People go to theme parks for fun and excitement, but when there’s a Karen around, things are far from “fun.” However, these people decide that no one is going to ruin their time and stand up to the Karen. Content has been edited for clarity.
Disability Organization
“I used to work at the Dutch theme park called, ‘Efteling.’ On my way to the restaurant I worked, some lady rushed over with a crying child when I passed by a playground area. Thinking the little boy got hurt I immediately asked what happened. Instead of an answer, the mother scowled and pointed toward a small group of four disabled people and their caretakers in wheelchairs. ‘THAT’S what happened!’
Since nearly half of the park’s attractions are animatronic shows and other displays, it’s not uncommon for disability organizations to take their patients here. I even started recognizing their logos.
So I explained to the mother, ‘Oh, yes, they’re from an organization that organizes outings for people with profound autism, what about the-‘
The mother cut me off by saying, ‘They shouldn’t be here!’
This left me stunned.
Me: ‘Excuse me? Why should-‘
Mom: ‘They scare the kids! This is a place for children and fantasy, why would you let that kind of person in? They don’t even know what’s going on!’
Getting angry and knowing there was no arguing with the mother, I instead knelled down to face the child instead and said, ‘Hey, little man, did those people scare you?’
The boy nods sadly. I then explained in the simplest words I could think of that they didn’t mean to, that they can’t help being who they are, and, since we were in a fairy tale park, I compared them to Quasimodo. That’s when the kid got it. I asked if he was still scared and he shook his head.
I thought I was done, the kid was calm, so I wished the two a lovely day and turned around.
Mom: ‘Hey! Aren’t you gonna deal with them?!’
I stood there in utter disbelief. Was she listening at all?
Me: ‘Are you asking if I’m going to kick out guests who did nothing wrong? No, I will not do that. Have a nice day, ma’am.’
I was already running late, so I left. When I walked by the group, I waved to them who smiled and waved back, hoping to show the mother they were nice and harmless.
I feel really bad for that kid. It must be hard being more emphatic and smart than your mother when you’re only five.”
A Friendly Competition Or So We Thought
“I worked at a theme park on the events team. We have events around seasonal periods and they’re always themed. At almost every event we have a competition build, a scavenger hunt, and other things for kids to do while they’re in the park besides rides. This particular event was in January 2018 and I was working on the competition build.
The way our competition build works is these kids get a LEGO base plate to build everything on. The two rules we have is that nothing can hang off the edge of the base plate and the build cant be taller than a foot. This is what our entitled mom uses as her leverage.
I had just returned from lunch and I saw that somebody had built an amazing building. It was a dragon that had a moving tail, arms, and head. It had lots of detail and followed the theme. It was definitely going to win. We were only open for about another hour and we didn’t think anybody else could build something good enough in that timeframe.
Enter our entitled mom (EM). She had two small children who started building at our competition. Like we normally do, we were talking to the kids and the mom trying to give them a great experience. The dad jokingly said to us, ‘You know when you see builds like that (the dragon) it’s like why even try, but hey if the kids are having fun so be it.’
EM finally sees the dragon build.
EM: ‘Oh wow he must’ve brought pieces from home.’
Me: ‘Actually he used all the pieces we have on the table.’
EM then proceeded to look at the dragon very intensely. When I see her reaching out to touch it, I stopped her.
Me: ‘Please don’t touch other people’s builds, ma’am. We don’t want them to break.’
EM: ‘I’m not touching just looking.’
I keep watching her just to make sure she doesn’t do anything else. But she then pulls out her phone and takes pictures of the entire building. After taking the pictures, she walks over to her sons.
EM: ‘Don’t worry boys that build is disqualified anyways. Its pieces hang over the edge.”
The piece she’s referring to is the moving tail. When you fold the tail it didn’t hang over the edge, but when you unfolded it would hang over the edge. When she took her pictures, she unfolded the tail. My coworker folded the tail back up and move the dragon build to the back of the table so she couldn’t reach it.
After a few minutes, EM comes over to us and demands we find the pieces that the kid used when he built the dragon. The Lego pieces that we use for competition builds are a mix of hundreds of Lego kits. There is absolutely no guarantee of any pieces. The piece she was referring to looked like an elephant tusk.
EM: ‘Find my babies these pieces now they need them.’
Me: ‘I will try my best ma’am but those small pieces normally fall to the bottom of our bins and there’s no guarantee we have anymore.’
EM: ‘I don’t care find them. We want to use them.’
I and my coworker spent the next few minutes digging through these large grey tote bins filled with thousands of Lego pieces. Just to try and find a tiny piece that is smaller than a pencil eraser. We found some pretty cool pieces that we tried to give to the kids.
Me: ‘Hey guys, we couldn’t find the pieces you wanted but we found these super cool ones do you wanna use these?’
EK #1: ‘No, we want the ones that are on the dragon.’
EK #2: ‘Yea, it’s not fair he brought his own pieces from home.’
EM: ‘You’re making my babies upset. Since we can’t use pieces we brought from home, can we use the pieces from inside?’
