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Interesting Things Ride-Ops Do


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At Six Flags St Louis, they thank riders for riding whatever ride they are on and suggest another ride on the park. However, the ride op on Boomerang encouraged riders to try Superman who had riders stuck near the top.

I noticed when we were waiting in line for Pandemonium they used an automated spiel. The line moved pretty fast for what appears to be a lower capacity ride. There was minimal guest interaction, but was still pleasant.

I may have mentioned this before, but a number of ride ops at Kings Island (I heard it most frequently at The Bat) saying the name of another Cedar Fair park and the name of another ride. That is truly annoying to me. Hopefully that has been put to a stop by this point in the season.

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At Six Flags St Louis, they thank riders for riding whatever ride they are on and suggest another ride on the park. However, the ride op on Boomerang encouraged riders to try Superman who had riders stuck near the top.

I noticed when we were waiting in line for Pandemonium they used an automated spiel. The line moved pretty fast for what appears to be a lower capacity ride. There was minimal guest interaction, but was still pleasant.

I may have mentioned this before, but a number of ride ops at Kings Island (I heard it most frequently at The Bat) saying the name of another Cedar Fair park and the name of another ride. That is truly annoying to me. Hopefully that has been put to a stop by this point in the season.

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Most annoying spiel: "As a reminder, the park closes in about 2 hours, 25 minutes."

For some, KI is their vacation. Reminding them that they're on the tale end does nothing for them. Can you imagine going to Florida and having the guy at the reception desk remind you, "your vacation is over in 2 days?"

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Or going to carefully crafted Walt Disney World and hearing:

* Welcome back you crazy Splash Mountain riders, how was your ride?

* Enjoy the rest of your day here at Disneyland Paris!

* I'll say M I C, you say K E Y.

* The resort closes in two hours and twenty-five minutes; buy your stuffed Mickey now!

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I love when the ride ops are entertaining. That would be me as a ride op. I'm sure it gets old doing the same thing over and over so you gotta make it fun somehow.

I would want to guests to be as psyched to ride a coaster as I typically am. Plus, normal is boring.

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...which takes us to an important point.

Who is the target market of a spiel?

What's amusing to the spieler may be bothersome, annoying or flat out unwelcome to:

* A grief stricken soul out on a mission to just forget the cruel world for a while.

* Two young souls madly in love, at the park for some quality time.

* A proud parent trying to encourage or cajole their leery offspring on to a first ride on a big coaster.

* An old guy trying to relive his past, perhaps on one of his last trips ever to an amusement park.

The fact of the matter is ride ops have important jobs to do. If they are bored absent their attempts to "entertain" us, perhaps the park did not wisely entrust them with our safety.

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I love when the ride ops are entertaining. That would be me as a ride op. I'm sure it gets old doing the same thing over and over so you gotta make it fun somehow.

I would want to guests to be as psyched to ride a coaster as I typically am. Plus, normal is boring.

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I hear you, but at the same time a ride op's job is not to make their own job more fun. If someone gets bored doing the same thing over and over, then it's safe to say they probably shouldn't be working in ride operations.

Auto-spiels or no spiels for me. That's not to say a ride op can't be friendly and personable; I'd just prefer they be friendly and personable off-mic.

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  • 3 weeks later...

On Invertigo yesterday as the train was ascending the ride op sang "Annd III will allllwwwaayysss lovvee yooouuuu". He was applauded too xD

On FOF before they launched the train the ride op said "And may the odds be ever in your favor". And "Pikachu GO!" on another.

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^ Ride restraints really are not a good thing for ride operators to be joking about.

Then you don't want to watch this video that's going around of the operator on a SlingShot ride (not the one at KI, but same type) telling the rider to check her seat belt:

(language warning: the girl's reaction contains a little profanity)

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I sort of like Spiels even though some people on this forum do not. Spiels the genuine ones and not the annoying "Diamond-Back" ones are great. I would rather have a person spiel than an automatic spiel that gets old quickly like the public service announcements in line for Delirium that I memorize "For the saftey and comfort of our guests please remember that all smoking is prohibited outside of designated smoking areas. We hope you have a great day and thank you for keeping Kings Island a Smoke-Free environment." I would rather have a person speil than a machine.

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Giving people who are untrained an open mic can e dangerous, for many reasons. That person may feel that thy have to fill the dead air and unintentionally annoy, scare, or confuse patrons. They may also accidentally put the company at risk for many things. Not to mention the ride op who thinks the spiel is more important than the safety checks.

Still to this day the best person a mic I have ever seen was a few years back on TTD. He was engaging, professional, charismatic, caring, and genuine. He helped make that ride all the better. Not once did he interrupt his safety checks before spieling and he never confused the rides name or location.

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I used to throw some truly awful puns into my Millie spiels at CP, but every once in awhile you just gotta spice it up. "They say this is the number 1 steel coaster in the world, when it's over you'll Ce-der Point....." (Most people couldn't Rap-tor minds around my humor...)

I was always conscious of what I was saying, and filtered it pretty heavily. There were other people who would just make me cringe every time they got the mic. There's definitely a fine line, if it's an autospieler, or just too dry, people stopped listening. But going overboard is even less helpful because you're focusing on being entertaining rather than relaying the appropriate information. I don't see a problem with making a joke here or there, but first and foremost, pleeeeeease make sure you're not eating the microphone/yelling into it, that defeats the purpose if I can't understand you in the first place.

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By far the best spieler in the park is the creepy lady voice-over on FoF who discusses loose articles.

Sounds just like the old creepy lady spiel from the early years of Millenium Force before they converted to live spiel.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest dtk1376

I've noticed lately on Flying Ace Aerial Chase that they play park trivia while the ride is running. Since there is only one train on the track and there is nothing else for the ride op to do while they wait for the train to come back in I don't see any issues with it.

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Today, I was in line for Flight of Fear, and noticed that they're trying to buy time in between when they launch trains (I'm not sure why, maybe to give the motors a break - one of which overheated and caused the whole smoke incident). Anyway, they asked three park trivia questions before the launched the train, and I was the only one in the station to answer any of them...it made me feel soooooo smart. :) They were pretty easy though:

  1. When was this ride originally opened? 1996
  2. What was the original name of the ride? The Outer Limits: Flight of Fear
  3. What is the fastest ride at Kings Island? This one I guessed Diamondback, apparently it was Sling Shot.

So that was my interesting ride-op experience of the day.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I finally rode Viking Fury yesterday. I got in a row because no one was in it yet. A woman and her two small children got in behind me. No big deal, room for us all, two medium-sized women's bottoms under one lap bar, and two small children under the other with the somewhat larger boy on the outside and girl on the inside.

Just before they finally locked the bars, a ride op came by and asked if the girl could scoot over and put her legs under our bar. She did, but could only fit her legs under, uncomfortably, with her bottom still mostly to the other side. She asked her mother if she really had to do this, and I mentioned to her mother that it certainly seemed a lot less safe than the prior situation. But, the bars were locked now, and she couldn't quite wriggle out easily, and the ride op was now ignoring us. Her mother's bottom and mine were smooshed as closely together as we could to give her room (which wasn't much even though neither of us are overweight), while her older brother (about 7 years old) had an entire bar to himself.

I still don't understand why this request was even made. With the huge crowd yesterday, Viking Fury was still a walk on, so it wasn't as if it was making extra room. The little girl wasn't more secure under a bar with full-size women's thighs determining its position than she was with her slightly larger brother's thighs doing the same.

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