What I said directly in the portion you quoted, when you consider the price tag and the time required (both booking and participating). The pricing of the tours I would consider semi-repeatable are fairly priced around $30 or less per person (Collies, Wolves, Train) with the more expensive ones clearly being one timers (elite VIP, roller coaster tours, etc.). I mean correct me if I am wrong, but have you met a large number of locals who marathon the tours? Sure a lot of people have done them once or maybe twice, but I am confused as to how you think my point does not hold true to these as well. The ones I would assume have been repeated are the cheaper tours, especially when you consider the cost for this is $100 given the minimum guests requirement (of which I have not seen proof of myself, I have just seen others speaking of, and I assume is accurate). As far as the river cruise goes, I see that as an experience with higher repeatability than a show with drinks experience, though that is an entirely separate rant.
Consumer psychology, people are more likely to spend more money on several smaller charges than one large charge. Once someone walks away having dropped the grand total over $100 for them and one other person to have a show and some drinks, the likelihood that they will run it back is extremely slim. But if you charge $15 per drink like they do around HoS, people are more likely to get a drink or two every time they visit, and that adds up fast. Same thing with the tours, especially when you factor in the kid-friendliness of some of the tours and the increase likelihood for people to spend money on experiences for their children.
Even so, the large numbers of tour options backs up my overall claim that the park is targeting the day-long destination trippers more than the locals. The thing up for debate here is if targeting that group is more beneficial to the business long term than targeting locals, yet that is the bit not being talked about.
I think you've missed my point. (Though it seems you then partially changed message in your subsequent post...? I'll address the original post.)
You described locals, as literally "the ideal target audience" for this new bar thing. But they aren't, at all, IMO. They'll go once, maybe. As you point out, they aren't likely to pay extra for it again and again. They are no more ideal as upcharge customers for this speakeasy than they are for the horses/dogs tour.
Yet the horses/dogs tour continues operating. As does the dogs/wolves tour. As do the others, even if we want to put those others in separate categories due to price.
Who is propping up ALL of this upcharge stuff long term? Out of towners. Not locals. And the supply of willing out of towners doesn't seem to ever really dry up for the rest of the upcharge stuff, short of a full-on pandemic. The speakeasy's target audience really isn't much different in that regard.
So... declaring that "it isn't gonna work" because it won't pull many local repeats, as you originally suggested, strikes me as a 50/50 guess at the speakeasy's fate based on the wrong causal inference.
If your point, as in your more recent post, was just that the park
should have provided a nice drop-in bar experience for locals to easily and incrementally spend their money while also enticing those visiting from far away, that makes sense -- but it isn't the same as predicting the speakeasy "isn't gonna work" because locals are "the ideal target audience." Those are two different points, and I disagree with the former, even while I agree that the latter sounds like a good experience. It sounds so good, in fact, that it sounds more or less exactly like the existing experience in the back of the Festhaus. ...Save for the location, which would be so much more accessible for everyone if the train stopped right at the back door of the place where the terrain is pretty damned flat. I will die on this hill, or rather on this level terrain.
One other thing I think we agree on: the speakeasy is probably much closer to being merely
kid-compatible than actually
kid-engaging (pending the truth about whatever it is that happens inside the place while the kid sits there with a flight of "mocktails"), whereas the tours generally do a better job with getting kids excited to see horses and wolves and such.
Families, wherever they're from, so often will choose to pay for an experience because it's something to do specifically
with the kids, which typically means
for the kids. It gets weird quickly, frequently making kid-oriented vacation spending irrational IMO. I say this as an oft-irrational multi-child parent myself. It seems to me that the speakeasy won't benefit much from that spending effect, whereas pretty much all of the tours do. Bringing your kid(s) to the speakeasy is more an obligation ("C'mon honey, he'll do fine in there for an hour") than a family opportunity/spending driver. Totally agree there.
Of course, the other main fundamental risk I see with the speakeasy has been beaten to death already by others: it may just be a medium experience. But that's all crystal-ball stuff for now. As the vacuous truism says: "It could work, if they do it right."