News: Cedar Point expected to be cashless in 2022

Y'all must be racking up some nice airmiles if your following my IP trail!

Italy is beautiful today!

randi b said:

The thing is that you can stop going on the computer...

This is good advice that you should take.

^

not nice 😒

What I'm getting at is that if you're worried about Visa or whoever tracking you, you should be rolling-on-the-ground-in-the-fetal-position worried about what your ISP knows about you, as I think Ralph was shrewdly alluding to above. Because no one knows more about you than your ISPs. Visa may see what you buy and when, but your ISP sees everything that you do online.

Wait.

Everything?

Not so much when you use a VPN for all your nefarious online activities.

Kevin and I always use a VPN when fleshing out our plans for world domination.

Nefarious? I use a VPN by default and only turn it off when it's causing trouble.

From the perspective of not wanting ISPs to see what you're doing if you research a good VPN that can be a good step to improve (not fix) some of the privacy concerns.

Generally this conversation can be boiled down to a best effort approach. Using technology you will always be susceptible to security or privacy issues, but there are steps you can take over what most people are aware of or actively doing that can make great leaps in protecting your yourself. It's something I've been working on trying to start a consulting business around but I have not put the finishing details together on. If anyone does have any questions or concerns I'd be happy to chat about it.

Just took a short hop from Italy to Serbia and it's a great evening!

The "answer" sort of depends on who you're trying to "hide" from. Blindly subscribing to and joining a VPN just changes *who* can see what you're up to (i.e., the VPN operator instead of your ISP). Further, big web sites expect you to connect to their sites from multiple networks and multiple devices and have gotten quite good at tracking your activities (on their site and more widely) regardless of what ISP or VPN you happen to use at any given moment.

As DJ says, there isn't some general salve you can apply to somehow fix all of this. But, I'd go a step further and say a bunch of the salves that the marketers would like to make you think help mitigate online privacy issues are just moving the issues instead of solving them. And, sometimes moving issues is in fact helping one's situation a great deal. But, just as often it's probably just snake oil. And, much of this is fairly fundamental in that we wouldn't really be happy using a network where this stuff wasn't possible--because we want to access things from multiple devices, we want to access things from various networks, we don't tolerate massively slow networks/services, etc.

Mark, wearing his packet pusher hat for just a minute ... even though he came for the coasters ...

An ISP knows you go to a porn site, but it doesn't know what your fetish there is. Every site is secure by default now, for the most part. They know you come here, but they don't know which pages you're looking at.

But Google is certainly following you around here, which is the trade I have to make to serve ads and pay for those hot cloud resources that have prevented any down time in the last year. This is the fastest, most redundant site you'll ever get for coaster porn.

Jeff, I can appreciate that. Thank you for making sure I get my illicit coaster information as quickly and reliably as possible.

What would any of us do without the lemon chill guy rumors to talk about with someone else on the internet?

Mark I wholeheartedly agree, I will say a lot of the VPNs advertised to people online are a bit of snake oil, but at the same time depending on what your concerns are they may still assist in each person's goals. I know that generally speaking Google's advertising system has given up on giving me personally relevant ads, I've learned some interesting languages from their advertisements. There are a few services out there that include VPNs that I do believe are a good balance of features especially if the "they" that people are discussing is a concern for Google. Something I have seen a growing concern in my career field and the people I've talked with. I have been learning to be careful and balanced to help anyone that I do discuss these topics with find the tools and approach that works best for them, again there are so many options and things to keep in mind out there that most people have not been made aware of and yet still be able to avoid some of the more snake oil one solution to all problems services.

I'm going to wrap up here though because I could go on for a while on the topic, and I do want to apologize if this is straight off of the original conversation too far.

I will say as a matter of convenience in the park I don't mind cashless, using tap and pay is generally convenient for me. But completely eliminating the concept just seems a little odd to me. I am still one of those old school weirdos that tips cash.

Where are you tipping cash at Cedar Point? Restaurants? You can still do that. Nothing is stopping you from giving your Friday’s bartender or your hotel housekeeper a couple of bucks.
Also- cash can still be brought to the park and converted to card. That seems to still hold a certain amount of anonymity and should be comforting to Nervous Nells like randi b. They may know what the phony card holder does, but they don’t know who you are. So go with that.
I have a hard time believing that in implementing this new policy that Cedar Point has nefarious intentions, designed to dig deep into the habits, psyches, and records of every individual that attends. I think it’s more of loss prevention than anything else. In this day and age it’s getting harder and harder to trust your own employees, and the park was getting ripped off.

You have to have a card to get money out of the ATM or are you one of those people who don't even have a bank account and stashes all their money under the mattress?

I convert all my income to gold bullion and bury it in my backyard, like any sane person who wants to protect it from those evil globalists.

43 ATMs at WDW...

What does the Mouse not know about guest experience that the Einsteins in Charlotte do?

Those ATM's are a marketing expense for Chase. I doubt Disney cares about them one way or another.

Shades said:

RideMan said:

About twice a season I see stories about people at Kings Island (specifically) being double- and triple-charged for purchases because of some processing error.

I wonder how many stories there are of people losing a $20 bill at the park?

The overcharges inevitably get fixed, but can leave people scrambling for liquidity for a week or more.

If you are scrambling for liquidity because you got charged twice for a burger and fries at an amusement park, maybe you shouldn't be going to an amusement park?

There are people out there that live paycheck to paycheck. I have always been that way. Sometimes I would have limited funds until the next payday and make spur-of-the-moment decision to go to CP. Having a pass, all I would need is money for gas and food. Getting home broke, waiting for payday only to find out you have extra charges and possibly overdrafts, sucks! You can't hold that against someone. Not everyone has the luxury of having a safety stash. That's the reason for having passes, to visit without having to spend much money.

As for going cashless, as long as there are plenty of kiosks that I can convert cash to card, fine. I can live with that. I just hate having options eliminated. I use both cash and debit cards. Pros & cons with either. As long as the park gets the message out to the public about it so people can be prepared.

mmmm .... coaster porn .... bring on the big woodies ....

Ok, that’s classy…

RCMAC said:

Nervous Nells like randi b.

Lol. Better than being a Lusty Lil!

Jeff, I don't have to worry about being caught on porn sites. But question, how does it benefit you to track the ISP's?

I don't track the ISP's. I don't even know what that means.