seaworld #If you wish to remain in the queue house feel free to do so

Work Training, Part 2

On Sunday of training, we had 2 of our new hires come in. (One was actually there for Saturday afternoon.) We were supposed to have 4, but I’m not completely sure what happened to the other 2. The leads were saying something about one of them already wanting to transfer departments.Our area manager, “Jeremy,” brought up a completely new girl, “Shelly,” to get trained as we were getting started. We had someone check the gates and someone check the tunnel. We put the ride into block check mode, started the lifts, and sent the 1st train out for the ride to stop it on lift 1. The panel (main set of buttons, usually situated at the front of the train/car, and, at least at my park, the one with the microphone) person and the enable (other, smaller set of buttons) person tried to bring the 2nd train into the station from the ready brakes, which is right behind the station. It wouldn’t move. It was a little chilly, and the ride doesn’t like the cold very well. Giraffe dispatched for a supervisor to call us to see what they wanted us to do, either call downtime and have the maintenance people take care of it or if we could push it ourselves because that’s all it really needed. The supe that called said he would bring our department manager, Jay, by to help out. The 2 of them came by with our female area supe , “Mary,” and a managerial supe, “Eve.” While the panel and enable operators pressed their buttons, the supervisors pushed the train. And, success! We got it into the station. They left, and we were able to continue on with safeties.

It was what they call an “emergency procedure” day, which is where we get practice with downtime (technical difficulties) situations. I had forgotten about this when Eve came back around the time we were finishing safeties. She asked if anyone wanted to ride. Four of us got on. “Connor” was in the very front. “Dave” was 2nd car 1st row. I was right behind him. “Hailey” was in the 4th car. Connor’s a goofball. He was being crazy Saturday as well as before this on Sunday. Even as we were on our way out of the station, he had his arms straight up and kept wooing. We go through the transfer area and start up lift 1. Then we stop. That’s when I realized that it was planned. That’s why Eve was there and asked if anyone wanted to ride. Jack was on lift and had to come down and talk to us as if we were guests. Our area supervisor who responded to the downtime, “Dan” came up with our female lead, “Kelly.” Dan explained to us that we were having technical difficulties and they were going to unload us, starting from the back of the train. Hailey was helped off 1st, then me, then Dave, and finally Connor, who was really disappointed we didn’t get to ride the whole thing. When we got down and outside the gate, we had to give our “names” to Giraffe. It’s a liability issue when we have guests getting unloaded, in case anything were to happen to them, then at least we’ll know if they were actually on the ride or not. Connor told Giraffe his name was Mick Lovin. Giraffe had been looking down at the paper, but looks up with a slight grin and says, “What?” Connor replied, “First name Mick. Last name Lovin.” Usually when we have to do an emergency unload (any unload that’s somewhere besides the station), the supervisors will give the guests a ride exit pass, which is like our fast pass-type virtual line queuing system, except it’s a piece of paper that’s good for 1 use to enter through the exit (or appropriate fast pass entrance). Our exit passes were vouchers to use at the pizza place on the other side of the park for a combo (pizza slice and salad or cheese bread) for $3. We had to wait for lunch, though, so we got more cycles in.

After lunch, we started training at the kiddie rides. We all started out as a teacup-type ride, but then Giraffe took 4 of us to a plane ride while leaving the other 4 with Kelly at the teacup ride. One of the supes came by to say that Kelly’s group could go down to the funnel cake stand for free funnel cake, and in a bit, my group could go. We kept going with our cycles and decided we didn’t want to go down. Dan came back and said it was like a 30 minute wait. When Kelly’s group came back, they said it wasn’t even that great of funnel cake. (From my 2 years in food service, I do know that you have to get the ratio of dry mix to liquid just right for them to turn out well.) My group finished the plane ride before Kelly’s group finished the teacups. We went over to the Samba balloon ride (you can look up any of these ride types on wikipedia if you’re not sure what I’m talking about), when we finished the planes. Finally, we did the teacups. We got to go over to test, and Kelly’s group came later when they were finished. I think the Sky Coaster people were still looking for fliers, but I was kind of ready to go at that point.

#ride op

I rode the biggest coaster in Texas today

For those of you who don't know I work as a ride operator and I can't move up at my job partially because I'm completely terrified of heights and fast roller coasters and going upside down. Iron rattler, the first drop is 170 feet in the air and it goes 70 mph and goes upside down one time in a zero g roll.

#ride operator #ride op #iron rattler

Things every ride operator needs

- a BS dector - cigarettes - mad people skills - ability to explain things 5,462,725,153,084 times and still have a smile on their face - cigarettes - the patience of a saint - sunglasses - tolerance - cigarettes - ability to stay hydrated and well fed every fucking day - a colorful cussing vocabulary

#rides #ride op #ride operator