Busch Gardens Tampa employee falls from Skyride

And I actually made the decision this year to leave the employ of a park that I felt did not have safety as a first priority. Due to an event that happened to me personally, and the fact that no one (not even the parks general manager) was willing to even talk about it let alone do anything about it. I decided that I did not like putting the guests and my own safety in jeopardy, not to mention the potential wear and tear on the ride itself.

And for the record I was making $6.55 and the average ride op now (because of the fed min wage increase) makes somewhere around $7.25 and $7.50.

In all the ride op situations that I am familiar with, a ride op would be lucky to make minimum wage. About 10 years ago, Lakemont Park was paying their employees around $3 an hour, if I recall correctly. This was when minimum wage was 5-something.

Cedar Point was trying to find a way to pay their employees less than minimum wage recently. I believe that they lost that battle. What was the outcome of that?

I lived in Orlando and worked at the brand new, uber-cool Islands of Adventure in 2000 and 2001. The park barely payed over minimum. I was making $6.25 per hour. There were days when I would get my paycheck, pay bills, and have $10 left to go buy two weeks worth of groceries. Let me mention that my rent and bills were cheap compared to most other places to live in Orlando. It was fun to work at the park, but that was the hardest year of my life, finacially.

About a year after I left, the park raised their hourly wage to $6.65, I believe. It still wouldn't have been enough for me to live on. Orlando is an expensive place to live.

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As for reluctancy to hit the e-stop, a lot of parks drill it into your head not to hit it unless it's necessary. This causes ride ops to second guess themselves, and to try to assess the situation before reacting, wasting valuable time in the process. This is only with certain kinds of rides; usuially the ones that are a hassle to restart.

Sometimes, however, pressing e-stop is no big deal. I've had to push it before, and I never got in trouble. That's because most of the rides that I worked on could easily be reset afterwards. I'd push e-stop many times a day when I worked the rides at Camp Snoopy at Ceadr Point, and believe me, it was usuially ver necessary. (Visuialize mentally diabled 9 year olds wearing long ponchos in the pouring rain on Balloon Race, head on the floor of the spinning ride vehicles, feet sticking straight up in the air, and their poncho getting wrapped around the center handspin wheel. Funny, but potentially dangerous.)

At P-Fliers at IOA, my coworker hit e-stop while I climbed the lift to catch a todler, who somehow got loose fropm his seat belt, from climbing out of his seat. We were commended and prize awarded for our "heroics".

But there is still that fear there. you ask yourself before pressing it, "Does this situation really require an e-stop? I don't want to get in trouble" Then if you do press it, the whole time afterwards you are thinking, "I hope that my supervisor doesn't get mad that I pressed e-stop."