What Are The Best Secrets About Your Favorite Theme Parks? (r/AskReddit)

theme park employees what are some cool secrets about your workplace some Cedar Point secrets some of these often friends who have worked around the park you probably already knew this but that $3.50 bottle of soda is one dollar two steps behind an employee gate same goes for most of the food in the cafeteria on most of the larger attractions and rides we have a system of signals and gestures to make fun of you behind your back it keeps the long repetitive and hot day somewhat interesting never ever ever will we tell you what is wrong with a ride also will never tell you when it's going to be up the only the FIR NCA ssin we can make as if we're told it's going to be a multiple our fix at that point we anticipate a lengthy delay yup we usually know what is wrong and how long it's going to take employee dorms could probably double for a gay male brothel many times we're instructed to take cars off of a coaster simply because of attendance numbers they don't tell us that officially simply no need to have three stroke three cars on the track when the park is at 50% capacity yep that makes lines longer sorry disaster transport $1 3d glasses are a rep of considering how short the ride is but you already knew that it's fun to watch you flash the ride cameras we block the pictures on the monitors but can still see them behind the counter we can also unblock them all I can't think of not really theme park but I used to work at Chucky Cheese secret pretty much everyone there hates kids with an undying fury one time a friend of mine started his first day and we had him in the Chucky costume and a kid came up and punched him in the balls without flinching my friend deck the little crap right in the face his parents weren't around so we rushed my friend to the back and told the parents the kid fell needless to say my friend was fired that same day your friend is a hero it is no longer available but SeaWorld used to serve free beer as a resident of San Diego I would buy an annual pass for $74 drive to SeaWorld a few times a week after work drink a few free beers and go home of sadly it ended in 2009 but boy howdy was it great while it lasted I'm glad someone had sense and did this also it's really hard to sign the autographs in some of the costumes in some of the characters you look through the mouth you have to act like you're looking with the eyes of the character which means most of their head is above your own the heads can be really freaking heavy and stuffy Lalo was the worst plus the water parks are really humid I almost passed out CP saddest new world get free Gatorade it's the yellow kind every Disney Prince I met was a gay man getting free Parkin trace was the best part of working there the pay was the worst if you see a character rub their ID it means they need to go backstage because they are going to pass out feel sick or are having some sort of costume malfunction I had to do this twice as Lyle oh because that costume was freakin terrible it's Powerade not Gatorade coke sponsorship remember and it's yellow for a reason red looks too much like blood when you puke it up how many of you have had your plans ruined by some meddling kids and their dog only the once but I had my revenge let's just say I know exactly how and why scrappy-doo never made it to adulthood I used to work at a place called Camelot theme park it's a modest place in the northwest of England it was also my first job I was rides operator but worked in what they called section 1 which was the part of the park with all the kids rides two years before work there some employee was apparently killed after being hit by a roller coaster during safety checks but I'm not sure how much of that his myth anyway relating to the how things work a bit in this question there was a ride there that had been around since it opened in the mid eighties known as the caterpillar Apple ride the cart train was modeled on a giant caterpillar and it went through a big red apple halfway around the track it was aimed at toddlers and small kids really but by god it was the most primitive roller coaster I've ever seen apart from the chain that pulled it up to the top of the main dip it ran completely on gravity and to start the ride he released the brakes which were clamps on the tracks not the cart itself and literally had to push it out of the station if you didn't push it hard enough it would slow down and stop before the foot of the hill and you'd have to call maintenance to get the stranded people out my first day operating the ride the brakes were faulty it was only meant to go round the track twice I ended up making it go round 15 times I went once for about five minutes my mum thought it was really chatty there I was soapy at her coma here are some secrets from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter the costumes worn by the team members were designed by Potter costume designer Janey to mime if some of the Hogwarts costumes worn by TMS working Harry Potter and The Forbidden Journey were actually used in the films and worn by extras TMS working Harry Potter and The Forbidden Journey are sorted into houses based on their height Universal operations merchandise and food service teams may usually wear their work wardrobe home however the