What are some of the amusing/strange/interesting things that have happened to you or that you have observed at amusement parks?
Heh. What happens at Kennywood stays at Kennywood.
^ And yet, Kristen Stewart continues to make movies! 
(When I saw the beer mug avatar in the Amusement Park thread, I KNEW kayaker would be making a Kennywood post. And he did not disappoint. 
)
Not an amusing thing, but interesting (to me, at least).
The gift shop at Lost Kennywood, the retro part of the park, was deliberately constructed to resemble the Walnut Avenue entrance of Revere, MA’s old Wonderland Park.
Kennywood gift shop:
Wonderland entrance:
I have to make a pilgrimage there sometime when the weather gets warmer and less COVID-y
My wife went to Disneyland the day the Yippies took over. It’s the only time she’s ever been. They had no idea what was going on - they just got ushered out.
The last time I went to a park (Magic Mountain in Valencia, CA) was useless. Every time we got to get on a ride, it broke. One time we were two people away from riding. Spent over two and a half hours and never road a thing. Management was very nice - not only did they refund our entrance fee, they refunded parking!
I don’t know how amusing this is, but eons ago when I was in the Navy, I went on a Special Services bus trip from NAS Millington to Nashville and Opryland. Right after I entered the park, I saw a man that I was certain was my 11th grade English teacher - same build, same coloring, same way of pushing his hair out of his eyes. This was a couple of years after I’d graduated, but soon enough that I thought he’d remember me. So I screwed up my courage (I was really shy back then) and I went up to him.
I managed to say “Are you Mr. P…?” and I realized he wasn’t. And I was mortified. I immediately turned, walked into the nearby ladies’ room, and stayed there till I was sure he’d left. No idea why I was embarrassed - it was a simple question, but like I said - shy…
When I was a child in the 1960s my grandmother was a nurse at a large refuge for the developmentally disabled and several times a year she would chaperone patients on field trips to Disneyland. These were the days before general admission; the most economical way to visit was to buy a booklet with one admission ticket and a variety of A, B, C, D, and E ride tickets. The patients would use the admission tickets and tickets for the tamer rides leaving my grandmother with wads of D and E ride tickets for all the premier rides at Disneyland. These would find their way into her grandchildren’s Christmas stockings. By the time Disneyland switched to all inclusive admission pricing, I was burned out on the place.
When I was a little kid up until I was about 17 (I remember taking a girlfriend there before it closed) I got to make several visits to an amusement park on an island called Bob-Lo that you’d get to by taking a large steamship from Detroit down the Detroit river. I have a lot of good memories from my kid years of an era that’s gone forever, and the boat ride was half the fun of the entire day.
Anyway, we went there for an end of school year trip in Junior High. I got on a ride I believe was called the Rotor-- it would spin up, and when it got up to speed the floor would drop, suspending you against the inside wall with only centripetal force holding you up.
It was not completely full, and there was a several foot gap between me and the person on the forward side of the spin. He puked, and I watched helplessly in horror as the puke… slowwwwly… crept… horizontally…along the inside wall toward me. Fortunately the floor came back up and the ride started to spin down mere inches before it got to me.
You know @kopek would be participating in this thread if he were able.
He is missed. I hope @Old_Wench is well. Maybe she will stop by.
Many years ago, driving into Disney World with the kids in back, I got messed up on which entry lane I should be in. I was pulling our camping trailer and somehow messed up the flow. This aggravated one of the parking attendants and he cursed me soundly, so my kids’ first Disney experience was one of Mickey’s Minions snarling at us thru the open truck window.
I was infuriated, and once parked I stomped away to complain to the Disney authorities about this. After failing to placate me with more and more comp’d freebies, they eventually brought out a high-ranking lady official to try and reason with me. After trying more comps to settle me down, she got exasperated and asked: “Sir, what is it you want us to do?” I pointed at the room where the accused minion was being held and snarled: “Put him on the Small World ride!” At this point we both started giggling, and she said: “Sir – let’s not be cruel.” At that point we both broke out laughing and were literally leaning on each other gasping for air.
I apologized for being so angry, and she re-apologized for the cursing worker and we went on our way, still chuckling.
Our version of that at Adventureland, outside Des Moines, was called the Silly Silo. People talked about the collapsing floor like it covered an alligator moat, which it didn’t, and it was the one ride I refused to go on, because I heard too many horror stories about it, most of them involving projectile vomiting.
