Question for Ride Op's

I've always wanted to be a ride operator sometime in my life, but do you ever get tired or sick of the job after a while, or is it always fun?

From what I hear, there are always "challenges" in this job. (Guests complaining, guests puking, guests who can't decide if they want to ride or not, guests that ask "When is it going to stop raining?) That last one is my favorite.
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Homer Simpson: Will you stop your spontaneous cussing?
Bart Simpson: Hell yeah.

Sometimes we do get quite bored. But then something unexpected happens and it all seems better. Such as a guest deciding to lose his lunch while the ride is in full swing. On our ride, if conditions are favorable, this causes the puke to be generosly spread out over the ride and foundation. This is very messy but is funny when looking back on it. This, as well as other surprises, are the kind of things that make the job fun.

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Monster Ride Host
2nd Year

As with any job, it's totally what you make of it. You can lament the fact that you have to do the same exact thing over and over again for 10-12 hours at a time or you can make yourself enjoy doing it many ways, maybe by saying hello to guests, even smiling at them helps a lot.

Side note #1: I didn't realize how much of a difference there was between a person's reaction to a big smile and a person's reaction to a blase or unhappy face. I never realized that they noticed our moods so much.

If any of you have ever seen me working Chaos, I got pretty fired up doing the spiels and even when I was putting down the T-bars. Sometimes, you gotta make your own fun where it has the potential to not exist. One unhappy person on a crew is sometimes all it takes to reduce the entire crew to acting as if they're being put through some terrible experience. On the same token, one happy, excited crew member brings up the spirits of the others sometimes. I've been both on crews, but the majority of the times I have been the happy one, just because it's my nature to try to make people feel better.

I guess the point is, the guests are there, they want to have fun, and it's basically your job to ensure that they are (1) safe and (2) having a good time. The ride ops who get bored with their jobs are the ones who cause guests to not be happy, and that's certainly not what we want.

It's really the laughs and excitement coming from the little kid who has just ridden her first roller coaster, or the cute boy who wants to take a picture with you when you get off the ride because you made him smile, or the guests who want to ride again and again and take the effort to compliment our operation that makes working at Cedar Point an awesome job of which we can be proud and happy to go to work every day.

Sidenote #2: The cute boy episode really happened to me when I worked on Mine Ride. It was one of the highlights of my year.

Besides, how can we get bored when there are coaster enthusiasts to entertain us with their shenanigans?

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Natalie
ATL Zone 3 Sweeps 2000


*** This post was edited by Backstreet Girl on 4/27/2000. ***

heheheh speils. They were fun on Gemini. I hope MForce has a head set and not the hand held kind - you get good bass frequency on headsets. if you shove the mic close to your mouth say something really loud and deep it can make the platform shake.

That's a simple answer. Either you like it or you don't. That pretty much goes for any job at the point. Personally being a ride operater is not something that would be on the top of my list. All you do is press some buttons that become second nature after awhile. It's actually a very easy job as long you stay awake and keep an open eye on what's going on..lol. Just speak clearly into the microphone and repeat what's been said a million times and look for the ok sign and press the button.

I think the reason I liked working in Ride Ops so much was the fact that I basically got to be an impromptu entertainer. Instead of working in Live E and having a script I would have to follow, I got to make up my own stuff spontaneously, and entertain people while I did it.

Don't get me wrong, safety comes first, but it's just so much fun to make people laugh and smile. :o)

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Natalie
ATL Zone 3 Sweeps 2000