In Our Eyes: Our view of Worlds of Fun on September 22, 2002

We decided to visit Worlds of Fun on September 22nd for the entire day, due to that I had a company picnic to attend. We actually arrived at the park at 11:30AM at with no plans until 3PM in the afternoon, decided to walk towards Americana. First off with the Orient section, nothing that I noticed had really changed. However, I do want to mention that we had previously visited Worlds of Fun in the evening a week before and the lights on the Bamboozler where almost all functional, making a standard Round Up look like one of the most interesting rides in the park at night. Also of note, I am not totally sure what Worlds of Fun is trying to accomplish, if anything with the previously mentioned damning up of the water under the Scandi/Orient bridge, but the green foliage is still there. It doesnít look bad necessarily, but Iím just curious why they decided to change it. Last, the Aquatic Arena, is still absolutely unchanged.

One change thatís good to see is that Worlds of Fun seems to be removing the remote control boats, or at least replacing them. The boats in Scandinavia near the Sea Dragon have already been removed as well as the controls. While, Blackbeardís Pirate Ships in The Orient, which never fit the theme to begin with, looks like itís also in the process of being removed. Honestly, almost any change would be better, considering for the past season they have never worked and have looked just plain ugly.

Moving onto Americana, Worlds of Fun has for several years celebrated German Feast, with one small food tent that served turkey legs, and a few other options. This year they have seemingly expanded it, not only where the Halloween decorations in full force (including the fountain water being dyed pink) but the Americana Plaza was full of food stations, including skillets, beer, the usual turkey legs and sweet potatoes and kettle korn, which turned out to be quite good, and a pretty good value. One of our favorite pastimes at Worlds of Fun, over the past season was playing Extreme Skeeball, we would routinely play $10 or more every time we visited the park. We where astounded to find a few weeks ago that they had lowered the jackpot. A little explanation is in order, with Extreme Skeeball if you reach a score of 450 you would receive a jackpot of tickets. It used to be somewhere around 500 to 600 tickets. Worlds of Fun reached an all time cheapness low, and has lowered it to the range of 200 tickets and I have seen it as low as 30 - 40 tickets. We will not be playing Skeeball at the park anytime soon. Moving onto the Timberwolf, in true Dinn fashion it has developed into a shake your brains out ride, which needs to be retracked, but thatís not my gripe. On Timberwolf, employees can run up to a capacity of two trains. Wouldnít you think it would make sense, that if you have a line running out into the Timberwolf Plaza area that it would be a good idea to be running two trains not one? I thought so.

As I mentioned in the past editorial Camp Snoopy is honestly one of the best run part of the park in general. However it will help me bring up the biggest gripe I have against Worlds of Fun of late, and it has nothing to do with the park itself. Employee Apathy is running rampant in the park. Now for every situation there is always the opposite present as well, there are wonderful employees at the park. Heck, the whole Boomerang crew gets trains out faster and runs a faster capacity on a per train basis then I dare say any other ride in the park (this is a Boomerang!). They need all the respect they can get.

However, going back to Camp Snoopy, itís 12:30 a lady walks up to the cash register to purchase something from Beagle Bay Outfitters, the ambassador apologizes and says they canít run the cash register because they donít have the key. In this situation it is absolutely not that employees fault, it is their manager. Which is the point I am trying to get at. The fact that employees at the park donít care, or donít have any pride in their work place I believe is not totally their fault, but the fault of incompetent managers. Who possibly with no fault of their own have not competently trained or more importantly shown their employees that it is important to care and to have pride in where you work.

Readers might think that I am referring to only one case, but there have been SEVERAL. Just to recant a few experiences. I walked into DÈj‡ vu in Europa, and found hats lying on the ground, and worst of all probably several dozen small toys lying all over the ground in clusters in one small corner of the store. This was not the first time that this store had been in this condition. Having worked in Merchandising in the past I was appalled. I mentioned the fact to the ambassador, and she said that she had previously cleaned up a mess a few minutes ago and that once the party had left the store she had plans to clean it up once more. A fair point, visitors usually do cause huge messes in stores. I came back about an hour later, and it was still there, and the attendant was just sitting behind the counter in a kind of daze.

Also, Viking Voyager, a ride I spent the good part of one summer working on. On the loading platform/dock stands the ambassador responsible for stopping the boat and helping people off. I watched her for several minutes. Not once did she help one person off the boat, not once did she even come within a foot of the boat to help steady it with her foot as we where always taught to do. I realize that the world we live in has demanded a more hands off approach, but the ambassador was also not even paying the slightest attention to any of the boats. What exactly did she think her job was? To get a tan?

