$2 to hold your on ride photo???

[Jeff said: quote]
The company, or chief micro-manager at least, doesn't get that.

Dick Kinzel is fine. You are looking at this to personally. He is trying to get a company out of debt. He is doing a lot better than Six Flags. Charging 2 dollars is a good Idea. I think it would be even better if they had a service where they send all of your stuff to the front of the park. Charge 5% of the bill to take it back to the front of the park or the resorts. It is a win win situation for everybody. Consumer doesn't have to carry all there belongings around, and doesn't have the risk of something getting stolen from the bin. Cedar Point makes some cash & get faster interval so people don't put stuff in the bin.

What would being in debt have to do with anything?

It would be in the parks best interest to stimulate sales as much as they could. And to offer a package pickup at no charge is a great way to do this.

What do all the other park chains see that cedarfair does not?

Charging a 5% fee would make them look silly, when everyone else is doing it for free. They would already be making money by selling more crap from the gift shops.

And let's not forget that the reason cedarfair is in debt, is because of Dick.

coolkid2345 said:
Dick Kinzel is fine. You are looking at this to personally. He is trying to get a company out of debt.

He's also the one that put them into that debt, so this may not be the best example to use.

What if they did it this way.

Move a few printers from existing on-ride photo locations, and add a hard drive. You then install them up in the front of the park where the Eye-Spy photos are. A person picks their on-ride purchase, and order it for the end of the day. They are assigned a number, and the file identified with the same number is sent from that ride location to the front of the park. The items are then produced starting a couple of hours before closing, up front, and the person picks it up at the end of the day. For a small fee, they can even have it delivered to their on-site hotel, or for a little more, shipped to their home.

Dj, stop using common sense! ;)

tambo said:
What if they did it this way.

Move a few printers from existing on-ride photo locations, and add a hard drive. You then install them up in the front of the park where the Eye-Spy photos are. A person picks their on-ride purchase, and order it for the end of the day. They are assigned a number, and the file identified with the same number is sent from that ride location to the front of the park. The items are then produced starting a couple of hours before closing, up front, and the person picks it up at the end of the day. For a small fee, they can even have it delivered to their on-site hotel, or for a little more, shipped to their home.

[sarcasm][sarcasm]

That would require investment in technology outside of a ride system, so that's pretty much ruled out. Not to mention it would probably take them about 3 or 4 seasons to get it right...[/sarcasm]

And that WOULD cost them money.

Your mom is to fat to ride TTD. said:
Dj, stop using common sense! ;)

Hey, I almost used math to show them how businesses (you know, in the "real world") calculate costs, but its quite clear any such explanation would be lost on them. After all, it uses multiplication.

Shades said:
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?

The caricature booths are run by Kamens Art Shoppes so that could explain the difference in policy. I know the Ripcord video booth (also run by Kamens) would always hold people's stuff free of charge if they asked, but nothing was posted anywhere saying they would.

I recall recently seeing signs in the shops along Frontier Trail which said for $1 (I think) they would hold your purchase by the front gate for you. I found that reasonable. The cost there is for somebody to take the item to the front of the park. I can see this as incentive to buy something. I've balked at buying because I didn't want to carry it around or go all the way to the car.

In regards to the $2 fee for holding your photo, I can't see any cost for just putting it under the counter or in a bin. What's the difference between handing it to you or placing it under the counter. Now if they have to stay open later to accomodate this service then that would be an added cost and a fee would be justified. However, I would guess the on-ride photos are open as long as the ride is anyway. If your riding after the park offically closes you would not have the option for them to hold the photo anyway. So, I don't see staying open later as a factor.

Ugh. If it takes one employee 30 minutes each day at each of 14 coasters to deal with this service, and that employee is getting paid (for easy math) $8/hr, the cost of the labor associated with the service is:

(30/60 hours) x ($8/hr) x (14 booths) = $56/day

If there are, let's say, 140 operating days in a year, the total cost of the service is:

($56/day) x (140 days/year) = $7,840/year

There's your cost. Yeah, its not that much, but it does exist. Imagine that!

What's more is that the labor costs are more than the hourly wage. In many cases, the actual cost of an employee is double their wage. This is probably not true for young, seasonal non-union employees at CP, but you get the idea. There is a cost, and there's simply no way of getting around that. Unless you pretend it doesn't exist, I guess.

