Knott’s Chief: Ride Inspectors Good for Business
When Disneyland, Universal Studios and Sea World officials skipped a public forum on ride inspections and accident reporting last week, Knott’s Berry Farm boss Jack Falfas expressed surprise along with the state regulators who called the meeting.
The purpose was supposed to have been to help craft rules governing how regulators enforce a law passed last year after a series of deaths and injuries at parks, including Disneyland and Knott’s. At the first such meeting in January, the big parks objected sharply to the proposed rules.
State officials said the big parks want to report only injuries that result in death, dismemberment, permanent disfigurement or require more than a 24-hour hospital stay. The parks also lobbied to hire their own, state-certified inspectors to check rides rather than have state employees perform inspections.
The state invited comment last week on revised rules, which would limit complete inspections by state employees to an initial “base line” visit, while park-employed experts would handle most of the required annual follow-ups. Reportable accidents were defined as any requiring off-site medical treatment.
But when reporters and cameras showed up for the second meeting, the big parks shied away. “I found that hard to believe,” said Falfas, who watched the proceedings but offered no comments himself. He justified his silence by saying he had not yet studied the proposed rules fully at the time.
Falfas, a veteran operations expert at Ohio’s Cedar Point amusement park, became general manager of Knott’s when Cedar Point’s parent company, Cedar Fair LP, bought the Buena Park attraction 2 1/2 years ago. He was a key industry player when Ohio adopted its own regulations governing parks and when the American Society for Testing and Manufacturing crafted its standards for amusement rides.
Unlike some in the industry, he says he’s a believer in state inspections--if they are conducted like those in Ohio.
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Q You have said that regulation of amusement parks became a good thing in Ohio. How did that happen?
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A As they started to create the standards, they were very specific, and they also created inspectors--state employees in Ohio. One of the interests that the operating units and everybody had was to have qualified inspectors. . . .
I don’t have a problem with a second set of eyes. I think it’s beneficial to our whole industry. If there was a surgeon operating on me and I was fortunate enough to have another set of eyes--good. Or if somebody recommended a surgery to me and if I had questions about it, I might want a second opinion. . . .
But the concern was, you want an educated second set of eyes.
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Q How do you ensure that?
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A One of the effective things that I saw done in Ohio was the establishment of an advisory board, and that’s one of the things I’ve felt strongly about since then.
The two major Ohio parks, Cedar Fair and Kings Island, each have a permanent seat. There’s two seats for other facilities, a seat for the Ohio Fair Board, a seat for insurers and two at-will seats appointed by the governor. And these were people that were well versed in the industry and had a lot of different interests.
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Q How did that help?
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A The advisory board helped design a training program for [inspection] work. And I don’t mean let’s just get them together for a week and talk.
The inspectors came to Cedar Point and were taught and familiarized with working rides. And they went to the industry schools and attended as inspectors. After that they went to Kings Island on the other end of the state, and they worked down there.
And when I say “worked there,” I mean they spent weeks at these facilities--or maybe months. It took them over six months of pretty intensive training to get ready. But when they were done with that, there was a confidence that these gentlemen knew what they were looking at.
A lot of them were state transfers who had inspected in other industries. They hired a chief inspector who came out of the industry and who had operated his own park for a while before he stepped out, so he had the ability to mentor some of those employees.
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Q But getting the program started still wasn’t easy?
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A I remember some of the rules that came out at the beginning scared the daylights out of people--not unlike what’s happening here.
There was the red tag, the stop order, which was part of the law. If an inspector put a tag on it [a ride deemed unsafe], it was down. I remember everybody having heart attacks over that.
But as everybody learned, it’s really a nonissue. If there’s a bad piece of equipment out there, nobody in this industry wants it to run. Any time there’s an incident in our industry it looks bad on all of us.
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Q What’s your professional background?
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A I started in the amusement industry as a seasonal ride operator in 1970 at Cedar Point, where it was a great summer job. I worked myself through the ranks of group leader, assistant supervisor, supervisor.
And when I graduated from college in ‘75, I was given the opportunity by Mr. Kinzel [Cedar Fair chief executive Richard Kinzel] to come and work full time. In ‘78, I became director of operations. And then eventually in that course, adding responsibilities, I became vice president of operations. So my career, my work experience after college, is basically in the industry.
If you’re an operations person in the park, your true love really starts to become rides.
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Q What is your understanding of the industry stance in California on inspections?
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A I believe that they want people that are really qualified, who know what they’re looking for and what they’re looking at. Right now I don’t know if I have a comfort that the law’s going to do that. They’re still talking broad-brush a lot, and they seem more concerned with fighting over the amount of fines and when you have to report [accidents] than really making sure you get a good second set of eyes, which as I’ve said is something I support.
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Q Ohio also enacted a law making it a misdemeanor for patrons to disobey posted ride rules--something California hasn’t done. Why are you a supporter of rider-responsibility rules?
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A It’s probably debatable what the exact percentage is, but in our industry one of the largest contributors to incidents is the guests’ actions themselves.
The Rider Responsibility Act [in Ohio] was another heated debate. The parks want it because they know it’s going to improve safety--and not through the fact that when somebody gets out of line in the park we’re able to give them a big fine. In fact the Ohio legislature wanted a small [fine]. OK, but it does have a positive effect on behavior when every entrance sign tells riders that they have an obligation to act as instructed.
That does work. And I’ll probably get myself in trouble for saying this, but here in California, the trial lawyers will not permit that.
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Q The lawyers might say the parks are just trying to evade their own responsibilities and make it hard for injured riders to recover damages.
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A If you’re negligent or if you do a wrong to someone and you’re wrong, you’re going to be proven wrong. It’s very simple. That’s not going to change, and the lawyers can go on making their money.
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Q What should the industry be doing now that regulations on inspection and injury reporting are here?
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A Right now the whole industry is sitting with their chairs pushed back, waiting to see what the first step is going to be out there. We need to get on with it. We have a law; it’s there. Let’s make it a good law. Let’s make it effective.
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Q How will consumers be affected by all this?
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A How big a state bureaucracy do you want? Somebody’s going to have to pay for [regulation], . . . and there are going to be fees imposed. And when you’re running a business, you’ll eventually want to recover the cost of those fees [by raising prices].
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Q But what about the safety aspect for consumers?
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A If they believe the government is looking out for them, then they’ll feel safer by it. And if good rules are promulgated, then that should be the case. . . .
Remember the attitude that President Reagan had toward perestroika in the Soviet Union? “Trust but verify.” I want [the regulators] to say, “Hey, Knott’s does what they say. Knott’s is doing a good job.” And when that’s what they say, I want my guests to know about it.
