@Zachary @Nicole feel free to put this in the right thread (or more than one thread I don't care), I am beyond reason.
So I have seen people complain about the weather closures before and largely I understand the park's situation with the weather where they are almost facing a lose-lose scenario. Tonight however, I experienced a compounding series of events that is a result of a lack of adequate procedure and is indicative of a company that has no care for anything outside of shareholder perspective.
We arrived at the park today around 4:00, fully aware of the forecast. Figured when it rains go inside, and then after the rain everything will be normal. It was raining pretty good even at 4, so we wasted some time doing wine tastings before our 6:00 reservation at Burgermeister's. I'll fast forward a bit to 5:30. At this point we were wasting time in the Rhinefeld store (the one with the wine tasting, Christmas room, etc) and the management team got a Code Black on their walkies. This was because of the tornado warning (Williamsburg is well known for the tornados of course) and began shuttering everything. We slipped out of the shop before the Code Black kicked in and set up camp outside the speakeasy doors for our 6:00 reservation, not knowing that a Code Black meant "close the doors, keep them closed". On one hand, I understand why the company angle is "stay away from the doors, keep them locked" but they also gave guests 0 warning that they needed to get indoors or they would be genuinely trapped outdoors. They had the "inclement weather, outdoor operations suspended, please seek shelter" message going, but when things went Code Black, the message abruptly shifted to "immediately seek shelter, everything is suspended, tornado warning". By the time this message was playing, everyone had locked their doors, and were straight up not allowing guests to enter. Luckily we had rain jackets and an umbrella, but we witnessed guests woefully unprepared in a standard tee shirt and shorts get locked out of shelter and left standing in the heavy rain. So, first business decision here, "lock everything down in the event of a code black". On its own, I can understand why, but I also don't see how preventing guests who missed the 0.5ms window to get indoors from obtaining shelter is a smart call.
Eventually the rains slowed, this was around 6:30. Keep in mind for an hour we had been just standing at the front door of the speakeasy, outside, while the speakers were blasting about a tornado warning (if I wasn't intelligent, I would've been immensely terrified at this point) and unable to enter any form of shelter nearby. So at 6:30 when the rain stopped, joy. We were far from the only ones standing outside the speakeasy as well, just about everyone with a reservation was standing outside at the front door during the storm. Then around 6:30 they took our reservations and assigned our names, standard procedure, thought we were over the hump. NOPE. The fire alarm in the speakeasy building went off. Which initially, I assumed, would not be a big deal considering it was a false alarm. At this point the rain had briefly resumed and everyone with a reservation gathered under the archway outside of the shop to take shelter (shop doors were still shut at this point). As BGW medics, managers, and security descended on the false fire alarm, BGW security cleared all of us out from under the archway where we were shielded from the rain to out in the courtyard where we all got rained on, in the name of "keeping the walkway clear". Again, another isolated decision that makes sense, but as someone who managed to experience both of these isolated decisions, was immensely inconvenient. Eventually the fire department showed up, and I shit you not, one fire fighter looked inside the speakeasy for half a second, and then walked away. Everyone at this point was so confident it was a false alarm, the fire department did not even perform their own investigation. Then we had to wait for all the staff to return, and we did not get actually started doing entries into the speakeasy until about 7-7:30. Now, at this point, if I was a manager, I would've ditched the façade of letting parties in one by one in the spirit of getting everyone in as fast as possible considering the events that preceded. But no, the entry process alone lasted an immensely long time.
Eventually around 7:30/8:00 we exited the speakeasy from our 6:00 reservation. No complains to the new show, they always do a great job in there. At this time there were actually scare actors out in Scary Tale Road, so we assumed it had switched to business as usual, just a slow start due to rain. Boy were we wrong. After we stopped at Festhaus for a late snack, we decided to walk over and see if we could do a run on Clown Town since when we did it on Thursday there were all of 3 actors inside. When we got there, we noticed it was closed. While unfortunate, we wrote it off as the park closing the outdoor houses due to the weather. We then began walking around to Italy, where we noticed Gorgon Gardens had no actors. At this point it was around 8:30, we had seen actors in Scary Tale Road at 7:30-8:00, so we got a bit confused. Thought maybe everyone was on break. We kept walking and this time cut through Festa just to check things out. No actors out in the Festa scarezone (which at the moment is so unmemorable I cannot even tell you the name of it) and we continued up the hill, sure enough, Death Water Bayou was closed. To us this was no surprise, just assumed it was in line with Clown Town, outdoor houses are closed. We then walked towards Pompeii because we did not take the time on Thursday to go through Lost Mines. We thought for sure this would be open due to being indoors. Boy were we wrong. As we got off the bridge and started to round the corner, we noticed scare actors were out in an area they are not supposed to be out in. Turns out Lost Mines was indeed closed, and all of the scare actors were out on the path immediately outside the house. At this point it started to sink in to me what was happening, the weather drove away most attendance tonight, and the park, after trying to resume normal operations, gave up in the middle because their monetary projections were not up to par. Just to confirm my hypothesis, we walked over to Killarney, and shocker, Killarney Diner was closed as well. I do not know of a house more indoors than Killarney Diner, if that cannot operate in the rain, I don't know what can. At this point we come to our third isolated decision, "not many guests are coming to the park tonight, lets shut down the houses and scare zones early to send a large amount of hourly employees home and offset the loss".
