Six Flags Over Georgia Free Admission!

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sirloindude said:

How is this Six Flags' fault? If I recall correctly, they said 3000 was the limit. You can't blame them for the mistakes of the radio station.

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Haven't seen a 3000 limit or any other limit. Where did you see that? The lack of a limit (and not ditributing tickets to that limit) is where the promo failed.

Even if the park was filled to true capacity and they did not let anyone else in including people who paid admission, People will still blame Six Flags!

If Six Flags let in EVERYBODY who came between 6-9 and something horrible happened because the park was overcrowded, People will still blame Six Flags!

Even if Six Flags pulled a great promotional stunt and it went well, People will still late some sort of blame on Six Flags!

If you think you can do better, open up your own theme park and prove it!

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If I recall correctly, they said 3000 was the limit

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You're not recalling correctly.

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Somehow, I think Six Flags could open the park only for the people in this thread and make everything complementary, and half would still find something wrong with the place.

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That's because none of the rides would be working.

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How is this Six Flags' fault?

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Because it's their park.

Although, I would imagine the management of Six Flags shares your attitude, and is saying, "how is this our fault?"

Actually, word on the streets (or through the grapevine) from those 'in the know' is that SF agreed to and prepared for 3000 free morning entries and Q100 never mentioned or enforced that limit.

Which plays exactly into what I've been suspecting all along:

SF agreed to one thing, Q100 brought something entirely different.

Well if that is true, then yes, I would submit that the chaos was at the hands of the radio station.

BUT

(sorry, I like big buts, and I cannot lie)

What I would suspect is that this "grapevine" is being constructed by either a Six Flags die-hard or by SFOG themselves. What a perfect way to cover their behinds..."oh...did you not hear us? We said 3000".

And let's just say the grapevine is correct...it is STILL someone at Six Flags' job to say "hey...theyre not enforcing our 3000 rule in their advertisements", and then do something about it. Yes?

Ummm, no.

Really, what world do you live in? ;)

Even if the "grapevine" is true, that doesn't preclude Six Flags from blame in my mind. I wholeheartedly agree that Q100 is also to blame for this, but I feel Six Flags is as well. If they agreed to 3,000 people (which is horrifically low considering the factors here), they should've made sure Q100 had efforts in place to enforce that. You don't think Six Flags read the promotional material for the "stunt"? They all live in Atlanta and have seen the other PR nightmares from freebies. So, they should've realized something bad was about to happen. Directly from the promotional material it says if you are in LINE before 9:00am, you're going to get in. It doesn't even say what line they're talking about - the pedestrian line at the gate or the car line on the highway? Six Flags should've reviewed the promotional material and said, "excuse me, but this is not acceptable to us - come up with something else."

If you run a company, you do not allow someone to run advertisements and just happen to not know that they are not including vital information in it.

LG, if you are running a restaurant, and you agree to give away 3000 free hamburgers to the first 3000 that show up, and agree to allow a TV station to broadcast this, are you telling me that it is not your responsibility as the restaurant owner to make sure the advertisement is running correctly???

What type of world do you live in? ;)

^ I think he's secretly a decision maker at Six Flags and that's why he defends every decision they make. :)

^^1. Yes (kinda, your example omits the 2nd party, so it's flawed)

2. The real world. ;)

See here's how it goes down:

OhioStater Inc approaches Gonchar Enterprises and says, "Hey you have a great facility. We're thinking of running a promotion where we let people into Gonchar Enterprises for free. It'd be a great opportunity for us to generate some goodwill and by agreeing to it, you'd get some free promotion as well"

Gonchar Enterprises replies with, "Yeah, that sounds like something that could work for us. And you know what? We'll even give freebies and discounts to the people who come to help out."

OhioStater Inc says, "Great! That's a teriffic idea!"

Gonchar Enterprises then asks, "How many people do you expect?"

OSI: "What's a good number?"

GE: "Let's say 3000. We can provide breakfast and discounts and the space for 3000 people."

OSI: "OK, let's run with this"

GE: "Done."

At that point we've reached an agreement. My job is to prepare for the promotion and yours is to get the people there.

How is it my fault when 30,000 people show up?

That's how the real world works. :)

Someone certainly dropped the ball here - and there isn't an ounce of evidence that points Six Flags.

*** Edited 4/7/2007 4:31:02 PM UTC by Lord Gonchar***

Six Flags over Georgia Free Admission!
Sure, admission's free. You pay to get out!
(i can't resist the old songs...)
;)

Ah, but there is more to this tale...

You see, Gonchar Enterprises has a pretty shaky history. They have over-expanded, hired less-than-average employees, cut back on maintenence staff, and essentially built a fairly dismal reputation. Recently, though, they developed new management, which promised that Gonchar Enterprises would get turned around. Everyone at the last board meeting agreed that they need to be very careful about their public image, so while they make these baby steps toward a better product, those baby steps each need to be taken with great care and planning.

Unfortunately, Gordy from public relations (he works at GE) failed to keep a closer eye on OhioStater Inc., and failed to point out at yesterday morning's meeting that OhioStater Inc. was not informing the public that the number needed to be limited.

