The Ravings of a Theme Park Junky

An Introduction

I've been a theme park junky my whole life. My family made many summer visits to parks and fairs all over the United States. I have fond memories of these family outings, dating back to toddlerdom. But how was I to know that all this theme park visitation was going to result in a rather unusual career choice.

It all started in college. I came home for the summer after my freshman year, badly needing a job to earn pizza and movie money for the next semester. I could have worked at a local fast food restaurant, as did so many of my peers. I could have worked at the mall, or even at the plethera of stand alone shops that littered our downtown area. But I had a better idea. Living just outside of Chicago in South-Eastern Wisconsin, I thought working at the local Six Flags park might be a fun alternative. I applied for a summer position working in ticket sales, and a career was born!

That summer led me to realize that there are a whole lot of unusual and interesting people out there in the world! I worked for Six Flags for three summers, moving from Group Sales the first year to a thrill ride attraction the next, and finally to the kid's playground area my final summer. Over that time, I amassed quite a collection of humorous stories about the park's guests and my fellow employees. The names have been changed (or added) to protect the innocent (or because I never knew them in the first place) but the stories are true - believe it or not!

Summer of the Nuns

Take for example, Raymond (not his real name), who worked with me at the Group Sales window that first summer. Raymond loved nuns. No, really! He loved nuns. We had several area Catholic schools who visited the park for their end-of-year field trip. Raymond could see the nuns coming from the parking lot a mile away. A shout would go up - "The nun is mine!" and he would happily signal the group down to his window. Not that any of the rest of us minded particularly. This was a day and age before debit cards and ticket vouchers. Nuns (and school groups in general) tended to collect the kid's money on the bus on the way to the park. Nuns in particular were notorious for rolling up with a shoebox full of crumpled dollar bills, nickles, dimes, and quarters. $300 or $400 transactions had to be counted out by hand, one penny at a time. It was not unusal to hear the loud "cha-ching" down at Raymond's station as he dumped the shoebox upside-down at his window to count out the change!

The only thing Raymond liked more than nuns was volleyball! The park had several athletic leagues designed to give the employees a chance to burn off some steam after work. Group Sales decided to enter into the volleyball tournament as a team. We practiced after work nearly every day. Raymond's favorite part of the game was the rule that required teams to rotate through the various positions every time they got the serve. Raymond would holler "Rotate!" at the top of his lungs, and we'd all dutifully move to the next position - but not before doing a rather odd little twist/hula dance that Raymond had created! When asked to submit our team name for the tournament, we couldn't resist calling ourselves the "Rotators!"

Raymond wasn't the zaniest person working at the Group Sales window that summer (although I think he was probably the nicest!). There was also Rob. Rob was the "lead," or front line person in charge. He was responsible for helping us get out of messes we got ourselves into, by assisting guests who were unhappy and straightening out banking problems. He was also responsible for training new employees. On my first day, Rob happily announced that we would go to lunch together! There were cringes up and down the line and I began to wonder what I was getting myself into. Rob was a terrific person, but it turns out he had a tendancy to spit when he got excited. Lunch with Rob meant sitting downwind of a terrible rain storm! And what did they serve in the employee cafeteria that first day? Undercooked barbeque chicken, of course! I came back from lunch that first day peppered in little spots of BBQ sauce.

Rob also had a unique way of dealing with bank overages and underages. Although the park wanted us to work with a great deal of speed to keep the lines moving, they also were very strict about accuracy. Since everything was hand-counted (no computers to keep track of change due back for example) we sometimes missed that mark. Rob kept about $10 in change in his pockets. If he was short, he pulled out enough change to make up the difference. If he was over, he dumped a bit back in his pocket "bank." Because of the weight of the change in his pocket, Rob's pants were nearly always drooping off of his waist. He also had a hard time sneaking up on anyone with all that jingling going on! He wasn't selfish with his pocket bank either. Any employee who requested his help in reconciling a bank error received the benefit. I'm sure had our park auditors known he was doing that, he would have been spitting his food at someone in a non-revenue generating part of the park!

