When I worked Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, checking that riders were 40 inches tall was a team responsibility. Yet safety demands redundant checking, so a park can't leave height measurements to one employee at the park entrance. (Unless every ride at the park has a height restriction, of course, but that's not the case at any major theme park.) When get measured on a ride-by-ride basis, the answer is either "yes" or "no." But at a central measurement station, the answer is always "yes." It might not be yes to everything, but it's always going to be yes to something. For me, the best way to handle height requirements is for parks to provide a station near the park's entrance where kids can get measured and find out which rides they can go on in the park. Don't leave this to the load station, after kids and their parents have gotten excited for a ride and waited in its queue. That's why I applaud theme parks that handle measuring kids pro-actively. After all, people come to theme parks to have a good time - not to get stressed out by things such as whether or not their kids meet height requirements. But I think they also bear some responsibility to steer them away from emotional distress, too. ![]() Theme parks and their operators have a responsibility to protect their guests from physical harm. ![]() As a parent, I felt that stress even more intensely watching my kids step up to be measured, knowing the anxiety that experience caused me as a child.īut as a theme park employee and ride operator, I learned the importance of height requirements in protecting guests from what are, at their core, enormous pieces of dangerous and unforgiving machinery. As a kid, height sticks intimidated me as a test I could not study for and could do nothing to pass. Robert Niles Let's talk about height restrictions on theme park ridesĪ reader yesterday asked me about theme park attraction height requirements and enforcement.
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