Is It Safe to Go to Six Flags During a Pandemic?

Over spring break, I decided to finally give in and take a trip to Six Flags with a good friend of mine. Because of the pandemic, it had been quite a while since I rode a rollercoaster. Initially, I had completely cast aside the idea of going to an amusement park until I was fully vaccinated. I didn’t want to contract the virus and potentially endanger my parents. However, after hearing positive stories from friends of mine who had gone to other parks during the pandmeic, and after seeing my parents get vaccinated, I began to ponder whether or not a trip to my home park would be safe. I looked into the protocols that were being taken and they seemed promising; however, whether or not the rules were strictly enforced was a whole other issue. There are many people out there who are more lax when it comes to practicing COVID safety protocols, so having people at the park to ensure that things were going smoothly would be incredibly important. Unfortunately, after spending a day at the park, I can confidently say that I was extremely dissatisfied with the safety measures being taken, and that I would not encourage anyone to go unless they are aware that there is great risk in doing so.

Although the bad heavily outweighed the good for me, there were some things that were successfully implemented to keep the people at the park safe. One thing that caught my attention was the fact that there were many sanitizing stations available for people to utilize. Six Flags also implemented hands-free, portable hand washing stations that were scattered throughout the park, on top of the standard hand sanitizing stations that have become commonplace throughout public places. This ensured that whenever I had to put my hands on something that others had frequently touched, such as the lap and shoulder restraints on rides, I was able to quickly sanitize myself before I touched any personal items, such as my phone or  debit card. Six Flags also encourages the people there to wear masks even on the rides, which was surprisingly not nearly as bad as I’d originally thought it would be. Also, despite this being a practice that varied from ride to ride, sometimes staff would come to clean and spray the seats. This was especially apparent on the Batman rollercoaster, where every couple of rides or so, the people there would fully sanitize one of the two running trains, and then send it on a ride across the track to give it time to dry. In the meantime, people in line would board the other active train when it came to the station. Batman in particular is a ride that utilizes over-the-shoulder restraints, which sit awfully close to your face when you pull them down. Seeing the park be cognizant of the potential hazards and addressing them by implementing a consistent cleansing routine was refreshing, and made me feel more comfortable during my ride experience. The final thing that I noticed was that in an attempt to promote social distancing, the park operators would try to separate you by at least one seat length away from any strangers that rode with you. I definitely don’t want to sit 3 inches away from a stranger during a pandemic if I don’t have to, so I was grateful for this policy.

 In theory, the practices and policies that Six Flags implemented would result in a positive experience where the people who decide to visit feel comfortable, and do not have to fear for their safety; however, there was a blatant lack of enforcement of some of these policies that made me a bit uneasy during my time at the park.

Despite Six Flags supposedly imposing a limit on the park’s capacity, my most recent trip was unironically the most crowded I have ever seen it in the almost dozen times I’ve gone. If you wanted to walk to a ride queue, chances are that you would have to traverse through large clumps of people, and many of them would be walking around unmasked. In general, the lack of a successful implementation of social distancing protocols and mask mandates were really the things that irritated me. In the lines for all of the park's attractions, there were stickers placed on the ground that signaled appropriate distances for park attendees to stand; however, these were consistently ignored by the staff and general public there. In fact, because the park was as crowded as it was, some lines would stretch out all the way to the park entrance even with the blatant neglect of the social distancing practices. Most of the time, I’d be forced to stand around a foot away from the people behind and in front of me, which isn’t the end of the world, but it also obviously isn’t safe by CDC standards. The worst case of this I saw was actually on the Batman ride. Even though frequently cleaning the seats for the ride is a great idea in concept, in practice it actually ended up being fairly counter-intuitive to what Six Flags wanted to accomplish. Batman is already a very popular ride, so traditionally, the lines for that ride are always longer than they usually are for standard attractions, even on normal days. On the day that I went, not only was the park especially crowded, but the ride operations were taking much longer than normal because of the added time that was set aside for cleaning. This resulted in a long, compact line that stretched all the way to the ride entrance. To make matters somehow even worse, because of the way that ride is themed, most of the queue is actually set indoors, unlike other premiere attractions such as Goliath and Twisted Cyclone. This meant that you were forced to stand shoulder to shoulder with a lot of rowdy, maskless pre-teens and teenagers indoors with very little air conditioning if you wanted to secure a ride. This personally made me, and I would assume a lot of other people waiting feel extremely uncomfortable and unsafe. Even for pre-covid standards this type of clumping is unprecedented, the fact that this was allowed to happen during a pandemic made things worse.

Batman wasn’t the only place where the lack of the enforcement of social distancing was evident. The park’s restaurants, like everything else there that day, were also crowded to the point where the line stretched out of the building. Similar to the Batman ride, a lot of the people in line were very lax about their usage of masks, and the park staff again would witness this and did not appear to care whatsoever. It created a situation where around 30 sweaty and musty people were forced to cram into a small room if they simply desired food. I remember this group of maskless kids that would keep cutting in and out of the dense line, bumping into what felt like everyone in line as they went. Considering the fact that your safety in this pandemic is not only determined by the precautions you take, but also that of those around you, spaces like that felt really gross to be in at the moment. Also, even though there appeared to be over 30 larger tables outside, all of them were full, and they weren’t spread out or properly marked to account for any sort of social distancing whatsoever. No matter where you went, everything felt cramped. It was yet again another situation where overcrowding and a lack of proper enforcement of protocols created a fairly unsafe experience for the park goers. 

I could go on about other negative experiences I had that day, but I think the important thing to identify is why these safety problems exist, and potential solutions to fix them. Most of the issues that I saw seemed to stem from overcrowding, and the inability to properly enforce social distancing protocols as a result. In my eyes, there is a very easy solution to this, which is to simply just lower the limit for park capacity significantly. This would mean things like park queues and restaurant lines wouldn’t be so overcrowded, and that people would actually be able to practice the social distancing rules that were technically implemented. However, I understand that Six Flags is a business, and that the chance of them doing this is slim to none. With pandemic fatigue being as prevalent as it is, people are just going to buy tickets and attend, regardless of how strict or safe the protocols are. Until Six Flags adjusts their max capacity limit or makes any other significant changes, I cannot say that I would encourage anyone to attend the park at the moment, especially with the end of the pandemic seemingly right around the corner. I’m not going to lie, riding roller coasters again for the first time in over a year was a great feeling, but ultimately there were enough concerns that I had during my time there that I would not feel comfortable going again until after I’ve been vaccinated.  If you do end up going with some friends or family, it’s important to understand that there is notable risk involved in doing so, regardless of how careful you and your group may be.

By Kailen Hicks