Rider Height Wristbands- What's the Point?

If you're wondering, I'm not promoting the idea that beer/drinks should be allowed on a ride. We didn't ask, it was their idea. I also suspect it has something to do with the type of day it was at the park; there were so few guests there that everything (including Volcano and Intimidator) were complete walk-ons. It was just a nice surprise.

As mentioned above, I wouldn't fault an employee (or get upset) for not letting my daughter ride if she was a millimeter short...nor have I the times it has happened. I expect the employees to have different reactions (which they do), and I also expect Cedar Point to, on average, enforce their policies in a stricter fashion when compared to the other parks, which also holds true.

Cartwright said:
If they wanted someone who was 47 7/8" tall riding the ride, they would make the height requirement 47"

Or their instructions to employees could be to simply round to the nearest 1/4". That's an explicit policy with no wiggle room. You're making it more complicated than it needs to be.

Shades said:
What if my kid is 1.5mm too short?

1.5/25.4 = 0.06" ==> your kid is good to go, enjoy your ride!

...why shouldn't they let your -2.0mm kid ride, I mean c'mon what is 0.5mm?

2.0/25.4 = 0.08" ==> my kid is good to go, neat-o daddy-o!

...what if my kid is 120.42mm.

If your kid is 120.42mm, I would say "congratulations, what's the due date?"

And don't get me started on the beer on the ride.

Yes, it's a genuine miracle that no one died in that scenario.

So where is your cut-off? 2.5, 3.0, or even lower? You have to have a cut off and then you are in the same place we currently are with the 48" height. Why can't 48" be the cut-off?

My issue with the beer is why can't I have one on the ride? That guy just did. The rule applies to everyone not just some of the time but all of the time. If the guy ahead of me got to have a beer on a ride and they wouldn't let me I would immediately go to guest services and I suspect the ride operator would get in just a bit of trouble.

My point is if you bend a rule for someone then you have to bend it for everyone.

I can't even imagine the nightmare that would be a "round to the nearest quarter inch" policy. How do you put that in an operating manual? How do you train that? How do you enforce it? How do you explain it to guests? Do ride ops, in addition to the height stick have a little pocket ruler they pull out? It would be an absolute nightmare and likely not something any inspector, designer, or lawyer would sign off on.

The height requirement should be the cutoff. 48" is 48". 54" is 54". If I have $20 on a Chili's gift card and my bill is $21, Chili's doesn't round off that last dollar. They charge me the dollar. Many, many things in this world have a gray area. To me, this is not one of them.

Shades said:

So where is your cut-off? 2.5, 3.0, or even lower?

For my example, it's to the nearest 1/4", so anyone within 1/8" of an inch would get a pass.

But really, we're getting too deep in the weeds here. The point is, it's nice to see employees exhibit some common sense, rather than be unthinking robots in every situation.

If the guy ahead of me got to have a beer on a ride and they wouldn't let me I would immediately go to guest services and I suspect the ride operator would get in just a bit of trouble.

Wow.

Cartwright said:

I can't even imagine the nightmare...

"Nightmare"? If a human, at working age, cannot gauge what 1/8" looks like, they shouldn't be handling sharp objects, let alone be the gateway to whether or not a guest at CP is exposed to IMMINENT DANGER!!!11!!!!!

If I have $20 on a Chili's gift card and my bill is $21, Chili's doesn't round off that last dollar.

Of course they round. Maybe not to the nearest dollar, but practically every transaction that includes a percentage tax (or percentage surcharge of any kind) rounds up or down. It's not complicated, nuanced math. Rounding is literally just basic math. This would be no different.

And if you're so convinced that inspectors, designers, lawyers, etc. would experience unavoidable cranial explosion under these circumstances, how are they able to deal with the unavoidable reality that every single measuring device in the park will vary by some amount? Possible by even more than 1/8"!

Why has this group of worry warts not convened an emergency quorum to establish a regulatory board that calibrates these measuring devices? People's lives are hanging in the balance!

But what states that the high school or college aged kid on his summer vacation job at Cedar Point is the person equipped to make this "common sense" decision ? If Walter Bolliger, Claude Mabillard and their engineering team were at the front of Valravn and told me that the person who was "almost at the 54" " mark was good to ride, I would trust their judgement. If the average CP ride op told me that, I would question their credentials.

With a job like this, you do sort of have to be an "unthinkable robot" and do exactly as you are told, every time, with zero exceptions.

I'm not understanding what there is to question here. A 48 inch requirement is a 48 inch requirement. The end.

However, of all the years I worked in ride operations, I never understood what was so hard or complicated for Guest Services (or any place that officially measures for that matter) to let guests know that their child may still be measured at all ride entrances and the reason why. Simply do so while measuring so it's not wasting time and send them on their way.

I don't think the GP or even enthusiasts for that matter understand how many parents a day will cut off the wristband from the older sibling and place it on the younger one to try to fool the ride host. The parents are placing their kid in danger and don't care. Quite frankly it's sad that a complete stranger (ride host) cares more about the child's safety. I'm sure by ensuring all ride hosts measure individuals of questionable height, it covers Cedar Fair's butt.

