Theme park queueing

[chickynuggets]

What would you do?

At a theme park...

Child A runs to join a queue to a ride. Joins the queue. Parent of Child A parks up the buggy a little distance away and collects Child B. Walks to follow Child A. In the meantime another family has joined the queue behind child A. Do you...

1- walk past the family to join your child.
2- join the queue behind the family and call child A to join you.

2 I think

2

Join your child, surely?

1

1

2 is definitely the right thing to do.

1

I'd go and stand with my child, they're in the queue already.

Is the parent and child B also getting on the ride, or just child A?

But why? The child is in the queue having legitimately joined it. Loads of people join a clue to get a place while someone else catches up. Should they not have their place in the queue just because they’re a child?

Everyone going on the ride.

In many theme parks if you read the 'rules' you should always do 2.

1 is classed as queue jumping. It gets incredible annoying for those who get pushed back in the line, even more annoying when it's a large family doing it,

I'd me majorly pissed off and I would tell them so too if there was 1 person in front of me and then 3 more people joined them!

1 happened a lot to us yesterday. It didn't bother me to start with but they always seemed to end up the last ones on the ride and we had to wait for the next one which irritated me.

I found if I a child rushed ahead in excitement I was less bothered than if an adult strode ahead, yelling for the partner to overtake us and join them.

@SmidgenofaPigeon

But why? The child is in the queue having legitimately joined it. Loads of people join a clue to get a place while someone else catches up. Should they not have their place in the queue just because they’re a child?

Because by doing so you push those behind your child further back in the queue. The remaining family are jumping places.

It's queue jumping and, whilst some people do it, you will often find it makes others waiting annoyed especially in very long queues. If everyone did it it would make the queue waits even longer.

2

2, 100%. I can't believe anybody would think it's ok for a child to run ahead and get in the queue whilst everybody else takes their time!

In America I have seen ride operatives send a whole family back to the end of the queue for doing it.

In my defence I’ve never been to a theme park 😂 useful to know the etiquette if I ever have to go to one

1. Especially in times of covid. No one should be squeezing or barging past anyone.

2, child a shouldn't be running ahead to join the queue!

One man strode ahead with a baby and then called his wife, toddler, friend, friends wife and two other children to join him. We gave a look and his wife called him back!

2, although if I was the person behind I’d probably tell you for go ahead anyway if you did that. While being quietly annoyed if you’d gone for option 1, of course

Although I think if it's a long one, it's OK for others in your party to placehold if you've already been queuing for some time, e.g. if one of you needs to nip off to the loo.

For context, The queues were only about two rides long at the most.