Day 129: We Got To Track Walk!

Today I trained from 6:45am-3:30pm for my third day of training. Today, we opened Track Walker with another training group. Today, I would say this was frustrating. There are so many training groups at Thunder right now. All of us are around the same point in our training, so we all need to be doing the same things, but it's not reasonable to assume that that could happen. There's just not enough room for all of us to watch a trainer do something.

Because I don't fully understand the operation of the ride yet, I can't explain what happened, but it took a while for the track to be safe to walk on this morning, so we had to rush through the walkthrough to make sure we opened on time. This really didn't allow us much opportunity for explanation/clarification. It was more, "Go fast so we can finish now, and we'll explain later." We followed another training group while opening track walker. That trainer would talk to her trainees, saying things like, "well you guys saw this yesterday, so you already know what to do", meanwhile Ashley and I had no idea what she was talking about. It was tough to keep track of everything when we weren't thoroughly going over it all.

We did walkdown again, but because we got a late start, we had to walk reeeeeally slow to make sure the ride was operational and ready for the guests. We went to break after that, and did more reading in the training room. I really appreciate the reading, even though it's kind of repetitive. I feel like the training is more complete and thorough than what I got in merchandise.

Today, we also covered a lot more new positions. We went up to Tower for a few minutes and got to see what it was like. Basically, there's a bunch of video monitors, and it's our job to make sure that the ride path is clear, nobody is near the track when they shouldn't be, and that all riders are safe. You have to keep your focus on the screens at all times, and for me, I get kind of distracted easily, so I think this could be tough.

After that, we did probably my favorite position: Grouper. Grouper at our attraction is different, because we load from the back to the front. Everyone follows us in a line and we put them in their rows, so it's kind of easy for people to get in the wrong place, which is the only frustrating part. After that, we got a new assignment, probably my least favorite so far, Merge. It was just difficult because people have trouble tapping their MagicBand to the touchpoints quickly, so it's a constant game of catch-up in order to keep our ramp filled, so the grouper can do their job efficiently. I think that position will just take some time to get the hang of it.

After work, I completed the triology and watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Donnie Darko before going to bed at 9pm. Tomorrow, I have my earliest shift yet, 6am-2:45pm.

'Til next time!