Line Cutting PSA

This season I can remember off the top of my head 2 incidents of blatant line jumping/cutting. I was at Cedar Point at least 15 times so either it's happening at a reasonably low level, I'm never in the right place to see it or I'm totally oblivious to my surroundings. Any of these three is possible.

I'd say it's the first option: it's happening at a reasonably low level.

If you have, say, five instances of line jumping on a day, and there are 40,000 guests in the park -- it's not happening often enough to require the commitment of money and resources to police it.

Five instances? Per day? Some parks I go to I see five instances per my one wait in line. lol But if it is only five instances per day, I totally agree.

"Excuse me. Excuse me. My friends are up there... Excuse me..." All day long sometimes.

I'm just gonna add that to my "I Swear If I Had Half Of The Negative Park Experiences That Some Of You Have, I'd Have Quit Going A Long Time Ago" list.

If you're experiencing multiple instances of line jumping each time you're on line in one day at one park, why are you still in the park waiting on line?

That begs the question - what is the "enthusiast" definition of line cutting/jumping vs. the park's definition?

Perhaps jumping in front of a few people to join up with your friends, so you don't have to wait in line by yourself because you either got held back/changed your mind about not riding, or because a huge group entered the line at once and split your group up - isn't *really* as big of a deal as you think?

I'm always inclined to let people squeeze by, especially if they're only going a few groups up, and there's not more than 1 or 2 of them. Ideally, their friends should step aside and let others pass so they catch up, but it doesn't always work that way - Oh well, I'm not going to play "Billy Badass" and not let them through. If it's blatant, and they've been bypassing the entire line, or ducking under railings, etc - that's a horse of a different color.

I've had an experience similar to Travis' ("Excuse me. Excuse me. My friends are up there... Excuse me...") once, years ago at SFA. It was infuriating. We saw at least 4 or 5 people/groups move their way past us while queuing for S:RoS alone. And we saw instances at most other rides that day as well. None of them met "friends" near the front of the line, either.

In fact, that may have been our last visit to SFA, in 2003.

I've seen similar significant line cutting instances at SFGAdv and Dorney, the latter of which the ride ops busted and removed the perps when they got to the platform. But other than those anecdotes, line cutting is pretty rare.

LostKause said:

Five instances? Per day? Some parks I go to I see five instances per my one wait in line. lol But if it is only five instances per day, I totally agree.

"Excuse me. Excuse me. My friends are up there... Excuse me..." All day long sometimes.

this perfectly describes my experiences that I was thinking of when i first hopped into the thread.

In fairness, maybe I don't see that sort of thing because I don't wait in lines long enough that five people will likely cut during my wait.

But, to me, that just goes along witht he idea of keeping yourself out of potentially negative situations...and apparently it works. :)

slithernoggin said:

If you're experiencing multiple instances of line jumping each time you're on line in one day at one park, why are you still in the park waiting on line?

I don't want to be rude to others, I'm not looking to take advantage of a bad practice. I also don't want to be confrontational, especially to minors since I am an adult. This is why I always buy the flash pass to avoid these types of rudeness. I don't want to feel like a sucker waiting in line while the teens push to the front so I pay for the experience I want. I probably go less often since I pay for the passes but That is what my wife and I decided would suite us best. I do think that this type of behavior is contagious and if the park doesn't stop it people get confrontational like in the video from the OP. If you look at the SF great adventure forum I bet you will see it discussed there since it is defiantly a widespread problem. Obviously most people don't cut but if you wait in a 90 minutes line about 1,500 guest should be able to ride that coaster in that time. If a small fraction say 1% cut or their friends are "saving their spot" you will see a few groups walk by you, I would say a dozen people is normal on some days. Is it going to make my wait much longer, no, it is just the principal. That is why I was not surprised to see a video of an adult berating a teen who cut in line.

I'm not sure I understand.