Wizarding World wardrobe items are the only wardrobe items that these TMS may not take home TMS court doing so will be immediately terminated and may face criminal charges for theft and IP theft if they do so after the three broomsticks restaurant was designed the real film set was altered to more closely resemble the theme park restaurant but the male dress robes scene and the Gladrags Wizarding West storefront are the same ones worn by Daniel Radcliffe in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire the female dress robes are an exact replica of the ones worn by Emma Watson in the same film in the TMZ work in that area are encouraged to act in character but they may not say anything that would add to the Harry Potter story for example they may not say they know Harry Dumbledore or any of the characters or say what those characters may or may not like or do for example if you see a little girl with a stuffed cat you can say I like your kitty I have a kitty like that at home you may not say oh I'll bet Hermione would like your kitty I didn't work at a theme park but my high school English teacher worked for Disneyland while he was in college and told us stories a lot he said she opened whether most disgusting guys ever and with live contests to see who could grope the most milfs in a day my buddy got thrown out of Disneyland for punching Dale after he groped his wife at WD w's Magic Kingdom the food served in the employee cafeteria or mouth circuit Iria is not the same food served to the guests it's run by aramark food services and is much worse there's a subway restaurant down there they also run but they don't participate in any national subway promotions $5 footlongs nope still it's cheaper than the food served topside and if you're caught taking food from the cafeteria to the top especially if you're buying actual visiting family or friends who are playing in the park you can be fired spent a summer working games at Hershey Park not the most exciting things to be learned but here we go all of the popular games have cameras installed in them that means ring toss ring tosses for cameras it's because if the attendant gets distracted and a ring lands on the outter to ring off bottles you have to call it in people notoriously have little kids leaned over and just place it and try and guilt the attendance into giving away big buck bears when you play wacky winding wires by July all of the new employees can beat that game does not mean we will bend the rules if we hear that annoying buzzer but it also doesn't mean we can't tell you which gang station has a smaller ring or larger ring it can make a large difference only one place of the entire park sells beer and that is the main town cafe right by the Great Bear check out the smoothie place in the food court area they are amazing and vastly underrated every year 1% of all profits from Hershey Park and Hershey's chocolate goes to the Milton Hershey School which was originally a school for orphans but will now also help kids whose parents can't afford to send them to school this means the school will never go bankrupt ever that school is worth over a billion dollars if you live somewhere close to Hershey Park make friends with the employees they get two free tickets per paycheck 15% off everything in the park and 25% off everything in chocolate world this means make with an employee give them your money and make them buy your chocolate for you employees can buy the prizes in the game stalls I know you're thinking who'd buy a crappy but dolphin that costs less than a nickel to makes but beloved giant but teddy bears as big as em and they make great birthday gifts but does not mean we can buy them for guests this can get us fired if you are thirsty but also a cheapskate food vendors can give out free cuts of water employees have their own cafe outside the park and it's got all the foods we serve in park - the delicious smoothies grr at like 75% off those $8 burgers are only 2 dollars and are made to an order unlike the generic cheeseburger you get in park we also had a weekly meal such as Salisbury steak breakfast for lunch etc all I got for now if I think of some later I'll add em feel free to ask about my time there I worked for a long time at Santa's Village and Sky Forest California it's closed now but it was pretty famous to Southern Californians at the time there was a dead rat in the nacho machine under the metal slope that holds the chips at the pixi pantry for at least a year we have dead rats pretty much everywhere just out of sight the deep fryer oil in the pixi pantry was never changed the insects were just scooped out with a mesh spoon all the burgers were cooked in the morning and kept in a bucket of water until someone ordered one most of the order fresh food vendors were clean enough Santa Claus was a huge chain smoker he smelled horrible the bee monorail was known to catch on fire the bobsled coaster derailed at least once sending the riders to the hospital we had a similar accident with the horse-drawn carriage I don't think any ride operators were actually trained for emergencies kids puke a lot you probably already knew that grew up in San Bernardino and the commercials for the place made it seem like a junior at Disneyland finally went there when I was 10 or so and was immensely disappointed