Theme parks cost cutting = lower quality experience
The smaller ones don't have to meet this burden. Therefore it is up to each individual owner on how they want to run their park. Overall individuals seem to care more about relationships than corporations (where even the employees are just numbers).
They also have better control over all aspects of their park and can quickly and more accurately address problems. That's why I tend to spend more money on independantly owned businesses.
Are all businesses in it to make a profit? Sure they are, but don't kid yourself that every single one takes every last dime they can from their customers.
It's possible to have a lower margin, have happy customers, have good relations with those customers and still make a great living in the end. But I guess all those business owners are just stupid.
I'd love to back up my statements with actual facts, but if I did I'd probably be accused of name dropping or be spilling information that was assumed to be off the record. Either way I can't win there.
I think the disconnect here is this: Rob thinks that cutting hours is a precursor to changed guest behavior. Me, Gonch, and I think 'Playa, think that reduced hours are in response to changed guest behavior. It's not as chicken-and-egg as I think some of you make it out to be.
And you know what? Markets evolve and change. There are so many things that are disrupting industries right now that have been stable for decades. The Internet is disrupting network television. MP3's have disrupted the music industry. MySpace is disrupting FEC's. Amusement Parks are being disrupted by dozens of different things, like the Internet, video games, movies, shopping malls, etc. I think that has been covered pretty well even in the mainstream press over the last few years. To answer the question, "Why didn't they think of that sooner," is easily answered with, "The market changed."
Furthermore, there is no universal truth that applies to each geographic market either. Cedar Fair is struggling to grasp that. They've staffed up or down in ways that don't make sense in acquired parks, and I don't think they appreciate the differences in retaining seasonal help either. What's ironic about that, in the context of this discussion, is that the very data that's driving operating hour adjustments also seems to be driving how they staff.
Jeff - Editor - CoasterBuzz.com - My Blog
It's possible to have a lower margin, have happy customers, have good relations with those customers and still make a great living in the end. But I guess all those business owners are just stupid.
Yeah, that's pretty much the way I see it. :)
I dunno. I just never understood why money seems to be pretty much the only thing that's 'bad' to want more of. And God forbid you takes the steps to actually obtain more!
Good enough is just that - good enough. I personally don't want to be 'good enough' in most things that matter to me, I want to be as good as I'm capable of being.
It sounds even sillier when you translate the idea to other aspects of life:
"I graduated with a D average! Good enough, I didn't need to do more."
"I was 40 pounds overweight and I lost 20. Good enough. I don't need to be healthier"
(it made me chuckle to type that :) )
I guess I'll just never understand why the customer trying to keep the deal in his favor is a good thing, but the business trying to do the same is completely unreasonable.
But you're right, greed has never led to anything bad before. (rollseyes) Besides I've never said all other kinds of greed were ok, they can all lead to bad things.
We do live in a civilized society after all. If everybody took the view that they should screw everybody else just in order to further themselves then it would be anarchy. But what do I know, I'm just a fool. :)
*** Edited 4/25/2007 4:53:43 AM UTC by Incidentalist***
Where did I say 'good enough'?
It seemed implied in the bit I quoted in the last post. I still think it was.
And personally, I hate the concept of greed.
Anyone who strives to get more of anything than they need is by definition greedy.
Padron my French, but that's bullsh*t.
But you're right, greed has never led to anything bad before. (rollseyes) Besides I've never said all other kinds of greed were ok, they can all lead to bad things.
Still don't buy it.
We do live in a civilized society after all.
Indeed. That's why the SF thug brigade doesn't beat the crap out of you and take your wallet as you approach the gate. (yet ;) )
Lord Gonchar said:Good enough is just that - good enough. I personally don't want to be 'good enough' in most things that matter to me, I want to be as good as I'm capable of being.
Again, so you're telling me you're as good as you're capable of being in everything that matters to you? I find that impossible to believe. That, or not much matters to you.
I guess I'll just never understand why the customer trying to keep the deal in his favor is a good thing, but the business trying to do the same is completely unreasonable.
I'm not saying that the business is completely unreasonable. Just saying that there is one extremely important distinction between the intentions of the customer and of the business. For most things, the customer could live without the business, but no business can survive without it's customers.
It's all about the business leaving the customer with the perception that they got the deal in their favor. If the customer actually got the deal in their favor, they just ripped off the business and actual money was lost. Does it happen, sure (see season passes and their abuse), but that's the exception and not the rule.
The norm is that the business tries to leave the customer with the perception that they got the better end of the deal, even when they didn't. Therefore, the customers' intention IS more important. If the customer feels ripped off, they'll be less prone to get ripped off again. You have to give the customer what they want. And that's the perception that they got the better end of the deal.