Line jumping happened repeatedly, and your choice was not to complain to management about the excessive line jumping, but to instead reward the park by spending more money on each visit?

Is it an unreasonable price increase to guarantee you'll have a good time? Is it an unreasonable value? Self preservation goes a long way

Similarly, going to complain to the park only to see them "look into it" takes MORE time out of your day at the park.

Although the park should do more to stop negative situations (as it was eloquently put), until they do you're really up to your own happiness. If riding roller coasters does that for you, and you're already at a park, you might as well invest in yourself.

Besides, it's way more damaging to the park if they lose a return customer. Buy the flash pass, but don't come back until they improve their service. Let them know about it too

That's kind of my point. Having an unwanted experience, repeatedly, not complaining to the park about it and paying the park even more money for your next day in the park provides the park with neither opportunity or incentive to change the situation.

I get what you are saying about spending more, but I have and continue to give parks feedback. I am just avoiding a bad situation, I am glad you haven't had this experience, but it is not that uncommon. Ultimately I am in the park to have a fun day with my wife, that is what I am there to do. I also don't want to take time out of my vacation to talk to customer service. But I have grabbed employees when I can, but most of the time they are not accessable or cannot leave their post.

I was probably exaggerating a little when I said that five groups of people cut per ride at some parks, but line does cutting happen. I see it at least a few times no matter what park I go to, except maybe Cedar Point and Kings Island.

The people I notice cutting in front of me are mostly teens and tweens. The worst I might do when I see it happening is shout something funny at them, like "Hey kids! Where are your parents?" lol I don't care anymore.

---And then he whittled down his post into almost nothing so he didn't offend anyone. lol---

Line jumping does happen, no argument. But a few times and five times per ride are pretty different.

To be honest, what I'm taking away from this thread is that some folks are bothered by line jumping, bothered enough to complain about it on enthusiast websites, but not bothered enough to take action.

I witnessed an exchange between a mother and son who were immediately behind us while in line for Firechaser Express at Dollywood this Sunday. This exchange took place immediately after a teenaged boy jumped us:

Kid: Is that guy allowed to do that?

Mom: Do what?

Kid: Just jump in front of us like that.

Mom: Yeah, he's just catching up with the rest of his group.

Kid (with a perplexed look on his face): Isn't that line jumping?

Mom: It's OK as long as you have people you came with that are already in line.

I typically visit 15-20 different parks each year around the country. Most of the line jumping incidents I've seen involve kids under the age of 18, but some of the worst line jumping offenses I've seen have involved adults. How does an adult explain to a child that you shouldn't line jump under any circumstance if the adult is doing it themselves?

My personal favorite line jumping story happened at Intimidator at Kings Dominion. A kid tried to get back up in line with his family and a guy tried to stop him. Said something about line jumping etc when somebody else yelled to the guy to just let the kid go. Then somebody else joined in and before you know it there were about 10 people from various groups yelling at the guy to give the kid a break and just let him rejoin his family.

Certainly took a turn the "line cop" didn't expect.

In the Disney lawsuit thread some of you guys talk about kids handling waiting in line, breakdowns, etc. My 5yr old boy does fine with queing; he watches the ride, asks how it works, talks to other kids, sings to himself. But he absolutely flips his sh*t when somebody pushes past and cuts in line in front of him. To him, THAT is not fair. It's not following the rules. That causes the meltdown...

I guess it pays to be (or at least appear to be) the angry black man. Many have tried to cut and depending on how bitchy I feel that day, I flat out block the way.

My favorite experience was at Kennywood (Exterminator) . These little runts tried to cut, not even say excuse me or anything. So I blocked the way, they tried to force my hand away from the railing...I mentioned something about flattening them into the ground if they touched me again. After talking amongst themselves for a few minutes, they jumped the railing, took to the bushes to try to get ahead of me. One of them fell, the other got clothes lined by a branch.

All of that just to avoid waiting an extra 10 minutes..Oy!