Season Pass Preview Night and Dining Plan

djDaemon said:

Why are these the only choices? How about a third choice: hiring additional staff so that they can successfully manage their in-house off-season projects while still managing annual ride rehab and preparation?

That would be because your third option is unrealistic. Based on their prior experience they budgeted the time they thought was necessary to complete the needed tasks. They probably didn't know they were going to fall short until a few weeks until opening. Lets just say that a month out they realized they were going to fall short. That means they had a month to post a job listing, find an applicant that they liked and met their criteria, and then train the employee. During the time that they are searching for for an applicant and training said employee they will become less productive. The net gain in productivity is very minimal if you were to hire extra help that late in the game. If you are saying they should have hired more people to begin with then you are just playing the results and trying to act like you are smarter than a company who has done this for years.

Dead Sexeh said:
That would be because your third option is unrealistic. Based on their prior experience they budgeted the time they thought was necessary to complete the needed tasks. They probably didn't know they were going to fall short until a few weeks until opening.

They could have budgeted resources better (and again, I fully expect they will going forward), to avoid the "oh s***" moment a few weeks before opening. That's not unrealistic.

Making an argument that no one here knows what's going on and responding with an argument that the park couldn't know what was going to go on is pretty weird. Ultimately, I don't think it matters, as the expectation that anyone should have, on any day of the season, is that stuff is generally working.

djDaemon said:
They could have budgeted resources better (and again, I fully expect they will going forward), to avoid the "oh s***" moment a few weeks before opening. That's not unrealistic.

Again all you are doing is playing the results. Also how do you know they could have budgeted resources better? (Hint: you don't) Given the information they knew going into the project they budgeted it as best they could. I do enjoy the stance of do better. I don't have any of the information you have, but just do better. Obviously you don't work in construction if you think it is possible to avoid the oh s*** moment. You have to deal with weather and as always unforseen circumstances pop up during the process.

Dead Sexeh said:...how do you know they could have budgeted resources better?

Because several rides were not ready for opening day. Not all of those incidents can be blamed on outside forces.

Obviously you don't work in construction if you think it is possible to avoid the oh s*** moment.

I don't (though I used to). I work in industrial production, where the "oh s***" moments often cost enormous amounts of money. That's why we use "lessons learned", root cause analysis, FMEAs and so on to figure out how to best mitigate the risk of an "oh s***" moment.

In this case, it could probably be best mitigated going forward by hiring more people, or reducing the scope of future projects.

djDaemon said:

I don't (though I used to). I work in industrial production, where the "oh s***" moments often cost enormous amounts of money. That's why we use "lessons learned", root cause analysis, FMEAs and so on to figure out how to best mitigate the risk of an "oh s***" moment.

In this case, it could probably be best mitigated going forward by hiring more people, or reducing the scope of future projects.

I agree with everything said here. I just see this as the "oh s***" moment that causes the changes. Before the first "oh s***" moment there is no way of knowing what changes needed to be made to the formula that had been working for years. I don't blame them for anything that happened this weekend as they used the formula that had been working for years, but now might have to change. I would start to blame them and lose some interest in their product if this became a reoccurring theme.