COVID-19 & Coasters: Coronavirus Impacts on the Amusement Industry

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Zachary said:
Disney has already set the president for charging for missed reservations in a park setting. I am super in favor of a system like that being used for park reservations. $20 hold per reserved slot. Refunds are issued automatically when you visit. Seems fair to me.
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That is a $10 per person charge for dining reservations not to get in the park for which you already paid for. Also saying a $20 "hold" so if they allow you to make 5 days in advance they will be holding $100 of your money or if thats per ticket holder for a family of 4 thats $400. The overall lack of any system BGW has ever used for purchases tells me there is absolutely no way for them to do this.
 
WDWRLD said:
Also saying a $20 "hold" so if they allow you to make 5 days in advance they will be holding $100 of your money or if thats per ticket holder for a family of 4 thats $400.
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This math makes no sense. Why would they hold the amount for each day out that you are booked for? A family of 4, $20 hold per person, $80 for hold fees.
 
WDWRLD said:
That is a $10 per person charge for dining reservations not to get in the park for which you already paid for.
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It’s often more than $10 a person. A quick Google search says between $10 and $25 per person—presumably depending on the venue. And yes, we’re talking about restaurant reservations vs park reservations but honestly, why should they be any different? In fact, the potential losses involved with a guest skipping their park reservation are FAR higher than the average losses involved with someone skipping a restaurant reservation. I can make a pretty good argument that charging more than $20 a person for missed reservations would be totally fair.
 
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Zachary said:
It’s often more than $10 a person. A quick Google search says between $10 and $25 per person—presumably depending on the venue. And yes, we’re talking about restaurant reservations vs park reservations but honestly, why should they be any different? In fact, the potential losses involved with a guest skipping their park reservation are FAR higher than the average losses involved with someone skipping a restaurant reservation. I can make a pretty good argument that charging more than $20 a person for missed reservations would be totally fair.
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And, I don't think you need the reminder here, but I was specifically talking about members having to do this, and just pre-charge for any other ticket. No gate sales when making reservations.
 
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@warfelg You need to get out in the real world ?. Airlines, hotels, rental car companies all oversell. There's plenty of algorithms out there (I'm sure Disney has a few) that know not all people that make reservations show up. They know what it'll take to make $$. And I'm sure with no-shows, Millennium Mom in her Range Rover with 3 adorables, a packed picnic lunch of Nutella on wheat and juice boxes will be able to get in.

But, with their layout of BGW, where do they check? At the toll plaza? And, if no reservation, how do they turn them around. They can't let them pay for parking, get to the gate and no reservations....
 
warfelg said:
This math makes no sense. Why would they hold the amount for each day out that you are booked for? A family of 4, $20 hold per person, $80 for hold fees.
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I was saying if they allowed each person to book 5 park days in advance, so you could plan out 5 visits in advance.

Zachary said:
It’s often more than $10 a person. A quick Google search says between $10 and $25 per person—presumably depending on the venue. And yes, we’re talking about restaurant reservations vs park reservations but honestly, why should they be any different? In fact, the potential losses involved with a guest skipping their park reservation are FAR higher than the average losses involved with someone skipping a restaurant reservation. I can make a pretty good argument that charging more than $20 a person for missed reservations would be totally fair.
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Disneys dining reservation hold policy is $10 per person on the reservation reguardless of location. In addition to that if you book a party of say 4 and only 2 show up you still dont get charged. Thay policy was put in place to keep people from making reservations at all 4 parks then deciding day of which park they wanted to visit and using that reservation. Its a completely diffrent situation.
 
I know that places oversell, but you know what those companies can often do? Bump you. BGW can't bump people @GrandpaD especially if someone is coming from further away. Imagine the family of 4 coming from NoVa leaving their house at 5am, get to BGW's doors, and.....can't get in. I know the likelihood is low, but that would lead to more bad press than needed.

Also yes, check at the parking entrance. If they have a reservation, they get one color parking tag. If they don't, they don't pay for parking, get another color tag, and go out the ride-share exit (yes I know this exists because I was an Uber driver for dropping someone off at BGW and picking someone up, so they do have a plan in place).
 
WDWRLD said:
I was saying if they allowed each person to book 5 park days in advance, so you could plan out 5 visits in advance.
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And why is that the parks problem if the person paying knows that before booking?
 
warfelg said:
I know the likelihood is low, but that would lead to more bad press than needed.
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Yes, the likelihood is very low. BGW has 40+ years of historical attendance records to draw up algorithms. So they open up for 10k reservations. They'll have a pretty good idea of the percentage of no-shows and they might actually be able to handle 12-13k so if that NoVa family shows they'll quietly let them through.

@WDWRLD I suggested (surmised) that the reservation system would allow just that...allow for reservations for a few days. They'd have to do that to accommodate the tourists coming down to Kingsmill Resort for a week of history, etc. I would think they'd only allow a maximum number of reservations per login, though so some jerk doesn't yet to make a reservation for every single day.
 
GrandpaD said:
Yes, the likelihood is very low. BGW has 40+ years of historical attendance records to draw up algorithms. So they open up for 10k reservations. They'll have a pretty good idea of the percentage of no-shows and they might actually be able to handle 12-13k so if that NoVa family shows they'll quietly let them through.

@WDWRLD I suggested (surmised) that the reservation system would allow just that...allow for reservations for a few days. They'd have to do that to accommodate the tourists coming down to Kingsmill Resort for a week of history, etc. I would think they'd only allow a maximum number of reservations per login, though so some jerk doesn't yet to make a reservation for every single day.
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The park that can’t get pass perks right is going to nail these algorithms?
 
