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Good Parks with Bad Clientele

Jarrett

Jarrett

Most Obnoxious Member 2016
It's one of the most uncomfortable feelings in the industry. You get to this park, it looks absolutely beautiful, they clearly put a lot of time and effort into making it a nice escape from the real world...and then it's filled up with the rudest, most disgusting people. Cutting in line, littering, saying stupid things, and just being :xcensoredx:s in general. Which parks have you encountered that despite being so nicely put together have **** idiots out to ruin it?

Dollywood- It has a lovely setting, lovely architecture, and amazing rides, but some of the people there just drive me crazy! It's not uncommon to find somebody in line that can't control their crazy child, a slow-moving group on the midway in no hurry keeping you from getting on with your life, and people who don't seem to understand that rides have rules that you have to follow when your ride them. My least favorite behavior here happens to be the **** morons that think Thunderhead's test seat is a bench and get all bent out of shape when you ask if you can test it out before getting in line. It's a gorgeous park but some of the people it caters to are just knuckleheads!

Holiday World- It's such a cute little family owned park and my second favorite park with my favorite cred, but some of the people here are, again, HORRIBLE. It starts before the park is even open, people who simply can't follow the rules constantly being told to get behind the yellow rope blocking the park off. In line for Gobbler Getaway, we counted seven people around us wearing camo (and I know we all have our own tastes but I personally think it looks stupid unless you're in the military or hunting) and at least two had some colorful variation or camo on an accessory that isn't used for hunting. My favorite behavior here would have to be the people who actually buy the $10 souvenir cup with "FREE REFILLS!!!!111!!11!!111!!!" at the soda fountains that offer "FREE CUPS!!11!!111!!1111!!!!!" that also come with "FREE REFILLS!!!!!!!111!!111!!!1111!!!!" Sure, the free cups aren't exactly big gulps, but they're enough to quench a thirst. I have a caffeine addiction, I drank five cans of Mountain Dew during one movie a few days ago, but even with caffeine being my bad habit I was absolutely satisfied with the free soft drinks. No normal person should be drinking enough pop that a giant souvenir cup to keep you from having to go back and fill your cup back up is necessary.

Knott's Berry Farm- Not nearly on par with the other two parks on here but I feel it fits in. They obviously made a good effort to make this park feel special and while Fiesta Village and Plantseeker left me underwhelmed, the rest of the park was beautiful. It's a fitting tribute to the California culture and even though the ride lineup and operations lack to some degree, it blows the pants off of anything else Cedar Fair has done theming-wise. Sadly, though, it couldn't get the semi-normal crowd you get at most Cedar Fair parks. The park was full of rowdy teenagers misbehaving, people who seemed to just lack common sense (I had to get somebody in my car's seatbelt for them on Silver Bullet because they couldn't figure out the buckle; this girl found me photographing by Pony Express and asked if the graveyard complete with cheesy organ music and the photo op casket was a real graveyard). Saw this one group that let 10-15 7-year old children run loose around the park without an adult to keep them from line jumping waiting for Coast Rider. And then the old guy in front of me looks like he came straight out of a bad Western movie and now said bad Western movie is missing the drunk guy at the saloon. It's not AS extreme as the other two but it's still a good example.

Honorable mention to Canada's Wonderland. This park is drop dead gorgeous, it has two fab B&Ms and plenty of other unique attractions, and they did a really good job incorporating the fake mountain and watery landscape of the park into how it looked. It's my second favorite Cedar Fair park and one of my favorites overall, but some of the people there were just WEIRD. Saw one group in line for Leviathan with a 10-foot selfie stick so long they had to hold it up vertically as it hovered above the queue, and at the same time so much of that stupid "put the iPhone on the forehead and be as obnoxious as possible" game I feel like there were more people in line NOT playing it than were. Another group in line for Skyrider that had snuck off to do some religious practice had picked a restricted area down by the water to do it. And parents with children they clearly had little to no intention to control in line for Wonder Mountain's Guardian. The icing on the cake? More line jumpers than I had ever seen in a whole season at this one park! People would just randomly brush past you all, "my sister's up front" as if the rules don't apply to them. And this drunk American guy in line for Skyrider honking at this Canada goose. (Oh wait, that was me. :p ) People at this park were a little irritating, but it was just a nuisance and didn't really take away from the park experience aside from the whole line jumping thing.

I understand that idiots go to theme parks and I feel like dealing with them is just another part of the hobby, but some parks are just too nice to be host to some of the people that visit. I consider myself fairly well-traveled but I know I can't hold a candle to most CoasterForcers, so I'd love to hear about this phenomenon and whether it exists around the world and how.

