$2 to hold your on ride photo???

GoBucks, I understand where you're coming from, but my main disconnect comes from this very simple fact: Disney, Universal, and Six Flags are all doing this already, at no extra cost to the park guest. If every other major park in the country outside of Cedar Fair parks can make it work, why should it be any different with Cedar Fair? Specifically Cedar Point. And even then, there is a lot of inconsistency within the chain, notably the digital pictures being offered at Kings Island.

Basically, if every other major park in the industry does it without problems (Disney and Universal have been doing it for quite a while), why do you think Cedar Point would run into a problem that makes it not a good idea for them?

I think your answer is that they have become disconnected from their customer base, specifically starting with Kinzel and trickling down (at least until you hit park level department managers, who still remain pretty much powerless, but we've already had the discussion about empowerment of lower level employees at Cedar Fair many times). I believe we all started to see that once Kinzel made it clear with his "People have to eat" statement. That's you're answer; very simply, they are disconnected from their customers.

GoBucks89 said:
But why do folks think that CP doesn't offer package pickup? Do you think they have never thought of it? Do you think they don't understand that some people would buy more stuff if they had package pickup? Do you think they ran the numbers and determined that the profits made from additional merchandise sales would more than cover the additional costs of providing package pickup but decided not to offer it anyway? Do you think they just don't like their customers? Don't care about their customers' satisfaction? Could there be another reason they don't offer it?

And, we have a winner. GoBucks89 takes home the coveted "Most Rhetorical Questions in a Post" award for 2009!!!!! With this award comes a one year supply of personal affront and all the free umbrage he can carrry! Hurray!

I recall the caricature booths having signs up saying they will hold your picture until you pick it up at the end of the day. I always assumed this was at no charge. Can someone confirm this? If it is indeed free then why would that be free and holding an on-ride photo not be free?

djDaemon said:
There are costs associated with everything. Let's say you want to buy an on-ride photo and pick it up later. You have to purchase the photo after your ride - that "system" exists already, so there is no "extra" cost there. But, you then have to come back and retrieve your photo later on, which requires the attention of an employee.

Not exactly true. If an employee is already there because the booth needs staffed then the service does not cost anything because the worker is there regardless of whether you pick up a picture or not. Now if they have to hire a second person to man the booth due to the increase in load due to people picking up held pictures then there is a cost.

Is that not exactly what I said?

BlueStreak64 said:
GoBucks, I understand where you're coming from, but my main disconnect comes from this very simple fact: Disney, Universal, and Six Flags are all doing this already, at no extra cost to the park guest.

And not only do they set a precedent in the industry that is familiar, they also offer a service that encourages guests to spend more.

I mean, isn't this the problem with virtually everything Cedar Fair does in determining how to price stuff? There are times where discounting one thing or offering a value-add service nets more guest spending in the end. The company, or chief micro-manager at least, doesn't get that.

No, that is not what you said. You said that coming back would require the attention of an employee. I agree that it requires the attention of the employee, but if said employee is required to be there anyway, regardless of whether you are picking up a picture, then there is no added cost. So your comment about it requiring cost is not valid.

I said that if guests were to come back to retrieve their photo later, that would either require an additional employee, or indicate that they're currently understaffed if no additional employee would be needed.

So yeah, if "said employee" is already there and not doing anything, that would suggest they're overstaffed, wouldn't it?

It would not. If the single employee is there because the park wants that photo booth open to sell pictures, then no it would not be considered overstaffed. By your logic, anytime an employee at a stand is sitting there idle they should be sent home. That does not work so well. Is it that hard to understand?

Yeah, makes sense. Labor does not cost money. Got it.

Would you mind calling my CEO and letting him know? I could use a raise.

I don't see how they can lose money dj.

Like I said, it cost's nothing to hold it under the counter.If they are buisy...so what. You wait in line.

If people are buying more, is that not more money in the parks pocket?

Besides, if they do have an extra person working, what are they losing? $7.25 an hour? I think by selling more, they would offset that by quite a bit.

Or.....

They could hire someone for minnimum wage, and have them go around to all the gift shops/photo booths to pick up all the things people have left for package pick up and bring them to the front gate for the guests to pick up at the end of the night.

How could the park lose? People will buy more if they don't have to worrie about what they are going to do with it for the rest of the day.

Like mentiond above....most other parks are doing it, and it seems to be working out great for them.

I don't think you're understanding the concept of labor costs, so I'll just plain give up trying to explain that aspect.

And I never claimed the park would lose money - quite the contrary, actually, as I suggested the park would likely make money via such a service. My only contention with your original post was that there is no cost. There is. You do not get something for nothing.

Bluestreak...I don't think they (he) have become disconnected to their customer base so much as they (he) have become beholden to their shareholders and financial institutions.

