I know they tell the ride when to stop and go, and a few other things based on the number of buttons they have on their control panel. If they just abandoned their post could any real danger result? Aren’t roller coasters designed to be as safe as possible, even if someone is asleep at the wheel so to say?
Some of them also regulate the pace at which people get on or off a ride, make sure that the ride isn’t overloaded with people, and ensure that they’re properly buckled or strapped in. If an operator abandoned her post and there was a malfunction, there might be a dangerous delay before someone else figured out how to turn the ride off. It’s not a terribly demanding job - which is why it’s usually filled by teenagers being paid minimum wage - but somebody’s got to do it.
According to friends who have done this work at a local amusement park, a big function of the operators was to be a defense against lawsuits.
The rides are fairly automated, and could have been completely automated if they had wanted. For example, the roller coasters have a button to start the cycle, but it automatically ends on its own when it gets back to the starting point, even if the operator had fallen asleep. The heights & curves are designed to only reach a certain speed, but there are also ‘inhibitors’ built into the track to slow the coaster down if it somehow exceeds the designed speed at that point.
Most of the operators work is to see that people are seated properly, buckled in, etc. and to repeat to each load of people “Don’t stand up. Don’t stick your arms out the sides. Don’t exit until the ride comes to a complete halt.” and similar safety stuff (which is already posted on big signs.
And they have a ‘safety briefing’ every morning, where a supervisor reminds them of these safety precautions, and talks about any recent problems that have been noticed around the park. And once a week they had a separate ‘safety training session’ of 30-45 minutes where they go over safety rules, actions in case of a malfunction, procedures for summoning emergency medical help, etc. Attendance was required & recorded, and they had regular tests (usually things like recite one of those emergency procedures from memory), with a Pass/Fail grade recorded. Fails got you a short remedial training session before you could go to work. And too many fails got you demoted to the dreaded clean-up-vomit-and-spilled-food-around-the-park job. A real incentive not to fail!
This training & testing seemed to be intended both for safety, but also as defenses to be raised in court against any lawsuit. Especially noticeable in the way they carefully kept records of this, ready to show in court.
I worked as a ride operator for several summers. It was a small, local kiddie park (11 rides total on a couple of acres of land), not a theme park, so your ridage may vary. For most of the rides (carousel-type things with cars/boats/rockets/whatever rotating around a hub), the controls consisted of a switch and a foot-pedal: Both had to be turned on for the ride to run, and while it wasn’t running, both were supposed to be turned off. After the pedal was held down for a set amount of time (three minutes, I think it was), the ride would turn off automatically, and wouldn’t turn back on again until you took your foot off and back on (on a slow day and with well-behaved kids, I occasionally stepped off and back on halfway through to give the kids a longer ride).
There was also a set of kid-powered crank cars, that I didn’t have to do much of anything for; a train; a couple of electric-car-on-tracks rides; and a roller coaster. On the train, I controlled the throttle (too fast, and it could derail on a curve; too slow, and it wouldn’t make it up the hill), tooted the horn and/or rang the bell while approaching intersections, and put on the brakes at the end to stop it in the station. For the track-car rides, there was a master switch that controlled the bulk of the track that stayed on pretty much all the time, plus three buttons that controlled sections of track in the loading/unloading area (so you could start the cars one at a time so as to leave space between them). For the roller coaster, the only control was a brake: The station area was tilted slightly downhill, so if you let off the brake, the train would roll down to a little dip and up onto the chain hill. We were supposed to finesse it so that the lead car would catch the chain, but with a minimum of clanking (which put wear on the ratchets). Occasionally, when the coaster was front-heavy, it wouldn’t quite make it, and you’d need to give a good push on the back car. Stopping it at the end of the ride used the same brake: It wasn’t automated at all (but like I said, this was a small park, and it was a very old roller coaster). There was also a small Ferris wheel, which had controls similar to the carousel rides, but it had to be loaded carefully or it’d get off-balance and wouldn’t run: You’d load the cars in order 1, 2, 4, 5, 3, 6 for a full ride, and varied the number of kids per car based on how big they were.
As for what I actually did: I would open up the gate to the ride, let kids in until it filled up, and take tickets from each of them (the park itself didn’t charge admission, but each ride cost a ticket). I’d make sure everyone was buckled in, give a short safety speech, flip the switch, and step on the pedal. While the ride was running, I watched to make sure nobody was doing anything unsafe (grabbing at things outside the ride, climbing out of their seats, etc.), and if someone did, or if a kid was crying, I’d stop the ride and take that kid off (we refunded tickets for kids who had to be taken off a ride). At the end of the ride, I’d step off the pedal, turn off the switch, and help any kids who needed help getting out (about half of them), then let them out a different gate, and open the gate for the next batch.
