Dan Guy Interview: Part One

Many aspiring engineers dream of designing roller coasters and thrill rides one day. Dan Guy is an engineer pursuing a career in the amusement park industry and, despite the fact that he’s still in school, he has had a number of unique opportunities within the industry. Thanks to Dan for sharing some his wonderful experiences with us here at Coaster101. You can tell how passionate Dan is about amusement parks by the amazing amount of details poured into every response so we’ve broken up the interview into two parts, the next of which will be coming soon! Now on to the feature…

C101: Can you give us a quick introduction – who are you and what do you do?

Dan: Sure thing. Currently, I’m a senior Mechanical Engineering student at The Pennsylvania State University.  Aside from all my school work, I also have roughly four years of experience in the amusement industry. I’ve worked for two different amusement parks under four separate positions. I am actually graduating this December and hope to land myself a full time job working at either a large amusement park, such as Disney or Universal, or an amusement ride manufacturer, like Premier Rides.

C101: How and why did you get involved in the amusement park industry? What fuels your passion?

Dan: To be honest, I actually kinda stumbled upon it. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always loved roller coasters since I was a kid, but I really didn’t become passionate about the industry as a whole until about 2003. Back then, I lived in Northern California and visitedSixFlagsDiscoveryKingdom (Six Flags Marine World back then) quite regularly. You might not remember this, but 2003 was the year Zonga was built and I just happened to visit the park the day that it was rumored to open. Now back then, I didn’t follow websites like Screamscape so I had no idea this was the case. It was a pretty gloomy day and it was raining on an off, but I figured I’d wait in line and chance being one of the first people to ride the new ride. Four hours later, after literally watching the drive tires on the lift dry, they started testing the ride with several of the park employees. Sure enough, they opened the ride to the public and I was on the very first train that the general public was on. Unfortunately, I had no idea Zonga was such a terrible ride back then, but little did I know this day would be so significant many years later.

I ended up keeping in close contact with two of the guys I talked with in line and they were part of a Six Flags Marine World fan site. We ended up branching off and making our own website called XtremeCoastin.com. After that, little by little I became more tied to the amusement industry and my knowledge of it grew. Of course, this lead to me wanting to become an engineer to one day design roller coasters, and I stuck with that goal through junior high, high school, and into college. I honestly wasn’t the greatest student in junior high, but my urgency to accomplish this goal ultimately helped me turn that all around. To this day, I still have no given up on that goal and I have no plans to. This is something that I’ve worked really hard to achieve and I won’t stop until I do so.


C101: What was your first work related experience in the industry and how did it come about?


Dan: Surprisingly, my first work related experience in the industry didn’t come until after my freshman year of college at PennState in 2008. The regional manager for a company called Picsolve had visited our campus one day recruiting people for jobs and I just happened to stop and talk with him. He was looking for people to be photographers and sales associates for all the photo booths atKennywoodPark inWest Mifflin,PA. I live across the river from the park, and I knew quite a lot of people who worked at the park as ride ops, refreshments, or games. I had always been against working for the park because of all the horror stories I was told by my friends about the low pay, long hours, etc. Pretty much the same complaints every worker at any amusement park in the country complains about. However, I’ve always enjoyed photography so I didn’t think it would be that bad, and I can now say that was probably one of my favorite summers working at a park. I met so many great friends and it actually opened up the door for another position in the park the following summer.

C101: What were you taking photographs of – rides, people in the park, or something else?

Dan: I was that guy who bugged people as they entered the park to get their picture taken. I also worked the photo booths for the rides selling on-ride photos, which at the time only consisted of the Turnpike, Garfield’s Nightmare, and the Log Jammer. I believe today they have now expanded to include Sky Rocket, Jack Rabbit, and Phantom’s Revenge. Probably doesn’t sound like too exciting of a job, but it was a great job to get my foot in the door.

C101: What was the next position at Kennywood that the photography gig opened up for you?

Dan: During the summer I worked for Picsolve, I had expressed interest of the amusement industry to my boss and he suggested that I try to find a job in ride maintenance the following summer. Towards the end of my Disney College Program in spring 2009, my old boss had put in a good word for me with HR at Kennywood and eventually I was hired as a ride mechanic at Kennywood. I have now been working as a ride mechanic for the past three seasons, and have had the opportunity to work on a lot of different rides in the park. I started off doing inspections and performing maintenance on the park’s Kiddieland rides, moved up to the Racer and Log Jammer the following season, and just this past year I was working on the Phantom’s Revenge. I also had the opportunity of helping out during the construction of Sky Rocket working with engineers from Premier Rides, which was probably the best experience I’ve had working at Kennywood so far.

Dan Guy working on SkyRocket at Kennywood.

C101: How did you get involved with Disney? What was your role?

Dan: After I graduated in 2007, my family went on a trip to Walt Disney World in the summer. This had only been the second time I visited the park (the first being in 1997), and there were so many things I didn’t remember from my first trip. Just walking around the place made me feel like a child again, and I wondered what it would be like to be an employee there. One thing led to another and I eventually applied for the College Program in fall 2008. AtPennState after your spring semester as a sophomore your petition to get into your major is either approved or disapproved based on whether you met the qualifications and passed all the required classes. In the fall, I was taking the last three required classes to get into my major and needed to pass them all with a B and maintain a 3.0 in order to take the next semester off to go to Disney and still get early entrance into Mechanical Engineering. I ended up getting accepted to Disney and getting granted entrance to my major, so I headed down toOrlando for my College Program. I luckily got one of the best roles on the resort and got to help pilot the monorails in Walt Disney World’s “Highway in the Sky”. ¡Por favor manténgase alejado de las puertas! I also had the opportunity of taking a professional development study of engineering at the Walt Disney World Resort, and this opened up doors for the Professional Internship that I did in spring 2011.

Check out for Part II where Dan talks more about how to drive the monorail at Disney as well as his advice to those interested in pursuing a career in the amusement industry.

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