We were outside a building that had more LEGO inside. Now the pieces that were inside were thick, dirty bricks no specialty pieces. Plus they didn’t belong to my department.
Me: ‘Sorry, ma’am those pieces don’t belong to the events team we can’t use those. Plus none of those bricks are the type of pieces you would want either.’
EM: ‘This is so unfair my babies aren’t gonna win and it’s all your fault.’
After this, I kind of shut down. I walked away to talk to some other kids who weren’t little brats. We had about 15 minutes before we were going to close the competition. During this time my boss came to help us start closing. When she arrived I let her know about our EM. Now, I love my boss. I have worked with her for a very long time. She is the main reason why I haven’t quit yet. My boss has an issue with entitled parents. Especially parents that put other kids down to bring their kids up. After I let my boss know that she had been touching the dragon build, she stood in front of the table and blocked the Dragon build. Again EM decided to try and touch the build.
Boss: ‘Please don’t touch other children’s builds.’
EM: ‘I’m not! I’m just looking. Did you know this build is disqualified?’
Boss: ‘Even if it was, we don’t like to tell little kids their build was disqualified and break their hearts.’
EM did not like this. She went back to taking pictures but not of the build, but she started taking pictures of us. My boss is very sarcastic and told her to make sure she gets her good side. I and my coworker jokingly posed while she took pictures of us.
The time hit for us to close and instead of EM leaving like the other families did she sat there and watched us.
EM: ‘When do they come out and judge them?’
Boss: ‘You will be notified by email only if you win.’
Normally when we close we put away all the LEGO and take apart all the builds on the table after selecting a winner. Since EM wanted to sit there and watch us, we had to carry this giant table, with all the builds on it, inside the building and into an employees-only room just so we can take them apart.
We kept going outside to continue cleaning up, and EM kept watching us. She followed us around and videotaped everything. I assume her husband went somewhere with her kids because they were gone.
After we moved everything inside, we took pictures of the dragon, and her children’s builds. My boss called security and let them know about her stalking us. She also contacted guest services and let them know of her behavior and that she couldn’t go up there and get free stuff. While we were taking apart the builds, Guest Services radioed us. They already knew the lady we were talking about by name. They said that she had caused several issues in the park in the years prior. She was an annual pass holder and her behavior today put more points against her annual pass and she was half a point away from being banned.
After all the builds were taken apart we decided to pull the dragon’s registration form as the winner. My boss looked at the slip and laughed.
Boss: ‘The builder of the dragon has already won a competition build so he can’t win again.’
The sad thing is EM’s kids built some really cute stuff and had EM not acted the way she did her kids would’ve won.
As of now (2021) I no longer work at this theme park but I’ve been told the EM has been permanently banned due to her behavior.”
Tattoos
“Some of my friends and I decided to go on a road trip. We decide the appropriate thing to do is go to a water park and theme park that were right next to each other and spend a few days out there for spring break. So we get the theme park out of the way first and have a good time then a few days later we head to the water park.
So here’s the thing, it’s a water park so obviously I’m gonna have my shirt off for a large amount of the time. I also happen to have a few tattoos, not to the point where my whole body is essentially covered but a good amount. I have one on my wrist that is barely even noticeable which is some Japanese writing, the other one is on my other wrist and it’s kinda hard to explain but it basically wraps around my wrist and has some lines coming out of it, it is way better than it sounds I swear lmao, the third and final one is the most noticeable since it is a big back tattoo of a cross.
Anyway we get there and the first day goes well, it’s a huge water park so we obviously wanna ride all of the slides. So I’m walking back to our table from the bathroom and when I’m almost there this lady looking like she’s in her mid-40s walks up and stops me. I’m a bit confused so I just wait a minute before just saying, ‘Yeah?’
And she immediately says that she has kids here and she doesn’t wanna see that. So I don’t know what she’s referring to and hoping nothing is sticking out of my shorts.
She immediately points to one of the tattoos on my wrist: ‘That!’
‘My tattoo? Is there anything wrong with it.’
‘Yes, this is a place for kids and I don’t want you influencing them to get one of these things.’
So I’m not really annoyed, just confused since this is a place where 90% of the people have their shirts off and at least a few of them will have a tattoo of some kind. So I tell her that
‘This is a public place and everyone has their shirt off, a good amount of them probably have tattoos.’
Of course, everything I’m saying in this isn’t word for word since I can’t remember every single word but this is basically how it went. She completely ignores what I say and tells me to put my shirt on which I obviously say no to. She tells me to put it on or she’s gonna call security.
I tell her to do it and she walks off. I go back to my table and sit down with my friends and they were literally watching everything go down I am a bit nervous since even tho I know I wasn’t in the wrong I still don’t wanna get in trouble with security. About 5 minutes later when me and my friends go to another slide she comes running up to us with a security guard behind her.
She tells him that I wasn’t supposed to have them out and he was just as confused as I was since he didn’t see anything wrong and she didn’t say specifically it was the tattoos. He asks her what she’s talking about and she gets even more mad and points to one of my tattoos.
