$2 to hold your on ride photo???

So, because Cedar Points visitors don't have the money that Disney visitors (ignorning the people staying at Value resorts of course), Cedar Point shouldn't strive to provide better food, better service, better anything?

It doesn't cost a company any more money to provide a hot burger and fries in a timely manner than it does to serve them a cold one in 15 minutes. Good service doesn't depend on how much money guests spend in the park.

On top of that, the fact that Cedar Points visitors are only there for a day means they should strive to make that day as good as possible. They don't have a week to make up for a mistake like Disney does with its visitors.

Cedar Point will likely never rival Disney in the customer service arena largely because of WHO is providing said service. Disney has the luxury of time when it comes to training their staff. I got a paycheck at Disney a full week before I ever worked a minute on my attraction. I had three days of general Disney Training (soaking me in the Pixie dust) and another two days of specific attraction training before I was ever in front of a guest on my own. Not true at Cedar Point.

Most of the cast members you run into at Disney are there for more than 3 months (College Program excluded). And, even the College Program and International Program participants are hand picked and Disney can be choosy in who they hire. Cedar Point does not have that option either. They are hiring employees they would not have hired 20 years ago.

That said, Cedar Point/Fair could have more customer friendly policies and while I can't say for certain that it is, today, a result of direction action (or inaction) on the part of Dick Kinzel I can say for certain that in the 90s that was the case and I suspect that has not changed.

I just went to Disney for 4 days in Febuary. I spent $1800.00 on souveniers in the park for my family of 6.... I wouldn't have spent but a fraction of that if I had to keep running out to the car with stuff. Having the option to pick it up at the end of the day was a great money maker. I sure their profit margin on just my sales covered the cost of the employee(s) to run the stuff to the front.

I would spend a little bit more openly at the point if a system like that was available. But if your going to slap me with a fee to do it, sorry I'll just be a cheap a$$ all day long and maybe spend a $20 on a few slushies or ice creams.

CP also needs to get a system similar to the photopass. But as everyone keeps saying, technology and CP don't get along very well.

I said that CP should strive for Disney's level of service. But you have to look at the reality of being able to provide it. The great service that Disney provides isn't free. And sure there are value resort at Disney. But seems to me that at every level, the Disney customers show up with more money to spend than the same level of CP customer (top 10% at Disney has more to spend than top 10% at CP, bottom 10% at Disney has more to spend than bottom 10% at CP, et.). CP has a lot of customers who could never afford a trip to Disney. I doubt that many (if any) Disney customers couldn't afford to go to CP.

A big issue for CP are employees. There is a huge difference between hiring seasonal employees and hiring permanent long term employees in terms of the quality of employee you will get. Disney has a significantly higher percentage of older employees (who are typically more mature/reliable/etc.) than does CP. If someone screws up at CP, you can threaten to fire them but they will be leaving in a couple of months anyhow. At Disney, its a long term job so there is more motivation to keep it by doing well.

And my guess is that even if CP provided platinum customer service (free pickup, delivery and setup at your house for all souvenirs, free laundry for life for clothing items, free cleaning for life for glassware, etc.), there are extremely few people who would ever spend $1800 in souvenirs on a trip to CP. I suspect that Disney has folks who do that every day with many people spending more (I know a couple of folks who spent about double that in their trip to Disney). Its easier to provide higher levels of service when folks are spending a significant amount more.

I agree and disagree on photopass. I think in some ways, its more important at CP. At Disney, you can ride with a camera on every ride in every park (other than the water rides and even then you can use plastic bags, etc. to protect the camera). Thus its easy to carry around your camera all day and get great pictures. At CP, you cannot ride with a camera on a lot of rides so its much more difficult to get good pictures yourself. On the negative side, there just isn't as much to photograph at CP (at least not to me). I think photopass is the way to go with on-ride photos.

I agree on the amount people will spend at CP.

But if the option was there, I would play alot more games at $2-5 each per person, I would buy my son the dragster poster and sweater or t-shirt he keeps bugging me for, ect. I might not spend $1800 over the course of a 4 day trip at CP, because it's a place we go to 5 to 10 days a summer. But I would definetly spend $200-300 easily. That is by far alot more per cap spending than the $20 I spend now.

As is I only buy something when we are on our way out of the park. The 8 hours I would be shopping in the stores all day have been reduced to 10mins as I walk down the midway. If the kids are tired and ready to go we spend nothing.

I've noticed alot of talk about employees and whether it costs more to do more.. You are all forgeting about unapplied labor/unproductive labor time. when someone gets paid x amount per hour to do their job and they work an eight hour shift, all of those 8 hours may not be productive time.. with what i see at Cedar Point... maybe 60% would be a good number for productive time.. 80% is a good threshold... so adding a few more tasks to ..basically unproductive employees.. well that will just help to increase the parks productivity and profitablilty. .. without adding cost to us. When I walk past the photo booths to look at my picture( which I always do) i see several employees standing around, as most riders decline to get the pictures, like me. If they had a central area where you could pick up your pictures they would be busy selling ride photos for all of the rides. less unproductive time. if you figure all the onride photos times a minimum of two staffers.. thats alot of man power. now man one centrally located station and put maybe 6 people there..I am willing to bet they would sell more photos per day as well as operate more efficiently.. I'm more than willing to do a time study if Cedar Fair would like to pay me..LOL I know i would buy more photos if i could grab them on the way to my car.

What CP could do is set up an in-park study. Pair up similar/like stores. The 'experimental' stores/game stalls/whatever will offer free delivery to the front of the park. The 'control' stores will go about business as usual, no delivery. Run this for a period of some weeks, if not the full season. At the end of the study, compare numbers in both experimental and control categories, not so much with each other as in year-to-year sales. This would give good, fairly reliable data to back up a decision.

