This is a story about a hot and humid day at Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom and how people act crazy in the heat.
Dear Diary,
Yesterday, we visited Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom for the second time this season. It is an amusement park and waterpark located less than 10 miles from our home. Its proximity means that it makes sense for us to make more frequent but often shorter visits than people would during “days of yore” . This works for us because we often like to arrive when the park opens but leave in time to be home to make dinner. No more riding from the time the park opens till the park closes and throwing up in your parents car on the ride home!
Back to yesterday’s adventures. It was very hot and humid. The actual temperature in Allentown was 93 degrees but the “real feel” according to the National Weather Service was above 100 degrees.
But yesterday was going to be magical, it was the first Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom visit of summer vacation!
We didn’t feel the heat at first. We arrived at 11 o’clock we went straight to the the water park section, Wildwater Kingdom upon arriving at the park. We found some shady lounge chairs to put our stuff. We filled our refillable drink cups when entering Wildwater Kingdom, so things were looking pretty good for us Nicholsons.
The boys rode a waterslide together and I took a moment and lounged on my chair for a short spell. Then we rode a waterslide together. We had fun playing in the younger children’s areas because they were cool and relaxing. We visited the lazy river. The air was starting to heat up and as we got closer to noon, more people started to appear. We were having a good time during our water lounging but after a while we decided to have some more adventures. The air was starting to feel more charged as more people started to arrive.
A steel drum band was playing live music near the lazy river. The music enhanced the party atmosphere but somehow made things feel slightly less relaxed and maybe a little more chaotic. The music made the air nosier. It mixed with the sounds of small children whining and teens excitedly finding each other and regrouping.
People were getting lunch at the nearby food stands and the air was getting hotter.
We refilled our drink cups at the soda fountain and headed towards the wave pool.
One cycle through the waves in the wave pool and we decided that the pool was a little too packed for our liking. Early in the season, Wildwater Kingdom does not open all their water attractions, and we could see lifeguards training in one of the wave pools that was not open to the public. Sometimes early in the season it feels like there are not enough open attractions for everyone who wants to recreate on hot days.
Mr. Man suggested that we try to ride the two water rides that are not in the waterpark and don’t usually ride. We had never been on the white-water rafting ride called Thunder Canyon so we went there. After a not-short walk wearing flip-flops, we arrived at Thunder Canyon. We queued up in a longer-than-you-would-expect line for a Thursday in mid-June with teens wearing different colored “Class of 2030” shirts. I guess Dorney Park is the hot 8th grade graduation destination!
But at long last, we reached our place in line and could relax. There was something in the air, that was definite. The teens joining the line were jumping over the metal queues to get ahead of each other. Then two older ladies passed us while we were standing in line without so much of a “sorry” or an explanation about how the rest of their group. One of those ladies joined the group directly in front of us. She sniped at the other women who cut in line and joined the group directly in-front of her. At the time, I thought that this interaction between two line-cutting ladies was as interesting as this experience was going to get. But it turned out this was only the beginning.
The women in front of us in line seemed like a real firecracker. She was younger grandmother-aged with short pink-ish dyed hair and piercings. She was wearing a swimsuit and was pushing what looked like a newborn baby-stroller or a stroller for a small dog. I thought there might be a infant carrier in the stroller, which she pushed across the metal grates when cutting line. It turned out on closer inspection that the stroller was full of stuff. The bottom shelf full of individual plastic water bottles. The middle shelf was full of towels.
She was snippy with her partner, a grandfather looking man in a white tank top and her grandsons (maybe), two pre-teen boys. She seemed like the kind of person that you did not want to set off. The sun was hot and it was after 1:00 pm by this point. The heat seemed to be taking a tool on everyone as you could see by the look of lethargy and annoyance in the eyes of the other people in the line.
Eventually, the line moved so that me and boys were very close to getting on the ride. We noticed that the chubby area, where riders put their personal items, was on the opposite side of where you boarded the ride. I began to take off my flip-flops and sunglasses and hat and encouraged the boys to do the same.
Baby carriage lady and her crew seemed completely thrown off when it was their turn to get in their raft. The staff seemed already annoyed when they had to inform the carriage crew that they had to move their stuff over the chasm of raft and put their personal items on the other side of the ride area, which is where everyone else had to keep their stuff too. This policy wasn’t a secret. This is where the boxes where to put your purses and sunglasses and stuff.
After the grandfather looking man moved the carriage over the raft to the personal stuff area, appearly they didn’t get their stuff enough away from the unlading area because there were more instruction to come. The female ride operator in the box got on the microphone. She told them at least two more time to move them there stuff out of the aisle.