‘Those!’
He asks her what’s wrong with it and she goes off on both of us saying how I shouldn’t have those in a kid’s place and she doesn’t want her kids saying this. He apologizes for her and tells her to stop bothering me. She storms off and I continue with my trip with my friends, I saw her a few times again throughout the trip but I don’t think she saw me.”
No Cutting in Line
“Me and my best friend, who we’ll call ‘Ana’ went to spend a fun day at a large theme park close to our home. It was on a particularly busy school holiday, the week of their Halloween Special, so I had never seen the place so packed. You could easily wait for 1h30 for the main rides everyone wanted to do.
All day long we’ve seen dozens of people cut in these ginormous lines, with lousy excuses such as trying to reunite with an imaginary relative who’s convenient all the way up the line. Where I’m from it isn’t uncommon behavior, and even though people disapprove, they’re unlikely to make a scene. However, on this day it happened way more often than usual.
We even saw two youth group coordinators who did it with their 20 kids… By the end of the day, we were ready to lose our s**t on the next person who would try to do that in front of us. Nevertheless, we were having a great time, catching up and drinking hot pumpkin soup while we waited in line.
Then we see a woman who’s passing everyone behind us. I exchange a look with Ana, and we immediately position ourselves to subtly block the way. The woman or who we’ll EM for entitled mom) comes up to me and tells me she’s here with her family, but they are already further in line, and would I please let her pass bla bla bla. Her teenage daughter is standing behind her. I say no, and she looks absolutely gobsmacked. Then I notice Ana is having the same conversation with a man (ED) I didn’t notice before, who’s holding the hand of a little boy about 7 yo. So we assume they’re all together and conjointly tell them they’re pushing it too far trying to cut the line as a group of 4.
EM then laughs faintly and tells me that they’re not together, pretty certain it will help her case. It becomes apparent there are two different groups. But it is the last straw for us. Two. Different. Entitled. Pricks. At the same time! I am ripe to make a scene.
Ana and I tell EM and ED they can wait in line like the rest of us, and if the rest of their families are really further in the line, their relatives can wait for them. ED is not having it and gives everyone the shoulder to pass (with his small kid in tow!) We don’t really try to block him as he’s very violent, pushing people around, and everyone’s afraid to hurt the little boy who’s being dragged by his father and barely protecting his face with his arm.
Though we’re still blocking EM and her teenage daughter. She then starts to negotiate with me. But how could I deny a loving family their last ride together? But it’s the holidays, shouldn’t we be nice to each other on a day like this? But she asked nicely, so how could I say no? She’s onto me nonstop for 20 min with her guilt trip. I keep telling her no. I explain she was not the first one to do that today, and that we are on holiday too and want to get on the ride as much as anyone in that line. It tells her again her relatives could wait for her if riding together is so important. At some point I just repeat no over and over again, then I just stop answering her. I ignore her, drinking sips of my pumpkin soup while she keeps talking to the wind for 15 more min. I exchange a few looks with Ana while we both try to contain our laughter in this absurd situation. My friend was listening in on the interaction, but she didn’t intervene much. I knew she agreed though, and she isn’t shy, she just thought I was doing fine telling EM off on my own. But EM doesn’t know her, so she assumes her silence means she might still have an ally.
She turns to my friend and says, ‘But you should discuss it with each other, don’t you think? Before giving me an answer!’
I reply that I gave her an answer already, as I repeated NO multiple times. But she insists that I never said no, and for Ana to share her thoughts.
So I ask my friend with a smile ‘Do you think we should let the lady pass?’ and she replies loud and clear ‘No’ with a chuckle.
EM now looks on the verge of tears. She calls us witches as she thinks we’re obviously enjoying tormenting her. Ana replies it’s a good thing we fit the Halloween theme so well then. EM tries to push us aside but we’re not moving. We certainly didn’t plan on going full force to block her, but she didn’t know that. Someone else might have smacked her in the mouth right there. She pushes harder in a proper fury. We let her pass when she shoves us more violently aside, surprised by the confidence such a frail woman has that no one would dare lay hands on her even after she assaulted them. But then she is confronted with the family that was right in front of us. Obviously, everyone has been watching this scene attentively and people won’t let her pass after the bit she did. So she starts negotiating all over again, playing the victim like she was a Martyr of God. Her daughter is just standing there, on her phone, trying not to make eye contact with anyone the whole time.
EM is talking to the other group, telling them how mean we were to her, and that we were obviously conspiring to mess with her with the knowing looks and grins we exchanged between us. I say we exchanged those looks only because she was ridiculously entitled and it became laughable at some point. Then I tell her I had a mom just like her, who would have such tantrums in public, and when I was a teen I could have died from embarrassment. And that her daughter looks very embarrassed by the way… In the end, she is stopped by someone slightly up the line who makes it clear she would be smacked if she tries to shove them aside. But she successfully moved in front of about 6 people after us, so it was well worth it for her… I hope we ruined her day.
The ride was very fun, and we just had time for another before the end of the day.”
