Working At Cedar Point?

Vater said:
I find this thread educational. I now know never to let my kids work at an amusement park that offers housing.

Or a beach. Or a parking lot guard tower. Or a long dock on a marina...

Exactly.

When she was 2, I had my daughter (now a teen) sign an agreement under which she agreed not to date until the earlier of her 45th birthday or my death. I figured if I wasn't dead by the time she is 45, I would be too old/senile to know or care. The agreement is notarized so its all good. :)

LostKause said:

Sex! Sex! Did I mention SEX? You will have many opportunities for SEX, if you want it. It's a hobby to release some of the stress one may find working there causes. It's kind of nasty how much SEX happens all around. Good nasty or bad nasty, it's your call. lol

damnit! Knew I should have worked there when I was a teen. lol!

http://www.kirkwilcox.com/Notes/CedarPoint.html

Just click through and read it. Trust me.

^Yep.

I worked at Cedar Point in the mid-80s.

It was a case of be careful what you wish for, you might get it. Cedar Point has been a very special place to me since my first visit in 1973. When I got a job at the park, I was ecstatic.

I bailed and left before the end of my contract. What they paid was nowhere near enough money to make it worthwhile, to me, to stay.

(Also: sex? SEX? A little something something might have made it worth my while to stay...)

Personally the sex and the friends are the only reason I worked there, and went back.

My experiences parallel that article a lot. The sexual harassment? Kind of. I was never harassed, but more than many times I noticed people dating their managers.

Time off. Nope. You can't get time off. I could get two days off in a row if they were one day one work week and another day another work week. When the park is open, you need to be available to work or else they will fire you, and you will lose your bonus.

They do charge for food at the employee areas. Not much though. I mean, you have to pay for food when you are not working anyways. My problem with the employee food was that they didn't seem to care about keeping things clean. The ketchup was in a big bowl with a plastic spoon in it. There was no sneeze guard, no way to keep insects from flying into it. Nothing keeping other food from falling into it. It was nasty, and when I made a formal complaint to the manager of the cafeteria, the guy told me to shut up and if I didn't shut up, he would see to it that I was fired. Great customer service there.

The schedule in the blog that Gonch linked to is just about right. It takes a while to get ready for work, then it takes a long time to get to work. You work you butt off all day, and then it takes forever to find some food and to get back to your bed. You don't get much sleep, and when you are in your bed, you WILL hear sex, if you aren't the one having it. It's kind of gross how much sex you will hear. You might even be in the other bunk, with the bed moving. People don't care how much noise they are making either. It's as if they forget you are there because the lights are off. Disgusting, if it's not your thing. At least screw quietly, please.

Some of the linked blog post seemed a little whiny to me, but when I complain about working there, I seem kind of whiny to me too. lol

It's not all bad though. I say this a lot... Working at Cedar Point will make you a man in more ways than one. It was the best and worst time of my life.

Let me talk just a little bit about the bonus. When I worked there, it was that they would add $1 for every hour that you worked to your bonus check, and if you work the entire length of your contract, they would send you your bonus check about a month after you leave. This was awesome, but it caused me a lot of stress while I worked there. Many times I would get wrote up for things beyond my control. If you get wrote up too many times, they will terminate you, and you will lose your bonus. That bonus check was the most important thing to me at the time.

One time I got wrote up because a person that I was in charge of did not call the park operations office to tell them that there was an accident and we needed management to the location immediately, like i told her to do. I was tending to the situation, and relied on her to call, but she did not. Another time, I was wrote up because the water was high and the natural gas line plugged into one of the boats on my ride had pulled loose. It was my fault that maintenance made the line too short to accommodate for the rising water. This was near the end of the season. One more write-up, and I was going to be sent home without being allowed my bonus check that I worked so hard for. That was the most stressful periods of employment I have ever had in my life.

