Safety Agent Geoff, Reporting for Duty

Fresh off a roller-coaster shopping trip to Europe, Geoff Rogers, international man of mystery and chief operating officer for Morey’s Piers, hopped a flight to Bogotá, Colombia. The mission? Increasing the safety of amusement parks around the world.  

Geoff is the chair of the North American Safety Committee for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA), the industry’s leading trade and advocacy organization. He’s also a member of their Global Safety Committee, which convened in Bogotá the first week of October. In other words: Geoff is his name; safety is his game. (No, seriously. He even travels with a particularly hefty pen in case he needs a makeshift weapon to defend himself or other passengers with while onboard a plane. “I know it sounds crazy,” he says. But, hey, it worked for Jason Bourne…)

Geoff is well-suited for these roles, given all the passion he pours into maintaining and critically evaluating safety procedures at Morey’s Piers. If a patron so much as stubs a toe on a trash can on the pier, that trash can is examined at a weekly safety meeting, to see if it might be better situated elsewhere. 

“I don’t think the public realizes how hard we work at it,” he says. “It’s the most important thing we do.”

Geoff’s work with the IAPPA safety committees is an opportunity to share some of this passion (and 33 years’ worth of industry expertise) with colleagues from around the world, while regularly collaborating with ride manufacturers, engineers, government officials, and key theme park bigwigs from Disney and beyond. The goal? Continually improving industry best practices and bringing these best practices to places in the nation and world that have not yet achieved Garden State-level status.

“Only Nevada and California come close to rivaling New Jersey in terms of ride-safety regulations in the US,” Geoff says. (And you thought we were famous for big hair and tomatoes.)

One of the things the Global Safety Committee does is to help inform the work of ASTM, the international body that writes technical standards for the design, operation, maintenance and inspection of amusement rides. (Right now, this group is working on a new standard for a roller coaster’s impact G-force. No, that’s not just the name of an all-girl singing group from “America’s Got Talent.”) Then, the committee works to harmonize these standards with those developed in Europe, so that the entire planet is operating off of one impeccably researched, thoroughly reviewed, and utterly comprehensive book of amusement park guidelines.

Of course, the trip to Bogatá was not all work and no play. Geoff did get a chance to experience tejo, the 450-year-old national sport of Colombia. Imagine a more challenging version of cornhole, with the addition of mini gunpowder explosions. No worries – in keeping with the theme of the week, it was all perfectly safe.

“I think you can learn every day of your life,” Geoff says. “And in this business, where people send their children to be strapped into big machines, you can never stop learning about safety.” 

The next opportunity to do just that? This coming week in San Diego, at another meeting of the (safety) minds. 

Geoff – and his pen – have already booked their flight.