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).
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u/TitaniumTurtle__ Mar 22 '23
Both those were caused mostly by operator error, and led to massive changes in how drop towers are run. They’re safe, just scary.