Random Theme Park Workers Share Most Disturbing Things They've Ever Experienced On Job (19 items)

• (#13) A Kid Passes Out On A Ride

  From Redditor /u/TubbytheIDD:

  Worked at King's Island on a ride called Diamondback. One day the train came back and this kid (about 10 or 12 years old) was completely unconscious. He was slumped over in his seat being held up by his mother. (For those of you who don't know, the seats on Diamondback are lap bars, so this kid was literally like folded in half, slumped over. Also, the ride is smooth as silk, so he didn't hit his head or anything.)

  Anyway, we immediately call 911 (inside the park, any park telephones route to the park's first aid station when you call 911) meanwhile all we can legally do as teens who weren't medically trained was offer a subpar first-aid kit (two gauze pads, a box of band aids, and some other misc items), and water.

  I had to stand there completely helpless watching his parents try to wake him up. They said he passed out while going up the first hill (230 feet) and they had to hold him up to keep from flopping around throughout the entire ride. When the first-aid cart got there, they lifted him off the seat and onto a stretcher and wheeled him off the ride, and he regained consciousness near the entrance of the ride.

  My area supervisor asked us all if we were okay to keep working and said if we needed to, we can all go home. It was terrifying. I thought the kid was dead and the moment I saw him slumped in his seat, [and it] is still etched in my mind. That memory isn't the worst part, though.

  Standing there, legally unable to do anything even if I knew how, while the mother was crying, just trying to get a response while the father tried to keep it together for the boy's sister, is the most haunting memory I have and I think it will be for a while.
• (#17) A Worker Makes Everyone Think A Child Plummeted To His Death

  From Redditor /u/GuinessSoldier:

  Got a good one here: so back in high school I worked as a lifeguard for a small water park on the east coast. The job sucked, the pay was horrible, and the management was a real b*tch, so after the first month of working there, motivation really plummeted.

  Well, in order to have insurance, the company that insured the water park hired individuals who would come to the pool as "normal patrons" with hidden cameras and pretend to drown in order to see how fast... one of the lifeguards would rescue them. Additionally, they had this life-size child mannequin that would sink to the bottom, and they would carefully put it in the water to see if any of the lifeguards would spot and rescue it in time.

  Now this thing looked like a real kid and was complete with swim trunks and goggles, so underwater, it was close to impossible to differentiate it from a real child. The first time the insurance company did this, the lifeguard on duty failed miserably to spot the dummy within time, so the whole park got audited and everyone had to go through retraining, but the company let us keep the child dummy for training and practice.

  Now for the good part - the park was still open to the public while we were going through our retraining and everyone got to take turns carefully placing the dummy into the water and testing each other on how fast they could find it. When it got to my turn for placing the dummy into the water, everyone had pretty much exhausted every way to put this thing into the pool, so I decided that I would one-up everyone and do something nobody thought of.

  There was a waterslide that pretty much went around the park, and I came up with the idea that about halfway down, I would throw the dummy over the side of the slide and have it land in the lazy river where nobody watches... Well about halfway down I grab this thing and throw it off of the slide and completely miss where it was supposed to land.

  Instead of landing in the pool, this dummy goes headfirst into pavement right in front of where all the chairs and families are relaxing. People were screaming, kids were crying, lifeguards were freaking out - everyone thought they had just seen a kid fall about 40 feet onto concrete and had his face completely smashed in.

  After numerous complaints and threats of lawsuits caused by the emotional trauma the guests had endured, I was fired that afternoon. The dummy itself was too damaged to be used anymore.
• (#11) Passengers Puke On Each Other During A Faulty Ride

  From Redditor /u/monkeedude1212:

  My horror story involved working the Ocean Motion, you know - the swinging boat ride...

  Anyways. So the Ocean Motion is going, doing its thing, swinging back and forth. It's pretty full and the line-up is pretty solid. When all of a sudden I hear a POP and tons of this black, inky fluid sprays right up through the center of the ride while the boat is in mid-swing. I hit the emergency stop button, but the ride isn't stopping. Of course, when the boat is in its downswing, all that black fluid comes falling down on the ride passengers.