*** Edited 4/25/2007 6:09:20 AM UTC by Incidentalist***
Lord Gonchar said:
And personally, I hate the concept of greed.Anyone who strives to get more of anything than they need is by definition greedy.
Well you got one thing right:
Main Entry: greed
Pronunciation: 'grEd
Function: noun
Etymology: back-formation from greedy
: a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed
IMO, greed, like most things, is fine in moderation. Heck, it's even needed to a certain extent. Where one draws that line is going to be different for each individual.
There does come a point where one's greed will have harmful affects on others. How can you argue that this is b.s.? To be clear, I'm talking about greed in general, not any perceived greed by an amusement park.
Gonch, the narcissist? Say it isn't so! :)
*** Edited 4/25/2007 5:51:00 AM UTC by Incidentalist***
Again, so you're telling me you're as good as you're capable of being in everything that matters to you? I find that impossible to believe.
In a sense, yes. More realistically (and more along the lines that I suspect you're thinking), I try to be.
If I ran a business, I wouldn't stop once I was at 'make a living' status - especially if there were ways I could easily achieve more financially (which would be my only reason for having my own business in the first place). However, if making a living was all I was capable of, then so be it. But again, that's not what I got from that original paragraph. Instead it read more like, "I have all I need and that's good enough, why want more?" to me and I just inherently disagree with that.
I'm not saying that the business is completely unreasonable. Just saying that there is one extremely important distinction between the intentions of the customer and of the business. For most things, the customer could live without the business, but no business can survive without it's customers.
Precisely! Which to me is why the corporate greed can never get out of hand - the customer will keep it in check. The neverending quest to squeeze out every last bit of profit by the big corporate bad guys is really in the hands of the very people supposedly 'harmed' by such thinking.
And in the case of amusement parks, it's even more true because every single person in the world could never visit a park again and we'd all be just fine. We really don't need them...
...and to want to visit as much as enthusiast types do and then in turn complain when something hinders our getting what we want just feels...well....greedy. ;)
(ok, that last little bit was just for fun, but everything before it was meant for real :) )
...All because the park wouldn't make a profit otherwise.
Business don't need to rip off their "valued guests" to be profitable. Repeat business is much more profitable than "get as much money from them as you can the one time they visit and then piss them off".
LG, you always have a way of getting under my skin with your, "When a business is ripping off it's customers, it is good for their profits and therefore is a good thing" logic. I find your posts very difficult to read all the way through because they get me so fired up.
...Which is probably your job here on CoasterBuzz, to start controversy. An advertisement funded website would probably be more profitable if it's web pages got more hits, no? When you cause a frenzy, More people view the site, which causes CoasterBuzz to generate more profit.
I just scrubbed the word "Sucker" off my face.
*** Edited 4/25/2007 8:35:33 AM UTC by dexter***
You can't talking about the perceived value without considering both sides of the coin.
And I don't want to talk for Gonch here but simply posting here to stir up controversy is the key feature of trolling, not intelligent park discussion which is what Gonch (and others of course) do a great job of stimulating.
Also notice that a lot of key players on this board end up agreeing with Gonch a lot of the time, it's not like he's taking the "lone wolf" argument for poops and giggles. Well, I mean, sometimes he's playing a little devil's advocate but he makes it pretty clear when he is.
Mot to mention it's not Gonch's style. Mine, sure...but not his ;)
CoastaPlaya said:
Which kinda pokes a hole in the argument that the people will rise up and revolt over shorter operating days, doesn't it?
It has nothing to do with that argument. People aren't going to complain about evening specials that include less hours because they're paying less to get into the park. People who once paid full price for operating hours of 10am-11pm aren't going to pay less once those hours are cut from 10am-8pm. I believe this is one of those cases where people are going to look back at what they used to get for their money, compare it to what they get now, and feel a little ripped off. Believe it or not, people are going to notice that they're being forced out of the park a lot earlier than in the past. Which ties in with this:
Lord Gonchar said:
So to answer the question of why now? Because sometime in the 90's someone got the bright idea tha longer hours meant more money. They tried it for a while. Turns out it didn't. Now it's being fixed.Why the hell close at 10pm? Why not midnight? Why not 2am? That'd be offering me even more for my money and as a customer I'm looking to get the most for my money and when I do I'm happy. Then, of course, happy customers means more money for the parks, so logic dictates that a park staying open until 2am would make them even more money.
There is nothing to fix. It's not like park operating hours suddenly swelled in the past decade. For as long as I can remember, parks were open to 10pm and 11pm at night on busy summer days- since when are late nights ar parks a new thing?
