New ticketing system?

^I understand that it is a problem, but is raising the wages a feasible solution? Just because you pay someone more doesn't mean that they are going to do a better job. I think most companies could pay their employees more, but that doesn't mean that a raise will make the employee more productive, or make better employees jump out of the woodwork. Decisions result from a very complicated process of cost-benefit analysis, which a lot of people outside a major corporation don't understand.

One way to look at it:
New faster network connections are installed around the park.
Credit Card transactions are now available nearly everywhere.
Guy getting his lunch gets through the line a bit quicker due to the faster CC machines.
He's happier when he interacts with the Cashier.
As a result, the Cashier isn't put in a bad mood by this guy.
Cashier is nicer to the next guy in line, resulting in him having a better day.

There, by putting in the new infrastructure, we've made one guys day better (and don't doubt this wouldn't be duplicated several times over) without having to pay more for employees. Yes, better pay could get you better employees. It could also get you over-paid, under-performing employees.

No one said that increased pay would cause people to do their jobs better. The theory is that increased pay would:

• Help to keep employees in their jobs, rather than having them quit over minor things, when they can find another job with fewer hours that pays more.
  
• Help to encourage employees to return year after year.
• Encourage a stronger breed of people to apply for jobs. As it is now, they wind up having to hire nearly everyone who applies. When the park used to pay better compared to other similar jobs, which wasn't all that long ago, they were far more selective with their hiring. Theoretically, you're getting the better employees this way, rather than just anybody.
• Having more employees to choose from, or simply having more employees to hire, allows you to adjust your staffing. Doing so will allow you to break O-C's and give employees shifts. Having a little more time off during the week as a result of having more people to schedule seems to go along way, based on what I witnessed.
  

These things are truly holding the park back, specifically when it comes to customer service. While it might cost them some more money upfront, doing these things right could and would help them in many other areas in the long run. Customers remember good and bad customer service, but are less likely to recall that they had to spend 5 minutes waiting to get into the park this year, rather than 10.

From an enthusiasts' viewpoint and the operational perspective, the new ticketing system is and will be a great thing. To the general customer, upgrading to a system that is considered to be the norm won't be that much of a surprise.

JuggaLotus said:
One way to look at it:
New faster network connections are installed around the park.
Credit Card transactions are now available nearly everywhere.

But, do we know that this is happening? As far as I've heard, we're getting a new ticketing system; I haven't heard anything in regards to networks and transactions throughout the rest of the park.

BlueStreak64 said:
That's got to be a complex system to set up, between the four different gates plus linking to the other parks.

It's probably no more complex than the Best Buy system that's in place which tracks how many copies of each item are instock at each location...

What year is it again?

I'm not sure why some think a new system would be complicated.

Me typing this post and submitting it seems 10x more complicated to me than a simple program that counts how many people are in a park at a given time.

It would also be a better way to track sales and reordering supplies.

If you think reporting and data warehousing is simple or easy, I'd invite you to come work at any of my last few jobs. There is so much to learn from data. If you think about it in terms of straight counting, you miss the point. Connect it with what you know about the customer... the group they're with, season pass usage, geography... you get to know the customer in ways you couldn't before.

I'm not convinced a POS system is coming along with this either. We've only heard about the ticketing system officially and I don't think all the parks are even getting it. Some food stands around the park now take credit cards, but it sure is annoying to walk up to one that doesn't.

I agree that data warehousing done right is no easy task. I dabble in it at work just a bit, but it takes a lot of involvement and support from the decision makers, a team of database people that have a good grasp of the business and the technology, along with fast servers with lots of storage (depending on how granular you want to be - and you want to be as granular as you can be). Without any one of these things, you're going to have a mess. To be honest, I'm not really sure Cedar Fair has any of these things. Maybe their technology people are competent if they kept a bunch of the Paramount people, but I heard they recently let a few go from CP. They can always invest in servers and infrastructure, but if management doesn't understand the value of the data, it won't happen.

Complex - consisting of many different and connected parts (definition from the Dictionary Dashboard Widget)

Seems some people forgot the meaning of the word complex. Any system linking four different gates to one central data center at the park (and this is where I start guessing), and in turn linking to a central data center (not necessarily an entirely different building, just system/server) which in turn links to over a dozen other parks, each park consisting of multiple gates is by definition, a complex system.

What Jeff and Matt said above are wonderful points. The Pizza Hut I worked at during my junior and senior years of high school wanted the franchiser to invest in a POS system for us, mainly because we were in a small town where many of our customers were the same every week, and having a system with all the purchasing data at our hands would allow us to selectively sell to them while they were placing orders over the phone or in the store. Unfortunately, we were also the smallest performer in the franchise, so we were lucky to get a dining room right before I left for the summer.

The opportunity to selectively sell to a customer based upon past purchases/consumption is something to strongly consider. Its a shame that we almost certainly will not be seeing POS systems in the park this summer for this, and many other reasons.

I'm just trying to think of how the "paper" tickets will be counted. They're not scanned, so this new system would only be counting the number of people going through the turnstiles, instead of the tickets actually scanned, right? Or both? You would think there would be some kind of barcode printed on them.. instead they are handed to the employee and ripped.

But I'm just going to think of something, if someone decides to bring a printer/scanner with them, it is very possible to duplicate the paper tickets given the right paper. Now I know no one is going to do that.. but who's going to stop someone from trying, and if they do try it there is a good chance they could get away with it (with the past ticket system that is). Now handstamps.. that's another story. I'm sure going to miss all this in the 08 season :(