Cashless System

Had a similar issue yesterday at Panda express, the system would freeze when they tried to enter my meal plan order. Happened several times on different machines. Eventually one worked. Employees were apologetic about it.

I try not to rely on wifi for anything important, but I don't have to wire an entire park. Were they able to take cash orders with the system down before going cashless?

Completely agree with the Coasters and Johnny rocket reviews.

In most of the encounters I have had with a downed POS, they still can't take cash. If they don't have a network connection, they won't function for any transaction. Most of the time it has resulted in getting the product for free, including today at Tropicana Field in Tampa. One of the registers was not working properly so the 4 beers, couple Cokes, and food was given to us for free.

Congrats on saving $100!

We got a couple of custard cones in Frontier Town Saturday night, and in the middle of transaction the system froze (no pun intended) and it was about 5 minutes before the transaction could be completed; in the meantime a big line formed. It makes me wonder how often that happens. I mean, for CP to rely on a cashless system and WiFi and then the entire system goes down, that's inconvenient for everybody. Maybe they need a more reliable wifi network?

Working on a WiFi network a fraction of the size of that complex. I can't believe any of their permanent buildings aren't hardwired. WiFi can be so finicky at that scale I wouldn't want to be reliant on it for most systems. Not much you can do for the mobile carts unfortunately.

My guess is all building locations with POS terminals are hardwired. If they have the handheld devices at sit down restaurants, those would run off of local wifi within that building. Food carts of course would run off of wifi unless they have a port which I am sure some of the more permanent "carts" do.

I just assumed that all of the building terminals were hardwired. But between you, me, and the lamp post - that server at Johnny Rockets seemed like he was probably less sophisticated than the lemon chill guy in terms of knowledge and inside information.

It's not really necessary to hardwire a POS, but you do need to have it on a separate network. At a company I worked at, we had a totally separate network for anything that handled payment cards, and it never touched the regular corporate network, let alone guest wifi.

TwistedCircuits said:

Working on a WiFi network a fraction of the size of that complex. I can't believe any of their permanent buildings aren't hardwired. WiFi can be so finicky at that scale I wouldn't want to be reliant on it for most systems. Not much you can do for the mobile carts unfortunately.

The amount of cost it would have. Cat6a can't run forever. Sure there's Fiber, but then you either need switches at entier end & tons of SFP modules, then still last hop is copper. Or you do GPON, which is an absolute devil of a system to build out.

Wireless works and is for the majority of time stable. A few plates of food & drink losses here & there isn't a big deal to something the size of this park. However an entire network rollout is something else. I applied to work at KI about a year ago and in my discussion with their infrastructure, they're not this "spare no expense" style IT rollout, it's very thought thru and conservative -- especially with a corporate security team reviewing production...like Jeff stated above, PCI-DSS isn't a joke. It's typically it's own set of vLAN(s), very strong ACLs, and tons of audits in place.

True, all very good points.

I wonder then why we're hearing more issues this year with the cashless program in place than previous years.

Is it a new issue that's just cropping up because of the change?

If so is it a throughput issue that didn't exist before? Did a surprising number of people still use cash in the park and help prevent it indirectly? Did they setup a new isolated network that's not holding up? More devices connecting causing congestion and range issues?

Or has this been an existing issue that's just exaggerated?

There are a hundred reasons, but if I had to guess, they're totally understaffed. I'm familiar with an entertainment venue that doesn't even have a person on-site when they're processing $20k+ in transactions over three hours. Someone on-call an hour away won't help, you need someone on the ground.

Also, copper wire is stupid expensive, especially right now.

^GPON is still the devil though, don't bring cost into this. Keep your glass away :P

My thoughts on it being noticed/reports rn is just that it's a hot topic. I'm sure in years past a register went down when someone paid cash and they just waived them on without making a post -- "hey lunch was free!"

Now, because a new system is in place, it gets more attention.

Does anyone know where the cash to card kiosks are in the park? we went last week and I couldn't find any. I was there with my husband who has credit cards, then I wondered where they were when I thought about them. No signs pointing them out in the midways.

You can find one on the map. A quick scan shows that they are at least in these locations:

• Main entrance bathrooms
• South Sky Ride station
• Arcade
• Across from MF's entrance
• Near Miss Keat's
• Gemini Midway near Coke station

I walked by all these spots, didn't even see them lol. But thanks though!

This shows that people are not observant. In the midway in front of each "cash-to-card" machine was a large, 6ft x 3ft, sign with an arrow pointing to the machine.

I was gonna say, every time I’ve been there there have been so many they were hard to miss.
If I had to guess where to look I’d find places that would normally be heavy cash locations. Games, small eats, small stores, stuff like that.

How was the cashless system at CP overall this season? Planning on going to CP next August after a short hiatus from the park!

I've been cashless at CP for the past few years so it really didn't seem different to me. Most (if not all) of their vendors take Google/Apple pay.

I've been cashless for a while too, kept forgetting to bring a quarter for the carp. Was waiting for them to take the next step with the coasters app ordering/pickup thing they built. That never opened did it? Not sure if it would have helped with their staffing issues, or was just another position they couldn't fill. Wonder if next year will see them abandoning that idea, or expanding it.