I have been saving the worst for last, Timberwolf, a little later in the ay. As many know I do not ride roller coasters, but I will usually stand in line anyway. I was appalled, as was Jeff. The group seated in the car in front of us, who had just got seated did not buckle their seat belt, it was plainly obvious that it was just hanging there from the car. The attendant walked by to check the lap bars and didnít even mention or for what it seemed notice that the seat belt was unfastened. In fact WE had to tell the rider to buckle his seatbelt. If all of this seems pathetic remember that this happened all in the course of a few hours.

I will now remove myself from my soap box and go on. I want everyone reading to understand that there are some good things going on at the park, and that there are wonderful employees out there too. In fact, just a few weeks ago during Public Safety Week, we visited the park on that Sunday, the parking lot was full all the way back to H lot. The park was busier then I had seen it in a while (try a few years) but very few of the rides had lines, and the park was very clean, especially notable since the park was so busy. It was a very good showing at least appearance wise for Worlds of Fun Ambassadors.

Back to the subject, itís very heartening to walk into Europa these days. Someone in landscaping seems to be caring about the park, and I must say it is noticeable, the bushes at Pizza Patio are trimmed, and the plants around the park have increased in number, plus we have seen a resurgence in plant rotation. Yes, we have noticed the fact that the plants by the Viking Voyager, the ones by the Thunderhawk and a in Camp Snoopy have been changed throughout the season. As I was on the topic of Europa, the biggest noticeable change in that area has been the repainted Autobahn building. It is now a bright shade of blue. At first I was not totally sure what to think about it, but it really has grown on me and it makes it stand out.

One item I never even had the time to write about, was that one of the outer ring carousel horses on Le Carousel had broke off it seemed. Not the horse itself, it just seems the mechanical gears at the top (which controls the up and down motion of each row of horses). We noticed it missing a few weeks ago, and just last week saw the horse propped against the Taxiís maintenance shed. We are happy to note that this carousel horse has found itself back in its proper location on the carousel, and this horse particularly seems to be running again.

Moving onto Africa, in true Halloweekends style it was decorated full of skeletons (perhaps a few too many skeletons) and tomb stones. On the aspect of decorating, the Taxi Car, police man scene over by Boomerang is actually pretty funny and shows some ingenuity (motorcycle skeleton cop pulls over taxi driver for speeding). Also it appears the Fury of the Bloody Nile is back in full force, with pink water, haunted raft full of skeleton pirates and all. If you donít think the Bloody Nile is all that, think about it, 100,000 gallons of water, how much dye would you need? Also, since it has been a while since I was up at the Fury of the Nile, I havenít had the time to notice a new addition. One of our biggest gripes is that people who always take a short cut through the trees in the Nile Observation area. Worlds of Fun got smart and added a concrete sidewalk for people who do not want to take the ""long"" walk around.

I have always been a fan of Diggerís Used Coffin Lot so we took that in, the whole five minutes of it, and it was good entertainment. Only comment I have to make is that I donít think the packing tape is Martha Stewart approved.

Onto the last world, Scandinavia. Home to BooBlast! for the remainder of the season. The section is full of several halloween themed attractions for kids and families. Included is the now traditional Trick or Treat Town and Spooktacular Magic Show. I have seen a lot of really bad park magic shows, and thankfully Worlds of Funís Spooktacular has never gotten anywhere near as bad. However, last year wasnít its best year, and I have to mention that it is vastly improved over last yearís show. It is a fairly well choreographed show, sometimes not flowing perfectly from one section to the next but still much better then just a standard magic show. I was pretty amazed at some of the tricks, I consider myself a pretty smart person and I couldnít even figure out some of them. I would recommend this show for anyone planning on visiting the park during the later part of this season. As far as the decorations for Halloween they could still use some work, but looking at the park as a whole they are improved over last year. However, just in case Worlds of Fun needs a little inspiration I would recommend traveling about 300 miles or so down I-70 East to Six Flags St. Louis. We could always use a couple haunted houses. Of course this is a topic for another editorial.

As far as the overall landscaping, I would like to mention the fact that it is much improved over the last few years, it's comforting to see real flowers in areas that where once well... Mulch gardens, and itís nice to see that someone is caring enough to rotate the flowers throughout the park.

As an overview, to look at the park as a whole, it has improved, heck any improvements are a plus and its great to see them, especially when they travel in multiples. Halloweekends, much, much improved, its not near as tacky as it has been in years past and I have seen enough improvements and decorations that actually entailed creative thought to have hope for the future. Again... Six Flags St. Louis... Please. As far as the employees attitude I can rant a rave all I want, but I will never be able to change anyoneís attitude unless they see a need to change. Overall again I must say please keep up the improvements, they are overall impacting the visitors experience in a positive way, atleast this visitors experience."