An amusement park is designed to bring you both thrills and bits of happiness after you walk through its doors. But, for those behind the scenes that help with the rides, concessions, and safety of others, it can be quite the opposite.
Christian Rock Band Canoodling
“So once a year we have this event where a bunch of Christian bands come and perform in the park. Church and youth groups will come from all over the country to see them. Apparently, these large groups of devoutly Christian teenagers have a lot of pent up frustrations.
We would catch them getting each other off EVERYWHERE. I’m talking heavy petting to coitus and everything in between. Behind bushes, in the bathrooms, on ANY slow moving or show-type ride – it got so bad that at the last event they actually shut down most of the slower rides during it because the fools would always get caught canoodling. I always like to think they had a deliciously awkward time explaining to their chaperones what happened.
Oh, and people poop everywhere in theme parks. I’ve seen a grown woman squat behind a bush and then scurry away as if there’s not a bathroom every 100 feet.”
Code Brown And A Missing Screw
“I once worked at a water park as a lifeguard supervisor and it was an everyday thing that someone sh-t or threw up in the pools. We even called it a code brown so we weren’t straight up saying ‘uhhh yeah, another turd in the kiddie pool.’
Another time we had a rip tide water ride where people could ride body boards like a big wave and while I was talking to another guard I heard the whistle go off like there was an emergency. As I approached, a guard told me that there was a nail in someones foot. I thought he meant someone stubbed their toe and their nail pushed back into their toe but it was an 4-year-old girl who had stepped on a 4-inch screw leftover from the maintenance the ride had recently undergone. Right into the heel.
As I saw it I got a little light headed but that what I was trained to do so as I picked her up and pulled her out of the water she moved her foot and it started to come out but it was still in there a good 3 inches. I put a latex glove on it and told her it’d be ok as I called for paramedics. Her damn brothers came up and said that she was gonna ruin their time if they had to leave and I had to tell them to get away. When the paramedics came they picked her up to put her on the stretcher and when they did, that good ole latex glove slid off her foot and got hooked on the screw in the foot causing her, what I believed by her screams, excruciating pain.
Never found out what happened after that but she should have sued. Big payday.”
A Line Cutter Gets His Comeuppance
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“Sort of a theme park on the sea…I worked on a cruise ship as a lifeguard for one summer (hated it) and was often stationed at the flowrider (the endless wave machine where you could body surf). One jerk kid, maybe 12 or 13, would always cut line despite me yelling at him and even trying to get his parents attention but he was just ‘that’ kid. One time he’s surfing and slips off the board enough for a WHOOSH to sweep his suit off. Not down a little, which is common on those things but right the f–k off. Naked kid comes tumbling back up desperately looking for his suit. The line has erupted in laughter. I see his suit. It’s obscured by where the waves collect in a bubbling torrent. I say nothing. He was crying and eventually found them and tried putting them back on with tremendous difficulty while trying to shield his shortcomings from the public. The beauty part is I keep a towel near by just in case this happens. The mom said something to me, but I just smiled and let her know that its okay…it happens all the time. He didn’t come back that day. Glorious line cutter karma.”
Extra Ride Baggage
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“A family of Irish travelers tried to get on a ride with a big backpack so the onloaders asked them to remove it.
The ride guys noticed it was strangely heavy and felt like something was moving when they went to store it for them so they looked inside.
Chickens. They’d been sneaking chickens onto the rides.”
Ride Breakdown Crisis
“We had a ride breakdown, surprisingly normal, however the train was stuck in such a way that we were unable to reach two rows of the train. It just so happened that in one of those rows was a lady that was having a severe panic or asthma attack (Our First Aid team took over when she got off) and wouldn’t/couldn’t calm down or get her breathing under control. Luckily mom was near by and had an inhaler. The ride was a flying coaster so the guests were laying on their backs while stuck and I was able to toss the inhaler and land it right on her chest. Between Mom, First Aid personnel, and myself we were able to get her calmed down while we wait for maintenance to pull the train into place.