Joe makes a lot of sense. Parks have kept the hours that they've kept for years because it worked. It's not like parks never made money in the later hours and are just realizing it now, nor have people suddenly started going to bed a few hours earlier. The reason that parks don't stay open to 2am? Long ago, when business people could make business decisions without the help of mounds of computer-generated data, it was discovered closing at 11pm- not 8pm and not 2am- made perfect sense. I realize that change is sometimes necessary, but it's not like park operators suddenly have some kind of miracle insight that they were lacking before. Why is it so hard to accept the fact that this is a thinly-disguised attempt to save a few extra dollars by taking away something that a lot of customers depend on? You know, that nagging little thing called time? Which ties in with this:
Jeff said:
I think the disconnect here is this: Rob thinks that cutting hours is a precursor to changed guest behavior. Me, Gonch, and I think 'Playa, think that reduced hours are in response to changed guest behavior. It's not as chicken-and-egg as I think some of you make it out to be.And you know what? Markets evolve and change. There are so many things that are disrupting industries right now that have been stable for decades. The Internet is disrupting network television. MP3's have disrupted the music industry. MySpace is disrupting FEC's. Amusement Parks are being disrupted by dozens of different things, like the Internet, video games, movies, shopping malls, etc. I think that has been covered pretty well even in the mainstream press over the last few years. To answer the question, "Why didn't they think of that sooner," is easily answered with, "The market changed."
I agree that the market for all forms of entertainment has changed dramatically in recent years, but I think that's also a crutch that a lot of people are using to explain everything going wrong and everything they do to try to correct things. True, amusement parks have a lot of competition, but it's not like they once had the entertainment market all to themselves. Amusement parks have always competed with sports, movies and radio/television, and in the years before the internet and video games there were things like roller skating and bowling. I could embrace your point if I went to amusement parks at night and found tumbleweed blowing across the midways, but when I go to a park at night, I see a lot of people. Right there is the proof that people don't stop spending time in parks when the sun goes down.
You pretty much nailed the disconnect right on the head. The thing is, you think the amusement parks are responding to what the customers are telling them. Considering what I just said about parks still being relatively busy at night, I think this is more a case of the amusement parks telling the customer how they feel. By slashing things like night hours, they are telling people that they don't want to spend all day at an amusement park. Take over a small country and tell them that they can't make it on their own... eventually they'll believe you because they have no other choice.
And now, for bits and pieces from the Post of the Year:
RatherGoodBear said:
My points of reference are Knoebels and Hershey... Based on the talk here, these parks either are miraculously making money between 8 and 10 PM, or else their management is too stupid to realize they aren't.My experience is that both parks manage to retain a decent crowd until later-- nothing like mid-afternoon of course-- but a fair amount of people who are spending.
I know my experience of mostly visiting 2 parks doesn't compare to that of "non-enthusiasts" who hit hundreds of different parks each year. But I think it's valid to ask "What are these parks doing that the others aren't?" Then again, why should I bother traveling any distance to some of these parks if I'm only going to end up sitting in a hotel room at 8:00 watching a repeat of Dancing With The Stars?
And I don't think it's just an "enthusiast" thing that the GP doesn't notice or care about. The GP notices cuts in hours and customer service at every other kind of business-- why do people think they're clueless when it comes to amusement and theme parks?
I wholeheartedly agree. I can pretty much respect any well-worded opinion (even if I don't agree with it) but I don't buy into this mentality that you can do whatever you want to the customer and still expect them to come back. People will stop shopping at a grocery store because the customer service desk gave them a hard time about a return. A bank will lose a customer than got charged extra ATM fees one too many times. It doesn't take a lot to lose a customer- in fact, the absolute hardest thing a company can attempt to do is win over a disgruntled customer. Damage control is more difficult than first getting a customer and keeping that person a customer.
Parks start charging people for front-of-the-line passes. Parks increase admission fees and parking fees. Parks remove rides faster than they install them. Parks cut operating hours. There has to be a breaking point!
The smaller ones don't have to meet this burden. Therefore it is up to each individual owner on how they want to run their park.
Very close to the real issue. Not spot-on, but close.
Back in the day when favorite park A or B had 4-5 coasters, the expenses weren't what they were when they built another 3 or 4. And there's more to a $10 million coaster than the cap ex spent that year. From that point on, it's an additional staffing expense. It's an additional maintenance expense. There's 2-3 more trains to overhaul in the offseason. Depending on how poorly the ride was engineered, there's days to weeks more work...and cranes...and people...involved in retracking or tweaking or even redesigning components in hopes the ride won't flake out during the peak season like it did last summer.
