Question for park employees

[Shaun]

What's the structure or hierarchy like at themparks? When you sucesfully get a postion at a theme park on the ground are you just put on the one postion and thats where you stay for good, or do you swap around every shift, do you have like teams that you work in on diffrn't postions and do you start on small rides and work up to big rides? Also do you slowly progress up through the ranks, eg. start as crew, then promote to team leader, team cheif, manager etc. Who does every body answer too? I'm interested in managing and and am just interested in how a big orgainisation like a them park goes about managing it's staff. I realise that diffrn't parks would do things diffrn't ways and that not everyone at a park is a ride op but I would just like to hear what you have to say. I'm sure someone can enlighten me Thanks Shaun

[joz]

Depends on the department, your own skill level, and, like everywhere else, how good at sucking up you are. I work in Food & Beverage at Seaworld and I can tell you that yes, people do progress through the ranks. Your gradually given more responsibility, if your good enough. You start off by becoming second in charge, and then head of an outlet. From there, its Trainee Supervisor, where people get the experience of being a supervisor, and upper management get to see who does the job well. Then its just normal, work your way up through the ranks of supervisor, duty supervisor, and then up to the really high ranks (3 park Manager etc.) At Warner Village theme parks, staff in many departments are swapped between the parks, (SW, MW, WNW) so staff can get more experience while working in the same company. In pretty much all departments, staff are trained in all relevant areas (I myself can work in any F&B outlet at SW), however in food + beverage & Retail, you do tend to stay in the same place for a few months. Ride Ops get it a bit different. They are trained easy stuff when they first start (Kids rides, show crowd control) and are trained more complex stuff like theatre shows, roller coasters and control rooms. In ride-ops, you move around to a different attraction everyday. Once you know them all, you can work your way up to supervisor. A supervisor has different tasks at different parks. At Movieworld, supervisors are in charge of the particular rides. Lethal Weapon, Scooby, Batman, Looney Tunes and Wild West Falls all have their own supervisor, while Road Runner is only ever operated by a supervisor. At Seaworld, there is only 2 or 3 general park Operations supervisors, which look after different sections of the park. I hope this answers your questions

[Shaun]

Thanks It sure does answer my question. My Dream job is to one day manage a theme park, and I'm even considering moving up to the goldcoast to go to uni just so i can hopefully get my foot in the door at one of the theme parks I want to to do a bachelor of business at Grifths Thanks Shaun