Welcome to the first edition of "On the Job". In this section, I'll detail what we did on Saturday, April 7th at the Hersheypark Ride Operations training. So, without further adieu....

Training was schedueled to begin at 9:00am and run until 6:00pm. I arrived at 8:30 and followed the directions I had been given previously. I went down the steps behind the Hershey Arena and entered the actual park through a gate near the Rides Office. This put me in the area slightly above "Skyview". We all were escorted down to the area underneath the bumper cars where we put our names on the payroll so we would get paid for the training. After signing in, everyone was given a ride operations manual that explains, in detail, how to operate every single ride in the park. This manual also contains a lot of the standard park procedures, dress code, etc.

After receiving our materials, we headed up to the "Music Box Theater". After waiting for about 10 minutes, the training was ready to begin. It started out with some introductions of all the supervisors/managers -- the Vice President even made a brief appearance. After the initial introductions, the main managers took turns explaining various rules and regulations about the park. They had a nice little Powerpoint presentation to go along with all of the talking. We sat for approximately 3 hours listening to them talk about thing that were, mostly, common sense. I was just beginning to get really uncomforatable on my little wooden bench when it was time to break for lunch.

The managers had actually finished speaking 30 minutes ahead of scheduel so we had an hour and a half for lunch. I finished eating in about 20 minutes and had quite a great deal of time left. A newly-made friend and I walked around the park (the entire park) about twice. I debated buying a soda at one point, but then I checked the price. Hersheypark has raised the price of a 20oz bottle of soda to $2.50 for the 2001 season. Ouch!

When it was finally time to come back for lunch, we signed back in and went back to the Music Box Theater. After a 45 minute talk, we broke up into the differenct park sections. My group, "Midway Cat", deals with all the rides around the Wildcat. Our group split up again into four smaller groups. Three of the groups headed out to the rides, but my group stayed back to do schedueling. I had already signed up for work online, so there was no reason for me to repeat the process. After waiting about 30 minutes for everyone else to get schedueled, our group headed out to the first ride, Tidal Force.

Good ol' Tidal Force was having some problems. The water level was too high and was causing the ride to shut down. When we got there, the maintence guy said that we could go ahead and run it, but it might break down. The manager in our group went through and explained the ride. He explained the buttons on the control panel, how to manually release the lap bars, etc. After he explained it, it was time for us to run it! I manned the main controls while someone else took the dispatch button. After he and another person checked the lap bars and gave the "ok" symbol, both I and the dispatcher pushed our respective buttons at the same time and the boat went up the lift hill. It was very cool. I love to ride the rides and now, I was finally getting to operate them.

After Tidal Force, our group headed on up to the Wildmouse. The operation is fairly simple. You push a button and the ride goes. Guests are loaded into cars as they movie through the station. If you need to stop the cars in the station for a guest to load, then you push the "load stop" button. To restart the ride, push the "load start" button. Pretty simple.

Next, we were shown the kiddie rides. They all work pretty much the same way. Turn the key to power up the controls, push the button and step on the pedal. When you want to stop the ride, take your foot off of the pedal.

After the kiddie rides, it was up to our last ride, Wildcat. This is my favorite ride in the park so, needless to say, I was pretty excited about operating it. It's very similar to Tidal Force. There are a few more warnning lights and a bigger display screen. The operater and dispatcher have to hold in their respective buttons and then the train moves. I got to man both the main controls and the dispatch button. It was very fun.

That concluded our training. We had to sign a card and check off the rides we were trained on. After our manager had signed the card, we were free to leave. All in all, it was a very fun day and I can't wait to start working.