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Common theme park tropes that you aren't a fan of

rob666 said:
My pet hate...especially at Alton...
"Hey, are you all having a fun day guys?"
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Aw no! I used to love asking people how their day was going especially kids. Finding out their favourite rides and stuff, made the day go quicker.

Although I'd never ask an enthusiast because they're usually scowl at me for a second before demanding the back row.
 
I’ve got a couple more, including one that might be controversial.
  • The first one, and a potentially controversial one, is scare attractions. I am personally quite introverted and get anxious around scare actors, and based on what I’ve heard about what happens in scare mazes and zones, that doesn’t sound like my cup of tea at all. Whereas most other people I’ve watched and read about have been celebrating things like touching being back in mazes, and have been so pumped about Halloween, I don’t get excited by scare season at all; it’s actually my least favourite time of year in parks, personally, and the only reason I’d be tempted to go to a park during the Halloween season would be for night rides and to see the night lighting. And if I want that at Alton Towers, for instance, I can just go at Fireworks. Don’t get me wrong, I get the appeal of scare attractions, but they’re not for me.
  • Another trope I’m not personally a fan of is segregation of demographics. By this, I mean putting the rides aimed at different demographics in different areas of the park; for instance, I’ve noticed that many parks seem to put thrill rides at one end of the park and kids’ rides at the other. Take Alton Towers, for instance; areas like Forbidden Valley, X-Sector and Dark Forest have very little for families, while you have CBeebies Land which is primarily aimed at kids. While I certainly understand the logic behind this and why parks do it, especially in the context of kids’ areas, it’s not something I’d personally do if I were to design a theme park; I’d personally like it if more parks tried to intertwine a variety of family, kiddie and thrill rides in each area so that the whole family could explore the entire park together as opposed to having to take the kids to one area and the thrill seekers to another.
 
1) Fast track - Mentioned several times above, and my reasoning is the same. Ironically queues seem to go much faster when they don't have any fast track queue at all.

2) Changing closing time on the day - I understand the need to do this when necessary but when I'm taking public transport (especially the park-specific buses or timed train tickets) it just becomes a bit of an "aww, I could've spent longer here but I can't now". If I drove then I would have absolutely no issue with this at all though.
 
Ethan said:
God forbid a park tries to provide decent customer service!
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No, it is when each member of staff gives you the same scripted line through the day, so you hear the same words twenty times over.
I have no problems with ad lib chat, I'm quite the expert, it's just that "Hey, are you having a fun day guys", particularly at the Towers, grates after the first half dozen times.
 
This will be a controversial opinion but I like paid fast passes. Being an enthusiast it is always a rush to get creds done whenever I visit a park for the first time. Many times it would be way harder without a fast pass. If I only have one day at a park, I don't mind paying 100$ for a fast pass knowing that I can get everything done that day. It would anyways be more expensive to stay another day.

What I really dislike are free fast passes and virtual queues. Especially the stupid free app queue that Liseberg has implemented. This system rewards people staring at their phones all day and refreshing the app every second while it punishes all us casual park goers. This system makes the queues take at least double the time that they did before. While the paid fast passes are used by such a minority that they rarely bother anyone these free ones really do and take away from the experience for all. The people who use it will have to spend more time looking at their phones than enjoying the park and the people who don't use it will wait in queues for eternity. It's everyone's loss.
 
Thecoasterrus said:
For parks such as Phantasialand I can cut some slack as they need it more for crowd control (for a park of that scale they have a really small entrance)
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What they could do away with is their nonsensical strategy of letting one random ride open long before the rest, and not advertise that fact on their app. It means you've gotta run all around the place to find the one ride that opens at 9:30, unless you really want to do a specific one like F.L.Y. or Taron.

Speaking of F.L.Y., why are they still forcing people to wait outside of Rookburgh before 10:00? It creates such an unnecessary bottleneck in the already cramped Berlin street.
 
Matt N said:
scare attractions. I am personally quite introverted and get anxious around scare actors, and based on what I’ve heard about what happens in scare mazes and zones, that doesn’t sound like my cup of tea at all. Whereas most other people I’ve watched and read about have been celebrating things like touching being back in mazes, and have been so pumped about Halloween, I don’t get excited by scare season at all; it’s actually my least favourite time of year in parks, personally, and the only reason I’d be tempted to go to a park during the Halloween season would be for night rides and to see the night lighting. And if I want that at Alton Towers, for instance, I can just go at Fireworks. Don’t get me wrong, I get the appeal of scare attractions, but they’re not for me.
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I agree with you here, especially when scare zones and scare actors spill out onto park midways. I've done scare mazes before, and they just don't really do anything for me. I don't particularly like jump scares, and the rest of it just doesn't interest me. I still love visiting parks in the fall, both for all of the night rides, and for the cooler weather, but I would prefer to be able to just go about my business without having to avoid certain areas to avoid the scare actors doing their thing.
 
cookie said:
What they could do away with is their nonsensical strategy of letting one random ride open long before the rest, and not advertise that fact on their app. It means you've gotta run all around the place to find the one ride that opens at 9:30, unless you really want to do a specific one like F.L.Y. or Taron.

Speaking of F.L.Y., why are they still forcing people to wait outside of Rookburgh before 10:00? It creates such an unnecessary bottleneck in the already cramped Berlin street.
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Been opening 9:30 for the last few months now and is shown as such on the wait time boards in the park.
 
RobCoasters said:
Skegness Scorcher
Surrey Sidewinder
Worcestershire Whizzer
Shanklin Screamer
Clacton Chaos Coaster
The Insane Inverness Inverter
Cornwall Colossus

...yeah. I would say I'm glad we don't have that kind of stuff here, but damn it would be the funniest thing in the world if we did.
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I’m going to beg to differ on this sort of thing. I’d much rather have the Skegness Scorcher than the Rockin Roller, Queen Bee, Millennium, or Odyssey. I like a coaster that makes some reference to local lore or history, even if it’s as simple as naming the place. That’s because one of my larger pet peeves is that I find most coaster names to be amazingly unimaginative, bland, and generic. The Skegness Scorcher itself is hardly a paragon of wit or uniqueness, but at least it has a little distinctness or local color — at least enough to let you know you’re not on Generic Coaster X That Could Be Anywhere on Earth.
 
I suppose as enthusiasts, we probably (sometimes) have somewhat different park experiences than the average guest. But I do think that really appreciating any medium involves a holistic understanding of its intended audience and intents, and if you're not able to accept that, then to me you are missing some of the point of being "into theme parks". It would be like... being bored of gore when you're really into slasher films, or something.

So all the stuff that I too find a bit whatever, like the same dark ride plot structure or staff enthusiasm, needs appreciating in its context. I remember being five years old and being so excited to go help the men in black or whatever.

Of course, I don't presume to say these things are not tedious after a while, and I too can't be bothered with a lot of theme park shenanigans, but I can still think about it with a kind of warm smile in appreciation of what 'theme parks are', you know?

(addendum: all the wallet-grabbing **** parks increasingly do is always uncool though lol)
 
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