I whole ordeal only took 10-15 minutes but it felt like an hour.
People stuck on rides always seem to think their lives are in danger when in reality they’re safer in the seat than I am standing on the catwalk next to them. But this woman was the only time I felt someone was in real danger and it scared the sh-t out of me.”
That’s Gonna Leave A Mark For Sure
“When I was a lifeguard lead manager, this sh-t happened.
It was mid July, and it was ~100 degrees outside. Not a cloud in the sky. It was hot for me, wearing a set of khaki shorts and a thick polo shirt. I had the break guards go on water runs as needed, and guards were permitted to rotate by swimming in the pool. This was to keep them happy, and to keep them from dropping like flies in the deathly summer heat.
Naturally, the cycles of the day began like any other. We delegated starting spots, and determined the final rotation based on the number of guards who had shown up, which was all of them. For that, I felt lucky. We had lost 35 guards from the staffing pool as a result of laziness and the usual number of kids who had life’s events pop up.
At our park, we had a slide that was about 60 feet high. This slide had three channeled slides that started off like a pipe, and then became fluted (half of a pipe, no upper half) channels. One pipe, and the most popular, was the one slide that went down at an 80 degree angle. It was completely open. You sat down, and slid down the 60 feet withing two seconds. Quite a thrill really, if not a quick one. Two guards manned the ride, one at the bottom and one at the top, to control the antics of the guests at all times.
As midday comes around, I settle into the usual rhythm, occasionally serving as master arbitrator for the minor problems that our guests have. Bored, i begin watching the slides go down. Four people come every 15 seconds, like clockwork, as they should. The technique is flawless on the part of the guards, almost robotic at times. If I were to approach these guards, they would likely be lost in their own world of thoughts and repetitions. At the top, I notice one of the guards turn around as a teenage male prepares to get into the slide. This is a problem. Teenage males are the trolls of the park, their antics a perpetual source of problems for all staff, from the lowliest trash-kids to the upper echelons of management. Then, I see the kid take two steps backwards. I know what he is about to do. He must be stopped, I think. But, alas, what am I to do? I have no way to contact the lifeguard up top. There is no phone, no radio. I blow my whistle twice. The guards nearby look at me, the guard at the top urns around to find the source of my noise, to fuind me pointing at the kid.
Too late.
The kid ran and jumped clean off of the slide. Now, up to this point in my life, I had been afraid of things. Getting in trouble at school, failing something miserably. They all made me a tad anxious. A lot of things had made me scared, and a lot of things had made my stomach churn. But nothing, in all of my life, had made this scared until now. Seeing a young man fall to his impending doom and being powerless over it makes you feel terrible. Feeling, by some extension of logic, that you are indirectly responsible for this, makes it even worse. Never, in my life, has my stomach and jaw dropped so fast.
To his credit, he assumed the proper position of arms and legs being crossed. But now he was clean in the air, flying like a lead brick. AS he did so, his body turned ever so slightly. It was something he noticed, and fruitlessly tried to correct for. Instead, he fell some distance before hitting inside the flume and chaotically tumbling down the ride. I called the paramedics immediately, and we had to backboard this kid out of the splashdown flume.”
Out In A Flash
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“One time I was working and a visibly drunk woman was standing by me with her kids. She was wearing a bikini top and at this particular theme park we were asked to tell people not to wear bikini tops in the park. I asked her politely that if she had a shirt to please put it on since bathing suits were only allowed for small children. She looked at me drunk as hell and said, ‘…you think I’m hot don’t you? You like my tits don’t you?’ Then she flashed me and grabbed me and give me a little kiss. Management was like WTF but she had been lost in the crowd. Later on a manager approached me and said she had been kicked out of the park and arrested because she was belligerently drunk in one of the popular kids shows.”
Not The Crossover We Wanted
“Worked at a Six Flags as a sound technician, so I spent most of my time backstage with the characters and actors. One time I walked backstage to find a headless Bugs Bunny and Scooby Doo having sex, costumes just unzipped, not off. Not exactly a horror story but definitely scarring.”
