Cedar Fair launches new websites

Jeff said:
Since when did you become the resident apologist for Cedar Fair?

mlnem4s said:
I will ignore your sarcasm since I realize it is based out of jealousy.

Well then if I ask it can we get a straight answer? :)

Since when did you become the resident apologist for Cedar Fair?

The mad rush to defend every last thing CF is a little jarring and noticable.

Tangentially related, from an Economist article comparing how two film companies dealt with the death of, well, film: Kodak (which declared Chapter 11 today) and Fujifilm (which remade itself):

Another reason why Kodak was slow to change was that its executives “suffered from a mentality of perfect products, rather than the high-tech mindset of make it, launch it, fix it,” says Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School, who has advised the firm.

The full article is absolutely worth reading:
http://www.economist.com/node/21542796

(Edited to add: with the obvious caveat that there are degrees of acceptable "fixit-ness"...)

They should have released it to us first like Jeff did with Mousrzoom. ;-)

Brian Noble said:
(Edited to add: with the obvious caveat that there are degrees of acceptable "fixit-ness"...)

Probably a greater degree of acceptable fixit-ness when its released in the off-season. What percentage of the parks customer base for the coming year(s) even knows the parks have new sites up much less that there are issues with them?

That knife cuts both ways. In the offseason, there is also no hurry to deploy a new site without a little more testing.

(Edited to add: to be clear, in this specific case, I really don't care. I haven't spent more than 15 seconds looking at any of the new sites myself.)

I'm still wondering what I'm supposed to be jealous about.

Among agencies that build Web sites intended to be primarily marketing devices, there really are two schools. Those that think like marketers don't have much in the way of QA or deployment process. Those that think like software development shops put a lot of stuff in place to get it right. I worked briefly at a place that fits in the former category, and trying to get the culture change to accept modern QA practices was like asking people to walk barefoot through a kiddie pool of scorpions and hot sauce.

Wouldn't the scorpions drown in the hot sauce? :)

^"to get the culture change to accept modern QA practices was like asking people to walk barefoot through a kiddie pool of scorpions and hot sauce."

Our client is fairly insistent that RAD means we can just cram code out onto the web sans testing and THEN go back to fix the code, and any erroneous data it mght generate, all free of charge. Wouldn't be as bad if our "leadership" was capable of recognizing how off-base that really is.

What's the 'Q' in QA stand for, anyway? ;)

Quick

Anyone who believes that rapid development means you can be a hack and have complete disregard for quality doesn't know what they're doing. Even agile and scrum processes (when done right) involve a whole lot of automated testing at the very least. An iterative process means writing as little code as possible, getting it into QA hands, and fixing everything in the next iteration. We're talking a week at most, and the last iteration before a release is reserved for stabilization.

The newer version of the forum app, which you'll see here eventually, has over 700 tests. And as far as spelling issues in the UI, even that gets checked now by people doing translations. Yes, the next version will be available in Dutch, and any other language I can get people to translate for.

Lord Gonchar said:

The mad rush to defend every last thing CF is a little jarring and noticable.

I didn't realize posting one comment was considered "defender of Cedar Fair" let alone jarring and noticable.

Maybe you guys need to ask yourselves why you consistently need to pick apart every little detail of every little thing???

Jeff said:
Yes, the next version will be available in Dutch...

There are only two things I can't stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch.

mlnem4s said:
I didn't realize posting one comment was considered "defender of Cedar Fair" let alone jarring and noticable.

It's not one comment, it's your last couple dozen - which if you go back and look are all correcting or contending with something someone says about CF.

It is certainly noticable for anyone regularly reading the site. Heck, you don't even really have to go deeper than thread titles to see the trend.

I'm honestly curious as to why it's gotten so noticably defensive and seemingly personal.

Maybe you guys need to ask yourselves why you consistently need to pick apart every little detail of every little thing???

No. That's not it.

Gonch is just jealous too.

No, I think this is where I get accused of doing your dirty work or being a patsy or sucking up to you or something.

Here's a moist nap, Gonch. Clean your nose.

Stop charging a "convenience fee" for people booking online and printing at home. Isn't it actually more expensive to man a ticket booth & print tickets at the park?

I would not be surprised to find it is less expensive to man a ticket booth. I have heard that most of the revenue collected by convenience fees go to the companies that process the online transaction. Let’s theorize that the processor charges 2.5% of the transaction. On a $120 transaction that’s $3.

Most parks pay ticket sellers around $8 an hour. So long as that ticket seller brings in more than $350 in revenue each hour, the park would be spending less than if they were selling the same products online without a convenience fee.

Back to the Cedar Fair sites...

I visit cedarpoint.com with my iPad and what is the very first thing I see, even before the park's logo?

"To view certain areas of this website, you need to have the latest version of the Adobe Flash Player installed. You can download it from Adobe."

Yeah. Right. FAIL. This is 2012. Any web developer who expects an iOS user to download Flash is a clueless idiot. Any web developer who includes Flash-exclusive content on his NEW site in 2012 is a narrow minded jerk.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I did the same thing and had the exact same thoughts as you, Dave. Especially since what they did in flash doesn't HAVE or NEED to be in flash.

And before anyone comes in with an "iOS isn't the only mobile operating system out there any mine runs flash" I say "yeah, but everyone around you didn't waste money on Android or WP7"*

*that was not a comment on the merits of either, just a comment on the fact that iOS is gaining quickly on android, and nobody buys a windows phone. On purpose any ways.

RideMan said:
Back to the Cedar Fair sites...

I visit cedarpoint.com with my iPad and what is the very first thing I see, even before the park's logo?

"To view certain areas of this website, you need to have the latest version of the Adobe Flash Player installed. You can download it from Adobe."

Yeah. Right. FAIL. This is 2012. Any web developer who expects an iOS user to download Flash is a clueless idiot. Any web developer who includes Flash-exclusive content on his NEW site in 2012 is a narrow minded jerk.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I do everything from my iPad and I feel your pain. At least it's better than Six Flags, I can't even get on their site on iOS because the whole site is flash.