I think it's a great rule, and really, how much of an inconvenience is it? But I would rethink the whole wristband situation so nobody is able to tamper with them during the day.

An engineering term that may be helpful (or not, because arguments) is factor of safety. If you are designing based on a 20% factor of safety, then loads need to be designed to handle 20% more than they are expected to handle.

I'm sure there is an actual design safety number, and then the park's height requirement for the attraction. There will be some difference between these two numbers, and the park is at liberty to decide how closely they want to enforce those requirements.

CPMaverick, The original 1989 Arrow ride manual for Magnum that hangs out in a drawer in the electrical room underneath the station states that riders must be at least 42" to ride (the park requires 48"). I have no proof of this, but I worked at the ride for three years and skimmed through the manual countless times on my 15-minute breaks while soaking up AC.

I'm fine with them enforcing the exact height requirement, however if they are going to measure you at every ride (even if you have a wristband) then what's the point to the wristband in the first place? Having a daughter that crossed the 52" height mark last summer, I can see the frustration in this. If the measuring was consistent it would be one thing, but we could go to Valravyn (be tall enought), walk to GateKeeper (not be tall enough), walk to MaxAir (not be tall enough), and walk over to Windseeker (be tall enough). Even though she was measured at guest services as being 52". If you're going to be that strict about the measurement, at least make sure the measurement is accurate.

So what if the measuring at one point (either the ride or guest services, take your pick) says they are tall enough and the measurement at the other point says too short? Which do you believe or do you go for 2 out 3? Or 3 out of 5?

As someone else mentioned previously, the only way to prove that there are inconsistencies between the metal measuring thingies is to bring in an actual tape measure.

That being said, the rider height wristbands seem like more and more of a waste of time. I get that it can be a token of achievement for reaching a new height, but beyond that what benefit is there to getting measured at Guest Services? Maybe half of the rides will not measure, but is that really saving you even a remotely significant amount of time?

CP Maverick said:

I'm sure there is an actual design safety number, and then the park's height requirement for the attraction. There will be some difference between these two numbers, and the park is at liberty to decide how closely they want to enforce those requirements.

And to add to that some companies have an advertised minimum requirement but actually have a much lower number they are safe with. A few years ago I was tasked with rewriting operational guides for an entire amusement park and water park. This required me to have meetings with ride manufactures and to read up on all of their ride manuals. This is where I learned that a few companies actually felt safe with lower numbers than what was advertised but added extra inches specifically to compensate for if a ride host let a child on that was lower than what the park wanted. Some differences were as much as two inches while most were around one inch. In one case the minimum was so low from the manufacture that we felt better raising it by 4 inches.

Cedar Point makes the height requirements 48", 48" inches for a reason. If you 47 and 7/8 inches tall, guess what? The child is not tall enough. There is no wiggly room. "But, but, he's only 1/8 too short... He just barely misses it" Guess what? He's 1/8 of an inch too short. If you let one child who is just slightly too short to ride the ride, then it begins a slippery slope of letting 1/3 of an inch too short to ride, the 1/2 too short to ride, then letting those 46 inches ride the 48 inch rides. It's the same as the Ohio law that states that you must be 21 to buy & consume alcohol. It's not 20 years, 11 months, and 3 days, it's 21 years.

The problem with the wristbands is - people are taller in the morning then at night. As children walk throughout the day, they could lose a tiny bit of their height. Their lost height could be the difference between just meeting the height requirements to just being under the height requirements. Parents also could try to swap wristbands between older siblings / older friends.

If the child gets measures at the ride again, it takes a whole 1 1/2 minutes at the most?

Their property, their rides, their rules, their insurance, their liability, their osha requirements ... problem solved.

I don't think anyone here is arguing against the safety or liability regarding this. Simply why bother having the wristbands if its not consistent at the park.... or as we have learned consistent amongst multiple parks in the chain. As Smiley said above and others in this thread, "The problem with wristbands is...". So maybe the problem is....the wristbands?

The wristbands are a general guide to whether each child is tall enough to ride, but the ultimate responsibility is with the employee tasked with measuring heights. It's not a perfect process; it's a compromise between the wristbands and measuring each and every child that passes through the turnstiles.

Which apparently they do now, regardless of wristbands.

Why not drop the wristbands and let the Guest Services people service the guests in a useful manner (i.e. some way other than measuring kids who will be remeasured at each ride regardless of what Guest Services says)?

djDaemon said:
For my example, it's to the nearest 1/4", so anyone within 1/8" of an inch would get a pass.

What makes your hard stop measurement of 47-7/8" any different than a hard stop measurement of 48"? The same problem still exists with the 47-7/8" stick. Let's say your kid is 47-13/16". Is the employee supposed to be an unthinking robot and not let the kid ride because of a tiny 1/16"?

Captain Hawkeye said:
Which apparently they do now, regardless of wristbands.

Why not drop the wristbands and let the Guest Services people service the guests in a useful manner (i.e. some way other than measuring kids who will be remeasured at each ride regardless of what Guest sServices)?

Most kids with wristbands get on the rides, no problem. But there are cases where the employee at the gate questions the child's height and remeasures them.

What's the alternative? Wristbands aren't a perfect solution, but they're a good solution given the circumstances.