Worst Blunders When Visiting a Theme Park
Have you ever had a trip to a theme park turn into a veritable disaster due to poor planning and/or decision making? I've had this happen more than once and three trips stand out as the most egregious examples.
My first trip to Kings Island proved to be a lamentable waste of money. I flew to Dayton (first mistake, as Cincinnati is a bit closer), rented a car and drove to the park on a Saturday afternoon. It was so crowded that it took almost half an hour to find a parking space. Once inside the park I was faced with long lines but didn't want to spend the money for FastLane so waited two and a half hours to ride Diamondback, then another two and a half hours to ride The Beast. That was all the riding I did. Considering that the entire cost of the trip including park admission, airfare, hotel and car rental came close to $500, I basically paid $250 per coaster ride and no coaster is worth $250 a ride! I vowed that going forward, I would spring for FastLane if a park was extremely crowded.
My second visit to Lake Compounce began well enough but ended on a painful note. I found a single rider in the queue for Boulder Dash and teamed up with him for five rides. After five rides he had had enough so when I decided that I wanted a sixth ride I was on my own. The initial drop is on a curve with impressive lateral G's and I had my hands in the air. I got slammed against the side of the car and as a result of the impact ended up with broken ribs. Ouch! I still think that Boulder Dash is one of the best woodies ever built but now will not ride it or any other woodie - especially The Beast - without a riding buddy to provide insulation and soften the impact. The only exception is El Toro, whose restraints are so tight that lateral motion is almost impossible.
My third visit to Kings Island was for the purpose of riding Firehawk, due to close permanently that weekend. Flying Dutchman was among my favorite coaster models and with only three of them operating at the time, I wasn't going to miss this opportunity. I purchased FastLane and got in numerous rides on multiple coasters. Although I had already ridden Firehawk three times that day, I couldn't resist the temptation to go for one more ride and go through that fabulous vertical loop again. Huge mistake! It had been raining off and on and was a cold, wet night. My train got stuck on the lift hill and I got stuck in a supine position, feeling cold and miserable, for an hour and 45 minutes before being evacuated by ladder after repeated attempts to get the train moving failed. To this day, that remains my absolute worst coaster experience. Should have known when to quit.
Replies (6)
I guess this counts as a fail on my part.
Last year I was in the Dallas area for work and decided to make my first visit to Six Flags Over Texas during one of my off-days. Since it was only going to be for one day and I wanted to maximize my time in the park, I opted to get the Flash Pass when purchasing my ticket. Well, this was a cold Sunday in January and the park ended up being DEAD in terms of crowds, to the point where every single ride operating that day was a walk-on (they even closed the park two hours early because there were so few people). After a couple of uses of the Flash Pass, it became very apparent it was not needed and I felt embarrassed walking in those lines. So I just used standby rest of the day and wasted $100 needlessly.
Satire response:
I once visited Orlando and went to this park called The Magic Kingdom.
It was anything but Magic. Parking fees were outrageous, park tickets were so expansive - I had to get a small loan for a family of three.
Long Ride waits, stroller and Electric Convenience Vehicle - everywhere. One ever ran over my foot.
No real adult Attractions - Not even one decent coaster.
Child meltdowns, defibrillator machines being used on the elderly….
Oh and a boring parade.
Never again will I go….HAAHAHAHAHA
Happy Sunday.
Hey Binnie: Lake Compounce Twice?
I went Once and that was enough unless you are in that area..
In NH they have a Park called - Canobie Lake park.
It is well maintained - not worth going out of your way for, just saying...But a nice little park.
Buying a balloon.
For me it was getting a dinner reservation at a Disney resort restaurant that required the skyliner to get to during afternoon thunderstorm season. We barely made it but I was afraid we would be stuck and still get charged for not arriving.
The past month or so Aquatica has been running of parking fairly regularly, and when they run out of parking a lot of people park at Sea World and walk to Aquatica. There is no shuttle or anything, so it has become common to see throngs and throngs of people walking back and forth between Sea World and Aquatica.
Now this is a REALLY long walk down International Drive. Its like 1.5 miles, takes over a half hour, and families with kids/strollers/beach bags and stuff are making this walk in the soul crushing Florida heat, to go to a waterpark thats way over crowded to begin with and probably should be closed for capacity. To add onto that, Florida in the summer also often has torrential storms that are like mini-monsoons. As I was driving by in the afternoon today we had one of those monsoon like storms and saw throngs of families were making the walk back to their car. At that point there is nowhere to hide, you are stuck on a 1.5 mile walk in a torrential storm, family/stuff/stroller in tow.
I felt so bad...all these people expecting to have a good time just to get stuck in insane traffic trying to get in, just to be told they are out of parking, get stuck in traffic again to Sea World, having to walk all the way back to Aquatica, having a miserable time there because of wall to wall crowds, then having to walk all the way back to Sea World in a torrential storm, and this experience cost a fortune. Just a terrible way to spend your 4th of July.
I would say anyone unfortunate enough to visit Orlando during the weeks of Christmas/New Years. Granted its probably not nearly as bad at Disney as it used to be because they do reservations now and have a much lower attendance cap (which comes with much higher prices during peak periods), but going to Orlando is already stressful and expensive enough, especially with small children. The crowds are just immense. When there is a need for crowd control staff just on the pathways of theme parks, not even parades/shows, just to keep people from getting stuck while walking around the park...that's Orlando during those weeks.
I would also say at this point going to Sea World/Aquatica Orlando on any holiday weekend. You might be thinking "why Sea World? Don't Disney and Universal get slammed on holiday weekends too?" Well yes, but Sea World has Sea World operations, which make visiting there when its slammed totally unbearable (visiting there is already barely tolerable when its slow). For those that aren't familiar with modern Sea World operations it is a staggering mix of apathy and incompetence. The way they operate this property (and Busch Gardens) makes Six Flags look like a well oiled machine. Just try visiting SWO on a holiday weekend and I can guarantee you the regret will hit at the start of your day when you are waiting in line at that toll plaza.
I will say in all the time I have been doing this theme park thing (over 30 years) the most memorable "veritable disaster" on a trip was going to Cedar Points opening day 2018, which was also Steel Vengeance's opening day. I've seen way more disasters at parks than I'd like to admit but this had to take the taco as the absolute worst ran theme park on a busy day I've ever seen. The park was just massively unprepared. Not only were they incredibly understaffed, but a lot of the parks most popular rides weren't ready to open yet maintenance wise. While Steel Vengeance opened on time, after less than an hour of operation two trains bumped in the station and then it was closed the rest of the day (it re-opened literally right before the park closed, with 1 train). Millennium Force, Maverick, Valravn, Gatekeeper, and Raptor ALL had delayed openings, and some of them were closed for hours after the park opened (I remember Valravn opening at like 6pm). Top Thrill Dragster and Wicked Twister were closed all weekend. They had entire sections of the park closed for staffing, like literally you would walk through a whole section of the park and every single attraction was closed. We realized what they were doing was rotating staff...so like every ride in the boardwalk area was closed at one point, and then they closed another section of the park and opened the rides in the boardwalk area. And of course there was no communication about any of this so people were just walking around totally confused on why literally everything was closed on a nice day. The lines were food at all the major restaurants were 45+ minutes all afternoon. I already had a major dislike for Cedar Fair but this experience really soured me on Cedar Point, the next time I went (6 years later) we went in the middle of summer when they were much better staff and things were much smoother. But NGL I held a big grudge with CP because that was like my third bad visit in a row.