Dealing With Out Of Control Parents
“Not necessarily a theme park, but I used to work at a party place that was filled with moon bounce-like ‘rides.’ I’ve seen my fair share of knocked out teeth and bloody noses, but the ‘horror story’ I have is about neither of them, just a psycho dad.
The party I had the pleasure of working for was for kids three years old and younger. The way it worked was that I had to sit on the edge of the slide and monitor how many kids went up and down the slide, and make sure they were not going down the slide incorrectly (head first, two at a time, etc).
One kid, couldn’t be older than three, decided he wanted to go on the slide. At the time he tried to go up, there was already the maximum amount of people at the top of the slide, so he was not allowed to go up. I had my leg out blocking the stairs so that he could not walk up, so he tried to crawl under my leg. I moved my leg down and blocked him from going down. Didn’t touch him, didn’t kick him, just simply moved my leg down.
The kid’s father is watching this all happen and goes ‘What the f–k! Why did you just kick my son?’ I looked at him shocked and told him that I did not kick his son. He said to me ‘Yes you did, I saw you kick him in the face, I am telling a manager. This is bullsh-t.’ He then threatened me, I don’t remember exactly what he said, but he said he would hurt me if I ever laid a hand on his son again. Remaining professional, I just said ‘Ok sir.’ After saying this, he went on to tell every single person in the party that I had kicked his three-year-old son in the face, which I did not do. By the end of the party the parents were heckling me and saying ‘What are you doing here? You should go work at a grocery store if you hate kids so much that you’re gonna kick them.’
I was pretty pissed off, but told my manager about it and we laughed it off. I had been working there for four years at this point and she knew I did nothing wrong. Not sure if the parent complained, but the dude was a psycho.”
Lightning Strikes And A Knife Fight
“Operated rides for four years. Two moments stand out. The scariest moment I had was when lightning struck a utility pole below me (my position on the ride was about 50 feet up) knocking out power to my ride and forcing me and my supervisors to unload the ride in the middle of a lightning storm. The second was a guy who was very upset that I wouldn’t let his kid who was a foot under the height requirement ride. I told him no early in the day, but one of my coworkers let the kid ride while I was on break. The family comes up later and the father who was noticeably drunk, jumps two gates and over the tracks to threaten me with a knife. I called security and he ran.”
In The End, We All Laughed About It
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“The worst thing that’s happened is a guy spitting in my face and starting to film me with his phone while screaming at me that he was going to sue the company I work for because I confronted him when he tried to trip one of my performers during a Halloween event. He was drunk. He was arrested. We all laughed at his mug shot the next day.”
Look Out For That Train
“I worked at Busch Gardens Colonial Williamsburg as a teen. I worked near the train tracks and every day I was amazed how close the ducks would come to getting hit by that thing. Well one day one got too close and got ran over. The heart breaking part was that it was a mallard and his mate spent the next half hour or so quacking forlornly at his corpse until the maintenance guys finally showed up to clean it up.”
Ninjas And Idle Threats
“I don’t know if these count as ‘horror stories’ as there’s no injury or gore involved, but here’s a couple things that happened to me while interfacing with the theme park going public.
I was managing a few ride photo booths and I was in one of them talking to an employee when a guy looked at our prices, picked out the package of four photos for $20, and said ‘$20 for one photo? That’s unfair to families.’ I told him that the price was $20 for four, and if he’d like a single photo, it was $10. He got very close to my face and growled ‘Are you getting smart with me?’ I told him no, tried to walk him through the different prices, and he kept saying ‘Are you getting smart with me?’ Finally I just walked away round to the back of the booth to check on some stock, during which point he told my employee that if he saw me again, I was getting punched in the face.
Another time a guy dressed as a ninja kept riding the coaster over and over with his mom and dad, which was strange enough, but on the third or fourth time around his mom whipped out her boobs and in the photo he was staring at them pretty intently. Security escorted them out.”
