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Rank Your Worst-Run Parks

MestnyiGeroi

MestnyiGeroi

Giga Poster
I’m sure this has been discussed before, but I don’t recall seeing it in my years on this forum. A conversation in my current trip report got me curious to ask CFers in general:

What are the worst-run parks you have encountered?

For me:

1. PortAventura — corrupt
2. Six Flags over Georgia — incompetent and undertrained in every area
3. Mount Olympus — indifferent
4. Six Flags Mexico — one-train ops
 
Good topic! I can think of a couple...

Galaxyland @ WEM - abysmal operations with staff that don't give a sh*t
Silverwood - nice park, good rides but one train ops on most of them and painfully slow dispatches
 
^^

I agree with Port Aventura

I would also add Mingo Land for abysmal operations, rude staff and general poor management.

And Southport Pleasureland is ... Southport Pleasureland

To be fair I have had very few experiences with consistently bad parks.
 
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1. Warner Bros. Movie World - awful 1 train operations and slow dispatches which meant that every queue was about an hour despite it being basically empty the day I was there. Basically made the queue skip (which was extortionate) essential if you wanted to do repeat rides on Superman/DC Rivals.
2. Six Flags Great Adventure - slow operations and the place is a dump.
3. Six Flags America - see Six Flags Great Adventure
4. Port Aventura - great park but the places dispatch times are painfully slow and queue jumping was rife.

To be honest, these are the only ones that immediately come to mind. I'm not counting tiny places like piers etc as I don't think it's really fair to compare them to large corporate parks.
 
1) Blackpool Pleasure Beach - Questionable owner and extortionate pricing but mostly fantastic rides.

2) Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach - A decent enough ride collection utterly ruined by an unnecessary and poorly communicated 3 hour time slot system that makes the experience pretty stressful if you're not there to cred-run.
 
Rob Coasters said:
Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach - A decent enough ride collection utterly ruined by an unnecessary and poorly communicated 3 hour time slot system that makes the experience pretty stressful if you're not there to cred-run.
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I’m hoping to visit this park next summer. How does this three-hour time slot work?
 
MestnyiGeroi said:
I’m hoping to visit this park next summer. How does this three-hour time slot work?
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I did it in August 2021 exactly one month after the social distancing rules were lifted. Capacity was hit extremely quickly on all of them and you need to book online.

How it works is that you book a date and a 3 hour time slot online, then show up to the park at any point within your allotted timeslot with your booking confirmation. Again you can arrive at any time but the entire park is emptied at the end of the timeslot. They then do nothing for half an hour before the next group is allowed in.

If these rules are no longer in place (you can check online) then my reply can be disregarded.
 
Rob Coasters said:
I did it in August 2021 exactly one month after the social distancing rules were lifted. Capacity was hit extremely quickly on all of them and you need to book online.

How it works is that you book a date and a 3 hour time slot online, then show up to the park at any point within your allotted timeslot with your booking confirmation. Again you can arrive at any time but the entire park is emptied at the end of the timeslot. They then do nothing for half an hour before the next group is allowed in.

If these rules are no longer in place (you can check online) then my reply can be disregarded.
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That’s awful. It reminds me a bit of Nickelodeon Universe in New Jersey, but they had four-hour slots. What a disincentive to visit. Yarmouth and Joyland were two old-school parks I was looking forward to taking my time with.
 
Ketchup said:
1. Warner Bros. Movie World - awful 1 train operations and slow dispatches which meant that every queue was about an hour despite it being basically empty the day I was there. Basically made the queue skip (which was extortionate) essential if you wanted to do repeat rides on Superman/DC Rivals.
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Seconded. At the time of my visit they were also enforcing mandatory paid lockers for 'loose objects' on Superman (which included whatever you had in a zipped pockets). Funny thing is that they still made you exit through the gift shop even when you weren't even allowed to bring a credit card or banknote with you on the ride. Baffling.

I agree with everything that has been said about PA, just an awfully run place. Looks nice and Shambhala's good, but that's about it.

Another park that felt it was being ran into the ground was Ocean Park in Hong Kong. I visited some three years ago and I didn't have the worst day there, since the whole place was really quiet (I assume the lack of tourists due to the protests likely contributed to the fact). But yeah, twice during my visit they shut down all of the rides (first time it was due to a thunderstorm, the second time was for god knows what, since the weather was nice and sunny), which resulted in me getting major cred anxiety if I'll even manage to get on the Mine Train that day. Luckily it did reopen after some 6 hours of downtime, but the dispatch times were absolutely awful due to the VR thing they were doing (I think the train was sitting in the station for up to 5 minutes at a time, depending on how many people went for VR). Also the whole back part of the park (where the Mine Train and log flume used to be) looked in very poor shape. It has since been closed (along with the Dragon roller coaster), but not replaced with anything substantial, so I can imagine the whole place seems even worse now compared to how it was 3 years ago.
 
