There was no movement in the line. That was the first indication that something wasn’t right. A flagship roller coaster at a local American theme park sat motionless on its track on a Saturday in late July—peak summer, peak crowd, peak everything—while almost four hundred guests waited in the heat with their phones out and their patience eroding. By the evening, the annoyance had spread from the line to social media, and by Monday, no press release could completely restore the park’s reputation.
Last season, parks all over the nation saw that scene, or a variation of it. It wasn’t dramatic all the time. A water ride might occasionally be closed for the third weekend in a row. There were times when the ride line was shorter than the refund line. However, the overall impact was difficult to overlook—a season where visitors felt that the experience they had paid for—sometimes four or five hundred dollars for a family day—was just not fulfilled.
In some ways, the subsequent events have been more intriguing, but they have been quieter than the outcry. Parks have been rebuilding both socially and mechanically. At least in some areas of the business, there is a sincere attempt to revive the feeling that visiting a theme park has significance. that the implicit contract between the operator and the guest—you pay, we deliver—remains in effect.
There is a technological component to this. Predictive CMMS systems, which track ride cycle counts, hydraulic pressure, bearing vibration, and motor temperature in real time and generate work orders before a breakdown actually occurs, are being implemented by regional parks. According to a case study that is making the rounds in the industry, a park with 42 rides significantly reduced unscheduled closures after implementing this type of platform, recovering millions in peak-season revenue. The figures are convincing. However, a family who drove three hours and witnessed their child crying in a closed line will not be reassured by numbers.
It is more difficult to measure the human aspect of the recovery. A similar argument has been made in business circles by Neil Dwyer, the chair of the IAAPA Global Safety and Security Committee and vice president of operations at Six Flags Qiddiya City. He contends that operators frequently underinvest in what he refers to as the “first X minutes”—the crucial period during which an incident occurs prior to the arrival of emergency services, during which frontline employees are essentially the first responders. He is not worried about parks being careless. It’s that having faith in certain aspects of crisis management leads to blind spots in other areas. According to him, being prepared is more about developing the ability to make decisions when things quickly go wrong than it is about anticipating every possible scenario.
Beyond the safety committee circuit, that framing has resonance. The notion that you can’t plan every crisis but can cultivate the intuition to handle one has an almost philosophical quality. American theme parks, which have always functioned in a state halfway between industrial operation and communal ritual, are realizing again how important the community component is.
Once, Coney Island realized this. Tivoli followed suit, albeit in a more subdued European manner. There was more to the great amusement parks than just rides. They were locations where everyday life came to a halt, where the spectacle and cacophony produced a communal experience that people took home. Decades of corporatization and optimization have thinned that texture, and the failures of the previous season revealed how thin it had become.
Whether the operational changes being implemented will result in true cultural healing is still up in the air. Coasters are maintained by predictive software. It doesn’t always restore the impression that a park is concerned about how your day went. It requires accountability, focus, and a long-term memory for what went wrong, all of which are more difficult to automate.
