Fast Lane is now Officially "The Flash Pass"
Can we please try to get along! :)
My only enjoyment from this thread was tambo's sporadic funny posts. Now if we could only get matt to tell a story....
GregLeg said:
The airline analogy is probably even better than you intended. Typically, preferred membership is a loyalty program. The highest tier of elite flyers has flown over 100,000 miles in a single calendar year. The reward for giving the airline so much business is early boarding, better seats, and (sometimes) better food.But that "early boarding" part is frequently available to anyone, IF you're willing to pay for it. For example, with my USAirways Dividend Miles Mastercard, I automatically board at the same times as the lowest tier of their preferred customers, even if I should drop out of that preferred tier (although I still haven't )
Hi Greg! Coming to VIrginia this year?
Anyway, I'm not sold on the above airport analogies. Because, really, at the end of the day, the plane is going to take off at the same time, you're going to sit in the same seat and thus aren't "denied access" as the other poster was arguing. (Unless we are talking about access to overheard compartment space, in which case you *could* be "denied access")
What I think is a more fitting airline, or more accurately airport, analogy takes place far away from the plane, starting with the airline counter. Now, I usually avoid counters like the plague, prefering to use curbside checkin when available. but I have noticed that most counters have a dedicated employee for 'preferred/1st class' check in. This person will work on 'regular' people as long as the special line is empty, but as soon as one comes up, they attend to them.
And dont get me started on the frequent flyers who get to bypass the security lines (are you one of those yet Greg?) :)
Oh and yeah, pay or free doesnt seem like a real debate to me. The way I see it, either everyone pays (whether they use it or not) or only those that wish to use it have to pay. I, personally, dislike the fact that you have to be an early-riser at the Disney parks to be able to snag good passes. When I wen to Epcot, I was smart enough to realize that "Sorin" was going to be slammed so we got those passes just after opening. By the time our ride window arrive (11:45am) all available passes were toast. I heard tell that the stand-by line was about 3hrs! (the ride was good...but not three hours good!)
lata, jeremy
zacharyt.shutterfly.com
PlaceHolder for Castor & Pollux
(The rest of this post is different because it is not so much about "Flash Pass" as it is about how some people with money forget that we are all people with feelings and desires. Some of them let money describe who they are.)
Ok, I get it now. If you have lots and lots of extra money flying out of your butt, you can flaunt it around and act like you are better than everyone else. If you are a po' folk, you suffer in the long, sweaty, line full of other stinky po' people and watch the well-to-do shake their hips and stick their nose way up in the air as they cut right in front of you while flinging their hair at you.
(It's time for dex to rant) I work at Target serving the public for $7.50 an hour as a punching bag for rich people. They throw their money around and show great disrespect to me by yelling at me and acting very snobish. They get very mad very easily. when I ask them if they would like to save time by putting their credit card in the card reader while I ring them up, they refuse as if I am asking them to eat their baby. They get upset if I let their $500 worth of clothes touch the conveyor belt as I ring them up. They roll their eyes when I ask to see their drivers license to finish processing their check. They snap at me when I inform them that I need to scan each 12 pack of soda seperately due to each flavor having a different UPC. They interrupt me with a laughing "NO!" in the middle of me asking them if they are interested in applying for a Target Visa, which is in my job description. Half of them can't put down their freekin' cell phone down long enough for me to ask them if they want their milk in a bag, which I consider showing care in their purchase.
...And I continue to smile and just take the verbal abuse, not once even thinking about snapping back at them, because I do what I am told to do by my provider, Target. I am a very good employee, loved and remembered by some of the less snobish patrons.
Then I get my bi-weekly $400 paycheck, pay rent and bills, put gas in the car, buy $40 worth of food to last me for Two weeks, and maybe I have enough to rent a movie or maybe buy a treat of some kind.
A lot of people are in my shoes. I'm not the only one suffering near poverty. I am smart, honest, and likeable. I was once a hero of thousands. Now I live in a half of a trailor with $9 dial up internet service and no cable TV (I really miss South Park).
...And RavenPhile tells me to stop being a cheap ass and stop being jealous of those who act like their poo doesn't stink. I'm not jealous. I just don't like that they are in my way. I do not have a problem with them getting more for their money. My problem is that I am getting less because they are getting more.
Why should I be jealous? I have more talent in my pinkietoe than most high class snobs have in their whole extended family. They can afford the guitar but do you think that their privileged life gives them anything to write a song about? Struggle is my muse.
I know what 3 of you are thinking. "If you hate your job so much, find a new one!" I put in a Three weeks notice today. Congrats to me!
I have been very civil in this discussion. I have made some of the most valid points on my side in previous posts. Some do not want to acknoledge my arguements are valad. That's okay because I haven't acknoledged the very valad points on the other side of the debate either.
I will say that my biggest beef with "Flash Pass" isn't that I do not have to wait longer, but that it isn't helping the parks run as efficiently as they could without it. They wouldn't need it if they didn't have it to make them need it.
How long has SF been running their rides with one train? Was it a problem before pay-to-cut became a "service"?