I worked last summer for Valleyfair a park in Minnesota owned by the people who owned Cedar Fair these aren't as cool as the disty Verrel once but I have a few behind the renegade coaster is an original Edsel Ranger sitting on a grassy hill I don't know what it's for in no one there I asked seems to know either buy a season pass as of last year parking is included and they cost $60 at the beginning of the season regular admission is $48 and parking is $10 our lifeguards are completely incompetent they get audited randomly throughout the season where the company stages an emergency and the guards have to save someone almost all of them fail and have to go through training again people lose a ton of money on rides I worked in Park Service's Park clean up and once found $28 in a day just in bills dropped from a roller coaster but I worked in the games Department for two summers best summers of my life games are not rigged they just require a lot of luck as the odds are against you one time an NBA player came to play the 3-point challenge he won the auditions for characters are tough to be a face character they line you up and analyze your bone structure before they do anything else if your figure heights and bone structure aren't right you don't even get to go any further in the audition it's fun though : three plus the underground passages in the main park I'm sure you know what I'm talking about are pretty awesome but can be creepy they aren't all bright and colorful it's a tunnel system not an attraction my childhood nearly fell to pieces when I saw the bench with my favorite characters heads all lined up in a row on it I went to school with a girl named Jasmine who looked freakishly like Princess Jasmine then she grew up became a dancer singer and performed as Princess Jasmine at Tokyo Disney being from Orlando I have worked all the theme parks since this thread is overwhelmed with Disney facts I will instead tell you something about my employment with wet n wild if an attractive large busted woman was at the top of the slide the guy working at the bottom of the ride would give the secret boob signal for the gaagh up top this was code for the lifeguard to send her down the slide with her hands interlocked behind her head instead of her arms folded across her chest if a person's arms are folded across the chest this method prevents one robe malfunctions which is a reason why it is the policy to do so because when the hands are interlocked behind the head it prevents the set female from covering her escaping breasts it goes without saying that this led to optimal boobage for the lifeguard waiting below Oh to reminisce on those scenes me gawking at those helpless girls through my mirrored sunglasses as they failed to realize that their bosom was exposed for all to see in retrospect this may have been an inappropriate use of power it is also worth noting that when purchasing sunglasses for lifeguarding the ideal pair will have dark lenses thus allowing your eyes to wander upon the exposed breasts completely unnoticed this was another very well known fact on the job and it's too late I've already seen it all at my park we spared no expense we tell the public that we breed all the dinosaurs on our island but that just isn't true when you are working with such volatile things as extinct animals the yield isn't 100% so we actually do most of our breeding and research on a second island a few miles away you know all your crap that you lose at Walt Disney World well after 90 days of being unclaimed it gets shipped to a cast only shopping area in the back of Magic Kingdom parking lot where it is sold to the slowly cast members for a huge discount why a wide cheap cameras and phones and such however when I was working attractions a lot of the best lost stuff never even made it to Lost and Found co-workers would take the items I know a few that had five six digital cameras and were collecting them I never understood it water is by law free if you go up to any food stand and ask for it but if you ask for magic water I guarantee that nine times out of ten you'll get a free cup of sprite magic water sounds like a codename for some vodka laced with h or something I work for Worlds of Fun out in Kansas City for about seven years I have a few things to add but the other Cedar Fair parks seem to have it on the money these are mostly game related things since that was my department despite what you may choose to believe in games we actually want you to win how many times you win now that's debatable a side point of the games they are all winnable some of them are just really really hard if you have a little kid and are generally pretty nice to the employee in the game and your kid doesn't win most others will generally be really nice and let them try again for free or give them some smaller plush for trying no we cannot sell giant blow Steve's stop asking yes we really do have cameras in all the games and they do work seriously we cannot sell crap to you or give you something for free 3-point challenge at any Cedar Fair Park is completely winnable I've seen it done management unless you're in a leadership position will hate you it's just a fact you have to face it is actually ridiculously hard to fire bad employees I have no idea why but it took us three months to fire someone who was