One Summer in Orbit

When I returned to Six Flags the next summer, I decided that working with money was not something I was particularly fond of. I asked to be placed at a ride instead. So, I ended up working at the "Orbit Group" of rides. The Orbit was a rotating wheel that spun you until you were held against your seat back by centrifugal force. It then tilted up so that you were, in effect, flying upside down at the top. The Orbit group was flanked by a couple of kid's rides - The Red Baron flying airplanes, and a car ride - and by the "Lost Parents" center.

As with most theme park rides, we were judged by our per-hour guest counts. Every ride and attraction had an hourly goal, and there were consequences for failing to reach the goal and rewards for exceeding it. I was lucky. My shift usually coincided with Dan's. He and I were the champions at getting guests through the Orbit line! Our secret? Dan could talk on the microphone at 90mph and I could run like the wind! When we ended up together Dan would spiel and I would check the safety locks on the guest cabins. He could deliver the standard Orbit load and takeoff spiel in 3 seconds flat and I was running like a crazy woman to be done at the same time he was. My "safe" spot, where I was to stand while the Orbit was in operation, was at the exit gate. My goal each ride was to make it all the way around the ride, pulling each cabin's "lid" to ensure it was locked in place, and to make it to the exit by the time Dan got to the "...hope you enjoy your ride" part of the spiel. Slower riders were not a problem - I ran right past them and came around for a second swoop. Dan and I almost always had the highest guest counts of the day when we were together.

As the night progressed, Dan got sillier. Guest counts didn't matter so much, as we rarely had a line later in the evening. We would slowly begin to hear celebrity spielers at the Orbit! Dan could do Elvis, John Wayne, and a host of other voices. I never knew who was going to end up delivering the spiel. Sometimes it wasn't even a known celebrity. Often, he would just do the spiel in an odd accent or voice of his own creation. I always wondered what comedy club circuit Dan ended up performing in!

Lost Summer

In addition to working the Orbit, we all took turns sitting in the "Lost Parents" center. Lost Parents was a little red cottage, with coloring books, puzzles, toys and games for lost children to occupy themselves with while waiting for a parent or guardian to find them. Problem was, Six Flags had a rule that anyone under a certain age who was not accompanied by an adult was considered "lost." This meant that we often had poor, unsuspecting children who stopped to ask an employee where the bathroom was, and who suddenly found themselves held against their will in the cottage. We always felt so bad for them, since no one was actively looking for them they often were doomed to stay with us until park close, when we could escort them to wherever they were supposed to meet their groups. We were not, however, supposed to chase a child who ran out the front door of the center. When we had a child who obviously was going to be there all day, we often would mention this rule, in passing. And then, sometimes, we would get busy with paperwork and turn our backs for awhile. We'd then shrug as the child ran past our front window and out into the park! But then, there was Billy. Billy had stopped to ask where his favorite coaster was about five minutes after being dropped off at the front of the park by his parents, who were planning to pick him up after closing. Unfortunately, he'd asked a park security guard who was particularly adamant about following the rules. He was led begrudgingly to our doorstep. But Billy wasn't unhappy about this situation, or at least he didn't show it. Instead, Billy spent the day with us. He was a great comfort to the legitimately lost small children who found their way to us. He played and read and colored with the short-term visitors. We kept reiterating the "no chase" rule, but Billy would nod and continue what he was doing. Every so often, he would sigh and comment about a favorite ride, but he never "ran away." We began using our lunch breaks to take him over to ride the Orbit and other nearby attractions. That night, we walked him up to the front gate to meet his family. I don't know how much fun he actually had, or whether his reluctance to leave was a result of not wanting to break the rules or just an unspoken fear of being out in the park alone. Either way, he was a truly unforgettable kid!

Another unforgettable kid was Cindy. Bugs Bunny and his friends often did meet and greets in the area in front of Lost Parents. Most of the characters would come into Lost Parents once in awhile to help out with particularly upset children. But Bugs was the star of the show and appearing to such a small audience didn't particularly appeal to him, so he was considered a bit standoffish by our team. One day, however, I was in the park as a guest and was sitting on a park bench outside of the Lost Parents Center, watching the characters at play. A family of four was interacting with the characters. The younger child was giggling gleefully as each character posed for a picture with him, but the older daughter, "Cindy" (who was maybe 7 or 8 years old), was acting up. Cindy didn't want anything to do with anything! She was generally behaving like a child who was fed up with the whole process of doing anything other than what she wanted to do. Finally, her mother had seen enough. Angrily, she turned to Cindy and began speaking to her in sign language. Cindy was deaf! Bugs Bunny happened to notice, and instantly knelt down beside the girl and also began signing to her! Cindy's face changed from a scowl to complete delight and surprise. Of all the people she'd encountered on this trip, the one "person" who really understood her and spoke her language was Bugs Bunny! The two chatted until it was time for Bugs to go back inside. From that moment on, Bugs WAS a superstar in my eyes!

