by jscll » Sat Jul 19, 2014 11:25 pm
I believe this "visual scan" technique came from the water park industry. (At some water parks [fortunately not Wild Water Kingdom, yet] the lifeguards are required to constantly wave their arm over the area they are responsible for, kinda like kindergarteners pretending to be elephants. Somehow this is supposed to indicate to guests that they are doing their jobs.)
Fortunately, most operators at Dorney are too self conscious to partake of this pathetic ritual -- I think my bias may be showing. Seeing this practice at Six Flags parks, most notably America and especially New England, it seems that it ends up happening that the operators spend most of their time looking in irrelevant directions. (i.e. down the midways or at the ceiling.)
Another issue with this technique is that it delays operations (which is why I despise Six Flag's got five -- it takes four seconds too long.) By the time an operator reaches their post, they should have verified that the entire area they are responsible for is completely clear and should know where all the other attendants are (if applicable.) On a busy coaster platform, the operator at the main controls provides a degree of redundancy to the process. Unfortunately, Six Flags has been removing this redundancy by using a sub panel which is used by one of the harness checkers instead of by a main panel operator, hence why they need to adopt these obnoxious practices. Now, unfortunately, it seems that Cedar Fair thinks that if they adopt similar policies, despite not needing them, guests will feel safer.