Daily Mess Cleanup
“My first job out of high school was at a theme park.
Nothing crazy, just a lot of poop. Kids would poop on rides, adults would poop on rides, it was a daily poop fest. At the time I was under 18 so it was always awesome when it happened because I had to shut the ride down and call in for cleanup instead of doing it myself.
Diarrhea on a roller coaster is not fun for anyone on the ride.”
Slushie Machine And Angry Smokers
“I work in retail at Adventureland in Des Moines, Iowa, if any of you are familiar with the place. I’m loaded with wack stories.
We have these slushie fountains in certain stores, and I happened to be working in the waterpark area one day when this chubby little kid comes in, shirtless. He goes up to the slushie machine and takes a straw and unwraps the paper off it. He proceeds to scratch his stomach using said straw and then he puts it back in with the rest of the straws, then he just leaves. It was actually pretty gross.
We also have a strict no smoking policy, though drinking is allowed. One day this group of obviously drunk guys walks into my store, one of them has a pretty good sized bloody cut on his leg. He tells me he walked into a wall and hurt himself, which was obviously bullshit. I go ahead and call first aid, because it looks pretty bad. While waiting for first aid, he starts smoking a cigarette. I inform him that I couldn’t let him do that, because it’s against the law in Iowa. Then he just puts his hand behind his back, because, apparently, if I can’t see his cigarette, he isn’t smoking one. I’m pretty sure he and his friends got escorted out.”
Fire Hazard
“I worked as a lifeguard for a while at a water park. The wooden building behind the wave pool caught on fire one day (probably because of an employee smoking in there). The park had to be evacuated and people were passing out in the parking lot left and right since it was about 100 degrees outside. The building burned down, along with all of the ride tubes that were stored in there. It was one of the worst days I’ve ever had to work.”
A Dangerous Moment At Legoland
“I have experienced a couple of incidents, mostly just people trying to attack me if they don’t get their will, but the most horrible thing I’ve encountered is also the best thing I encountered, I was working in Legoland in Denmark and i was at a ride that was just a train, we would be 2 on shift and i was standing at the line waiting for my partner to come back with the train, while i stood there and waited a guest from the line called me over and said that there was a boy who wasn’t breathing, I quickly ran over to the boy and saw his father completely frozen and crying his heart out, I yelled to the food stand across the path and told them to call the emergency crew. After there went some seconds I decided I couldn’t wait for them and started to give him mouth to mouth, I had the kid out a solid minute and was starting to sh-t my myself when he slowly started to wake up and breath again, both me and the father just sank down in relief that the boy survived, then the emergency crew came and got the father and boy to a hospital. The next week they came again and I was thanked by the boys whole family and they said they were extremely grateful for what I’ve done, they tried to offer me all kind of stuff but I refused and said I was happy with just the boy being alive.”
Get The Scissors Ready
“I used to work at a small water park where there were some dry rides up the southern end. There was this 8-year old kid just being a little sh-t; pushing in line, climbing up the slide of the playground, knocking other kids’ hats off, that sort of bullsh-t. I warn him several times, then ask him to leave, but he doesn’t. I go and ask my supervisor what to do and he says ‘Get the scissors.’ He means to cut his wristband, without which he can’t go on any rides. I call him over, and he surprisingly complies, and before he can react, I grab his wrist and cut off his wristband. Naturally, he starts crying. He runs off to get his mum and she comes back about 15 minutes later and comes and talks to me (without her son). She asks why I did what I did, and I explain the situation to her, and how it is standard procedure. She nods and understands, and knows that her son is a demon-child. She leaves, but, lo and behold, 10 minutes later here he comes. He tries to cut in line again and I stop him, and ask him to go back to his mum. His first reaction was to punch me in the balls. Oh sh-t, no he didn’t. My supervisor sees and immediately calls security. Apparently his mum saw too and she comes running. She doesn’t say anything to her child, but goes and tells the supervisor to ‘scare’ him. When security arrives (30 seconds later) they grab the kid, whirl him around and handcuff him. He’s sh-tting himself at this point. They grab him and take him off in their golf cart. A few minutes later they return and the kid has obviously been crying, and hard. He jumps out of the cart and runs straight to his mum, who grabs him and walks out. People watching were stunned, but amazingly, and I sh-t you not, some applauded as they went off. Best day of work I had at that place.”
