Michael B

Thanks. Interesting questions. I could go on for a while. It was often good working there, though it could also be agonizingly tedious. Besides the usual drudgery of processing people through the rides, the centre was overly ambitious with its opening hours (it was open until 2.00am for the first month or so). Even after they cut down - which was a gradual process - it was often deserted, particularly on Saturday nights (which they eventually dropped) and Friday nights. The story was that it would be big when Expo 88 came to town, then that it would be big after Expo finished, and then the staff all knew it just wasn't ever going to be big, except during school holidays and weekends (though that varied) ... A lot of money lost there, I think. Had some fun with the other employees, had some fun with customers from time to time, had many hours just sitting there waiting for customers ... particularly on the Ferris Wheel (I did a lot of study up there ...). The policy was that if we didn't have customers, we had to be seen cleaning all the time, so that could be painful. My favourite rides to run were the Swing Ship - it was spectacular, had a real sense of power, and was easy to run (and allowed some interesting views of customers, ahem) - and the Bumper Cars (you could ride on the back of them and jump from car to car, plus play your own music (when they weren't cracking down on that). I also experienced the odd phenomenon of being the subject of obsession by at least two schoolgirls ... At various times, each of them hung around the centre (in the company of one or more friends) staring at me ... Going up and down in the glass lift next to the Swing Ship when I was working there ... I worked Friday nights and either Saturday or Sunday (and weekdays during some University holidays), and this went on for months if not years, week after week. Of course, I had boyish good looks back then - I worked there from about 18 to 21. No doubt if I was a less scrupulous (or shy) person, I could have taken terrible advantage of this, but it was all just a bit freaky. I never really acknowledged them. The employers weren't too bad. I outlasted quite a few managers. After a year or so, they introduced the policy of rotating us around the rides every hour - someone said they did this at Disneyland to keep the employees more sane (?). It certainly helped. One female manager saw another ride attendant and I pour our drinks on our supervisor at a work function (it seemed like a good idea at the time ... We were very, very drunk (read as per The Fast Show)). He declared that he was going to give us quite a beating after the boat cruise ended, we grovelled and apologised, and all seemed to be forgiven. However, the manager never seemed to think much of me after that. They later introduced a ride attendant "employee of the week" award, which rotated several times through everyone except me ... This was particularly grating (though I never lost any sleep over it) as I'm fairly sure I was one of the most courteous, conscientous and responsible ones there (when not on employee boat cruises). Anyway, that's probably more than you wanted to know! Cheers Michael B

I worked at Top's (never quite sure what that apostrophe meant) as a ride attendant for over three years, from shortly after it opened up until the end of 1991 (I was actually there for a few months from the start as a cafe attendant, and for a while as a dishwasher ...). I ran a Google search the other day for old time's sake, and also found out that the Swing Ship had been relocated. As for the roller coaster, or "Dragon Train", I saw that quite recently - in June or July 2004, at the Brisbane Medieval Fair. It's been given rubber tyres and turned into a kiddie's ride ... Although it's perhaps an ignoble end, I took some comfort from the fact that the body was not sent to the junk yard, and is still giving some joy to kids. The coaster itself needed some adjustments over a lengthy period - for quite some time the "stop" button was very edgy, and failing to push it at just the right time would mean that the thing would coast right through the station, and would stop half way up the first slope unless you pushed the start button straight away. Of course, some times it would just stop, full of passengers ... At least once or twice on my shift. And then there was the time one of the Centre's mascots, a koala, went riding on the coaster and lost its head ... Cheers Michael B