Amusement Park Bans PDAs and Smartphones

Lynn 05-25-2008

Alton Towers Resort will be piloting a "PDA Free Zone" during May Half Term (May 25th - June 1st inclusive), to encourage parents to disconnect from the office and reconnect fully with their families. PDA police will be onsite to enforce the ban and any adult caught using a PDA whilst at the Resort will be asked to report to one of five "PDA Drop Off Zones" where they can safely leave their PDA's for the day. If the scheme is successful, it will be introduced full time.

Russell Barnes, Divisional Director for the Alton Towers Resort explains; "What we have here is the ultimate short break location where every member of the family can unwind and have fun. We feel it's so important for parents and kids to focus on nothing more than having the best possible time, we are prepared to take drastic action to ensure that parents really leave their work behind!"

Raven

I could see some serious people getting hurt for this one especially if they also use the phones for taking pics.

Hsoolien

It's not a bad as I see it, I can't think of the number of times I've seen kids ignored for a PDA/Cell call

orange

i'm with hsoolie on this.

if they have a PDA/smartphone they have more than enough money for a digicam. there's no excuse there..

the only reason i can see is that they're tryin to call or txt to meet people there

Nina

I actually wonderin if this is just for any pda usage or just it more advanced features. If you making a call on it maybe the police don't care, if you trying to do a report maybe they would.

orange

thats what i mean tho.. there has to be SOME kind of leeway for people tryin to meet others, maybe they have an aunt who's sick in hospital and callin to check up... maybe their house just blew up for no reason and the neighbours are callin to say "we saved the TV! the cat on the other hand..."

hugo281

well yeah I can see happening at a theme park, but oh what if there's some kind of emergency or something that they have to be reached, like the parent could be a Doctor, a Cop you know something in that nature wouldn't they need their cell phones if they needed to be reached.

Hsoolien

People used to handle emergencies quite well without cell phones, it was called being somewhere where it's reasonable for you to deal with it, not going out because they can always contact your cell (which is usually disruptive to others)