An Unfortunate Incident at the Theme Park

It was a pleasant evening in late December. My teenage daughter, her friend, and I had planned a fun evening at the local waterpark, which was transformed into a magical winter wonderland for the holiday season.

Winter Wonderland

As we entered the winter wonderland, we were greeted by thousands of twinkling lights synchronized to popular holiday songs and a prominent, beautifully decorated Christmas tree.

The park also featured a holiday light show, live music, train rides, a miniature petting zoo, hayrides, pony rides, an inflatable slide rising three stories tall, and an outdoor ice rink.

The teenagers had been eagerly looking forward to our visit there. They had relished their previous visit to the waterpark during the summer.

Yet, little did we know that this particular visit would end in disappointment, anger, and mortification.

The Beginning of the Evening

On this particular evening, the park was relatively crowded, with mile-long lines at every ride. Even worse, the lines were all moving at a snail’s pace.

As a result, the girls could not move from one attraction to the next as rapidly as they would have liked, leading them to skip several attractions altogether.

Nonetheless, the girls happily posed for photos at several holiday photo-ops located throughout the park.

They spent most of their time at the temporary outdoor ice rink. I recall noticing an apathetic young man liberally spraying the rental skates with Lysol as they were being returned to him.

Funnily enough, this incident occurred a couple of years before the pandemic, so there was no shortage of Lysol.

After ice skating, the girls decided they wanted to grab a bite to eat, so we headed to the concession stands for pizza, fries, and sodas.

Following a quick meal, the girls delighted in the opportunity to roast marshmallows to golden perfection on an open pit.

A Peculiar Incident

It was around the end of the evening that a peculiar incident occurred. We waited in line for about twenty minutes to go on the hayride when the girls decided to leave the line for a few minutes to check out a nearby attraction.

Be that as it may, I held our place while standing adjacent to the queue and checking text messages on my iPhone.

When it was our turn, the team member in charge of the hayride accused us of jumping the line. She condescendingly reprimanded us as if we were children and ordered us to the back of the line.

We were caught entirely off-guard and were speechless at how disrespectful the park employee was to us. Other people were equally astonished by this bizarre turn of events and looked at us sympathetically. Nevertheless, they went ahead of us one by one to board the hayride.

By the time everyone had gone ahead of us, the ride was packed. We would have had to wait another twenty minutes for the next ride. Furthermore, it was getting dark and nearly closing time.

We decided to leave right then and there rather than argue with the disrespectful team member. By now, the girls were crestfallen but remained silent. I was angry with the employee and felt sorry for the girls.

The End of the Evening

We walked to the entrance of the park, where we sought out the admissions attendants. After explaining our predicament to them, they seemed apologetic and offered us free food and drink.

However, we decided to forego the latter as it did not seem like just compensation for our mistreatment that day.

We exited the park feeling disillusioned and disheartened. It was the end of what was supposed to be a lovely evening.

Takeaway

We should have been more assertive in dealing with the rude, arrogant team member, but I was not about to argue with her in front of all those people. It was also getting late and nearly closing time when the incident occurred.

In fact, I did not give much thought to the incident until now. After penning this article, I have decided to write a complaint letter to the park and request a full refund.

This story originally appeared on Medium.