One of the policies of Lost Parents centered on when to call Security in to help with a missing child. Security was only called in an "emergency" which usually meant a child under the age of 5 was missing, a child had been missing for a longer period of time, or a child in the Lost Parents Center was ill and needed medical attention (which required a parent's consent). Then, security would put out a report to all units, and the parent or child would be hunted down in the park. The rules changed at night, when all security personnel were summoned to the back of the park to begin the "sweep" - moving guests to the front and out the exit gates! Children under 5 who were lost were still a priority, but older children and missing parents were not since they would be caught in the sweep and would end up at the gate eventually anyway. Policy called for sending a parent who was missing an older child back to the area where the child had last been seen to look again, and then up to the park exit to wait for Security to sweep the child to that area. One night, a frantic woman came running into Lost Parents right at sweep time. Her 6-year-old son, Johnny, was missing and she wanted us to page him. We didn't page under any circumstances, as the paging system was disruptive to other guests and difficult to understand anyway. The chances of a 6-year-old lost in the park hearing and understanding a page were next to impossible. We explained this to the woman, and let her know that security wasn't available but that they were posted at the exit and wouldn't let her child out without her. Her son had only been missing a few minutes, and was probably around the merry-go-round, which she had let him ride by himself, trying to find her at the ride's exit gate. She broke down into hysterics! We didnt understand - we HAD to find her son! Crying, she explained that her older child had been kidnapped two years before and had been found dead. Johnny was her only remaining child. We immediately dropped everything and escorted her to the merry-go-round area ourselves. There we found Johnny calmly waiting by the exit for his panicked mother to return! She gratefully hugged each one of us, after of course nearly squeezing Johnny in half!

Nothing But Net

For my third summer at the park I asked to work in the kid's playground area. This was a massive expance of bounce houses, ball crawls, net climbs, go carts, fun houses, and other assorted play areas. We rotated around from area to area within the playground. One of my favorite places to work was the net climb. This cargo net had two steep grades, the first to a "halfway" platform with escape stairs for those who were leary of the steeper climb to the top platform, some 30 feet up. Rules prohibited adults from climbing. The exception to that rule was of course the employees. WE were encouraged to climb up to rescue children who became stuck or frightened during the climb. We became climbing experts, holding races to the top in the hours before the park opened. Many of us could climb forward or backward, down or up, and could do so without holding onto the sides for support.

I always looked forward to having a child stuck on the climb! I know, that sounds cruel. But I was an expert at helping them get to the top. Even children who were stuck on the first level often wanted to continue to the very top with my help. There's something very satisfying about the proud look of achievement when a child completes a difficult task.

Unfortunately, although the climb itself was quite rewarding, there were some side effects that weren't so much fun. Our "uniform" at Six Flags' kid's area was a pair of culottes and a western style shirt and vest. The uniform was perfect - it managed to be too hot in the summer, too cold when cooler weather moved in; impossible to dry when it rained and sticky when we sweated; and it was ugly to boot! The culottes meant that on the top of the net climb, anyone down below was treated to a free "show!" I only had to look down at the smiling father's faces below to know that they were NOT smiling proudly at their children's accomplishments! After the first days of climbing the net I learned to wear shorts under the uniform. Even then, it wasn't unusual to see a father down below, smiling proudly at their child (and probably imagining that the shorts weren't there!).

Three summers of heat, crowds, and noise, along with long hours on my feet, and I figured I was done with theme parks forever (at least as an employee)! When I returned from college after my senior year, I took the more traditional mall job and left Six Flags to the guests (myself included). I assumed at the time that I had pretty much washed theme park employment out of my system. Little did I know that five years later I would end up employed at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio! But that's another story for another time!