Australian Ride Safety Culture

[Levithian]

The additional safety systems were in place long before dreamworld incident happened. It's no secret a number of rides in Australia were supplied with these fitted at the request of the operator and were not originally designed for by the manufacturer. It's 100% one of risk management, wanting an additional physical restraint or control measure in place to achieve at minimum double redundancy on every safety system/device.

Some people here might not be old enough to remember when public liability crisis happened in the late 90's, early 2000's. Liability insurance experienced monumental increases to premiums, largely driven by uncapped potential for damage claims when being sued and the unsustainably low premiums being charged vs risk being exposed to. Businesses were forced to close because the cost of finding insurance was so high that it wasn't profitable, they couldn't actually find insurance to cover their operation, or the hoops insurance companies forced businesses to jump through in the name of minimising risk meant it was not actually possible to continue operating or offering whatever service they were providing.

For the industry (not just theme parks), the exposure was considered too great and many operators were unable to find insurance coverage, effectively running them out of business or having to cease operations until underwriters were available. Quite a bit changed due to this period, not just physical changes to equipment and devices, but also running procedures and methods of operation. It's still occurring today 20 years later. 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

19 hours ago, Noxegon said:

I think the key point here is “faster than they should”. From my own experience at Green Lantern, operations suddenly got much faster after the queue closed for the evening. Working quickly clearly wasn’t a problem then, so why was it an issue for the rest of the operating day?

Yes, there is definitely a culture of poor motivation in some parks (and the 5 o'clock knock off was the best motivation there is) but that doubles back to the double edged sword - what manager is going to insist they work faster, when any safety accidents that occur fall back on them?

I'm not saying it's right, i'm just saying what it is, in the culture. We need park management that is brave enough to come in and say 'this isn't good enough, we need to be better, and i'll assume responsibility for it'.

Nobody is doing that, and that's why there's no motivation prior to 5pm.

[rappa]

Well there is also the issue that you can bet your life that the first person they tell they have to work faster will be straight over to HR claiming they are being 'bullied' by the manager.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

exactly. and the cycle continues.

[Dean Barnett]

What about incentives? Sea World USA/ Universal have the riders and or trains per hour displayed publicy.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Dean Barnett

[Brad2912]

3 hours ago, Dean Barnett said:

What about incentives? Sea World USA/ Universal have the riders and or trains per hour displayed publicy.

Shouldn’t need to incentivise people to do their base role/job. Then it comes an expectation to be rewarded for doing the bare minimum 

[red dragin]

The parks don't seem to be bothered by the slow throughput. Less wear and tear on their machinery, less power consumed. 

And the punters still cough up their money. 

I doubt anything will change. 

[REGIE]

I get slowing down operations on off season but it’s in the parks best interests to have higher through put in the hoildays. If there’s 2-3 hour waits, they have already made the cash big time. Having good operations means good reviews and more returning customers. 

[New display name]

51 minutes ago, REGIE said:

I get slowing down operations on off season but it’s in the parks best interests to have higher through put in the hoildays.

Only if you were paying per ride would it be in the parks best interest.  TPWW proved last week Australian parks can load & unload guest quickly without safety issues.  You just have to go to a pay per attraction park like Luna Park Sydney, to see it happen.

[Park Addict 93]

18 minutes ago, New display name said:

TPWW proved last week Australian parks can load & unload guest quickly without safety issues.  You just have to go to a pay per attraction park like Luna Park Sydney, to see it happen.

I could be wrong but I think TPWW got that aspect wrong, I don’t think single ride tickets have been available at LPS since covid. 

[New display name]

You still enter the park for free and pay if you want to go on the rides.  (Not signally anymore👍)   Imagine if you entered MW and half the rides were down and the running rides had a queue time of over and an hour.  Would you walk back to the ticket both to buy the ride pass? 

[REGIE]

4 hours ago, New display name said:

Only if you were paying per ride would it be in the parks best interest.  TPWW proved last week Australian parks can load & unload guest quickly without safety issues.  You just have to go to a pay per attraction park like Luna Park Sydney, to see it happen.

Giving a good experience to get people coming back and feel more inclined to give good reviews is in their best interest. But they are getting customers regardless so maybe your right

[Stevie]

On 26/01/2023 at 3:23 PM, Dean Barnett said:

What about incentives? Sea World USA/ Universal have the riders and or trains per hour displayed publicy.

This comes back to going faster for the sake of going faster, potentially risking safety. If you make the ops job a competition, you're gonna have a bad time 

[Gobbledok]

Surely there is a middle ground between being a slack ass and rushing faster than is safe?

[pin142]

2 hours ago, Gobbledok said:

Surely there is a middle ground between being a slack ass and rushing faster than is safe?

Not sure but I think it is called a turnstile 🤔

[webslave]

4 hours ago, Gobbledok said:

Surely there is a middle ground between being a slack ass and rushing faster than is safe?