We didn’t get safety briefings every day or even every week; you’d get a full day of training when you started, and a refresher at the start of each season if you came back (there was high turnover, since it was mostly kids on summer jobs). But we never had any ride-related injuries in 50-some years of the park being open, so it must have been enough. We did, however, hear about injuries on other similar rides at other parks and fairs.
Do they have emergency switches to shut them down if there is a problem?
And clean up puke too.
I’m going to mini-hijack and mini-rant here.
What you see as “defense of lawsuits” is routine stuff that any conscientious person [here, the theme park] ought to do when operating a thing that subjects the human body to serious danger if not properly run.
It’s kind of sad and annoying when people lump this into some “we’re just doing this so we don’t get sued by parasitic lawyers” category as a knee-jerk reaction to being spoon-fed a mouthful of crapola from those who can profit from being less caring about others in society.
Well, your rant is mis-directed.
You did see that I said this was intended for safety first, then said also as defenses for lawsuits?
I see no problem with the park doing this, and approve it. In fact, I disagreed with my teenage friend when he was complaining about “this boring training” that they had “over & over again” – I told him I think it contributes to the good safety record at this park.
(To rant about parasitic lawyers, we’d have to go to the Pit. Might be fun, though.)
Generally, yes. But usually only available to the operators, not passengers. (Too risky to have it open for any rider to force an emergency stop.) Some rides have a panic button for riders, which just alerts the operator, who can stop the ride.
But some rides, like roller coasters are only powered up the first hill; after that they ‘coast’ the rest of the way. There isn’t much an emergency switch can do after they ascend the first hill.
Some roller coasters do have automatic friction brakes on the tracks at various intervals, in case the timing gets messed up and two trains get too close together. Generally these are at the top of a hill so the train can start moving down the other side again when the brakes are released.
I always thought they ogled teenaged girls and sold pot. But maybe that’s just the local fairs.
That’s why the rides at the park I was at had foot-pedals. If I saw something that needed to be tended to now, like a kid climbing out of one of the boats and falling in the water or clothing catching on something outside the ride or whatever, I could just run straight over and while I was running, the ride would be stopping.
Former Six Flags Employee
I worked at the Dallas location, in Spain (Teacups, Swinging Ship, Bobsled) and was additionally trained at two other rides in the same general area of the park for the convenience of getting break times worked out when we were short (carousel and spinning hat).
Bobsled was the big ride of the section - most complicated. The ride was divided up into a series of blocks (lift pt 1, lift pt 2, lift -> brake 1, brake 1 -> 2, brake 3 -> 4, brake 4 -> station, station [only block that cold hold multiple cars]), and the ride computer kept them out of each other on a fail safe system. Each friction brake would be in the up (stopping position) until it confirmed that the car ahead was out of the next block, so that there were two brake stations between cars at all times. If a car stopped out on the ride because of a computer fault, the head operator could tell the computer to double check where the cars were and restart progress if one stopped at a brake station for under 15 seconds. If it took longer than that, somebody had to go running and do a tandem reset of the cars from the brake station (which meant grabbing the keys, sprinting into the back area, then climbing 40 feet of ladders with a smile). In station there were two loaders, and a head operator - loaders controlled the doors and made sure that people seated properly and that the restraints weren’t too tight (very loose on this ride - two people front to back). The biggest problem was probably getting people (especially 2 guys) to sit straddling each other in order to maximize throughput when lines were long. Also in charge of making sure people left their bags in the station, as they could fall out onto the track and cause problems - huge problem for some people, and I got called not very nice names several times for enforcing policies here: you can hold onto the bag and wait behind the exit gate or you can leave it on dock or ride. The operator controlled the microphone to talk rules and help alleviate boredom, reset the restraints if there were problems, call the boss for trouble, stop the ride if there were issues (most common was people getting out of seats on lift hill) and start the cars in tandem with loaders. It broke once while I was loading and it was minor enough (drive wheel just below chain lift broke) that I just let the cars come back into station before shutting down the ride.
Swinging ship was a 2 person job - loader and operator. Five to a row, don’t split the bar, stay seated at all times. Pretty simple - loader let in people, then shut the gate, operator got everyone to leave stuff in the boxes, somebody locked it up, then both checked the restraints on their half of the ship. Both got into the safe zones and activated together. Loader had ability to do a slow ride stop (generally for somebody standing), while operator could do a slow or emergency stop (something broke or people breached the restricted area around ride).