(Sorry for the rant. I'm trying to add something different to the topic. Flame away, Flamers!)
Six Flags operations have indeed been *suspect* at several of their parks long before any of these virtual queing systems were thought of. I recall the discussions here when they were first introduced and the biggest complaint by most (including myself) was that SFI needs to run at max capacity *FIRST* before implementing a virtual queue (I'd show you the thread but the search doesnt appear to be working right now).
I could say many things about your rant, but most of them are your personal experiences and as such, they are just that. However, I'd venture that though those customers may *appear* to be more well off than you, I sincerely doubt that they are rich. My wife and I make a fair amount of money and we dont have to decide between food and rent, but we aint *rich* by a damn sight. Yeah sure, we're living the 'American Dream' of a house in an affluent suburb with a white picket fence (okay, our fence is natural wood colored, but you get the point). But we shop at Target because, quite frankly, if we didnt, we couldnt afford half the ish we have. I dont think *rich* people care about such things.
We all have to make financial sacrifices. We're saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of debt that we used to finance our education so that we can get these jobs we have. We are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for this lovely house we have, not because the house is extravagant (it's nice, but it aint no mansion) but because we wanted to live somewhere where our kids could go to a school that actually gives a damn.
So yeah, when I go to a park, I want to get the most I can out of the experience. I'm too old and too out of shape (though working on it) to try and out run the teens to the front of the lines when the ropes drop. Hell, for that reason alone I could argue that I'm simply buying back the spot that should have been mine to begin with.
Oh and you have a very short sighted outlook on talent. 1) You dont *need* to be tourtured to create something beautiful. and 2) Not everyone who is at a fine station of life was always that way, some *have* faced eviction/no heat/the repo man/bankruptcy/etc...
lata, jeremy
_who has Pulp Fiction on the brain right now...
But that "early boarding" part is frequently available to anyone, IF you're willing to pay for it.
So are several other perks. Northwest used to hold all front-third seats, plus exit rows, for elite flyers. Now the "little people" can buy them for $15 per one-way flight (or maybe per leg; I forget as I'm not yet a little person. Next year, I will be...)
My problem is, as an example, SFNE and SROS. There is no row set aside. The line enters from the opposite side of the station from us "peons". Us po folk's line gets stopped, sometimes for several cycles, while I have watched them let 40 or more QBotters into the station. Though I think, after reading Gonch's posts again this season, I understand the virtually place holder, seems to me this isn't working correctly. They basically are taking up 2 whole trains while I wait, and I can't imagine all 40 of those people got to the line at just the same time I did... *** Edited 3/25/2006 3:25:45 PM UTC by COASTINGTHRU***
Personally, I think the "designated row" is the worst idea possible. It makes things confusing if they 'occasionally' fill the rows with non-virtual queuers and it atrifically reduces capacity if they send those rows out empty. Similarly, I'm not a big fan of the "up the exit" plan either. Most of the exits are not wide enough to begin with then you add two-way traffic to it and it becomes a huge clusterf#ck. I like the "Disney way" where the two lines are merged somewhere just before the boarding area.
jeremy
zacharyt.shutterfly.com
PlaceHolder for Castor & Pollux
It basically is "the Disney way or the highway". The prevalence of virtual queueing IS really *ticking* people off. The food services and games areas RELY on heavy VOLUMES of traffic to make the park serious "jack" (or cheddar, whichever cheese you prefer)....Wow am I white or what? Gotta forgive me, just saw Dave Chapelle and James Lipton and I am more in love with him than before - if that's even possible...
But I'm digressing, yet again...if the parks DO follow that line to the fullest extreme (my theoretical previous example of WAY fewer people having the park to themselves for a SERIOUS price)...they're also gonna have to staff FEWER bathrooms and food locations, etc., REDUCING operating expenses. Then almost every operating day becomes a "buy-out" of sorts and your season pass is good only on SELECT weekends....wow will our *enthusiast events* begin looking CHEAP again...
The park events, like HN and the BB thing and PPP and Stricker's events and IB events, etc., notwithstanding...
The multi-park ACE-sponsored events and the like HAVE gotten a LOT more expensive in the past few years, but I suspect it won't be long before even the "poorer enthusiasts", like me :) - will come to the relization that those will be seen as BARGAINS again in the nearer future. Having a park open for a few hundred people is plain *expensive*...and corporate buy-outs are no different than ACE events (except the parks DO get more, and better, feedback from us)...if they're reading... ;)
...that SF thing just HAD to explode sometime, guys, I mean they were getting ROBBED by their customers...the *weapon*, as it were, was a SF season pass good for UNLIMITED visits by a lot of teenagers with a summer free to fill up the park.
You want in CartmanLand, you gotta pay. The parks will be relatively free of lines in the future, but they won't be cheap...I *gotta* get a better-paying gig, LOL... ;)
-brian, who is going *as soon as* his kids are old enough and comfortable enough in the water.
My "dolphin encounter", in the wild, lasted about 7-10 minutes...
I intend to do it some day, though...
How DO you all afford kids AND travel? LOL!
*** Edited 3/25/2006 11:45:19 PM UTC by rollergator***
I WILL do it someday.
