Making a Discovery: This place sucks!

This week I took my daughter to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom for a day trip with my parents. I’d been there many years ago as a kid (when it was still called Marine World) but this was the first time I’d gone since they turned it in to an amusement park. I was extremely disappointed.

For starters parking and admission were way too expensive. It cost $15 to park on a hill about half a mile from the park entrance. That’s $4 more than it costs to park at Disneyland, which of course, is a far superior theme park. Tickets were $50 a piece, just $13 less than Disneyland.

As if that weren’t expensive enough, everywhere we turned, we were forced to spend more money. You want to feed the giraffe a carrot? $5. You want to feed the seals a fish? $5. You want to get up close to a dolphin? $25. Everything had its price.

I guess I would be fine with the high prices, if I felt that they were actually going towards what I assume is the high price of caring for exotic marine mammals. But the animal exhibits were all in disrepair, the animals looked miserable, and in some cases the exhibits clearly hadn’t been renovated in the 15 years since I last stepped foot in Marine World.

On top of my general irritation with the park, it didn’t help that every single employee I encountered was rude and disinterested.

When we stopped to have lunch, I waited in a long line to pay $25 for two corn dogs, fries and two drinks for me and my daughter. When the cashier gave me my food, I asked for lids for the drinks. She gave me the company line “we don’t have those for the animals sake.” Okay fine I can respect that. Can I get a tray? “We don’t have trays.” I asked: how am I supposed to carry all this food? The woman actually just rolled her eyes at me and walked away. Unbelievable.

Also, when you have someone that is teaching kids about marine mammals, they should at least SOUND like they give a shit. That was certainly not the case with the employees at Discovery Kingdom.

The last thing I’ll say is that the bathrooms were foul. Not only were they old and falling apart, but they hadn’t been cleaned in hours with garbage and piss all over the floors.

So, even though my daughter had a blast, I don’t think I’ll be going back to Discovery Kingdom. She can go with the grandparents!

Got a bad customer service story? E-Mail Me