I was at Great Adventure today and I have a question for all of you Park employees. Ok I watched Viper and Medusa run today but what really struck me was why viper and medusa. why not all of the rides. it is so close to the beginning of the season that shouldn't they be testing all of the rides? isn't there like a certain number of hours that each coaster has to be run to meet standards. Just wondering.

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Kingda Ka 2005

While I haven't worked at Great Adventure, I have worked pre-season at Cedar Point, right when they're doing that sort of opening maintenance. The likely reason that only a couple of coasters are running is that the maintenance staff is limited -- they can only work on so much at once. Probably they're not doing inspections yet, so it isn't necessary to have every coaster running at the same time, just the ones they're checking out. Closer to opening day, you'll see more coasters and other rides running simultaneously, as crews begin to arrive and there are more people to run them and more employees that need practice doing so.

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Walk Beyond...

Melissa makes a very good point, before the season starts staff is limited to all year workers and the mantenince crew, they cant run something wiht nobody to opertate it so i figure they do one section of rides at a time, Madusa and Viper are close enough to each other that they do those atthe same time and maybe work their way across the park.

Well, Viper and Medusa were the coasters that you could see running at the time that you were there...however, I know B:TR, Nitro, Skull Mountain, and a handful of other flat rides were running for at least a couple of hours yesterday. Can't say much more for the other side of the park since I didn't witness anything over there.

Oh yeah, BTW, the staffing this last weekend was pretty good as most of the rides employees were in for training, and cycling rides is a part of the training process.