2Hostle, I really do not know who the post was directed. It was in reply to what RavenPhile said directly after my previous post. I don't know who is a snob or not. If someone read my post and felt I was talking about them, then well...
I gave my everyday life as an example of how a lot of other people's lives are. I guess I could have shortened it and said, "I work very hard as a pee-on for the public who most seem have a lot more money than I, and I get a very small paycheck for my effort. So when I go to SF with all the extra money I've got, and those same kinds of people are causing me to have a worse time at a park because they have more money, it makes me sad and angry."
About music, I am not so sure I am as short sighted as you think about talent and such. The best art, no matter what kind, usuially comes from some kind of frustration. I can understand that there are a lot of exceptions to this, but it is generially true. Perhaps if very talented people aren't having chalenges in life, they have less reason to use their talents. I guess my point in saying that was, I have other things in life to make me feel special other than wads of money sticking out of my wallet. It is my way of balancing my happiness to others.
When it comes to my greatest hobbie, it is frustrating that I need wads of cash that I don't have in order to keep up with those that do. It didn't used to be that way 10 years ago. I find a day at Hersheypark not as frustrating as a day at SF, mostly because they do not put their guests in different classes. I guess what worries me the most is that I will not be able to afford a day at the amusement park if other parks look at SF and say, "Hey, we should charge an extra $30 to allow people to ride 2 or 3 times more rides. We should charge Two or Three times more for parking. We shouldn't let people leave the park to eat fast food. We should raise our gate admission by 10-20%. People will pay that." That would cause me to go to even less to parks than I do now, which is only about 2-4 parks per summer.
I'm going to work at CP this year, so things will be a little different. When I worked there before, I was able to visit many more parks in the season, and I had CP everday other than those. This year I am so excited to be able to visit CP, GL, KW, PKI, SFKK (hopefully on a slow day...lol), HW, and perhaps SFGAm (hopefully on a slow day again). That is a whole lot for me to be able to go to during a season.
Sorry I turned my posts toward me. the topic isn't called, "Dex can't afford to go to SF parks", is it? I don't wish to offend anyone. I just want people to understand that there are those out there in the coaster community, or in life in general, that are worse off than them. I'm sure there is someone worse off than me too.
*** Edited 3/26/2006 12:01:03 AM UTC by dexter***
dexter said:
snip
I'm going to work at CP this year, so things will be a little different. When I worked there before, I was able to visit many more parks in a season, and I had CP everday other than those. This year I am so excited to be able to visit CP, GL, KW, PKI, SFKK (hopefully on a slow day...lol), HW, and perhaps SFGAm (hopefully on a slow day again). That is a whole lot for me to be able to go to durring a season.
/snip
Ahh, well see how karma works. I work long and hard and will perhaps never get to visit as much parks as you in one summer. :) I may have the vacation time, but due to the nature of my work, I can't just up and leave whenever I wish. So please, don't be mad when I buy my gold Q-bot with the money that I work long and hard for, for a park visit that's few and far between. :)
Oy, I've contributed to the beating of the dead horse...perhaps I too should be flogged.
*** Edited 3/26/2006 12:03:17 AM UTC by Antuan***
But this year will be very different for me. Seasons that I only get to go to a park a few times like you, our park seasons would not be as equal.
"Zombie Horse of the Undead 6: "The Flash Pass Menace"
At this point, I'm working for a software company, helping my buddy get his new food stand going, and working with a business partner in trying to get a small side business to turn into a profitable, bigger business. Guess which one actually pays me? If I could buy a fast-pass to success, I would, but I can't.
If someone sees the time-saving of a fast pass as a benefit to them, the money is going to become the least of their issues.
-Josh
Folks pay to get into an amusement park. There are many people, many families, who cannot afford the gate admission to an amusement park.
So we have people here whining that they shouldn't have to pay extra for expdited access to a ride, on the basis that not everyone in the park can afford it, yet they have paid for access to the park, even though many people cannot afford that.
You get what you are willing to pay for. If you are not willing to pay for Qbot, or not willing to get a Fastpass, or whatever, well fine. Wait in line. Enjoy yourself.
Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep.
--Fran Lebowitz
Analogies like cars and airplanes are not useful because they don't reflect the nature of the beast.
Hobbes: "What's the point of attaching a number to everything you do?"
Calvin: "If your numbers go up, it means you're having more fun."
What does everyone think of the new name for Lo-Q's ride reservation system? I think it is a very good move. Calling it "Flash Pass" gives us an idea of how well the DC Superheros can be used in marketing.
Justice League is a very popular TV program with kids and adults (I'd watch it way more often if I had cable). Although The Flash is not the most popular hero on the show, his character still communicates very well what Flash Pass is trying to sell, imho.
On Screamscape (I know, I know) they showed an advertisement with Batman about how they are beefing up security, implying Two things at the same time. One, that they are focusing on making the parks safer for families, and Two, that the DC Superheros are going to play a larger part in entertaining guests than before. I find that very clever.
Even though I have a few very large problems with SF, I feel this is a very good move for the company. What does everyone think?
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