Wave Pool Of Disgust
“Worked at a Paramount Park several years back as a lifeguard. The grossest part is that the giant wave pool is not drained/refilled all summer. By the end of the summer, when the wave pool was turned off at the end of the night, you could see sunscreen oil slicks on the surface and all of the bandaids and hair ties would settle into a giant disgusting mass. A few times I saw guards go in after money, but I can assure you it wasn’t worth it.
After the waterpark closed, I filled in on ride duty. One time I filled in as a height-checker because the girl who did it before me had her arm broken by a psycho dad who tried to take her wristbands (which were used to indicate kids’ height) from her for his kid who was too short to ride safely.”
Vacation Memories
“I was visiting Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio and was stopped right at the gate of the Chaos ride since all of the cars were full. Little did I know this would secure front row seats for the best story of the entire trip.
A man who had gotten on the ride just before me had placed his video camera on the operators booth so he wouldn’t have to take it with him on the ride and risk breaking/losing it. As the ride is starting up, one of the operators notices it and gets the bright idea to start filming thinking ‘well this will be a nice memory that the father and son won’t have to put any work into preserving at all.’
She was wrong.
Halfway through the ride the owner of the camera loses his lunch, and breakfast and what looks like dinner from the night before. Seriously, this guy had a lot in there and a lot came spewing out of him. Before the operator with the camera realizes what has happened, he has stopped barfing and she quietly closes the camera and puts it away as the ride comes slowly to a stop. The man apologizes for the mess, gathers his camera and things and leaves in embarrassment. None of the operators say a word about the fact that it is on film.
All I can imagine is him sitting his family down to watch the home movie of their trip to Cedar Point and him going ‘hmmmm, I don’t remember filming this…Oh God! Oh God no!’ as his entire family sees the recorded history of his weak stomach.”
A Maze Of Problems
“I worked for the Halloween events for a theme park in my area (won’t say the name, but it might be on the border between two states).
I got kicked in the face and almost broke my nose. I was given a break for as long as it took for my nose to stop bleeding, and that counted as my only break for the evening (we got under 30 minutes of break time for a 8-hour shift).
Another guy actually got fired because he had a migraine and had to go to the first aid area until it was over. It took something like two hours, and they fired him for it.
We were also the ‘maze’ closest to the only place that served alcohol in the park, so we had to deal with drunk a–holes and sh-tty kids fairly often. Someone choked a girl working in the maze.
The maze almost burned down a few times because a–holes decided that a dried corn maze was a good place to smoke a f–king cigarette.
I had a lot of fun most of the time, but I had to deal with a bunch of stupid sh-t on a nightly basis.”
Bloody Coaster Ride
“Small town amusement park in Iowa. I ran the roller coaster pretty much every day that summer so I got to witness quite a few things firsthand. The one that sticks out the most HAS to be the time the coaster came back with a huge blood splat on the front of it along with it’s horrified passengers. The front seat had a pair of 15 year old girls with bits of blood and hair all over them (don’t picture Carrie, it wasn’t that bad) and they were crying their eyes out and screaming for me to let them out.
The people in line were about as confused as I was initially, until a kid from the middle car jumped out laughing like he had just witnessed the coolest thing in his entire life. He told everyone that the coaster had ran over a small group of squirrels on one of the drops and it appeared to had hit every single one of them.
The ride was closed for about 20 minutes while another employee and I cleaned the entire car. For the rest of the day I was forced to explain that we did NOT run a person over. To this day I still wait for it to happen again randomly because I’m constantly hearing from my riders that they nearly hit a squirrel.”