  At this point, I'm a teenager mashing the stop the button... The boat is still swinging. Then I notice that the wheel that's usually used for braking and slowing the boat down isn't raised at all. So of course it's not going to stop. I immediately piece together that it was likely hydraulic fluid that went up, a hose must have come off or cracked or something.

  So I grab the phone and call security, as is procedure. Usually you call when you have to close the ride for a few minutes for any reason, usually kids' sickness. They just log it and the day goes on as normal. So I call security and I'm like, "Send everybody." 

  And they're like, "What?"

  And I was like, "Mechanics. Managers. Maybe even paramedics. The Ocean Motion just spewed oil or something all over the passengers and won't stop. It literally won't stop."

  Of course, the Ocean Motion is on the farthest end of the park, so even with people rushing, it takes them a few minutes to get here.

  And you guys know how a pendulum works, conservation of momentum and all that? The Ocean Motion was at peak swing and it just keeps on swinging. By the time I hung up the phone, everyone in line figured out what was going on and just noped the f*ck out of there.

  Here's where it gets really f*cking gross. Imagine you're... on the Ocean Motion for the first time. Due to some unexpected failure you've got hydraulic fluid in your face creating an awful stench. Not to mention it's at full-swing for well over five minutes. You want to get off and you're feeling sick, so you can't. So what happens involuntarily? You throw up. Of course, you're on the middle of the Ocean Motion still in full-swing so the vomit goes everywhere, on pretty much everyone in front of you. On their heads, in their faces - gross.

  Now imagine you're in the exact same situation and someone just vomited on your face. How could you hold it in at that point? MORE people start vomiting. This cascading chain of reaction caused like five people to vomit all over each other. The managers and mechanics and medics get there... At this point there [are] very few options: No one wants to go under the boat and do repairs because the thing is still swinging wildly.

  Plus, stopping the boat should be the primary concern. So they basically position people at either end of the ride, waiting for it to swing by, then when it was at the peak of its swing, try and grab it and put some friction on it before letting go, to steal a bit of its momentum. It took another good seven or eight minutes to actually get the boat stopped and people off the ride.

  I know the managers tried everything: full refund, offered them literally anything in the store, dry cleaning for all the clothes, any number of things. It didn't stop the lawsuits, but I believe there were some rather large out-of-court settlements.

  I worked the rest of that summer, but I've never gone there as a patron since.
• (#19) A Guy Does Drugs At A Water Park And Has Convulsions

  From Redditor /u/dax80:

  Used to work graduation parties at a water park. This one kid had the bright idea to do a ton of drugs (don't know what kind) behind the putt-putt windmill. A short while later, a hypnotist came as part of the entertainment for the school's all-night party. This kid happened to get hypnotized and was simultaneously on a ton of drugs.

  I'm not an expert on hypnotism, but it takes a pretty heavy toll on your brain. Shortly into his hypnotic state, he went nuts, shaking, convulsions, looked like a f*cking zombie movie. Scary as sh*t. Blacked out. Out cold, went to the hospital, and apparently was in critical condition for a few days. Happened in front of the whole school.
• (#2) A Camp Counselor Accidentally Takes Kids To Dolphin Orgy

  From Redditor /u/zach2992:

  At SeaWorld, she was a camp counselor over a summer. Her kids one week were second and third graders, and she was taking them to... the dolphin area to watch them. Just so happens that at that time there was a dolphin orgy. Just 30 dolphins in one big ball, going at it.

  They went up to go feed them and since they were all so busy, only one fat dolphin came up to eat while occasionally you would see some tails come up and splash.
• (#1) A Lifeguard Poops Her Pants After Seeing A Drowned Mannequin

  From Redditor /u/puppy2010:

  A girl I used to know worked at Wet and Wild Sydney for a season when she was in uni. One night, she was working on the lazy river ride (the kind of one where you sit on an inflatable tube and just bob along) when she noticed some legs coming out of the tube, with the rest of the body trapped in the water under the tube.

  She sh*t herself when she saw it and ran over to help the trapped person, only to realize it was a mannequin that had obviously been placed there as a prank.

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