Cedar Fair testing RFID wristbands for payment

No, no, no, no, no, no.

You have zero idea what you're talking about.

This is already happening at almost every hotel in the country. Even in the town where I work, there's a restaurant that has a deal with local hotels to charge back to their rooms - it's the same damn thing, and it's not going to require the intervention of DHS, the NSA, the president, FBI, CIA or whatever. It's just not.

This is also happening in every Wal-Mart in the country. They have everything tagged with an RFID tag/identifier that alerts the inventory system when the item walks out the door, and orders more if they're getting low. How do you think security knows whether or not something is stolen? It compares with the register logs, and if it wasn't paid for, they can find out. Those things you walk through? More than just an alarm.

I realize the idea of RFID scares some people, but it's really not going to have anything to do with personal information.

I'm sorry, but you're just plain wrong.

Why would there be a company wide wristband, prepaid or otherwise? That makes no sense.

You go to Cedar Point, if you want you get a wristband. You go to Knott's Berry Farm, if you want you get a wristband.

Why would Cedar Fair offer a national wristband that had to obey all the laws of each state where the company does business? Far easier to offer a wristband on a park by park basis that complies with the laws of that state.

Okay. Take a look at ncsl if you are interested I'm reading the things I am referencing. It speaks for itself. No more RFID talk for me unless I'm getting paid for it. Thanks for an engaging conversation all.

913girl shows up the same time Aamilj comes out of hibernation. Coincidence?

I know I don't post much, but feel I can add some insight to this. There is no red tape for Cedar Fair. They are already paying someone to take care of the legal side of storing peoples personal information for them, you know the people who are storing it.

So long as they have been named PCI compliant from an accredited source and aren't broadcasting any personal information via RFID it's really not that difficult and the barriers will be minimal.

What has a lot more red tape than RFID is what Timber Rider mentioned above with regards to prepaid cards. The term he is looking for is slippage and the laws as to what a company can do with that vary from state to state. In some cases, Michigan included, any slippage must be reported to the state treasury as unclaimed property, meaning the company doesn't get to keep it. It wouldn't make any sense for Cedar Fair to use the prepaid card model in this case. It would be far easier to tie it to a credit card.

Editing to add in case it wasn't clear, I think she is confusing the difficulties of having an RFID system in place with the difficulties that come from being accredited to collect and store (they already do this) peoples personal information. It sounds like she thinks they may be one in the same.

But! But! But!

NCSL!

http://m.ncsl.org/issues-research/telecom/radio-frequency-identific...-laws.aspx

^ Looks like a lot of enhanced drivers license regulation and not much else. Almost every other case involves the words "without permission or consent". Unless Cedar Fair is going to sneak up on you and slap a band on your wrist without your OK, this doesn't appear to apply.

913girl said:
Okay. Take a look at ncsl if you are interested I'm reading the things I am referencing. It speaks for itself. No more RFID talk for me unless I'm getting paid for it. Thanks for an engaging conversation all.

The universal code for "I surrender because my arguement is no longer defensable". Never refer to a site which will refute everything you are trying to argue.

Raven-Phile made the same point above, but if I can link a credit card to a hotel room key in hotels around the world and charge anything to my room key, why would a wrist band, that I signed up for and agreed to the terms, be any different?

Yeah, none of that will really apply though when your talking about just transmitting a series of numbers that are used server side to look up and charge the account. Nothing personal will be transmitted via the RFID I'm sure, and even if someone skimmed all the numbers, good luck getting access to the table that you would need in order for the numbers to be useful.

Editing to add that I'm aware Tek knows the vast majority of what was within the link has no bearing on Cedar Fairs application of such tech.

kpjb said:

913girl shows up the same time Aamilj comes out of hibernation. Coincidence?

Drats! My super-secret scheme to rid the world of electronic commerce incognito, starting with one coaster message board...FOILED! :-)

Oh weird, Great Wolf Lodge, in Mason, Ohio, uses RFID to get into your room, and buy stuff everywhere in the resort. Pretty sure Cedar Point is in Ohio. And oh wait, I work for a theme park company that does the same thing in its parks.

And others are correct that RFID has nothing to do with credit cards at all. Regulation around card processing is mostly self-regulated (PCI) because the card networks are not in any hurry to lose money to fraud.