It’s hard to say exactly when the ride operator or the other riders and potential riders in line started to turn against the carriage crew, but you could sort of feel had happened by this point.
Finally, carriage crew were all seated in the raft and they and the people in the rafts ahead of them where about to be released into the “white water”. But just as that was about to happen baby-carriage lady said that she “Stop, I can’t find my phone”. Then instead of the ride operators running the ride, they stopped everything and the man unbuckled himself from the his sesat and got out to look for zip-lock bag with the phones in the baby carriage. He took instructions while the lady mumbled thing about how the man was stupid.
Then the lady said, “Someone in line stole two phones from a Ziplock bag while I was in line, I know it!”
If people weren’t against this group yet, this is the moment when it happened.
She was accusing us of stealing her phones after she had already held up the line to ride a water ride on a hot and humid day. Me and a tall 8th grade girl in the group behind us in line exchanged eye-raises as if to ask each other, “Can you believe this lady?” The crowd was uniting against this group, you could feel it in the air.
I told baby carriage lady through the ride operator that I had seen her put her Ziplock bag on the top of the viewing panel on top of the stroller. But to no avail. The Baby carriage lady told him to look there, but I didn’t see him look there. They were getting very agitated with each other, and the phones were nowhere to be found.
At this point, it felt like nobody knew what to do. The young man ride operator, tried to seat us in the baby carriage group’s raft, but as we walked over to the raft, the female ride operator in the box told us through the microphone to go back to the line.
The carriage crew thought that the focus was still on them and got annoyed when the operator in the box told them that they would have to exit the ride even though they didn’t find their Ziplock bag of phones. The ride operator in the box made multiple requests for them to exit the ride far enough past the gate and onto the bridge that led back to the main part of the park. Eventually, the group complied.
The three other groups of seated rafters were released and not long after the first group entered the water someone could be heard shouting, “We see the bag of phones”. The ride operators said, “Do not put your hands into the water.”
To my knowledge the bag was not retrieved from the rafting ride water.
By this point, the ride operators seemed like they could care less about the situation. They were done with baby carriage lady. The ride operator in the box her crew and probably were finished with them the minute that they walked through the gate that led to the exit bridge. There seemed to be an attitude of “It’s too darn hot for this business.”
A few minutes later we were seated and got to ride the ride. It was wet and the water felt like a relief, but it was hardly worth the 30-minute wait in line and ensuing kerfuffle to get on the ride.
We saw the preteen boys from the carriage crew while walking back to our towels and dry clothes and I felt bad for them. They seemed like nice boys who just wanted to ride the ride. I don’t think we saw the pink haired lady and the grandpa looking guy. The boys were standing near the railroad track near a small security shack.
We saw the carriage crew one more time yesterday afternoon. After taking off our swimsuits and getting dressed we walked just outside of the park toward the parking lot. We saw them talking to a female security guard just outside the gate. I was trying to listen in and not listen at the same time.
From what I heard, they were animatedly telling their story to the security guard. The security guard was telling them that what they should have done was go to the lost and found kiosk as soon as they realized their phones were missing. I don’t know completely grasped what happened or if that is just the company line.
I don’t know if the carriage-crew got kicked out of the park or if they were sitting outside of the park talking to a security guard of their own accord. I felt bad for them though. I imagine that they had been looking forward to this trip. Maybe it was a day out with their grandchildren. Maybe they had traveled a distance to go to the park.
That wasn’t even the only incident at the park that seemed off yesterday. We didn’t stay much longer after at the park after our trip to the car. We came back long enough to ride a few more rides and try to buy some ice cream. We were informed at the ice cream kiosk that the ice cream was too hard to scoop. Then Henry was told that he was too tall to ride the helicopters in the kiddie area, even though he rode them last month. I think the ride operator just didn’t want to run that ride if it was just him.
As we were leaving the park, we heard some teenage boys playfully tussling. It seemed like the kind of tussle that could quickly evolve into a fight without much imagination. Last year, on a hot and humid June afternoon, my sister Liz and I witnessed a fight at Dorney Park that caused the ensuing crowd to run in all directions when a teen rammed a garage can at other teen and the plastic trays stacked on top of the trash can when flying.
Liz and I ran into the line for the nearest ride, the lazy river, and stayed there to ride out the melee. She thought there was going to be a crowd-crush but by the time we got off the lazy river ride, the melee seemed to be over. As we left the park that day, we saw a few local police officers watching over several young men sitting on a park bench waiting for their parents to pick them up.
I guess this is to say that hot and humid weather melts people’s brains and maybe the wisest course of action is to stay away from the public on these days unless you are up for a little chaos.
Till I write again,
Katie
Ick! As I get older, I don’t like events with large crowds of people.