Dick had it relatively easy for quite some time. Attendance down, per cap up seemed to satisfy the Board and the financial institutions during quarterly and annual reporting. It ain't cutting it anymore. That is partly because attendance and per cap has not been reporting numbers you want to hang your hat on and that is partly because Dick overextended the company with the Paramount purchase.

The expectations are greater on Dick and the gang than ever before. And, seeing as his skill set is farily limited I don't think he has the ability to see the bigger picture when it comes to pricing strategies...among other things. And, since the corporate culture was established long ago that you don't question Dick there is a reluctance to call him on the carpet about these issues. If I had to wager a semi-educated guess I would say that the other parks get away with more customer friendly initiatives simply because Dick isn't around enough to interfere.

It isn't necessarily as simple as saying parks a, b and c do something so why doesn't park x. You need to dig down deeper than that. You need to look at customer bases because to the extent there are differences, what works for one park may not work for another. You also need to look at merchandising revenues/potential of the parks. Simply because certain parks make more money in merchandising with the package pickup doesn't mean that every park will do so.

I haven't been to Universal (looks like I will be going there next summer) and haven't been to a Six Flags park in at least 10 years so I can't speak much to those parks. But Disney is totally different from my perspective in terms of merchandising. Disney is a marketing machine with which pretty much no one else can compete. How many rides do you exit into a gift shop? CP will never be that no matter what they do.

My guess is that the larger parks offer free package pickup because they believe it results in more merchandising sales and that the smaller parks offer it because they believe it brings more people to the gates based on added guest services. I suspect that CP is in the middle. They do not believe it will increase merchandising sales enough to offset the additional costs and do not believe it will increase the number of folks who come to the park in any significant numbers.

That may be totally wrong. And CP may be totally wrong in its analysis of this issue. It may be the case that they would make more money in merchandising profits than the cost of having package pickup. But I think that to suggest that they do not understand the concept that if you decrease the price of something you may increase your profits through increased sales volume or that by incurring a cost to provide a service, you may increase your profits again through higher sales seems silly to me. The concepts are more basis than econ 101.

And I have advised numerous businesses over my career and have talked to a lot of business owners about various ideas that would increase profits. The good ones will pull out a spreadsheet and show you why they do not do x or y. Most often its because the revenues are not what you might otherwise think, the costs are higher than you might otherwise expect or a combination of the two. And there are reasons why competitor a or b can do it but it doesn't make sense for them to do it. Sometimes, because of competition, they are forced to do it although they lose money on it but their competitors don't. Customers just expect the service and don't really care about the differences between the competitors.

And maybe CP doesn't have a clue and doesn't go through any of the analyses. Maybe all they understand is higher prices for everything with no additional services. Maybe econ 101 is totally beyond them. But having been around a lot of folks in business for 2 decades now and seeing how they operate and understanding the magnitude that is CF and the success that they have had, I am willing to bet that they understand all of that and have thought these decisions through. And I am certainly willing to bet that they know more about their business, cost structure and customers than I do and I suspect pretty much everyone who posts on a message board.

I understand the concept of labor cost's, and like I said, they would not have to hire any more labor then what they have now. The same amount of people would work in the photo booth. You would only have to hire an extra person if you offerd the package pick up in the front of the park. But again...that would be offset by the additinal income that the park is generating from higher sales.

The current labor force that they have in the photo booths would be more than enough to hand out some pictures near the end of the night. No extra labor cost there.

Wow. Never mind. I give up.

Good. If you cannot understand what crazyhorse and I are saying it is best you give up. Why do you think it would cost more labor given the scenario we have laid out? The person is at the booth regardless. That person makes the exact same pay wether he is sitting on his rear or giving me a picture. That costs nothing.

All they need is a larger hard drive to hold the pictures longer.

We have been doing this for years, we have all of the onride photos from Cp. If we see a good photo we like we write the number down or the attendant would and we come back later and buy it on the way back to Breakers. The problem is, if you don't pick it up in 2 hrs on a busy day the photo would be gone, written over by the hard drive because it only holds around 5000 photos. Last year we had problems not getting our Millennium and a Diamondback photos because we were late. New hard drives would be a cost but that could be paid for in weeks with more people able to buy there photos at a later time. There is no need to stack up or dig through photos, that would be a wast of time and materials when people do not come back to retrieve them.

So will they now charge me 2$ for doing this?

It's not like the photo shop counters are very busy any more, except for people looking and moving on. Paying employees to just stand there is not profitable, they would create more profit from a little convenience for there guest.

Exactly.

And it's not something that would just benifit the photo boothes eather. They could do something like this park wide in the gift shops. I bet the glassblower would sell more:)

They could also do like disney does. If you are staying at a on property resort, they will ship your items right to the resort gift shop for you to pick up there.