Water Works

This reminds me of my time at Wild Adventures. I started out in the gift shop and soon was moved to group sales. I worked there from the time that I returned from Kissimmee, Florida (circa 1999) to when I got my job teaching in Coffee County. And every summer until 2006, I would return because 1) I liked having something to do in the summer. 2) they worked around my cheerleading coach schedule. 3) the extra money wasn't bad.

What stories I could tell about my experiences at Wild Adventures. It wasn't entirely hard work; checking in groups in the mornings always made the time go by faster. As a teacher, it always disturbed me when school groups would arrive and not know how many students that they had with them. Isn't that chaperoning 101? Count the kids before you leave the school? So, the poor children would be baking on the busses while the disorganized group leader attempted to do math at the check-in window. Family reunions were also entertaining since Wild Adventures had a twenty group minimum. So, family reunions would call earlier in the week, make a reservation for the lower rate to avoid the walk up rate, then have to scramble to find family members to make the twenty. The kicker was that the payment had to be in one form (one credit card or cash). We could split the payment twice. If we felt so inclined. That was pretty much up to our discretion. Depending on our mood, we would either leave our window open, allowing our cool air from our office to filter out into the defacto group leader's flushed face. Or give them a piece of paper and a pencil and tell them to knock on the window when they were ready.

After we checked in groups, time tended to stand still. Normally we would had to return voice mails and do mail outs of reservations. But if we were really lucky, a summer thunderstorm would roll through and one of us workers might be able to go home early. Those of us who worked in group sales loved thunderstorms.