Worlds of Fun adds Food Options and Credit/Debit terminals

On the Worlds of Fun Blog, Brandon tells us about some of the new food options that will be available next year. In addition, they have added Credit/Debit terminals at several eateries.

World's of Fun Blog

The credit/debit terminals are such an obvious thing. It's about time. I'd like to see this more.

They better hurry up and finish getting 'Y2K' compliant before the end of 1999. That is unless they stocked up on bottled water and canned food.

Oh wait... ;)

~Rob Willi

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Lord Gonchar said:The credit/debit terminals are such an obvious thing. It's about time. I'd like to see this more.

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Why? so they can charge you 3.50 extra on your ten dollar meal?

Can't say I've ever been charged $3.50 for buying with my credit card...

-Nate

That's because the fee isn't charged to you, the customer. The businesses have to recoup the fee that they are charged by the credit card companies somehow, and so they raise prices.

That's why some businesses, especially the small ones, have a minimum amount you must spend in order to accept credit as a payment.

Yeah, but Worlds Of Fun accepts credit cards already. This is just a case of finally adding the terminals that most other businesses have used for a decade or more now.

It will also free up the lines as well...

How will it free up the lines? Debit/Credit transactions IMO take longer than Cash transactions. I'm not saying I don't want the D/C machines. I usually carry very little cash.

Jason, if they are just using good old dial-up I can see the frustration. If everyone is using a card it will create a bottleneck since that kind of processing will take sometimes up to or over 30 seconds.

Hopefully the park will spend a little extra coin and invest in something like this .

I realize this is just me hoping and the reality will be much slower.

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LostKause said:
That's why some businesses, especially the small ones, have a minimum amount you must spend in order to accept credit as a payment.

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Fortunately for consumers companies like Visa and Mastercard have stipulations in their usage rules that 100% forbid this sort of thing. The problem is it's not worth Visa's time to go around to every mom and pop shop and make sure they're not adding $.50 to every order under $10 for credit card transactions or whatever. So they get away with it.

That being said nobody is getting charged an extra $3.50 to use a credit card on a $10 meal, price setting just doesn't work that way. And even if it did you would still have the option to not buy whatever it is you're buying if you don't feel it is a fair value. *** Edited 2/15/2008 2:03:17 PM UTC by matt.***

Hopefully the park will spend a little extra coin and invest in something like this

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You do realize you're talking about Cedar Fair, the king of "if there's no ROI, why spend extra money?" - right?

I'm sure that as a very large volume vendor, they get a decent rate. As a low volume customer, I get particularly screwed when people use debit cards. The discount fee alone (not counting the per-transaction fee) I've seen as high as 5.9%.

Considering the park has been accepting credit cards for the past few decades, I'm sure the rate isn't going to be affected.

Jeff Y, I used that example just to show that the technology is there for credit/debit transactions to be faster if CF chose to go that way.

I realize that there is a large posibility that they wouldn't pay for the technology though.

Most places like McDonalds and PetCo, all I do is hover my chip-embedded card over the reader, and that's it. No signature needed, and the transaction is done at that moment. This is the way it's going, and cash should hardly be needed anymore. Most people my age (college) barely carry cash anymore.

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GoliathKills said:
Most people my age (college) barely carry cash anymore.

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Hell, I barely carry cash anymore - and never seem to at the parks...and I'm a long way outta college age. :)

Yeah... I haven't been big on cash in the last dozen or so years. I hate change, thick wallets and the scum that people get on cash.

Cash is only really necessary if you're visiting Scooter... ;)

Ha! Even Scooter can take my card. He doesnt like to, but it's possible.

I just paypal him the money before I head over. :)