Dammit Mike, quit bringing logic and common sense into the discussion. You know neither applies to management.

Well, at least not this management.

JT -- If you tell me I have two customers and customer A is going to spend 3-5 or even 10 times as much as customer B, you can bet that I will be willing to do a lot more to get the sales from customer A. And I suspect that the portion of folks going to CP who have absolutely no interest in buying anything other than some food/drink (no matter what the price, level of service, etc.) to the portion of folks going to Disney who feel the same way, the portion of zero buyers at CP will be significantly higher. I just don't see CP becoming a big merchandising place.

Disney has one big advantage in tracking customer decisions. Because so many people use their admission cards for pretty much everything during their stay, they can easily track what visitors are buying for food/drink and souvenirs and at what locations and what rides they ride (at least with respect to fast pass) and when. They know where they are staying as well. So I suspect they can build pretty good profiles in terms of what typical guests staying at the various resorts will spend and where.

Wow, lots of back and forth since yesterday. A few points...

When you want to bring information technology into the discussion, keep in mind that Cedar Point has woefully inadequate infrastructure. How many non-ride stations are younger than 30 years old? It's not like they've got cat-5 and fiber running all over the place. I'm not convinced they even have adequate phone lines.

The magic words "return on investment" come to mind, but again, you've gotta convince dad it'll be worth it. That's why there's no unified POS system, no hotel room charge-backs, season pass accounts, etc. I'm still astounded that they got the green light to implement Gate Central after the Paramount acquisition, partly because of the cost and partly because no one dare admit that P-Parks did something much better than Cedar Point did.

The concept of spend more to make more is also completely lost on Dick. At one of the other former P-Parks, there was an internal effort to start a certain value-added service that would benefit guests and likely get them to spend more. It involved more people too, and when dad found out, it was vetoed.

And if that weren't enough, they managed to weed out, fire or replace all of the good people from the Paramount chain (most of them, anyway), and those that they did replace were younger, cheaper, and OK with working the absurd six-day, 60-hour weeks. One surviving P-Parker says that the HR cost savings was not achieved, and you have inferior people to provide an inferior product. Again, dad thinks less is more, in every case.

You ever get the feeling that Cedar Fair could go from a mediocre company struggling with debt to a take-no-prisoners kick ass winner if there was a significant change at the top?

Yes, I do think they could do far better if the guard would change. Maybe and can hope that Kinzel will retire sooner then later. Yes, in some ways he may be good but we need someone that is more technology advanced running CF or at least understands how to use a computer.

Everything you said above Jeff I completely agree with.

Jeff said:
When you want to bring information technology into the discussion, keep in mind that Cedar Point has woefully inadequate infrastructure. How many non-ride stations are younger than 30 years old? It's not like they've got cat-5 and fiber running all over the place. I'm not convinced they even have adequate phone lines.

The magic words "return on investment" come to mind, but again, you've gotta convince dad it'll be worth it. That's why there's no unified POS system, no hotel room charge-backs, season pass accounts, etc. I'm still astounded that they got the green light to implement Gate Central after the Paramount acquisition, partly because of the cost and partly because no one dare admit that P-Parks did something much better than Cedar Point did.

And that is exactly why I don't think we'll see any true benefit and ease of season pass usage and processing until 2013 (Kinzel is set to be done 2012). He just can't seem to grasp or accept the idea of technology beyond new rides as a successful, viable, and integral part of the park experience, for both guests and employees. I know it seems a little ridiculous to say that we're still 3 years out (at least) from the season pass system actually being complete, but it goes right back to Jeff's post.

Imagine being the VP of IT for Cedar Fair. He came from the Paramount Parks, and while I've not met him, every person who knows him likes him, and believes he gets it. I just can't imagine having the patience to have his job.

I have a hard enough time getting my mom to understand technology and remain patient, and she's been using computers and such on a daily basis since the days of MS-DOS. I can't imagine being the VP of IT. *shudders*

Is he that far behind the times?

I'm sure he can use a computer. That was just a bit of exaggeration to stick a point, that I would hate to be the VP of IT at Cedar Fair due to Kinzel's seeming lack of ability to understand and accept technology as a successful, viable, and integral part of the experience of the parks.

Actually, I think its been stated that he does not use a computer, even to the extent of having his email printed out for him. At least that's been alleged in the past.

I have a little bit of knowledge about this. In 1994 when I started working at the Point there were no PCs. The AS400 and work stations ruled the day and to write even a simple letter the "software" was so antiquated that it would take forever. I actually preferred to just use a typewriter.

My Vice President back then purchased a personal computer on his own and brought it to the office. A few of us "younger" folks who had experience with computers in college started using it right away. On multiple occasions we were asked to help with reports that would go to Dick, particularly in the area of making graphs and pie charts. Dick and others were always interested in seeing those. If any other VP or Department head had done this I don't think Kinzel would have reacted well but since my VP could navigate outside of Dick's puppet strings without repercussion it went the other way. PCs started becoming more visible by the late 90s and into the 00s.

Jeff is correct. The infrastructure at the Point...particularly when it comes to IT related matters was antiquated and I doubt that has changed to any great extent. I'm convinced that if it isn't shiny and over 100 feet tall Dick just can't grasp it's value.

In the early 90s, PCs were not nearly as common at work. Accounting firms had one PC on the largest engagements. Small jobs had nothing. Federal court system in mid 90s had PCs which judges used as often to play music CDs as they did anything productive. I would say it was the late 90s that PCs really took off in terms of business operations (I can remember in 96/97 that email was used to essentially carry on conversations -- few people used them to send documents). So being outside of tech in early to mid 90s wasn't that big of a deal and certainly not uncommon. But developments since then have taken off exponentially. Being left behind to the extent CP apparently is at this point is crushing.