Chitown wrote:While I am pleased with Six Flags running Great America (thank god it isn't Cedar Fair), Marriott just had a way of creating a certain charm to the park.
Times have changed so much... Remember being handed your change: dollars, then change and then a receipt while the employee was looking at you? Now they damn near throw it at you. It's not their fault, that is how they are trained. There is a curve/ratio where quality service is at one end, and speed/efficiency is at the other end. There is a sweet spot in the middle where you can do both. It's just lost on many companies these days; McDonald's, Six Flags, you name it. They're hell-bent and getting another penny no matter what the loss in service. It is OK for many of them since, seemingly "everyone else is doing it."
This has drifted over into ride operations as well, as you can deduce from this video. Ride ops just aren't trained for (any where near) that type of efficiency. Priority is given to pay-to-cut-folks. They even have their own red-shirted employee (who oddly seems to confuse and slow down everything; enabling a coaster to send out a ridiculous amount of empty seats, etc. etc, etc...) They even try to assign seats sometimes - completely offensive to some folks who just waited in a long line, and are wanting/willing to wait for the front or back.
Thank god for places like Holiday World, Knoebel's, etc. I would even say Cedar Point (still - different from it was years ago) stands way above Six Flags in terms of quality service and efficiency.
"It is what it is." Good thing for us locals - Great America is probably the best run in the chain.
As soon as one train hit the first loop, a second train would peek above the "lift rocks" (which had fake smoke billowing out, to boot!). Good times. My have things changed.
