A group of ride operators and park supervisors are learning how to avoid the accidents that do occur in a conference room at a large theme park, in between the morning seminars on restraint verification and the afternoon simulation exercises. This activity rarely makes the headlines. International Ride Training’s five-day intensive program, Ride Camp, lacks the prominence of a major industry trade fair.
Press releases and keynote speakers who are cited in consumer media are not produced by it. Attendees claim that it produces the kind of operational knowledge that alters park personnel’ behavior on the floor for years to come. The industry is aware of it. Most of the public doesn’t. It is worthwhile to close that gap.
The idea behind Ride Camp stems from a rather unsettling statistic concerning the safety of amusement rides: most major mishaps don’t occur because a ride malfunctioned mechanically. They occur as a result of a human making the incorrect decision, missing a step, or failing to pay attention at the crucial moment. Mechanical inspections are vital and essential, but they evaluate the machinery rather than the personnel using it.
The ROPES methodology, which stands for Ride Operations Professionalism, Efficiency, and Safety, is a structured framework that Ride Camp uses to directly address people. It breaks down everything from guest engagement protocols to restraint verification sequences to emergency response procedures into steps that can be taught, practiced, and evaluated. The premise is that good intentions are not the source of safety culture. It can be lost in the same way that it is developed via accountability and repetition.
The most widely recognized third-party certification for ride and aquatic operators in the business is the iROC certification, which is at the core of the program. It creates a uniform measure that operators can use across businesses and sets standardized performance goals that go beyond the informal training that most parks offer to seasonal employees. In a field with high seasonal turnover, where the institutional knowledge that leaves at the end of the summer can represent years of collected experience, this portability is crucial.
That knowledge is anchored in something more resilient than personal memory with the aid of a certified standard. Speaking with park safety directors who have sent employees through the program, it seems that the certification process alters operators’ perceptions of their own roles, making them less like ride operators and more like the final safety checkpoint before a visitor boards.
The training methodology used at Ride Camp is purposefully more hands-on than classroom-based. Instead of using a sanitized training facility, the exercises and simulations take place on real rides at real parks, placing trainees in the operational environment they will be working in. The context is important. Details like the sound the control panel produces during a typical cycle, the sightlines from the operator station, and the feel of a lap bar under your hands are not transferred from a PowerPoint presentation.
In the location where they are applied, they must be learned. Alongside the technical training, there is a leadership development track that tackles the management challenge that every park faces by late July: how do you maintain a seasonal workforce, which is primarily composed of young people, consistently focused on safety protocols during the busiest weeks of the season, when the lines are longest and the pressure to move quickly is highest?
The extent to which the iROC standard will be adopted globally and the likelihood of the amusement industry as a whole coming to a consensus on a uniform training standard are yet unknown. It appears more likely that the parks that send their employees to Ride Camp are intentionally arguing with their investment that human elements in ride safety should be treated with the same rigor as technical ones and that safety culture is developed rather than accepted. Every year, the sessions are packed. Even though the majority of visitors are unaware that the training took place, the industry is paying attention.