My son, “Dweezil”, went through a period of being terrified of any kind of boat. This first manifested when I tried to take him to the Statue of Liberty (via the ferry from Liberty State Park). He was not quite 7… and he freaked out - I wound up having to take him back off the boat. This of course stranded us in NJ, when we had a train back home that evening, from Manhattan - but weirdly he was willing to ride the water taxi - a much smaller boat.
Anyway - this fear kept us from doing things like taking the boat to get to Disney World from the parking area. I think that meant we had to wait for the monorail or whatever. It did, however, spare us from having to ride It’s A Small world 
A year or so after this all began, we took the kids (and Dweezil’s friend, C) to California. One of our destinations was Legoland. Our daughter, and C, wanted to ride a boat ride. Dweezil refused - so my husband took the other two on the ride.
The wait was estimated at 30 minutes or so - so after a while, Dweezil and I went to the exit and waited for the others. Evidently things were a bit slower than expected, so the others did not appear in a timely manner.
Dweezil turned to me, and announced “See, I TOLD you they were goners!!”, absolutely satisfied to have been proven right in his Boats Are Evil belief.
Five minutes later, the others emerged.
Dweezil looked genuinely peeved to have been proven wrong.
I lived in the Orlando area for about a year and decided to splurge on a Disney annual pass that covered all the parks. One of my favorite places to go by myself was Typhoon Lagoon because of their massive wave pool. It was just a great place to go in the middle of the summer for exercise and to cool off.
Was on my way out one time zig-zagging through a full parking lot to get back to my car when a couple of Disney security golf carts ran up on me from several directions. They started asking me what I was doing there, why I was looking in the parked cars (I wasn’t), where I was headed to. I answered all their questions and eventually went on my way but was later kind of pissed off at the accusations. Apparently a single white 25 year-old male is a suspicious character.
There used to be a small amusement park - Kiddieland - just west of Chicago. When I was a kid, my favorite ride was the Tilt-a-Whirl.
Fast forward to when I was a parent of young kids. One day we went to kiddie land in kinda iffy weather. The park was deserted. We got to the Tilt-a-Whirl, and the attendant figured he’d treat us to an extra long ride. As with many folk, as an adult I no longer had the tolerance for some spinning sensations that I had had as a kid. That ride seemed to last an hour! Man, I had to do everything I could to avoid puking.
I remember going to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg when our kids were young. My youngest was just a tad too short to go on the roller coasters, but wanted to so badly. We folded up a bunch of park guides, stuck them in her shoes, and told her to walk as tall as she could. She thought that was SO out there, that we were encouraging such petty fraud.
I went on the coaster with the kids - even tho I HATE coasters. I thought I was doing a good enough job until we saw that photo that they take and try to sell you. My little kids are all gleefully smiling, shouting, hands in air - while I had this look of rictus frozen on my face. To this day I wish we had sprung for that photo.
Riverview in Chicago closed when I was only 6, so I only have vague recollections - mostly of Aladdin’s Castle fun house. As a kid, it always seemed sorta seedy and dangerous. Which I suspect it may have been. By the time I went to Lane Tech - literally next door - it was long gone. But my dad went there in the 30s, and said they would regularly ditch school and hang out in the park.
Oh My God! There is no greater seething cauldren of germs and filth than this place! They got bins of loose legos in the areas where you wait for rides and such. Dirty, grubby little snot-nosed brats rooting around in them, then move on to the next bin. Way back yonder, when the family went there, wife and kid got sick the next day. Like, REALLY sick. I got it a day or so later.
Wife was laid so low, she lost her sense of smell. Which is not a good thing. For either of us.
At Disney? I’d assume so.
I’d say the same about any McDonald’s ball pit. I used to clean them…and I’ve seen things. 
I’ve been there! I don’t remember a thing about it but Mom had pictures of me on some of the rides.
We moved to the New Orleans 'burbs the same year Ponchartrain Beach permanently closed, partially due to the rides getting condemned. The beach itself had already been closed due to pollution.
Pieces of the rides later turned up in a park next to the international airport.
Why?
I’m an adult male who has has visited Disney parks by myself many times, maybe into triple figures. Never had a problem with security.
We used to go there a lot. In fact, one year for my birthday we had a party and were driven there in a “firetruck”.