I just don't see this requiring extra labor. How long does it it take to hand somebody a photo. Yes, they have to sort through them to get the correct one, so maybe a minute. Most of the time the employees are just waiting around for somebody to buy a photo, so they have spare time anyway, it's not that they have to put something else aside to do this. If anything this gives them something to do. I'm not saying the employees are lazy or slacking. They just aren't that busy most of the time. The majority of riders look at their photo and move on.

You're assuming that the additional work cannot be absorbed into existing man-hours.

And there aren't 14 on-ride photo locations. :)

I'm not suggesting the employees are too busy to add this to their list of duties, or that they'd need to hire additional staff.

Again, I'm simply pointing out that there is a cost associated with this service (because, in crazy's original post, he claimed there is none). What's so damn hard to understand about that?

Walt, I'm not ignoring that. I'm simply using the method most businesses use to calculate cost as a way to show that there is a cost. And my numbers are not meant to be "real world". I know there's less than 17, but more than 10 on-ride photo rides, but I don't care to take the time to count them. :)

Yes, it can be absorbed into current labor costs, but there's still a cost. If a paid employee is devoting time to something, that something costs money for the park. They don't get it for free.

There are large numbers of assumptions being made in this thread by a lot of folks. Why call out just one? ;)

And maybe we have a lot of folks here who based on playing RCT feel like they know how to run amusement parks better than the folks who actually do it for a living. LOL I can't wait to visit the parks that these folks open/manage. From what I have seen, I know I am going to be getting a lot of free stuff when I visit. Though I suspect that I better plan my visit close to opening day because I am not sure how long they will be open. ;)

Ha! That one is easy to focus on, because its seemingly the basis (or one of them) for his "this shouldn't cost money" argument. Its also the easiest to disprove.

And once again (because people seem to assume my "this costs the park money" argument somehow translates to "the park is justified in charging for this"), I think its absurdly short-sighted to charge for something that would quite likely increase sales. I know we're not even remotely in the park's cross hairs as far as getting our money, but there have been a few times that I would've liked to get an on-ride photo, but didn't because of the hassle of carrying it around or finding a place to stow it. The same goes for shot glasses, which we buy a couple of at least every year.

DJ, I agree that having an employee man the photo stands is a cost. As I mentioned earlier much of the time they have nothing to do. They are there for a certain amount of hours. By giving them something else to do even as minor as this which can be absorbed easily CP gets more work out of the employee for the same hourly rate. I believe they should offer the service for free. They would probably sell a few more photos and in the long run get even more out of that employee. That's just the way I see it. In a nutshell, they are there anyway.

GoBucks89 said:
And maybe we have a lot of folks here who based on playing RCT feel like they know how to run amusement parks better than the folks who actually do it for a living.

The dynamics at Cedar Point/Fair are a lot more complicated than that. As far as we know, there could be widespread disagreement on this policy, with one person making the decision. Cedar Point also appears to be in the minority among other amusement parks on this issue. Are you suggesting the other parks are run by "RCT" fans?

djDaemon said:
Again, I'm simply pointing out that there is a cost associated with this service (because, in crazy's original post, he claimed there is none). What's so damn hard to understand about that?

But is there an additional cost? If the total cost remains the same, the fact that there is a cost is irrelevenat. Yes, obviously there is a cost. But other than to argue semantics, I don't see how it deserves so much of the conversation.

It doesn't deserve this much conversation. Because, quite simply, the cost exists. That I've had to explain it so many times in different ways is shocking, really.

Is it an "extra" cost? Probably not. As has been noted (even by me), the cost of the service would likely be absorbed into their existing excess labor for on-ride photos. But regardless, you cannot simply ignore the cost as a basis for claiming the service should be free. That's what I'm getting at.

A lot of these arguments would make more sense if the employees were paid by the task, but they are not; they are presumably being paid for the hours in their shift. And as others have said, this job appears to involve a lot of standing around. Whether these booths are overstaffed is a valid question, but another issue altogether. So if you're already committed to paying an employee for the full shift, your cost doesn't change if the employee is doing the nominal work of placing a photo under the counter, or just standing around. The only way that the cost would be increased is if it could be shown that employees had to put in extra hours to serve all the customers' needs, but nobody has seen this.

I admit that there would be a small cost in training the employee to hold on to a photo, and there would also be a small one-time cost to build a filing system at the booth, but that's it.