Whats with the secrets?

Well, they never actually let people in...so we had to sit on the metal poles under the cement overpass mechanisim thing. :P

We did get to ride, my uncle and this friend we ended up meeting whilst sitting in line. We naturally waited for front seat. since the single rider infront of us was first.

We did that because we had never ridden, and we were there for a week. No Worries.

It was, actually....fun. After arguing with the ops [Sorry Guys!] we just started to chat, rotate trips to the Slushy Stand and the Fries stand...It was interesting to hear the vareity of responces the ops gave the people questioning TTD's opening.

I

I bet on somedays they just get silly with people so they don't get frustrated. Heres an example. Is Top Thrill Dragster closed? NOPE says the ride operator. We just like to close the line down once in a while, just to see how short the queue gets....lol. HERES YOUR SIGN. For any of you that don't know what that means, it pretty much means DUH and you asked a stupid question.

i worked as a guard over in soak city and zoom flume would go down all the time. like others have said its park policy to not tell guests why the attraction is down. A lot of the times we may not even know exactly why it is down. The "down due to technical reasons" line is feed to us from park management. So if you come to the park and are unhappy with the answers you get from ride ops. over in kiddie land is the Park Operations office. take it up with them

And as for how long a ride will be down? WE NEVER KNOW. trust me if we could tell ya when we were gonna stop getting asked every five seconds "how much longer till its running again" we would tell you.

and for the people who say they work in retail and they know what its like to be annoyed by customers. Working at an amuesment park is tottally different. trust me. i've worked numerous retail jobs and at 2 different amuesment parks. they dont even begin to compare.

True no one deserves to be treated rudely, but please understand when you are about the 100th person in 10 minutes to ask us the same question we are going to get annoyed. and if you ask a stupid question..."what time is the 10o'clock laser light show?" you are gonna get a stupid answer. plain and simple.

But the 100th person who asks you the same question in 10 min. doesn't know they are the 100th person, and they don't care.

They may visit CP only once a summer and are concerned that they may not get to go on a ride they really like that year.

So, I'm sorry, but getting annoyed and showing it to guests is not an option. Sure it's human nature, but you have to work through that and treat the 100th guest with the same question like they are the first one to ever ask that question.

The same with stupid questions. The world is filled with stupid people. But, no one likes to think they are stupid, and they certainly don't come to Cedar Point to be disrespected. If someone asks what time the 10 o'clock laser light show is just smile and say "it is at 10pm on the screen in front of the train station."

It's all about guests having a nice time, and becoming repeat customers. It may be hard to answer stupid questions politely and with a straight face, but that is what you have to do.

I gotta agree with Pete. Most of your job is dealing with the public. If you can't do that, then you are in the wrong business. I work at a costume/magic shop and we get thousands of stupid questions every day. All I can do is give them the best answer I can, and then talk about them to other employees after they have left or when I end the call with them on the phone.

I pride myself in the fact that in the 2 years I worked at the park, I don't believe I was ever rude to a guest, and one summer, part of my job was calming people down who had been treated poorly.

It seems there are several people here who say they are very patient and understanding in these difficult guest situations. I commend all of you for your confidence in your ability to perform a park op job, and suggest you all apply online for a job at Cedar Point today.

A rude employee is most likely rude because of their natural personality and attitude. I agree 100% that just because a stupid question has been asked many times day after day that we employees should treat the question and guest with respect and courtesy. The FEW employees who are sarcastic and disrespectful act that way towards guests and fellow employees because thats how they are naturally. What I really find ironic is that the the attitudes of a lot of the people on this forum (who are also criticizing the employees of being rude) is very sarcastic and disrespectful. Job or no job sarcasm and rudeness isn't a very polite way to treat anyone, whether they're a guest or some random person in cyberspace.

Just because this forum isn't your workplace and you're not here to deliver the kind of customer service that the employees of Cedar Point are expected to, doesn't mean that you should treat people with animosity, sarcasm or disrespect.

Also keep in mind that this post is not directed at any one person specifically, just the whole negative atmostphere that many (not all but many) of these posts portray. I also do not think that it is acceptable for any employee to act rudely to a guest, whether they have had a bad day or whatever.

As for the original topic, we ride hosts are not trained to give detailed explanations of why a ride is down, whether we know or do not know. Trying to explain what caused the mechanical downtime would just cause confusion and potential unnecessary worrying among the guests. It is much easier for Park Operations to have all employees just simply state that the ride is down for mechanical reasons and the length of the delay is unknown.

"it seems there are several people here who say they are very patient and understanding in these difficult guest situations. I commend all of you for your confidence in your ability to perform a park op job, and suggest you all apply online for a job at Cedar Point today."

No thanks. I already have a job dealing with the public all year long.

In 2003, I was in line for X when it went down. I had been thorugh almost the entire queue, and I wasn't about to leave. The employee actualy told the guests in line that the ride probably had something wrong with the wheels, and that it would be up in about a half hour or so. Twenty minutes later, I was going up the lift hill.

Congratulations: that doesn't take into account another problem that could have arisen as a result of the wheels that they didn't see... then what? You'd most likely be fumed if it took much longer.

If it was something like a bad wheel, we usually just announced, "we are only expecting a short delay" to sort of encourage people to wait. From our experience, we knew that a wheel should only take 10 minutes to get done. We didn't tell them it was a bad wheel, but if they looked out to the transfer track area, they could figure it out.

If it was some random alarm, we always said we didn't know how long the delay will be because that was the truth. Perhaps maintenance would come and clear it and we'd be good to go. Or perhaps some poor maintenance guy would have to chug to the top of the lift to replace a sensor.

