Kingdom University

 Just a little more about my summer job at Kentucky Kingdom. Kentucky Kingdom is an amusement park located in Louisville, Kentucky. It consists of many roller coasters, rides, and attractions, as well as a large waterpark. I have worked at Kentucky Kingdom for 4 years now. I work in the park services department, which means I'm responsible for keeping the park looking clean. The park services department takes care of many things that other departments can't, such as keeping bathrooms clean, sweeping up eating areas, trash runs, or taking care of any animals that may end up around the guests (yes, this has happened, we had to try to get a raccoon off the roof and we take care of wasp and hornet nests as well as any baby birds that are unsafe around any guests). We are responsible for the cleanliness of the park, so we do just about anything you could think of around the park aside from operating rides, lifeguarding, and serving food.

This summer season was very different from previous seasons. In a regular operating season, the employees fill out the paperwork needed to start the job in about February and then training starts in March so that the employees would be able to work by April. However, this season, paperwork had to be filled out by May. The projected opening day for Kentucky Kingdom was June 29, which would normally be the middle of a regular operating season. Training sessions consisted of 10 people or less, so there were a lot more training sessions we had to do for the team members. I was a supervisor. The supervisors had a month to get the park clean and ready for opening day. We worked 5-6 days a week setting up the park for about 7 hours a day and we still weren't completely done by the time the park opened, but we did the best we could. 

This season also had some rules and regulations we needed to follow in order to keep the park operating. First, every employee was required to wear a mask whenever they were out in the park during operating hours. If there were guests in the park, a mask had to be on (unless you were a lifeguard and your specified area for the day was not within 6 feet of other people). The park services department had to tell many lifeguards to put on their masks this summer. We also had to require that if a guest was to go to an indoor restaurant or shop, they had to have a mask on. Another thing that we had to do was put ground markers in the queue lines 6 feet away from each other to ensure that the guests were socially distancing. We also had hand sanitizer stands about 20 feet apart from one another throughout the entire park. Not only that, but the park services department adopted many new cleaning procedures for every operating day, including sanitizing tables once a guest gets up from it.

With the limited capacity rule that was going on for the end of the lockdown, we were allowed to operate at half capacity, which made no difference from a normal day. The maximum capacity of Kentucky Kingdom (I believe) is around 60,000 guests, but the maximum capacity for this season was about 16,800 guests. This had no effect on the number of people who come to the park because in the 4 year span of working at Kentucky Kingdom, the highest capacity we've reached was about 18,000. That only happened twice. A normal week day during the pandemic got anywhere from 1,000-4,000 guests, with weekends reaching about 5,000 to 8,000 guests.

I've also decided to put in a few pictures of me with some of my best friends at work (I've worked with these people all 4 years and one of them is currently my roommate, which I think is really cool).