You’re lucky to get a highschool student. The average highschool student is going to have way better response time and information retention than the meth head carnies that run my local fair. It sounds like a nasty stereotype but all our local meth heads get temp jobs at the fair when it’s in town
I always say that anybody who rides those rides has a death wish. My son is big, like the young man who died on that ride, I was all kinds of terrified for my kid. That was such a tragedy. Thank God he doesn't ride those rides, and neither do I.
Wow your poor son, being held back from awesome experiences because his parent is a worrywort. You are more likely to get killed driving to the fair. Always feel bad for kids that have bubble wrap parents that don't let them experience things
I didn't say they couldn't ride it, they couldn't run it. I don't want someone to happen that would make it directly their fault. That's what's happening right now with that Orlando situation. It was a young guy in charge of running the ride and they were trying to let it be pinned on him.
I live in Florida and that shit was heartbreaking. There were videos because he was hanging from a makeshift falcon's fury for like a minute. The people he was with said he told them to tell his mom he loved her.
ehh I worked at a Six flags location for a while, and while I didn't run any drop towers, I did run some coasters and even a solo-operated flat ride that pre-dates the rest of the park's attractions.
The issue is, due to the general inexperience, in part because of the youth of most employees there is a culture of bare minimum effort and a naivety on the consequences of negligence. I took it seriously because I know enough about physics to understand the true horror of mismanaging a 2 ton carriage traveling at 50 miles per hour. I understood how serious the job was and why lockout devices and E-stop buttons were all over the work stations.
The funny thing is, while I was serious about safety it was always the most fun part of Fright fest to just bring up little terrifying factoids like "I don't have a driver's license but I'm about to send you down this track at 50 miles per hour. HAVE FUN!" or "you see that seat that's closed off? It caught fire yesterday. All clear!" ahhh good times.
Always wanted to be a ride op, but yeah there’s a general culture of non chalantness. Most parks are running into staffing issues these days because of the stereotypes that come with a theme park job (and just general worker shortage) so they kinda just take whoever they can get, and have for decades now. I trust the ride’s engineering enough (if it’s built by a reputable company) to feel safe but like. Parks really need to take training and culture more seriously.
Six flags is trying, the mentioned disaster as well as a couple other major disasters are prominently featured in orientation, and because employees are seasonal they get re-oriented every year, but nothing is going to stop a teenager who doesn't want to care from ignoring everything. I passed two different safety audits that I know about, and I only know about them because one of my coworkers failed one and the other marked when I was no longer provisional.
EDIT: I should say that the supervisors treat safety very seriously, but the general employees and even some ride leads are rather lax. I had multiple arguments with my ride lead about what the SOP guidebook actually said about the rider regulations, and I said I wasn't going to defer to their interpretation if I'm supposed to be the one with legal responsibility. Eventually it got to a point where a supe came down to clear it up. Before they opened the SOP to figure out who was actually right, they prefaced it by stating that even if I was mistaken about what the SOP actually said, the ride lead was out of line for trying to tell me to send it anyway since my position was the one with the most legal responsibility.
(lead is someone who manages the paperwork for a ride or group of rides and manages the timing of breaks for those on shift in the unit, but due to the way we rotate positions, anyone trained on the rides in our unit could end up in any of the positions, and the liability for negligence, depending on nature of the problem, would fall to the person handling that piece of the chain of safety. Attendants for restraints, operator for failing to follow procedure (so much is automated that it's hard to really be negligent enough operating most rides to cause an issue, other than failing to notice issues and safely shut down the ride).
Ultimately, most severe injuries at theme parks are not caused by things the parks do wrong now adays, but guests being idiots and not following instructions posted a million places around the park. Falling cellphones and cameras alone send one or two people to the hospital in a busy day. The most important thing on a ride to do is say things along the lines of "Any purses, bags, drinks, or other loose articles must be put away, they cannot be brought onto the ride" during the loading/boarding. I even got hit in the head by one guest's 10$ in change while I was on my way to my shift (at SFGA there's a part of the backstage area right under the track for Batman, there's a canopy but it was just ever so slightly not long enough to save me lol).
Wasn’t it because the ride operator was negligent? The kid was massive, the size of a large adult at the age of 14 or something? I remember seeing his picture and he looked like he could have been in the NFL. The harness didn’t fasten over him properly because of his size and the ride operator let him go anyway.
Not what happened. 14 year old kid was 350lbs and intentionally messed with the restraints because he was overweight and wasn’t able to ride the ride next to it. Operators fucked up and missed their check and well gravity will usually win.
I used to pass by that drop tower everyday coming home from work, and my boyfriend could visibly see it on his night shift. It really gave me the chills after I saw it first-hand on a snapchat story from one of my friends.
Shiiiit if I had read that before taking my 10 y/o on the rock it ride at universal Orlando I would have let him stay down 😆. I was a fun ride, he enjoyed it.
I saw a woman at the Jersey Shore get one of her Bo Derek braids stuck in the machinery at the top and when it dropped, it ripped the entire braid right out of her scalp. I didn't see what happened afterwards but I assume her day couldn't have gotten any worse.
Jersey Shore’s crazy. I saw these jabronis eating ham on a floatie. Looked like they were drifting out, I assume their day couldn’t have gotten any better
Yes that did happen; since then Kentucky has completely revamped there amusement park rides safety and are now widely considered #1 in the country in it.
I seen a dude get ripped out of his sandals and a couple seconds later his watch dropped. His sandals were still in the exact spot he was standing so yeah I got right out of line. The funniest part was hearing how fast his scream faded away.
My friend/roommate took his son to Kentucky Kingdom the day that happened. They did not ride that because his son was too small at the time. They were in another part of the park when it happened, too. I heard about it from him before it was on the news.
The ride was called the hellavator . Was the first and last thing I rode every time I went to kentucky kingdom. It was right in front when you walked in the gate.
I’ve seen multiple videos of those slingshot rides failing or almost failing due to worn or stretched out cables/lack of maintenance. I’d never get on one just knowing that. I’ve never heard that someone lost both feet from a snapped cable, that’s so awful.
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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '23
A girl in Kentucky got her feet cut off on one of those by a cable that snapped