WDWRLD said:
That is a $10 per person charge for dining reservations not to get in the park for which you already paid for. Also saying a $20 "hold" so if they allow you to make 5 days in advance they will be holding $100 of your money or if thats per ticket holder for a family of 4 thats $400. The overall lack of any system BGW has ever used for purchases tells me there is absolutely no way for them to do this.
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Perhaps one of the parties is a better analogy, since there is no obvious example of theme parks requiring reservations for normal entrance.

We had tickets to a nighttime party at Typhoon Lagoon. There was a massive storm, and the party was cancelled. Disney did not provide refunds. Instead they offered to rebook people. We asked to have the price of our tickets applied to a pass holder water park pass, which they accommodated. Regardless, people who could not attend on a different night, were not (immediately?) getting their money back.

So, I believe there is industry precedent for charging people for missed attendance.
 
warfelg said:
The park that can’t get pass perks right is going to nail these algorithms?
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Hey... I'm just guessing how it would work...not whether SEAS/BGW can make it work.



And, remember, this is what SIX FLAGS is planning on doing. SEAS hasn't announced anything. So deep breaths people...calm down...
 
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Nicole said:
Perhaps one of the parties is a better analogy, since there is no obvious example of theme parks requiring reservations for normal entrance.

We had tickets to a nighttime party at Typhoon Lagoon. There was a massive storm, and the party was cancelled. Disney did not provide refunds. Instead they offered to rebook people. We asked to have the price of our tickets applied to a pass holder water park pass, which they accommodated. Regardless, people who could not attend on a different night, were not (immediately?) getting their money back.

So, I believe there is industry precedent for charging people for missed attendance.
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Not sure that even is comperable, in that instance a hard ticked event was canceled by the supplier and a alternate date was offered as so you would not lose the cost of your ticket, a alternate date was not suitable and a refund was given once asked for.

I dont know of any park or venue that sells a season admission pass some with no blackout days then on top of that requires a no show deposit on top of that on days you would like to use said admission. The only close example I can think of, and this does not even happen is if Disney charged a deposit per fastpass booked. So when you make a fastpass Disney charged you a deposit then on that day if you rode the ride you were refunded the deposit amount but if for some reason you didnt make that fastpass window or decided you didnt want to ride you lost your deposit.

I honestly can not think of a fair way to figure out who gets in and who does not. You also have to think about private parties, what if tickets, passes and memberships were severely limited on a day because a group like Dominion Energy had paid for their employees to get in? What if they blocked off an amount for hotels, so say the Holiday Inn guests were offered access to the park just for staying there and that number was taken off the top of the park allottment every day even if they dont show up. What about Colonial Williamsburgs combo tickets.

I guess my point relates to Star Wars Galaxys Edge. So right now, well before they closed you had to get a boarding group each day to ride. They only allotted so many groups a day. Now if its a very bad weather day and guests dont show up at their return time to ride that means the groups are gone through quicker. Same with days the ride runs really good and there are no down times. Some days by 8pm they have gone through all the allotted days guests and the ride sits idle. Now look at BGW, what if you have a day, say a sunday where many people come in the morning at rope drop then in the afternoon there is a big storm and many people go home because they have had enough and arent coming back. So now the parks guests numbers are low and the weather clears up but no new guests can come in and the park is losing money because its empty.
 
The circumstances have never required something like this. If you think that reservations are good, then you should want the park to protect themselves from loosing massively from people not pulling through on the reservations. You don't want people showing up to the gate and being turned away, so putting out the reservation thing kinda "discourages" people from just showing up at the gate, so if a large chuck of reservations no-show the park is really losing out on income.

Here's something I really don't get about SEAS stuff when it comes to things like this:
1 - When Disney does something like this it's "ok".
2 - We complain all the time about how SEAS is cutting it so close on financials, but when things come up that could help save a company and park we're obviously passionate about, we complain that they are trying to make money.
 
Holy crap...SIX FLAGS made a preliminary announcement about a problem WHICH NO ONE KNOWS how it will be executed and folks are going off like they have bottle rockets in their pants (nice analogy, huh?)

We could play "what if" forever in this. @WDWRLD BGW (or any park since we're in the Industry thread) has a 30-40 year historical record of attendance. First, if I were them, any Dominion Energy party is off the books this year. Secondly, the area hotels are very valuable because those tourists are plunking down big admission bucks. Again, if I were them, I would mandate hotels communicate (let's say) 30 days out of any large block (which would be limited in size). Then, using the historical attendance data you create a maximum reservation allotment for members and GP, with the majority (say 80%) toward membership attendees vs GP (remember, as part of their attendance data, they know what percentage of attendees are members vs GP daily). So yeah, you may wake up in morning and say "hey it's a great day today! Hey Mrs. WDWRLD, let's go to the park" and the res system says "you might wanna try miniature golf" because we're full today. Too bad. Yeah, you got season tickets, but so do thousands of other people. Whatever system employed to control attendance is not going to be a cure-all and it's not going to make everyone happy all the time...but the park is open (which I assume everyone wants).

But again....It's SIX FLAGS...and we don't know Jack about how their program will even work.
 
I am not sure why BGW would go to a reservation system with limited number of people per day and at the same time give away more free tickets for friends to membership holders.
This will fill up the park with people that did not pay for their ticket while forcing other people to not be able to go that already paid.
 
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