Let me add one more funny thing here... From the blog:

I hate teenage girls. The entire time I worked at Cedar Point, every teenage girl that bought Dippin' Dots flirted with me in attempt to get free/discount ice cream. I must really come off as a pedofile when I sell ice cream. Then again, who else would willingly spend their entire summer off selling Dippin' Dots?

Did anyone else catch that? He called himself a pedophile. HAHAHA!

There is a little bit of that going around too. A guy who worked at the photo booth for Woodstock's Express was arrested for having relations with a teenage boy working as a games host. He said that nothing happened and that they were just friends, but you never know. Once again. Stay away from the teenagers. They wear green tags, so they are easy to spot and dodge.

The dirtbags working at the Thunder Canyon always talked about horndogging over the teenage girls in their skimpy bathing suits and wet clothes. One guy once told me, "The younger, the better." Gag. lol

LostKause said:

Some of the linked blog post seemed a little whiny to me, but when I complain about working there, I seem kind of whiny to me too. lol

A little?

My linking to that wasn't an endorsement of the content. That's some of the lamest, whiniest, exactly-what's-wrong-with-the-world complaining about a job that I've ever had the displeasure of reading.

Work is hard and stuff.

I though you were endorsing it, which I found kind of strange. lol

I hate to say it, but many people who have worked there have a negative opinion about it. You'd have to work there to understand.

You do kind of know what you are getting into when you apply. There are a few unexpected surprises once there, however, not all of them are bad surprises. If you can stick with the job and not leave after seeing how tough it is, like many people do, you are a strong person. I am a strong person for working there three seasons. After completing my last season there, I said no way that I will ever go back to that hellhole, but I don't regret working there in the first place.

About being a displeasure reading that, I found it hilarious and very entertaining. I kind of related to some of it. I disagree with some of it too. Thanks for sharing.

^Yep.

My opinion of it, looking back on things, is much better than it used to be. I intentionally avoided going back to visit just because I found myself struggling to overcome terrible memories. Last year, a full seven years (give or take a few weeks) after working there, I was able to visit and find the magic again.

So as not to seem as I'm contradicting myself regarding my earlier post, I was able to disassociate the job itself from a few people who were just terrible at their jobs. As I said, I had a good crew that set ground rules (pretty much about there being no drama) and, save for a few minor, isolated incidents, lived up to them. That Top Thrill Dragster crew in 2006 was just epic, and the Millennium Force crew with whom I spent a week on a voluntary switch with a friend of mine was outstanding as well. Also, the horror stories of the accommodations didn't hold true for me as I had understanding roommates and we set ground rules as well. If you wanted to mess around, you weren't going to do it in our room.

In my opinion, there are worse ways to spend a summer, and Ouimet seems like somebody who genuinely sees value in employees. If you are genuinely interested, give it a shot. It can be a pretty cool place if you make it one.

So funny, dude. I worked there in 2006 too, and it took me until last year to get back there too, for the same reasons. lol

And the magic came back for me. I might not try to get up there this year, but maybe next year, or whenever they tear down and replace Shoot The Rapids with a REAL log ride. ;)

You have me laughing up a storm LostKause. My 15 years at Meijer could only be referred to as "Gays of our lives." You pretty much knew who was doing who. This lady divorced her husband so she could date this guy, and this married manager is doing that guy. Dirty old farts dating teenage girls, and so on. And, of course the back stabbing bitch was queen of them all.

There was one guy who worked in our food court, (back when I made pizza) who thought he was the hottest stud at meijer. He was certainly a good looking guy, but all he talked about all day long was buttering muffins, and which muffin he was going to butter, and which one got buttered. That drove me nuts. So, I said to him one day...since you like buttering things so much, how about buttering my stick. His face got so red, and he never said anything to me about buttering muffins again. All the girls were coming around giving me high fives, and laughing...heard what you said to Hank. You got balls.