Well, yeah, there is.  There's a lot of industries with great safety cultures that also manage to pull in delays where it's safe to do so.  In a large part a lot of it seems to center around a realistic look at procedures and how long they should take when done correctly, which is followed up by measurement against these benchmarks and investigation when there's a deviation.  This is not a bad approach because variance in either direction is undesirable; if you have someone who is repeatedly coming out ahead of benchmarks then that warrants investigation as you may find they are not doing the job correctly, whereas if you have someone constantly under-performing then that's obviously also something you want to try and work on.

The key to it is realistic benchmarks on what needs to be done, and how long it should take.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

6 hours ago, webslave said:

The key to it is realistic benchmarks on what needs to be done, and how long it should take.

Perfectly said! This is exactly what our parks need to focus on - Determine a FAIR average dispatch time and then compare. 

Unfortunately modern management prefer metrics over common sense, and will only see 'x' drop in time, rather than the reason for 'x' was because idiot guest did 'y' stupid thing and caused a stop. The person timing \ measuring has to allow for things beyond the operators control, but instead they'll just install a computer that counts the time between dispatch and they'll all be judged based on the clock (which is why Maccas parks you at Drivethru and then walks it out to you seconds later - they live and die by the clock)

On 27/01/2023 at 10:02 AM, New display name said:

You still enter the park for free and pay if you want to go on the rides.  (Not signally anymore👍)   Imagine if you entered MW and half the rides were down and the running rides had a queue time of over and an hour.  Would you walk back to the ticket both to buy the ride pass? 

Most people enter LPS and walk straight to the ticket booth. They've no idea how fast the rides are dispatching, and are only aware of closures if posted at the ticket booth. They don't do individual ride tickets, so the argument that LPS has faster ops because of their ticketing structure is fatally flawed.

[Dean Barnett]

13 hours ago, Stevie said:

This comes back to going faster for the sake of going faster, potentially risking safety. If you make the ops job a competition, you're gonna have a bad time 

Ride safety and efficient ops aren’t mutually exclusive. This is demonstrated daily around the planet. 
 

2 hours ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

LPS has faster ops because of their ticketing structure is fatally flawed.

Why do they have better ops then?

[rappa]

You've half quoted @DaptoFunlandGuy to totally change the nature of his point, don't do that, it's against the community guidelines.

He's saying the argument is flawed, which it is, the tickets are not a justification for the ops to be faster.

[New display name]

4 hours ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

Most people enter LPS and walk straight to the ticket booth.

How do you know this?

If I'm a tourist and don't know what is inside a place like a fair, I generally have a walk around first.

[joz]

I mean if you walked into the park by mistake that would be a thing. Surely though most people who go to Luna Park go there intentionally to go on rides and would on arrival go straight to buy tickets?

[Dean Barnett]

1 minute ago, joz said:

I mean if you walked into the park by mistake that would be a thing. Surely though most people who go to Luna Park go there intentionally to go on rides and would on arrival go straight to buy tickets?

If I was a uneducated international tourist and presented with the obsene "on the day" ticket price - I'd be doing a walk through. 

 

2 hours ago, rappa said:

You've half quoted @DaptoFunlandGuy to totally change the nature of his point, don't do that, it's against the community guidelines.

He's saying the argument is flawed, which it is, the tickets are not a justification for the ops to be faster.

The question still stands - why are LPS ops better than GC parks?

[New display name]

@jozI'm not saying anybody is incorrect and I could be way off the mark.  It was only 2 days ago I thought they still sold individual tickets.

Just now, Dean Barnett said:

The question still stands - why are LPS ops better than GC parks?

LPS is in a different state, so QLD health and Safety is a different entity to NSW health and safety.  Very likely every state has its own rules.

Edited January 31, 2023 by New display name

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

1 hour ago, Dean Barnett said:

The question still stands - why are LPS ops better than GC parks?

You're asking the wrong person. I never said their ops were faster. I'm not in a position to judge as I haven't visited LPS since Ranger was there. I'm simply saying it can't be the ticket explanation as the explanation is incorrect.

I could speculate? Perhaps there's a better culture fostered by management that makes operators keen to do things enthusiastically? Perhaps as said above, different state health and safety requirements apply? Perhaps the park's attendance levels don't slam ops from start to finish so they have more energy to get through a shift if they only have to hustle for 10 minutes a day? Perhaps the lower latitudes are cooler and more comfortable to work in? Perhaps their proximity to the Sydney Harbour Bridge inspires them to move quicker because its such an iconic sight, and that's why our GC parks are building so many ICONIC attractions to try and replicate it? Perhaps it's because the heritage rides are exempt from all the modern safety rules.

(Spoiler - I thought seriously about maybe 3 of those suggestions - i'll let you guess which ones)

[Naazon]

You missed the obvious one. Having a ride called Big Dipper gives the park a +10 speed boost on ride ops.
It is countered with a +7 noise boost though.