'That's When Fights Break Out Among Guests.' Universal Theme Park Engineer Gets Real About One Big Thing That's Changed With Rides Over The Past Couple Of Decades

Theme parks are places where people go to have fun, but theme park trips also have so much going on that they can be quite stressful affairs. Trying to do everything you want to do in a limited amount of time, and with limited money can put people on edge. In an era when everybody has a camera, we’ve also seen tensions boil over, leading to not infrequent fights in theme parks.

The proximate causes of these fights can be all sorts of things, but it seems that one of the reasons that people can get in fights was actually specifically caused by theme parks themselves. Kevin Blakeney, a landscape architect who helped design the brand new Epic Universe park, recently told The Atlantic that the use of lineskipping systems can cause conflict when those in the standard line have ot watch the people who paid more walk on by. Blakeney said…

We’ve probably all been there at one time or another. Nobody likes standing in long lines, and that’s what you spend a lot of time doing on any theme park trip. Seeing people skip the line can be obviously frustrating.

It turns out that Epic Universe queues are designed to reduce the points at which the standby line even sees the Express Pass line. They largely take separate paths to the attraction, specifically to avoid potential conflicts. I’ve been through Epic Universe and certainly notice when the queues diverge, but I never really considered the rationale behind the idea.

It’s at least understandable why this sort of frustration can happen. It’s long been argued that theme parks, mostly Disney. But Universal isn’t innocent here, have been pricing themselves out with middle-class guests, making the focus guests with the money to spend on premium experiences.

Line skipping options are the frequent target. Universal’s Express Pass is more expensive than its standard ticket. While Disney’s Lightning Lane multipass is cheap by comparison, it’s a bit less flexible. Even Disney recently launched an expensive Premier Pass for those who can drop hundreds per person on line skipping.

I've certainly spent the money to try to make my own Disneyland vacations go more smoothly. If you make the decision to spend the money, it can be frustrating as you feel like you have to do it in order to have the sort of experience you want.

It’s one thing to know the best experience goes to those who can afford it, but it’s another to see that with your own eyes. Perhaps separating those with Express Pass from the rest of the guests prevents fights from breaking out, but the underlying issue is certainly still there.