Meanwhile, the population of your market is about the same. The number of hot, sunny days in a season? No guarantees. And unless you're a growing park--let's say a half- to three-quarter million visitors a year--attendance is NOT going to take a sustained 20% jump cuz you built a coaster.
So these days--unlike the free-wheeling 70s--your seasonal staffing costs have jumped by a third to 50% and your maintenance budget may have doubled. It's not a corporate vs. private thing. It's a money thing. Plain and simple. An independent park has to make the same decisions.
God, it is always the same debate here. The cheapscates(sic) vs the corporate butt kissers.
No kidding! And at the extremes, neither group can see past their own nose...
Funny how amid the talk about ride ops getting enough sleep and how closing earlier is more profitable for parks
Said who? I said it was among those little intangibles. Before that (top of page 3, can't miss it) I discuss an example of those 'extra' expenses trimmed in favor of bigger cap expenditures.
More rides in the park or longer days? Which one really adds to the quality of a visit? Why hasn't anyone touched that yet?
-CO
NOTE: Severe fecal impaction may render the above words highly debatable.
If the cost of a new 1000 foot high 25 inversion launched underwater wooden coaster with no active restraint system is obnoxious parking fees, high food costs, short operating hours, and long lines unless I shell out for a premium pass, then I'll gladly do without and spend my time and money somewhere else.
I can't speak for everyone, but I know that's not me. I've said this before, and I'll say it again- I hardly ever vacation with a strict budget in mind. Whenever we go somewhere- whether it be a day trip or a two-week excursion- we spend whatever it takes to make us happy... and that's usually quite a lot (I've got the credit card debt to prove it). Just because I happen to disagree with decisions that business people doesn't mean I'm a cheapskate, nor does it mean that anyone else is. It makes us concerned customers, that's all.
And in defense of all the real cheapskates out there, I'd rather have them watching my back rather than the people that blindly assume that certain business people can do no wrong. If it weren't for them making a lot of noise, I shudder to think at what I'd be paying for silly little things like a gallon of milk or a DVD.
*** Edited 4/25/2007 2:05:40 PM UTC by Rob Ascough***
See what I mean about the extremists on each side not seeing past their OWN nose?
-CO
NOTE: Severe fecal impaction may render the above words highly debatable.
There's so much lack of perspective about the original issue: Cutting hours. I'm sure that the decisions were not made arbitrarily, but were made to maximize profitability with minimal risk to lowering the perceived value of the product. That's the real question we're all after, and it's the answer to that we disagree on. But I ask you, if you know that the evolution of the market is such that the parks face new kinds of competition, then do you really think they would do something that would ultimately funnel money away from them and into that competition? That's the question I'd like to see answered.
I can't believe it took to page 4 for someone to take a stab at me making money with this site. I'll never understand why some folks think that's evil. You know what, after seven years, with all of the spare time I've put into this place, I'm certainly not going to apologize for making a buck from it. I've earned it.
Jeff - Editor - CoasterBuzz.com - My Blog
I'm not debating the fact that the move to cut hours was made to increase profit. I'm debating how it makes sense as far as the customer is concerned. I'm not hoping amusement parks make more money in this case, I'm hoping that more and more doesn't get taken away from customers such as myself. Like I said before, I'm a customer before I'm a businessman and an enthusiast.
So parks are worried about customers going elsewhere? They should be, because there are plenty of other things people can do with their free time. Then again, there have always been ways for people to spend their free time outside of amusement parks, so I fail to see what has changed. Roller rinks got replaced by video games, but there was always competition and there will always be competition. Considering that the parks want to create reasons for people to spend time there instead of somewhere else, their solution is to take things away from the customer? Charge more, offer less... that is their solution? If it is, I have a very bleak outlook on the future of amusement parks.
I don't think that anyone is criticizing the parks for wanting to make money- I don't expect them to let me in the gate while assuming some kind of monetary loss. But you said so yourself, Jeff- parks are already highly profitable. If that's the case, why can't they be happy with the profit they're making and make sure they keep offering people what they've always offered them? To me, that makes the most sense if they want to start retaining the customers they have. It's not like people are going to stick around so they can pay more for less.
As for what you're saying, Playa... I actually have no idea what you're saying. Why is this a debate of cheapskates versus the business-minded? Why is there no middle ground for people like myself that understand the business aspect of all this but continue to root for the customer, not because he's cheap but because he doesn't want to be forced to sacrafice something he's always had? And if you're going to accuse those cheapskates as being incapable of seeing past their own noses, I think the same can be said for the people taking the other side of the debate.
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