Internship - Week 7 (28/11/11 - 4/12/11)

On 1/12/11 (Thursday), I helped out in the evacuation of guests when the attraction encountered a technical difficulty. It was a new experience for me because I have only heard my colleagues mentioning about their experiences, but have never tried it out personally.

When the attraction is undergoing a technical difficulty which cannot be settled within 20 minutes, evacuation of guests is necessary. When the person in the control room determined the need for an evacuation, a "Code Red! All N.E.S.T personnels please return to base" spiel will be activated. Upon hearing this, all positions except Greeter, Load and Unload console operators must gather outside the leads room. The person in the control room has to check through the CCTVs and assign different areas to everyone for evacuation.

A minimum of 2 team members are required for each group of guests being evacuated. One of them will talk to the guests to prevent mess and confusion, while the other will manually push up the gate of the ride vehicle. The guests will be told to alight the vehicle row by row so as to avoid confusion. Thereafter, the team members will escort the guests through the primary escape route, with 1 team member leading at the front and the other team member guarding at the back so that no guest will stray off from the group. However, when the situation calls for it, guests will be led through the secondary escape route, which will be the nearest exit. Before exiting the attraction, guests will be given a complimentary Universal Express™. This  ticket will allow them to enter any attraction in USS through the Universal Express™ queue.


Official Opening (3/12/11)
On 3/12/11 (Saturday), it was the official opening of Transformers The Ride and 18,000 tickets were sold out for the day. It was a very busy day as many people visited the park to experience the new attraction. Due to the great response, the waiting time of the attraction rose to 3 hours after only 1 hour since the park started its day of operations. Although the ride was grounded for 45 minutes due to a technical difficulty, many guests still wished to remain in the attraction for the ride to resume operations.

Due to the nature of this business, there are many chances of guest interaction. In this process, it is inevitable to meet difficult guests who are hard to please. In the morning, I encountered an incident whereby one of the child of a guest did not meet the minimum height requirement of 102cm. I had to do my job and stop the child from entering, despite the parents repeatedly asking me to close one eye. However, the minimum height requirement was set to ensure the safety of all guests taking the ride, it is important to be strict on the entry of small children. Hence, I had to explain to the parents that preventing their child from entering is due to safety reasons. In the end, the father of the child said "You really make our lives difficult". Nonetheless, I still had to keep a smile on my face because there are other guests and I should still do my part to make their experience enjoyable. In the later part of the day, I encountered another incident when I was in position as a grouper. As a grouper, I have to ask guests for their party size and group them into the different rows available. However, an elderly couple simply pushed my aside before I had a chance to say anything to them. They chose the row they preferred and entered the loading queue area of the ride. Since they were of old ages, I let them be and continued grouping the other guests.

There are also instances when guests just get angry and scold you in front of everyone, even though you are just doing what you were told to do. On 1/12/11 (Thursday), I encountered a mother with two children. One child did not meet the minimum height requirement and could not take the ride. She told me to take care of the child while she took the ride with the other child. However, as part of the company policy, team members are not supposed to take care of children or belongings for guests as we are not responsible for it. I tried to explain to the mother that I cannot do so because if anything bad were to happen to the child, I cannot be responsible for it. She then scolded me by claiming that she spent so much money to enter the park and I can't expect her to go home and find someone to take care of the child. No matter how much I tried to explain to her, she still insisted on meeting the manager. I had no choice but to get my team lead to attend to her.

Although in cases like these, I am just doing my job and staying firm by the instructions I was given, there will still be times when guests can get so unreasonable that I just felt like telling them off. However, I know that it is not right to do so and will remind myself constantly to bear with it. Through these incidents, I have learnt that communication with guests is very important. Only through effective communication can I get messages across to guests. Some guests are very understanding and will cooperate well, while some guests may be unaccepting and insist on doing things their way. In times like this, it is very important to stay calm and maintain your stand.