| rev:text
| - A cute park, a mix of the charming past and more modern thrills. Our visit was mixed. Overall, we did not regret our visit, but the park did not meet our expectations in some areas, and we don't feel we need to come back anytime soon. We are theme park enthusiasts, and with all of our experience, we may be more critical than the average guest.
Positives:
--- the size is manageable
--- the rides were mostly enjoyable for what they were, even if many are quaint. The Turtle, in all of its simplicity, was a family favorite. Noah's Ark is a unique walk-through attraction that may have you scratching your head, but you'll want to go through again.
--- the admission price was reasonable, $30 each when we bought the 4-ticket weekday bundle, plus $10 for an additional senior guest
--- free parking
--- reasonable food prices (for theme parks) and quality for the most part
--- most amusement parks hold guests in a certain location before official open, leading to a crowded, uncomfortable start. Kennywood allows you to wander the park until the rides open to guests.
Things that could be improved:
--- #1 problem is the understaffing that contributes to unnecessarily long wait times. My wife waited 10 minutes at a Rita's ice cream shop. Terrible? No, but only 1 register of 3 was open. Many rides had only one employee working a ride, leading to too much down time between runs of the ride. Many rides lacked employees at the start of queues, so you could not ask questions about the ride, such as the wait time. (There are no wait time indicators.). There are few employees walking through the park.
--- the training of the employees: almost all are high-school and college kids. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but they were not good ambassadors for the park. Many openly socialized, ignorant of the difference between being "on stage" and "backstage." One cashier at Potato Patch was moaning to a supervisor about his working hours as we waited to give him our order. I don't feel as safe when the 2 employees checking your seatbelts on a roller coaster are chatting about personal matter, oblivious of the guests. While some stood out as being particularly unprofessional, most were merely OK. They minimally interacted with us and did not seem to care to do his/her job with more than a minimal effort. We didn't come across a single employee who was "actively friendly". I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but it was true for our visit on this day.
--- painfully slow loading of the attractions: Rides were not running at full capacity even though it was a busy day. Lines that seemed short had surprising wait times. Garfield's Nightmare had only 3 lines in the switchback queue filled with guests. Even so, our wait was exactly 26 minutes. We wanted to enjoy watching people getting soaked by the Pittsburg*Plunge ride, but launches infrequently occurred. We were not sure that some coasters were running because it took so long to see a moving ride vehicle. We timed some rides at a launch every 4 or 5 minutes.
--- queues and attractions are often in the blaring sun
--- disappointing theme-ing in some places: This may be an "amusement park" but it is rarely a "theme park". As theme park fans, we could identify lots of little touches that Kennywood could make to improve each attraction experience. For example, the haunted house ride was playing pop music.
--- The haunted house ride (wait of 25 minutes) is a competitive shooting game, but there were no announcements that the scoring system was broken. I thought it was just our ride vehicle, but when I told the employee, he said that none of the vehicles worked and that they were "last on the fix list for today."
--- The 2 outdoor shows we chanced upon were quite poor. Amateurishly scripted and performed. We hope that management is not choosing "good enough" over "excellence."
--- There are not enough directional signs.
--- Bathrooms are in need of an upgrade and are insufficient on busy days: the women's line was often out the door.
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