You busted me!
No where did I say this was going to be any cheaper to the park patron. Maybe I should have posted this in a new thread titled "Alternatives to charging a parking fee - Business Case"
Theme park parking and admission fall into my NIHYWIWY category (Now I Have You Where I Want You). By the time you and your family shows up to my ticket booth, unless you have strong willpower, and an inodrinate amount of patitence, there is no way you are going to tell you wife and kids "Sorry Gang! Daddy can't afford Park Beta" Especially after traveling a distance to the park, and having your kids worked up and exicted about it for a week. Besides it damages the ego.
What I am suggesting is to change the method in collecting the parking, and if it happens to create more revenue, so be it, a nice little side effect.
At Park Alpha, you haven't even gotten to my ticket booth yet, and before you can even park your car and wind down from the car ride, I already have a staff member, palm outstretced, demaning money from you. Not a great situation to put a customer that hasn't paid the gate fee yet into, especially as you have waited 20 minutes in bumper to bumper traffic as the parking toll collectors collect tolls as fast as possible while making change, dealing with people who havent even gotten their purse or wallet out yet, people who think my toll plaza is an information center, etc. Yes customers will gripe about the parking fee, just look on this forum, if you think WE are griping about it, just imagine the normal amusement park visitor. Then you hit my ticket window at Park Alpha and BAM I'm hitting you up for more money.
Now at Park Beta, I have my advertising department buying all sorts of billboards, newspaper ads, radio and television spots, all proclaiming loud and proud that "Park Beta offers FREE PARKING" (I also have the word of mouth from folks used to paying parking fees, about the free parking) You arive at Park Beta, and instead of waiting in a car park line for 10-20 minutes, you are crusing right into my lot, my greeter showing you to a space, my tram whisks you to my front gate, all before you pay me one penny. You're likely to notice and comment to your friends about how wonderful my parking lot was. Then you hit my ticket booth, and yeah the admission price is a bit higher than you expected but NIHYWIWY. Your pride and ego taking over, you buy the tickets. It's a necessary evil, parks are out to make money, but now I have reduced the times I have asked you for money from twice to once.
If you REALLY want to get to the bottom of the parking fee issue, think about this:
If the park charges $7 to park, and parks 10,000 cars per day, and is open 120 days, they have collected $8,400,000 in parking fees. I challenge you to justify a parking lot costing a park $8,400,000 per season. I'm not talking slushing the parking fee money over to another budget, I'm talking line item expenses related to the parking lot. If you really want to remove this "theme park ripoff" then parks need to look at how much that lot is costing them, add a reasonable cushion for unexpected expenses (say 10% of budgeted costs), and divide that over the average number of cars they park in a season. I doubt it would exceed $2 per car.
But that just ain't gonna happen, as I said in my first post, parks see their lots as giant green dollar signs.
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David Bowers
Mayor, Coasterville
