Stupid Guest Tricks

Mr. Syndrome and I were waiting for Rip Ride Rockit last night shortly before closing at Universal, since we were staying for Halloween Horror Nights. As usual, the Rockit decided to break down...and stayed down for an extremely lengthy period. We chose to remain in the line, since the park was closed at that point and it was still almost an hour to HHN. A lot of people left, but the two women in front of us stayed too. About 45 mins. into the fiasco, a poor TM had the misfortune to wander by them and they totally went off on him. I mean WENT OFF! I won't recount the whole ugly conversation here, but can anyone tell me the logic in these statements? They said:

"We came to Universal today specifically to ride this one ride. It was the only reason for our trip. That's why we waited until the end of the day to ride it."

Uh, if that was your sole reason, why the hell did you spend 8 hours riding everything else. Wouldn't it be your first priority the moment it opened?

Logic = Fail

You have to love that logic.

I have seen some CM's post that guest have said that to them, and I cannot understand how you could say that to a CM and not feel totally stupid.

we ride the stuff we "have to" ride FIRST, then everything else is a bonus in the fun department.

and I say "have to" from the viewpoint that if we don't, no big deal, we will just ride it the next time we come to the park.

But you're not a SG.

Last year Christmas Week we had closed access to the 5:30 Indy show at about 5:20 as were were way overcapacity, even in standing room. I had a family of four come up and the guy just had to get his family in. I told him the next show would be at 6:45 and we would be opening up the queue in about 15 minutes.

His response was they could not do the next show as they had to leave around the time it started so they could get their flight home. I did point out to him, very sweetly, that there had been four earlier shows during the day and he could have come to any of them, I think I did say something to the effect of if it was so important you could have made time earlier in the day.

When I told him there were another 100 or so people trying to also get and I could not make an exception for him, he really blew up and wanted a manager. At that time I knew there was both a manager and a coordinator within 20 feet of me. I told him I would see what I could do. So I went over to the telephone and called to photocell and asked the person there if he happened to see a manager please ask him to come out. I went back to him and told him a manager would be there "shortly" as soon as he was located.

Finally the guy (and family) decided to leave. When that happened the manager who had heard everything came over and said I handled it very well and thanked me for keeping him out of it.

Character attendants get this all the time. "We have to be at the airport in an hour - can't Pluto see one more child?" This happens when: It is the last set of the evening, the line looks short because it was closed 20 minutes earlier, and a hundred people have already been turned away.

Besides, if you're still in the Magic Kingdom and need to be to the airport in the hour, you are not going to make it. My favorite reply is: "You better hurry then and not let us make you late! Bye!"

And then it is "This bad man won't let you see Pluto!" like I'm the guy who put off finding the kid's favorite character (really?) until I was walking out of the park.

Moonliner wrote:Besides, if you're still in the Magic Kingdom and need to be to the airport in the hour, you are not going to make it. My favorite reply is: "You better hurry then and not let us make you late! Bye!"

For variety, you could say, "Since you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of making it to the airport in time, you've got plenty of time to stay here and wait for Pluto's next set."

I work at a relatively small theme park in Idaho. I have had quite a few guest interactions that have made me scratch my head. Two such incidents happened last week.

I was unloading guests from our train that had just completed a trip around the park. A guest approached the exit gate and said "is this where we get on?" I replied that the station is actually the appropriate place to board the train. So they start to walk away and I continue to unload guests and thank them for visiting. The guest returns and says "Well, since I didn't know where to go, can't I just get on the train here?" Uh...no?

The second incident kind of left me dumbfounded. I was assisting a guest at the front of the train depot building. A guest approached me during the interaction and interrupted me to ask where to go to get her wheelchair bound father on the train (which was out in the park at the time.)

I advised the guest that the HCA entrance is to the left of stroller parking with the wheelchair icon, if they wait at the gate, when a train pulls into the station they'll load them. She says ok and walks away. I finish with the other guest and am headed into the depot building to do something and I see the family walking along the platform towards what would technically be the head of the line. They had to open a gate that had a sign that read "Please wait for a cast member" to get onto the platform. I ask them to please go back to the gate and wait. The guest replies, well you didn't tell us to wait so we were confused. I'm just thankful they didn't fall onto the tracks from the platform, I hate paperwork.

Dexter32