As SeaWorld Entertainment prepares to reopen, fans step up criticism of board chair

It's fine to say that personal responsibility should take over, but if I'm personally responsible and others aren't (even a fairly small minority), what am I supposed to do? Leave and sacrifice the day and my ticket money? Leave and spend six weeks demanding a refund? Take matters into my own hands with the irresponsible people?

If there's a sign out front saying masks are required, that's not just an instruction to wear a mask - it's an implied agreement between the park and me that other people will be wearing masks. If the park does nothing to ensure that everyone is, they've broken that agreement.

Or, to look at it another way, they'll bounce you out of the park for line jumping. Why not do the same for endangering others' safety?

Well, Joel Manby is clearly having more fun not running SeaWorld...

https://www.facebook.com/100017409223009/posts/633367483920220/

I have no interest in shopping/traveling/etc. where people don't have to or won't wear face coverings. Right now, I suspect I am in the minority.

What's interesting to me is that none of this was an issue at Universal the day I went, nor does it seem to be in any of the other days since they reopened. People do what they need to do, wear masks, stay distanced, rides still dispatch with mostly normal intervals and everyone still has a good time. One of the other sites mentioned 12 minute dispatches on Manta the other day with one train ops utilizing every other row. What's the point in that when you are allowing everyone to congregate with no rules in the queue

From what I read, Sea World parks are doing operations exactly wrong, and Universal exactly right.

Uni is requiring everyone to use sanitizer immediately before boarding to eliminate the spread of the Covid, then spot cleaning to supplant this. Results are light crowds and short wait times, resulting in empty queues and social distancing.

SEAS parks are loading every other row, cleaning and sanitizing after every cycle, then running the train empty to dry it off. Effectively resulting in 25% capacity per train, plus the time it takes to do the cleaning. Results here are the same light crowds, but very long waits, which of course puts more people in closer contact in the queues.

Wait, they're running the train empty to dry it off too? I thought I'd heard it all.

Cedar Point, Kings Island, Holiday World, Kennywood, Hershey, other regionals waiting to announce a date, if you're reading this, please please please do it the way UO is doing it and not the way SeaWorld & Busch are. I'll fly up north for the second half of summer and spend money on incidentals if you promise to just dispatch coasters in a normal and reasonable way.

Kennywood is July 6 for workers' families, July 7-10 for passholders, July 11 to the public. Plans are leaning toward the Universal model. Details on the website.

hambone said:

It's fine to say that personal responsibility should take over, but if I'm personally responsible and others aren't (even a fairly small minority), what am I supposed to do? Leave and sacrifice the day and my ticket money? Leave and spend six weeks demanding a refund? Take matters into my own hands with the irresponsible people?

I don't really have a good answer for that. Yeah, it sucks if people aren't following the guidelines, but my perspective from an operator's standpoint is that it's not financially feasible to have very many people whose sole purpose is to enforce social distancing.

Or, to look at it another way, they'll bounce you out of the park for line jumping. Why not do the same for endangering others' safety?

Anecdote time: I worked in rides at a SF park for 6 years in the early-mid 90's, when line jumping was taken seriously, and I never once saw someone kicked out of the park for doing it. If they didn't comply when we asked them to head to the back of the line, they did when a security officer showed up. Marching someone out of the place is a bad look, especially for something that doesn't really cause harm and that losing their gained spot in line is punishment enough. I would make the argument that parks will be in a similar predicament with social distancing, but I would definitely concede that the stakes are much higher. Like I said, I don't have a good answer.

My place of work has had more complaints about crowds being larger than expected rather than social distancing not being enforced. That stems more from the misconception by some people that limited capacity = exclusive experience.