MestnyiGeroi said:
That’s awful. It reminds me a bit of Nickelodeon Universe in New Jersey, but they had four-hour slots. What a disincentive to visit. Yarmouth and Joyland were two old-school parks I was looking forward to taking my time with.
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They still have the three hour time slots, doesn't look like they're going away anytime soon. Locals are annoyed that it's ticketed at all now because you used to be able to just wander through them
 
1. Six Flags - Can't narrow it down as something manages to piss me off at all of them.

2. Blackpool Pleasure Beach - Price goes up but hours go down, rides removed, Valhalla debacle. All adds up to a day out which should be a lot better.

3. Chessington/Thorpe - overselling of Fast Track and poor management of RAP system.

4. Alton Towers - As above plus removal of 'filler' rides which used to make the day more magical.

5. Cedar Point - Fast Lane is out of control. Other than that its actually very well run but forking out $100+ to turn a 2 hour wait into an hour should not happen anywhere.

I've been very lucky with Port Aventura, have been multiple times over the years but never in peak season. It feels a bit hollow sometimes and I can imagine it being hell on earth during the summer holidays.

Those are the only ones worth a mention from my perspective. I'll add a top 5 best run parks to end on a positive!

1. Europa Park
2. Knoebels
3. Silver Dollar City
4. Liseberg
5. Kings Island
 
Ever? It's La Feria Chapultepec by a landslide.

First, there was the 30 minute wait to get tickets because their process was so unbearably slow.

Then, there was the 9 minute dispatches on Quimera despite only having one train. Oh, and the dangling barbed wire in the queue was a nice touch:
1660225014151.jpeg

Then, there was Cascabel, where the ride ops had to literally kick the catch car into place before dispatching.

After that, there was Montana Rusa which only operated with a single train. So, they would load on one side, dispatch a train, and then the ride ops would all move over to the other side of the station and wait for the train to come back. Then, they would load on the other side. The on-ride photo taken by a photographer in the station was pretty special as well.

Finally, there was the spinning mouse where they would wait for every single car to get back into the station. Unload every single car. Then fill every single car before dispatching a single one of them. And there was also the policy of letting ride ops just reach under the cars to grab something while the ride was still in operation mode:
1660225793252.jpeg

All that being said, it was such a great experience. It was so laughably bad that it made it all the more fun.
 
Indy said:
Ever? It's La Feria Chapultepec by a landslide.

First, there was the 30 minute wait to get tickets because their process was so unbearably slow.

Then, there was the 9 minute dispatches on Quimera despite only having one train. Oh, and the dangling barbed wire in the queue was a nice touch:
View attachment 19563

Then, there was Cascabel, where the ride ops had to literally kick the catch car into place before dispatching.

After that, there was Montana Rusa which only operated with a single train. So, they would load on one side, dispatch a train, and then the ride ops would all move over to the other side of the station and wait for the train to come back. Then, they would load on the other side. The on-ride photo taken by a photographer in the station was pretty special as well.

Finally, there was the spinning mouse where they would wait for every single car to get back into the station. Unload every single car. Then fill every single car before dispatching a single one of them. And there was also the policy of letting ride ops just reach under the cars to grab something while the ride was still in operation mode:
View attachment 19565

All that being said, it was such a great experience. It was so laughably bad that it made it all the more fun.
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You are definitely not the first person I’ve heard to say La Feria was the worst run park, so I certainly believe you. That said, I went for two days just a couple of months before the accident, and I had no problems — except that Cascabel never opened and the line for the Cantinflas attraction had a prohibitively long queue. Oh, and the food was crap, so there’s three things. But I had a good time in general. I marathoned Quimera over and over on both days with almost no lines. The coaster did have a delayed opening the first day that stressed me out, and those restraints were medieval, but other than that it was fine. I managed to get both sides of Montanya Rusa. And Raton Loco didn’t have the weird ops you describe, although it was a violent ride.
 
I'd say E World
Could you imagine a 8 minute dispatch for Vekoma Boomerang? I don't know the reason why, but they didn't let me pull down my OTSR for 4 minutes after I sit on a front seat. Look at these long line. It was written 30 min wait but ended up an hour wait.
20211203_142429.jpg

Other local parks are doing very well, like Lotte World here has 90 second dispatch for Mack coasters.
 
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