tardy literally every single day by at least an hour and sometimes never showed up for shift red means stop red tags are jailbait aye red tag is any employee between 15 or 14 years old eat before you get there the food is crap and where it's made is worse you can also leave and come back and just pay for parking again it's way better than getting terrible overpriced food the Prowler Mamba and monsoon and the best rides in the park and the only ones that don't break down at the drop of a dime if you have a friend that works at the park and is willing to do so have them use your vehicle information for an additional employee parking pass you get an extra for free this plus a season pass equals extra savings I had to be the one to spoil it for everyone but the characters that you see walking around are actually just people in costumes hopefully I didn't chatter too many childhood dreams it's mostly pee the back the park guests can't see of the Legoland Billund castle borgin is a flat sky-blue brick wall sorry that wasn't cool I don't work anywhere cool like Disneyland or Cedar Point but I did work at a small local amusement park the big secret here is that some of these rides are more dangerous than they look and all of them are staffed by minimum-wage high school or college students it's a winning combination also the park has paid people to keep quiet about injuries I'm unsure if that's common practice in the amusement world I used to work at a theme park called Santa's Village about ten years ago my first day they quickly certified me to run the big roller coaster they hired I had no idea what I was doing so I'm standing there watching the cars go around and I noticed a huge beam that holds the coaster up is snapped in half it was attached to the ground and attached to the track but was snapped in half and the part hanging from the track was swinging in the wind and pulling the track down with it did the maintenance guys quickly welded it back together and reopened the ride freak that I also drove this firetruck thing where a miniature house would catch on fire in the fire truck would drive to it and the kids would use hoses to put it out well one day while driving it the freaking truck overheated and had caught on fire the whole place was falling apart and nobody seemed to give a crap thank God that death trap of an amusement park went bankrupt there are several defenses on the sides of buildings at Cedar Point usually inside of these fenced areas is a vending machine selling soda and water for one dollar and 25 cents not for three six dollars a protein spill means someone puked also hidden passages everywhere I kid you not I think I'd rather clean up puke than protein if you know what I mean I know a thought Park in England that the manager has a special relationship with the roller-coaster fan club and every time a new roller coaster is opened the entire club gets invited to the park which then stays open two hours later just for them on just that ride the rest of the park is shut down and everyone else is kicked out but that one riders kept open I used to be a vet tech for Jurassic Park Triceratops encounter at IOA and this used to be one of the main attractions in Jurassic Park it was shut down for a while and I just saw they reopened it Jurassic Park being my still favorite franchises I try to add my own flair and modifying my uniform to accommodate a triceratops belt buckle that was a big no number before I actually started to actually work with the robot we had to go to Dino classes and learn all these bogus facts that Universal wanted to you to answer if guests had questions one question I swear was how big is a t-rex testicle answer about the size of a basketball the one the vet tech is holding controls the different modes of the dinosaur as well as the sneeze function if there are mats that detect movement under foot which if accidentally stepped on immediately freezes the dinosaur just in case someone tries to hop the gate my favorite was there is a small button behind the frill of the Triceratops that once pushed sets the Dino is to rage mode we were forbidden to push it with thread soft termination if we did so I would push it all the time and ad-lib I got a lot more it was about nine years everything ran on Windows 98 which caused everything to break down all the time my spelling is bad and I'm on an iPhone so suck it grammar nazis custodians in the park they egg the guys girls who walk around in all white with little hip packs with paper towels and stuff and then carry these little cards I can't remember what they are called but I remember the year I was there they had Pinocchio on them anyways their cards that if your child has an accident throws up or does one of those things it would honestly just ruin the Frick out of their day a custodian can go with you into any Disneyland store turn their card into a supervisor at that store and give you new clothes for them for free I worked there 1.5 years and only ever used mine once they are rare and almost nobody remembers they have them it's not just for kids either say you throw up on yourself your GF gets her period early or something boom new crap so you don't have to go home in tears of embarrassment so next time you see someone have a crappy day at Disneyland refer them to a custodian and it might