Fortunately for Gordy, Gonchar Enterprises isn't really one to take responsibility, so they told him "dont worry, Gordy, it aint our fault."

The end result? Consumers are now even less enthused about G.E.

At Gonchar Enterprises it's not Gordy's job to worry about OhioStater Inc. He has better thing to be doing. It's his job to create situations that will help us and he did.

OhioStater Inc. screwed up bad and we'll be sure never to work with them again. I can't blame Gordy. He did exactly what he was supposed to.

But OhioStater Inc. can expect a not-so-fun phone call coming their way.

My next step is to get Gordy to hit the press and explain how we let 5 times the agreed amount of people in and actually overaccomodated the promotion and apologize for the confusion that OSI caused.

Regardless of who is at fault for the fiasco, what really matters is who Joe Public blames. I bet a lot of people are indeed blaming SF. Whether they have any fault and what portion of the fault (if they have any) lies on them is irrelevant. Public perception doesn't care about the minor details, SF got hurt on this one.

That being said, I put the vast majority of the blame on the radio station. BUT, SF put themselves in the position of allowing another company control over a situation that could (and did) go south. If they had any doubt that something could go wrong, they could/should have been more dilligent in keeping an eye on the promotion. I'm not pinning my reputation on somebody else coming through for me (at least not someone absent from my payroll), are you?

So I don't blame SF for this at all, but I also don't feel sorry for them for any backlash that they might receive since they could have put a stop to things before they got to where they are.

^ Gonch, that's great that Gordy is out there playing cleanup, but doesn't he have more important things to do? I guess he probably did have something to accomplish before the incident, but now it's taken center stage and has to be addressed. I'd also wager that what he had to do that was more important earlier was less important that allowing your companies name to be associated with this incident. Few hours payroll time to ensure things are going as planned > than few hours payroll time cleaning up mess and having your reputation further smeared?

Do you really think that his efforts, at this point, are going to do help persuade the public opinion? The message won't reach near the amount of people that saw the mess all over the news, sat in a traffic jam, couldn't get into the park, etc...

But we had no reason to believe OSI would screw up in the first place. That's the point.

Now that they did, Gordy is forced to play clean-up.

Wouldn't it be even more counterproductive to assume every agreement or promotion is going to go wrong?

And who's to say Gordy didn't call OSI repeatedly asking/mentioning that OSI doesn't seem to be taking the proper steps to keep this under control only to be repeatedly reassured that it was under control?

Poor Gordy. He has the candle burning at both ends.

Note to parents: Don't drop your kid off on a major highway at 4:00 am in pitch black cold. For any reason. Ever.

I have to admit, my bias towards blaming GE is due to my previous personal experiences with him.

OK, my brain is hurting so I'll repeat that in real-world terms.

I have personally had some very bad, bad experiences as a customer at Six Flags parks. Due to this, I am biased towards saying "well, another sub-par SF experience in Georgia".

And that is the problem. I am a consumer of parks, and it is up to SF management to convince me that there is a good reason to come back. This didn't help. Objectively, of course, this could be 100% crazy radio station's fault.

I hope Gordy has a flexible 401 k

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Lord Gonchar said:
Wouldn't it be even more counterproductive to assume every agreement or promotion is going to go wrong?

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I totally agree it would be counterproductive to assume ALL agreements will go wrong. But not all promotions are the same.

Most promotions seem to be consistent year to year. It doesn't require a whole lot of effort to ensure that people bringing a can of 'x' get a cheaper ticket. That should be old hat to most amusement parks.

Corporate events have been occuring regularly for years. No surprises there.

This was different. This was something new. How often does this happen? Reminds me of the day after Thanksgiving sales at Wal-Mart. Anything bad ever happen at one of them? :) It wouldn't have taken much for SF to know EXACTLY what the radio station was doing, regardless of what they thought they had agreed to.

You botch a church groups outing to the park. Easy to fix. You can talk to the person who organised the day and explain the situation and that person can relay the information. Everyone affected can get the details and know what went wrong. You screw up something that shuts down a freeway during morning rush hour, have fun with your damage control.

Again, not placing most of the blame on SF regarding the actual fiasco. *** Edited 4/7/2007 8:37:46 PM UTC by Incidentalist***

I'd be the first in line when it comes to complaining about Six Flags, but it seems in this case the blame isn't fully theirs. Partly, yes, knowing that their own name was attached, and being that it is their own responsibility to know about things like park capacity, they should have paid more attention to how the radio station was advertising the promotion. But it sounds like the radio station didn't really put more than 10 mintues worth of thought into how they were going to run this on their own end, either. How long does it really take to add a disclamer "Free admissions limited to park capacity limits?" Honestly?

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OhioStater said:

Note to parents: Don't drop your kid off on a major highway at 4:00 am in pitch black cold. For any reason. Ever.

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Exactly. Don't blame someone else if you do a half-a***d job parenting and then something bad happens to your child. Dropping them off early because you need to get to work and then expecting a phone call when they get in safely...what happens if that phone call never comes? Do you wait until your workday is over until you go and check on your child?

But the really important question is how many of those $35 season passes did they sell?

In the case of Ohiostater vs. Gonchar Enterprises; I vote that G.E. did not bring good thing to light in the situation.