I agree with 913girl. As a former Meijer cashier, I have dealt with all kinds of different systems and cards. Credit cards, gift cards, rewards cards, perks cards, EBT and you name it. Like she is trying to point out, this system will only be of value if it works 100 percent of the time. And, as a person who has dealt with a lot of card situations, it will never be a 100 percent reliable feature.

For example. If you have a credit card tagged onto this wristband, and you want to add funds to it, while in park, (or out) If your bank is down, or if the system is down, you will not be able to use it. Which will then have you reverting back to your wallet anyways, and if you have left your wallet at your hotel, or where-ever, you will have to go and get it. Kind of defeats the purpose. As a system like this would have to communicate via computer to many different sources at the same time. And, if one or more of those sources is down, it can shut down the whole system.

I can't tell you how many times we have had to call in tech support, to get our so-called modern machines working again, while we try to get as many non cash guests out of the store with adding machines, and hand written credit card slips, with the old slide punch credit card readers, because the machines would not function at all. And, it is not a quick task of getting them back online either. So, it's not as easy as some of you think.

You have to be on the other side of the business of cards, to understand how complicated they can be. The only way to remedy a downed system is to be on the phone with each credit card company, and be ready to be on hold, while you get transferred from department to department to department, until you get someone who knows what they are doing. the pleasures of banking outsourcing, and lame automated systems.

So, ask yourself, do want to be the one spending your day at guest services waiting in line with everyone else with a tech problem? or do you want to just save time and bring your wallet? Just because some of you have had no problem to date with your business, does not mean it won't happen. Having spent 15 years dealing with unhappy customers, I would rather nix it.

Yes, it is as easy as we think. Sorry, but cashier experience doesn't mean you know how these systems work.

Timber-Rider said:
I agree with 913girl.

Well, that certainly puts the final nail in the coffin of her argument. :-)

Timber-Rider said:

For example. If you have a credit card tagged onto this wristband, and you want to add funds to it, while in park, (or out) If your bank is down, or if the system is down, you will not be able to use it.

Wrong, wrong and wrong. The wristbands are not a proxy to real-time card processing. When you set up a folio account at any of these parks, you swipe the card at the kiosk or customer service, set a limit, and a temporary auth is made to make sure you've got the credit. At the end of the day it batches out whatever you actually spent.

This stuff has been figured out for years by all sectors of the hospitality industry.

I spent years as a cashier. I disagree with Timbur and Ninonewhatevergurl and her 'brother'.

Timber-Rider, your argument is roughly the same as saying that airlines should use stones and chisels to record reservations because their systems occasionally go down.

I love new technology, and I'm happy that Cedar Fair is looking into new forms of payment. Without the change in leadership, we might still be using cattle and corn. So, I think the RFID wrist bands are smart, especially for pre-credit card teens and water parks.

That being said, the RFID bands at Dorney sound like wearable gift cards. There is still quite a bit of thinking, as you need to know the balance to make purchases, and you need to keep track of it after the day is over. If a credit card was tied to the wrist band as mentioned throughout the thread, I'd be far more interested. This is a good first step though.

Soon, we'll all be using our very own RFID wrist bands to make purchases on underwear and sunscreen.

This technology (and implementation) seems old. Disney has been doing it 10-20 years. Even arcades have utilized similar processes for some time.

I personally believe biometrics (not RF wristbands) linked to a central processing makes more sense financially and functionally. My hunch is privacy hysteria is a contraindication...? Maybe the technology is not reliable yet? I still remember that God-awful "finger width" biometric process Disney tried some years back... :-) But something that requires the end user to carry/hold/obtain NOTHING...seems to be the ultimate get.

I personally hate bottlenecks. Waiting to get wristbands/etc...just lengthens the ticket purchase process time and frustrates the end user. I'm for any system that decreases such inconvenience.

I think they could be a little more forward thinking than radio frequencies ...possibly...? I'm certain they can get beyond "refills"...which is the reality of the archaic process they're testing.

I applaud efforts to modernize the process...but think they might be a bit behind the curve with how they are implementing...

Raven-Phile said:

Soon, we'll all be using our very own RFID wrist bands to make purchases on underwear and sunscreen.

...and brownies! ;~P