In rare occurances, we absolutely knew we were going to be down for a while and we would "strongly encourage waiting riders to go and experience other rides and attractions." Examples of this would be welding or perhaps the lift motor being replaced. If you know it's going to be hours, you are not doing anyone any favors by telling them you don't know how long it will be. That is the kind of stuff that causes people to stand lined up along a black fence for half the day and leave the park pissed off.

For Daily Complainer to say that an amusement park is different from regular retail as an excuse for poor attitudes and service is absurd. I worked at a park for close to ten years and i also currently work in retail. A dumb customer is a dumb customer. And you WILL get dumb, rude, obnoxious and every other negative description there is. No matter where you work in a service related industry. The only difference for a ride operator is that when a ride is down it will usually create a rapid fire of stupid questions. But it shouldn't be anything unexpected. You should be ready and able to deal with it, because again, it's your job to deal with the customers.

It's making excuses for poor service that allows the service to degrade even more. give me a break...

MDOmnis said:
If you know it's going to be hours, you are not doing anyone any favors by telling them you don't know how long it will be. That is the kind of stuff that causes people to stand lined up along a black fence for half the day and leave the park pissed off.

My experience at Dragster is slightly different then other rides I've worked when it comes to downtime and guests. We are given very specific instructions about what to say and what not to say. It goes as far as specific words are "off limits" when answering a guest's question concerning the ride and the downtime. Under certain circumstances those "off limits" words are exactly what we ARE told to say.
Whether or not I know that downtime will last for several hours or a few minutes doesn't really matter. I have to relay information to the guests based on what I have been told to say, depending on the situation and circumstances.

My point is that if you feel that a ride host isn't giving you very much information or not tell telling you his/her true opinion, it's because our job is to say what we're instructed to say and nothing more.

Ohio State said:

My point is that if you feel that a ride host isn't giving you very much information or not tell telling you his/her true opinion, it's because our job is to say what we're instructed to say and nothing more.

Public does not need to know why there is downtime at all. It is like asking for people's personal information that the public does not need to know. So this summer please when there is downtime do not ask a ride host what is wrong with the ride. Please and thank you.

I don't agree that the guests should be completely uninformed. If a ride is down for weather conditions, theres nothing wrong with letting the guests know why the ride has stopped cycling or loading any more riders. If a ride is down for mechanical reasons its a good idea to at least say its down for mechanical reasons rather than not acknowledge the downtime at all.
Go ahead and ask, but expect simple answers such as this ride is down for mechanical reasons, rain, or high winds.

You're right Chris. I know they told you to do a lot of strange things at Dragster! :) It just doesn't seem to me like they are doing anyone any favors by jerking them along if they know the ride has no chance of opening for hours. That's management's fault though, not yours. They did have the signs outside the gate when they knew it was going to be opening late at least. I guess some people would probably stand there all day nomatter what you tell them, so maybe I am having too much sympathy for them.

I just hate to see 200 people standing there waiting along the fence when I know that say the catchcar isn't even installed or something! :) That's 200 people who are going to go and tell their friends about their trip to CP where they stood or sat on the ground next to Dragster for x hours. Not great word of mouth marketing.

HeadSpins, the least you can do is get on the PA and make an announcement about whether it is due to mechanical, weather, or something else. If you have a person at your entrance, they should say the same reason to approaching guests - not just say, "we're closed beat it." Of course you're not going to tell them the exact problem even if you do know, but a little bit of information is better than just no announcement at all. I think as an ATL, these are simple things you should probably know. The spiels for these situations are in every ride manual at Cedar Point and if Geauga Lake isn't similar, I expect it will be soon.

It's probably best, if you are going to ask the question of downtime, Ask How long has it been down? A lot of guests come up to ride and just ask what's wrong with the ride? A better question in my opinion would be, can you take a guess of when the ride might open? If they still can't tell you anything just walk away. Since reading this topic, I've learned many things and just came up with this theory. I think it would be a good idea, because this way the ride ops don't have to hear that annoying question.

Having spent a large portion of my summer working at Power Tower, I can tell you the biggest thing to annoy most of us. When a guest would come up to one of us at entrance and ask us what was wrong with Dragster or when it would be up. A few of the times I had not even noticed it had been down, and I simply told them the best thign I could, which was "I don't know." Following which I was berated with a sentence of cuss words.

This happened at least 5-10 times this summer to me alone. Yet some people expect us to sit there and take it?

Anyways Shawn Meyer, what's so different about your form of question then anyone else's that might pop up? We still can't tell you.

There isnt too much difference. I just think maybe this question if it was asked might not be annoying to the ride operators. What I mean by that is if you are still told I don't know, then it's better to just better to continue to wait. It's a different question, it's like an opinion question. If you guys think I'm not making sence, let me know now.

Ohio State said:

Whether or not I know that downtime will last for several hours or a few minutes doesn't really matter. I have to relay information to the guests based on what I have been told to say, depending on the situation and circumstances.

If you or any ride op knows that it is going to be hours of waiting, then Cedar Point, not you, should have the professionalism to make people know that the wait WILL be hours as opposed to minutes. This also works the other way around. If the wait is going to be minutes and people have been waiting for 3 hours in line, telling them that is could take hours to fix may make them leave which again branches from professionalism. I guess I have come to the conclusion that as ride "guests" we dont need to know what is going on exactly with a ride, but if it is possible, or as you have stated, if you know about how long it is going to take, an good faith estimate would be nice.
*** Edited 4/22/2005 1:38:33 PM UTC by BPMCH02***