(I know somebody's going to make a comment about how you know it's got bad clientele if I'm there, haha. :p )
 
Home park hatred here. Gonna echo the sentiments of the test seat benchwarmers. Green Lantern, Nitro, El Toro, and Kingda Ka all suffer from this, El Toro and Green Lantern especially since their test seats are near where A LOT of people can sit down. For some reason I find that a lot of people like to sit in El Toro's Entrance and on the Lantern in front of Green Lantern's entrance, both not too far from the test seat. What's worse is people actually argue with you when you tell them to move.

The other big one, as much as it's currently a "gray area" at the moment is, is e-cigarette smoking. It's really not a 'gray area' like smartasses like to believe but they all love to argue with you how it's not smoking and that they're allowed to do it outside of a smoking area. It's still in park policy, and even though it's not specifically mentioned we're still going to yell at you, yet they're so entitled that they ignore that. Hookah, E-vape, anything, they'll fight you about it, and they'll especially fight security about it (who subsequently kick them out of the park). Heck I'll go as far to say they might even fight their own mother about it...
 
Also a bit of Home Park Hate-
SFGAm is pretty good at theming(area wise) when it comes to Six Falgs. The ride selection is pretty good, having my top 2 creds there, and a nice collection of classic 70s-80s rides, and just a nice park overall. But some people can really mess up your visit. It's mostly undereducated GP who are attempting to know everything about the park(American Eagle has the steepest drop in the park/is the oldest ride in the park, Superman was installed before Raging Bull, etc). But there are a few snobs here and there. Line cutters, obnoxiously loud talkers, uncontrollable kids, and a few trash/mean talkers to younger ones. Like a few years ago, I was in the single rider line for Ragin' Cajun, and I was put with a group of High Schoolers. When we were going up the lift hill, they kept taunting me by saying stuff like "Hold on or else you'll fall out!" or "15 people already died on this this year!" But it's not too bad. Like I said, they come out here and there. I usually encounter something "visit disrupting" at least 3 times a season.

EDIT: I also forgot about SFMM. Amazing coaster collection, but horrible guests. I heard that back in '06 when six flags was trying to sell a bunch of parks, SFMM was going to be sold to Cedar Fair, but they didn't buy because of all the obnoxious guests there. I'm not 100% sure on the validation of it, but it still shows how guests can impact executive decisions.

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^The topic is good parks Mark.

I'd say Blackpool Pleasure Beach and every good park in China. Although you'd have to find one with decent operations first.
 
I don't find many problems at Blackpool to be honest,
my home park,
apart from school weeks,
end of june and early july,
when the security staff ask me to beat up certain kids 'cos they are not allowed!
I tend not to though,
don't want my season pass taken away!
 
Kings Island. All kinds of Kentucky creeps it's way into this otherwise decent park.
 
I agree with Holiday World because it is in Kentuckiana making it redneck central. And because it is the vacation center for the lower class families in Central to Southern Indiana it attracts the scumbags.
 
Not that it's a nice park, but Kennywood was full of subhuman trash when I went there.
 
I'm gonna be honest and say that Alton towers is about the only park in the UK that I truly enjoy spending time at.

Thorpe Park has potential but is always full of dicks, flamingo land is just pathetic and filled with 'beautiful people'

The one that gets me the worst though is Disneyland Paris. I want it to be amazing, have high hopes for it, then get let down because the people are ignorant and rude.
 
Great Adventure and Magic Mountain are easy winners for me. Look into the smoking area of Great Adventure on a Sunday night for a good impression of the people that attend the park. I left Great adventure after a midnight ert on el toro and we were the last cars in the parking lot. The amount of trash people leave behind is ridiculous and magic mountain was just as bad. While waiting for Tatsu some guy was smoking like he wasn't doing anything wrong and no one said anything. Overall crowd behavior Great Adventure wins.
 
Thorpe Park.

Also a mention to Port Aventura. This isn't an all year round thing, but my first time there was at the peak of school trip season and the Spainish teenagers were just awful. Was such a shame as its a fantastic park.
 
The filth of the earth at Carowinds have a lot to answer for, as do the cretins at Six Flags New England.

Six Flags parks in general seem to attract quite gross people. Apart from Magic Mountain, didn't seem to be too many mutants walking around there.
 
Strangely I've experienced the most obnoxious visitors in Phantasialand. People standing up on coasters (Colorado Adventure), screaming, shouting and making noises just to be annoying in indoor queue areas, pushing people around in queues and people jumping the queues. It doesn't seem like a park that attracts scum, but in all of my visits, it has. Not enough to even remotely influence the visits though, I usually just ignore people like that.
 
Ill second Port Aventura, love it there but the clientele can be awful. Although, with any park the time of year you visit them would have a big impact, I try to stay clear of all parks during school holidays but school kids are not the only problem.

Disney Paris, PA, Alton Towers (sometimes) and Heide Park are on my list for good park bad clientele
 
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