Down for the season?

Cedar Point will fire you, or at the very least, won't hire you back the next season (although in operations this year, I'm guessing a lot of people wouldn't want to come back.

I've known the people in marketing for a very long time. If they say that they intend to reopen the ride, then that's what they intend to do. If it doesn't pan out, so be it, but if it was going to be outright down for the rest of the season, they would come out and say it. They're hooked in and know what's going on, and they have never tried to deceive the press or the public regarding ride availability. It would very obviously come back to bite them in the ass.

I'm aware that they make it known that they could fired you for devulging information on-line, but I've never actually heard an instance of this. If that did happen, I'm sure that person would spread that around as well. It's probably more likely that you wouldn't get rehired.

This is why if you post here while working there, you have to be very selective in what you do say because you don't know where the company would draw the line.

"...although in operations this year, I'm guessing a lot of people wouldn't want to come back..."

This is so true, and unfortunately most of the people that won't be coming back are the ones that care the most about how well the place is run. With the current policies in place, it's just too tedious to try to do the job and still have fun while doing it.

Oh, how I long for the days of character ride signs...

Come on... you've been around long enough to see that "talkers" have been canned and complained here. Then we all made fun of them for being stupid. :)

I talked to some folks tonight, and word is that if Jasper gets his way, Twister will run again before closing day.

Really? Maybe I never really paid much attention to people complaining about being fired for saying something they shouldn't have.

Maybe I thought it wouldn't pertain to me so I didn't find it that interesting,

Twister down again 10/02. Hopefully, if what you say is true Jeff, it will be up when I return Oct 23rd, or possibly if I go last weekend of the season.

I wasn't fired for stuff I posted on here, but I feel that I came close... definitely a whim of the upper management type of thing. I shut my trap after that :)

As for seasonals not knowing anything, I think that's a little extreme. We knew a little more than most of the customers, but we weren't 100% in the loop either. A good example would be when a certain routine maintenance issue would come up (a bad wheel, for instance). We generally knew how long the ride would be down for those types of issues, but told the customer that we didn't know how long. That's as much to cover our butts as anyone else's of course, just in case something else is wrong and the ride ends up being down longer. But that's an example of a seasonal knowing something.

One incident in particular comes to mind where the employees were specifically told that something was confidential and was not to be told to anyone... including the workers on the ride who hadn't been there during the incident. I generally agreed with those types of policies given the nature of how issues can be blown out of proportion and used in the press against a park and the industry as a whole.

That's a good way of summing up the situation.

Seasonal employees are told to "lie" to the customer on a daily basis when it comes to routine situations. Of course we know how long it should take to transfer a train off for a bad wheel. The only problem is that if we quote a time and it takes longer than that, the guests get very upset very quickly.

But there were a few times this season where I felt that boundary of what's okay to keep from the guests was crossed. When you know at 6:00pm that your ride won't be going up for the rest of the evening (11:00pm closing), is it fair to keep telling guests that "we hope to have the ride up and running as soon as possible." We had to fight just to earn the ability to say the delay was expected to be "lengthy."

As for posting information as an employee, I don't doubt the park will have you reprimanded (and even fired) for being too open about information. I'm sure the park didn't circulate a memo midsummer "reminding" employees of the park's guidelines on revealing company information and require all employees to sign it just for the heck of it. People did lose their jobs this summer for violating those guidelines.

In my 25 years as an electrician, I have never had the opportunity to see a transformer break. (Except for those junk x-formers on door bell kits.) I would assume if it is a transformer, it burnt up, not broke.

I am not trying to be a jerk here or step on anyone's toes, this is just my professional opinion.

I may be just blowing sunshine up my own a$$ but if it is a transformer, it must be something that has to be made. These LIM's require a hell of a jolt to get you going that fast. These motors consume a lot of power and it takes a toll on the x-former(s). I have never seen the electrical room but I imagine this facility having enough power to feed a small town. If it is a single x-former, it must be big as hell! So shipping would be tough too. Not that there aren't cargo planes out there. It would weigh a lot! You can laugh at me but I know a little about LIM’s from school. Although they were just beginning to experiment WAY back then!

All thing considered, this transformer just isn't in stock on someone's shelf or it would be there already. Considering that the ride was made in Switzerland, the voltages here and there are quite different. So I believe this has to be a special order kind of thing that has to wait for it's time to be manufactured. I would assume it would be copper wound and few companies manufacture those on a daily basis.

I believe people in operations would like to be more specific, but you need to cover your axx in these situations.

I hope this sheds some light on the situation. We all know CP doesn't want ANY rides down ever, but when they go down, your understanding is appreciated.

The steel and the trains are made in Switzerland, but I doubt much else is. The only non-US impulses are in Japan (the first one) and one in Taiwan. The other five are in the US.

I was at CP Sunday and noticed a WT worker on another ride. When I said, "Didn't you used to work on Wicked Twister?" said worker replied: "I still do. It'll be open Friday."

When I asked what was wrong with it, this worker wouldn't budge, saying that he or she would if he or she could.

So does this mean that Twister will be reopening Friday night?

We'll just have to wait and see..

Glad to here that, if it is true!

Gah... won't go this Friday unless Twister is open... must.. know.. for.. sure!!!

what a shame, i was hoping to get some year end rides this saturday...

maybe i'll get lucky.

don't be surprised if you guys get to ride her again this weekend...

hope for the best!

Woot! I hope that's true since I'd planned to be there this weekend anyways.

I'll be quite disappointed if WT is closed on the 23/24, the day I'm going. I was hoping to get 5 rides in hitting the BIG 25!! Please get her fixed CP.

Check the latest news, it should be up and running this weekend.

Yippie!

I'll keep my fingers crossed til saturday!

"Also, didn't the maintenance get the ride back up the same day the cable broke last time." (referring to my last post about TTD)

No...they didn't. I can clearly remember wanting to go into the park on my day off and get pictures of the cables just hanging there. It took three days, the third day it was running by the afternoon.

And as far as me being an ignorant moron...lets look at how CP treats some of its employees...Myself as an example....here's the story.

I worked Cadillac Cars, and I was bringing a car into the station and the brakes failed (management swears these cars have no brakes, yet maintenance puts on the Stop tags, "Added spring to brake"). Well, I hit the car in front of me, and me and my fellow employees laughed, as did the guests on the car I was jumping. But the supervisor saw it, and called us all into her office afterwards. Now, I was the only one asked this question--->Why didnt you take the cars off the track that the brakes dont work on?..I said well, for one, im not in charge, two, I wasnt told to take them off the track. "Well dont you think that's a safety issue?"..Certainly, but once again, I wasnt told to remove them from the track. So the next day, I went into work at 11:30, and proceeded to remove these cars that the brakes didnt function properly on from the track....Once again, I am called into Park Ops (Second time of six in 2 days). Well, maintenace wasnt happy that I took 9 cars from the track. Now the park wasnt busy, we were only running 7 or 8 cars that day (out of 22). I got yelled at for taking them off....Manager said there must have been some kind of mix up the night before. Then I had my intelligence insulted (How?..by this question.."Are you sure there is a brake on these cars?"..I went to school for auto/diesel mechanics, I know what a brake is) So, after the sixth time getting called into Park Ops, I handed them my resignation. Now, you tell me who the moron is here...Yell at me for NOT doing something, then yell at me for doing it...make up your mind, and be careful about who you call ignorant S2Kster. I love Cedar Point, just not some of its managers. *** Edited 10/8/2004 12:08:14 AM UTC by Richland3Firefighter***