Rider Height Wristbands- What's the Point?

Again, let's assume everyone's points about safety are 100% correct. Why have wrist bands in the first place?

Thabto said:

Then why issue the bands at all and just measure at the rides?

What I'm taking away here is that they can expedite the loading process. If a child has wristband X, they can generally be waved through -- but if the employee in question has any questions ("Sir, your child appears to have waffles stuffed into his shoes") then remeasuring is appropriate.

Captain Hawkeye said:

Again, let's assume everyone's points about safety are 100% correct. Why have wrist bands in the first place?

Richie explained it perfectly (and included various scenarios) two posts above yours. If there's no doubt your kid is above the mark, don't bother with the band as there will be no issue when they get measured at rides. If they are close, get the band. You're still going to get measured sometimes, but it's going to be more of a quick check to make sure the kid is close and not an inch too short with a swapped band. If they see you're close and have a band, they're not going to split hairs with you.

Just my two cents, everything else here has been perfectly covered.

Anyone want to take a bet on whether or not someone asks again what the point of the band is? It's been perfectly explained 5 times now. No parent is ever told that their kid will not be measured for the rest of the day if they get a band.

What, no wrist band? And deprive my kid of a status symbol?

I usually notice another sort of wristband and wonder why someone would waste the money to give their snotty little brats fast lane.

Maybe to give their kids the best possible time?

Because they love them?

I take the money that band would have cost and put it towards the pass so I can take them all summer, not just have short lines once.

The question is perfectly legit. If they measure at the queue, there is zero benefit to anyone for measuring at the point they issue the wrist band. Literally, nothing is accomplished.

GL2CP said:

I usually notice another sort of wristband and wonder why someone would waste the money to give their snotty little brats fast lane.

There are quite a few reasons, probably chief among them being that this would be their only time they get to go to the park all season (for reasons such as money constraints, travel considerations, etc), and they'd like to be able to get all the riding in they can in one or two days.

People need to quit equating FL/FL+ with "rich" or "snotty little brats" or "spoiled." Maybe that family saved up the money so they could give their child(ren) a one-time experience for the summer. A lot of times, this one or two days on a busy Saturday or Sunday in July are the only days they get at the park all year.

Just because you may live close or can afford a pass to go all the time, doesn't mean other families don't consider it a destination where the FL/FL+ wrist bands could be a value to them.

/rant

At KI they sell a height "license" picture and all for something like $10. Same issues as discussed here, kids are measured at the ride and can be turned away.

Hey if you ever want to cheat the system, send your kid into low orbit around Earth for a month or two, and then when they come back, immediately take them to Cedar Point.

At KI as of a couple weeks ago, they were giving out the bracelets at individual rides as well. If a kid was measured and found to be tall enough to ride, the ride ops were offer to give them a bracelet.

Not quite an apples to apples comparison, but I took my nephew to my closest park, Six Flags Great America last year. He had just hit 42 inches and barely at that. He was measured twice by the first ride op we dealt with that day, passed the 42 mark by a hair, got his wrist band (he was beyond excited) and we never got bugged again all day.

I wouldn't have guessed the CP ride ops would still remeasure after seeing the kids with the height bands, but at the end of the day, they have to cover their behinds. Like Jeff said above, double measuring is accomplishing nothing. Maybe it's part of that junky 'safety' stuff they started to half impliment 2 or 3 years ago.

Some of the worst "measurement delay rides" are Troika, Tiki Twirl, Scrambler, Matterhorn, Super Himalaya. These rides are slow loaders as it is, but when there are kids in line that want to ride alone but are too short, then need a certain age rider with them, the loading process comes to a screeching halt while they figure out who is riding with whom or who is or isn't riding.

My son is either 53 7/8" or 54 1/8". It doesn't matter to us as he will not ride Witches Wheel, Raptor, Rougarou. On all the other coasters that we ride, some ask to measure him and it takes all of 10 seconds to do so, no big deal.

From experience there are parents who stuff their kids shoes or have girls where shoes with a slightly larger heel to make a height requirement and get a wrist band. Then change their shoes or take the stuffing out for the rest of the day. In the end it's the ride op who gets the final say on who is tall enough to ride. Ride ops can be held legally liable if a child who is too short rides and gets injured. They're just covering their ass, the parks ass and in the end your child's ass. Way too many people don't take safety on rides seriously and look at height requirements as no big deal.

You may not be a sketchy parent but trust me there are hundreds of them in the park every single day trying anything they can to get their kids on rides who don't meet certain requirements. The ops are only doing their job as they're trained to do it. Humans make it so we can't have anything nice.

They're especially useful in, say, Kiddie Kingdom or the two Snoopy lands. In the kids' areas, my children never get/got (tense depends on which child we are currently talking about) measured once they don a wristband for the various attractions. They just smile and flash the band. Mind you, at the beginning of the season this would not take place as nearly everyone is overdoing everything.

I'm 6-1, and I actually had a ride op stop my on my way into Maverick to measure me to make sure I was not "too tall to ride"; this was in early June. I'm hoping his eye for tallness has improved.

Take the kiddos to the bigger rides, though, and they're going to get measured. Like they should.

We're also not talking a dramatic amount of resources here.

Sounds like some entitled parent is upset because his/her kid was measured more than once. And just how many rides did this inconvenience cheat you out of riding?