get less crappy real fast not an employee bit up apparently theme parks take sneaking in pretty seriously i sat drunkenly in interrogation for over an hour tonight and had to bail my friend out of jail because he told the ladder cop to freak off you fat B we went in under a fence and got snagged pretty quickly over all worth the fourth degree misdemeanor depends on the theme park I broke into our local Historical Park and everything went better than expected not sure if it's a secret but Disneyworld has an entire underground system of accessible walking passages you can crawl down one manhole in Frontierland and pop up in Tomorrowland but it's really like a bunch of cement hallways and doors Universal islands of adventure cats everywhere seriously if you work at i/o and walk through the park at nighttime don't start there watching you hunting Disneyland and DCA have about 200 feral cats that roam the parks at night instead of trying to capture and move them they just have a neuter and release policy any kittens are given two loving homes on top of that there are five feeding stations hidden throughout the parks it's a great way of keeping the parks rodent population down apparently here are some better Cedar Point secrets most employees who used to work on rides have taken excess ride parts that were never installed I have a limit switch and some other minor items some of my friends have old seatbelts and proxies yeah we can never tell you what is wrong with the ride or how long it's going to be down but we almost always know exactly what's wrong and about how long it's going to take no we usually don't have stupid hand gestures for crap behind your back well maybe some rights do but none of the atrides I worked on did dragster is running super slow this year because there is no multi move due to a train throwing off simp rocks when running like that if people actually know what this means I'll explain more the red phone on the rides are not the bad phones that everyone thinks they are they are the phones used for communication on the right it's the white phone that goes to outside places maintenance Park operation et Cie someone mentioned the overpriced soda but it gets worse I'm pretty sure Cedar Point gets all the soda for free from Pepsi since Pepsi likes advertising in the Park Beach Boys plays in the cue lines because people were trying to appease Duncan's all see the Fair CEO if you are in butthole to a ride operator you will probably be stapled to your seat during the ride the employee quality may have seemed to go down there that's because everyone that was well trained on the rides left because of how terrible they treat their employees and how much they overworked then no overtime ohayo seasonal employment exemption written for amusement parks that cedar point specifically lobbied for people have crazy stories about bad stuff happening in the park but Cedar Point is one of the safest parks in the world by far like it's not even a question if you see what goes down at other parks one of the most dangerous rides in the park is Sky Ride yet the slowly floating cabins people at the other end have to slow and stop them manually at full capacity they are coming in every seven seconds Cedar Point is the only park left with a ride like this possibly because they have never had a serious accident on it there are lots more but those are some of the basics I worked at Michigan's Adventure owned by Cedar Point for a while not too much that hasn't already been said but I do know that most people running the rides at that Park are hungover or maybe drunk we only got three callings before we were fired and I was told that even if I threw up on a guest I would not get to go home I knew of a guy who took all the safety clips off the children's rides the buckles that require a key to open so that the kids don't open them them selves on the ride riding a water ride don't you don't even want to know what is in that water AFR in a water park means accidental fecal release and if you see lifeguards keeping you out of a pool don't go back in because that's what just happened and it happens way more often than you think nothing is safe please don't ask what's wrong with the ride of it's down we can't tell you because if we did you wouldn't actually know what was happening and would freak out just because the safety harness is malfunctioning doesn't mean a few good hits from a maintenance guy won't make it work again soon I also worked at Disney and that's been covered extensively I worked the Safari ride if anyone is interested if you are new to the 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Channel: Updoot Everything

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Keywords: theme park history, theme park, theme park crazy, theme park secrets, theme park secret spot, #updootst, updoot, reddit, r/askreddit, askreddit, ask reddit, r/, \r, r\, best of reddit, reddit stories, reddit story, top posts, funniest posts, funny, funny posts, funny reddit stories, funny askreddit, reddit funny, askreddit funny, askreddit stories, reddit stories 2019, people of reddit, sub, reddit cringe, memes, toadfilms, updoot everything, updoot reddit, story, stories, rslash, comedy

Id: PJqq-jvp00Q

Length: 27min 30sec (1650 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 06 2020