I think if I was in housing with other young guys, I would certainly lay down the law. No sex, no drinking, no smoking in the room. I'm a non smoker, and I would hope that being in a confined place like that, Cedar Point would be smart enough to not allow smoking in the dorms. Not, only because of the health hazard, but because of the fire hazard. I knew a guy who passed out drunk on the couch while smoking and burned a good portion of his body, catching his couch on fire. Lucky he didn't burn the house down.

So, housing is $40.00 a week? with how many people living in one room? That's not cheap at all. In fact, for a dorm style room, that's a rip off. But, also pretty damn smart of the park, as they get a huge portion of the money they payout to employees back. If you have 3 people living in one room, that's $600.00 in a 5 week month. You could get a nice 2 bedroom apartment for that.

Makes me wonder just how many current Cedar Point employees were actually conceived there. Heck, it's been around a while no? I wonder how many generations were conceived there? :)

^Sounds like a really bad idea for you to live in a dorm.

When I worked there, the Corkscrew crew -- at the time, all women -- was fond of marching down the Midway after the park closed, singing "We are the Screw Crew, we do it all for you!"

Timber-rider, I always got lucky in that we only had two or three in a room, but you might not be so lucky. Some rooms can sleep up to four in two bunk beds, and if they all have girlfriends or boyfriends sleeping with them, that's up to eight. lol

Cedars, the summer camp-style "hotel" is located near the marina gate. The best thing about it is that it is on the peninsula, so you don't have far to go to get to work. Two or three people live in one small room. It's cold in the Spring and Fall, and very hot in the summer. Cedars lacks of AC and heat. The place is so old, I assumed that it would soon be torn down way back in 1999 when I first worked at the park.

Commons is off the peninsula, across the street from the employee parking lot just past McDonald's. You might recognize its location from when you go under the walking bridge on the way to the park. The employee recreation center is located in this compound. The compound is surrounded by chain a link fence, and like all the other employee housing areas, you must show your badge to enter, and there is only one way in or out.

In Commons, there are two kinds of living areas; dorms and apartments. Dorms are small, cinder-block enclosed rooms with two bunk beds. They have a shared public restroom on each floor. The buildings are separated by gender, not that that matters because some chicks are lazy and will use the men's room anyways if they feel like it.

The apartments in Commons have a living room and a kitchen, and two shared bathrooms, with several bedrooms, I want to say eight, throughout. Each bedroom sleeps three or four, just like the dorms. Each of the two bathrooms have one shower each, so with as many as 32 people living in the apartment, it can get pretty crowded, especially in the morning before the park opens.

Bayside is the apartment-style dorms, and are known as being somewhat nicer place to live. I visited these, but never stayed there. I don't remember why they were nicer than all the others, except that they have less people per apartment. This is where people who stay exceptionally early or late in the season stay.

Cedars closes earlier in the season, I'm guessing around September, because it gets cold during the fall. If you live here during that time, and you are still employed by the park, you will be required to move to another hosing area. Commons closes the day after the last operating day of the season. If you are still working for Cedar Point after the park closes, Bayside is still open. I don't know when Bayside closes, if it ever does.

LK a good description of Cedar Point housing. Bayside is open year around. It is not air-conditioned.

Commons Apartments have five bedrooms. Four bedrooms have either 3 or 4 beds and the fifth bedroom has either 4 or 5 beds for a total of 16 or 20 per apartment. Still too many! The only air-conditioned area is the kitchen-living area. Their are no windows in the kitchen-living room. The bedrooms are not air-conditioned and get very hot. You pay more to live in an apartment than in a dorm.

But then, how much time do you spend in your room?

If you can get past some of unavoidable complaints about operating certain rides, this post gives a good explanation of the pros and cons of working at Cedar Point: https://web.archive.org/web/20111203091415/http://forums.somethinga...id=3427866

Scottt said:

If you can get past some of unavoidable complaints about operating certain rides, this post gives a good explanation of the pros and cons of working at Cedar Point: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3427866]https://web.archive.org/web/20111203091415/http://forums.somethinga...id=3427866

Funny. I didn't see a single "pro" in that entire post.

Good stuff though.