After we realized everything had been shuttered, we were browsing Emerald Isle and decided to give up for the night and just start back up tomorrow (I know, a Saturday, how dare we). As an out-of-towner, I always stay at Kingsmill, so we called Patriot Shuttle around 8:45 for a pickup back to Kingsmill. It was at this point that Patriot Shuttle notified me that the park was now closing at 9:00, so they were picking everyone up anyway. This stunned me. I had been checking all social media, checking the app, and listening to the announcements. At no point did I hear an announcement that the park had adjusted their closing time from 11:00 to 9:00. As I write this now, their Instagram, Twitter, and app have no mention whatsoever. The fact that I found out from a local company is shocking. We immediately proceeded to the exit and as we boarded our shuttle, at 9:00, an announcement came over the speakers saying the park is now closed. So the previous isolated decision had been elevated to "you know what, there aren't many people showing up beyond the hundreds already here, lets just close down and kick them out". Again, each one of these decisions in isolation I can see the reasoning for. The problem I have is the compounding incompetency when you step back and look at the whole picture.
In one night, we were:
- Locked outside in the pouring rain during a tornado warning, with no clear warning that we would be prevented from entering any indoor facility
- Delayed over an hour for our reservation to something we paid extra for due to an unnecessary process to clear a fire alarm, with no form of "sorry about this, here is a 10% off coupon" or anything like that
- Prevented from experiencing any of the haunt attractions after the park had initially tried to start the event back up and changed their mind
- Told to leave the park 2 hours early with no warning or way of finding out before the park was formally closed
I don't want to be a guest who complains because I was inconvenienced. I wholeheartedly understand the predicament they are in, as a business, when weather hits and are faced with extreme attendance losses and a smaller audience who still demands a good experience. My problem is they consistently made decisions that are entirely business-focused and selfish, with no effort to make a concession to improve the guest experience. A good concession would've been rolling the event back to only the indoor houses for example. Maybe announcing clearly they intended to close early now, so get in everything you can. Maybe instead of quiet closing, having every show put on a final show adjusted for the new schedule, instead of cancelling everything. Make
some effort to improve the experience of the guest who, despite the weather, decided to come out and support the park. These are the exact guests they should be smiling at, because despite how shitty everything was, they were still willing to spend money at BGW.
A closer. When I was on the Patriot Shuttle we talked to a couple from NC who were only there for the night. They were hard workers who drove up through the rain today after work let out, had this trip planned for a while. They managed to get in the park around 7:30/8:00, started to find everything was closed, and then got a call at 8:30 from Patriot Shuttle that the park was now closing at 9:00 and they had to get picked up. They too only found out because a local company cares about its customers. This was their only night in town and they had to get back on the road early tomorrow morning. Oh, and they were members, so a "free ticket" or whatever BGW hands out to "compensate for the inconvenience" is meaningless to them. They travelled over 3 hours for one night of nothing. Money spent on gas, hotel, food, all useless. Despite all this they were still in good spirits, much better than I, and I am here all weekend. Everything I witnessed tonight, in isolation made sense, but you start to put it all together and it is genuinely unacceptable. It is a sign of poorly incentivized leadership and a lack of care that the big picture is not well accounted for. The isolated decisions are left up to smaller leadership teams, the big picture should always be monitored by a group of more senior leadership. And the fact that a best and worst case customer experience was obviously not monitored at the high level is extremely telling that United Parks (or SeaWorld Parks, per all the packaging and bags in the park) officially gives 0 shits about anything but their revenue and costs.