Cups, carousel, and hat were all one person rides. One person loaded and unloaded, checked locks and started ride by themselves. A key was needed to start the ride (magnetic or actual turn key), and the operator needed to physically remain in place at all time to keep a switch activated (foot pedal, touch sensor that worked on hand capacitance I think, and a proximity sensor based on body heat I think - not sure about that last one). Cameras were used to keep eye on backside of ride.
Not a great job, but not bad either.
I used to be a ride operator. The answer is it depends on the ride. As a general rule, the more basic the ride is, the more user-dependent the controls are. So for say, a simplistic rotating ride, the ride op may control the sequence of the ride (the starting/stopping, the speed, etc.). For a complex roller coaster, basically the computer takes care of all the blocking (ensuring one train is in one section of track at a time to prevent collisions) and only requires the ride operators to hit the dispatch button.
Since they’re the most interesting, I’ll limit the list of responsibilities for a roller coaster ride op:
[ul]
[li]Ensuring guests are the correct height[/li][li]Assisting in loading/unloading[/li][li]Checking lapbars/restraints[/li][li]Dispatching/bringing in the train, as well as operating the gates[/li][li]Responding to mechanical/medical issues[/li][/ul]
Every ride also has a huge red button on the control panel labeled “E-stop.” Ironically, it was not only the easiest button to accidentally hit (or a guest hit), but also the button that causes the most problems. After a e-stop is hit, supervisors and mechanics must go to the ride and do a bunch of resets. It’s a huge ordeal/hassle if you didn’t mean to hit the button. Basically the e-stop will stop a train at its next brake section (called a block brake), or stop trains if they’re on the lift hill still.
I have been a ride operator at a traveling amusement park that goes to 10 states in 9 1/2 months. My job duties range from ride to ride. On “kiddie rides”, you have one of the biggest jobs of the whole park. While operating a kiddie ride, you have to constantly be looking at the whole ride because of little kids standing up, etc. On a major or thrill ride, you have to pay attention very well also because as a major ride is bigger, that means if trouble occurs while the ride is operating, it can be a lot worse accident. I will just say that in the past 50 years, we have NEVER had 1 accident, not even minor. We have 5-7 certified ride inspectors at every spot, and managment is always out checking and ensuring the safety of everything at that spot. This is a very demanding job, but pays pretty well. All rides in our company have at least 3-5 things to run at once, and major rides have 5-10. Some rides may have controls to "put the floor down, spin pendulem on the deck, shoot up into air, spin, back to bottom floor, spin, up in the air again, etc. this is all on one ride and the procedures are the same for every time you run it. What we stay in are called bunkhouses. They basically are a really small room with a bed, and maybe some shelves, depending on what kind of bunkhouse. Each trailer houses 10 people, 5 on each side, with a shower on each side, too. This traveling job is really cool because we get to travel. I would have never seen places that i have if i wouldn’t have went to work for the company. I love it and probably won’t change in at least the next 10 years!!
This would be an example of the importance of operator doing everything when it’s supposed to happen. I also feel the ride should have had safety switches to prevent to girl dropping until the net was in place regardless of the operator.
An operator who failed at this almost killed me once. It was one of those roller coasters with formed butt seats (including a little upward post in the middle), and I have always had a wide butt, even when I wasn’t overweight. I couldn’t quite fit with that upward post in the way, so the safety arm couldn’t quite latch. Before I could tell them what was happening, the ride started. I unfortunately frozerather than screaming out, but luckily my friends noticed and screamed at them to stop, and the operators fortunately listened.
What surprises me is that, at that time, I was not so shaken up that I couldn’t try any of the other coasters.
This matches my experience. Though there are some rides that required some skill, particularly the roller coasters. I don’t know what the new ones are like, but the old wooden ones I operated had a big wooden hand brake. It took some skill to figure out how much force to use based on the load of the coaster. The idea, of course, was to have it stop smoothly, with no jerking. The bumper cars often required jockeying the cars between sessions and even helping people who got stuck in the middle of the ride. The toughest one was a really fast merry-go-round. Only a few people worked that ride in all my years, as it was VERY dangerous to move on and off the platform as it spun. But the guys who worked it did so beautifully.
It’s weird when you read a zombie thread, not knowing it is one, and find your post from over a year ago.
Weird.