Kennywood may still be open, but riders are moping
Kennywood is (mostly) open. As many as a dozen rides have been closed in recent weeks, and some patrons aren’t happy.
Kennywood officials say this late-summer stretch has been one of the trickiest in the park’s modern history, as the park has tried to manage the collision of huge crowds, mechanical problems, construction and staffing issues.
“Several issues have made a perfect storm,” Nick Paradise, director of public relations, said this week.
For the first time, Kennywood waived a weekend surcharge last weekend, acknowledging that issues were detracting from the customer experience. And those experiences have been documented — emphatically — on social media.
Customers took to Facebook to report as many as 12 rides closed and long lines at food stands and the remaining rides. One Facebook page, “The Decline of Kennywood and Idlewild,” has more than 2,000 members and has been averaging more than 10 posts a day.
“Terrible day yesterday! So many rides closed!” posted one woman, attaching a photo from the park listing eight rides closed all day, as well as “limited operation” in Kiddieland. “Waited an hour and a half for the Racers, over an
hour for Phantom’s Revenge.”
One of many negative reviews on Kennywood’s Facebook page read: “Went on 8/ 25. Waited 30+ minutes to just find a parking spot. Got in the park and it felt like half the rides were closed. Lines were absolutely ridiculous and in the 8 hours we were there, we onlyrode 4 rides.”
Kennywood management acknowledges problems. General manager Jerome Gibas has been working at Kennywood in West Mifflin and at Idlewild & Soak Zone near Ligonier for more than 40 years. He said the last two weekends have been like nothing he has ever seen. Following a stretch of rain, Aug. 19 was sunny and 77 degrees. The result was the largest crowdin four years, he said.
That crowd encountered a closed Sky Rocket, the first ride visible upon entering the park. It has been closed since mid-May, when a generator melted down in the motor room. The ride was manufactured in Europe and is unique, Mr. Gibas said.
“Unfortunately it’s not something they have boxes of sitting around,” he said. “They told us it would take 12 to 16 weeks, which, unfortunately for us, is the whole summer.”
The Thomas the Tank Engine ride in Thomas Town, which opened July 27, has been closed since Aug. 2, when, in an episode that could have been scripted for the accident-prone Thomas character, the ride derailed for the second time. The issue, Mr. Gibas said, seems to be that the track “settled” after it was reinstalled. It has since run flawlessly on more than 100 testruns, he said, and the park is just waiting for the state to clearit to reopen.
The Paddle Boats closed because the park drained the lagoon to lay footers for the new Steel Curtain coaster opening next year. And the Raging Rapids and the Arcade closed in late August, as they always do this time of year, to begin preparations for Phantom Fright Nights, the park’s popular Halloween event. Since Aug. 22, the park has been open only on weekends, as is also customary for late summer.
In addition, staffing shortages prompted rolling closures of various rides, including in Kiddieland, as the park’s youth workforce returns to school. Kiddieland tends to open with six or seven of its 14 rides in operation, Mr. Paradise said.
Kennywood is the area’s largest youth employer, putting as many as 1,500 students to work in the peak of summer, Mr. Paradise said. Those who are 14 and 15 years old start at $6.60 an hour, 16-year-olds start at $7.60, and older and more experienced employees make up to $12.50. Those in less desirable jobs, such as housekeeping, can make more.
But finding people to work — especially through August — isn’t as simple as it once was. When Mr. Gibas grew up in West Mifflin in the 1960s, working at Kennywood was a rite of passage.
“At one time, you could go one community up, one community down the river, and we had everybody we needed,” he said, explaining that just the kids from Braddock, Turtle Creek, West Mifflin, Duquesne and McKeesport were “more than enough.”
It also used to be that high schools and colleges didn’t start until after Labor Day, Mr. Gibas said. These days, the start of school for both has become mid- to late August.
For high schools, that is in large part due to the emphasis on the state PSSA tests, said Mark DiRocco, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators.
“The accountability testing was and is the main driver,” he said. “People started to realize that we only had so many days of instruction prior to those tests being administered in mid- March or early April. Those instructional days were much more valuable in August than in June.”
Last weekend was college move-in day for many state schools, said Mr. Gibas, resulting in staff shortages. But larger trends have shrunk the college workforce in recent years. College students are more interested in internships and building their resumes than, say, working at Kennywood, Mr. Gibas said, and many of them use the summer to take additional classesor study abroad.
High school students are also more academically focused or concentrating on sports, he said, noting the popularity of baseball tournaments, basketball camps or fall sports practices that start in early August.
One report from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that the teen labor force participation rate in July 2016 was 43.2 percent, down nearly 30 percentage points from the high of 71.8 percent in July 1978. It’s not just Kennywood that struggles to find teen workers in late August, Mr. Paradise said, mentioning that the city of Pittsburgh closed 12 of its 18 pools before Labor Day in part because of staffing issues.
It’s also a common topic of discussion among members of the Pennsylvania Amusement Park Association, noting that other amusement parks fill as much as 70 percent of their workforce with foreign students.
Kennywood used a small number of foreign students this year — a number it plans to increase next year.
Mr. Gibas took pains to say that the teenage workers who do come to Kennywood are hardworking and industrious, and they have had to deal personally with a lot of the complaints in recent weeks. The park is still hiring for this season, he said.
A fully operational Thomas Town and the new Steelers Country, planned for next year, will require even more workers.
“This is not our first challenge. We will respond to this,” Mr. Gibas said. “We need to be more creative in how we go about it.”
In the meantime, he urged those who are dissatisfied to take their concerns to the park, rather than just to social media.
“If somebody comes to the park and they don’t have a good time, let us know and we’ll fix it for you,” he said. “We’ll do something for you. That’s what we do. If you don’t have a good time, you tell us.”