webslave

Yeah, that can work, but you have to balance that against human nature. If you incentivize your people based on dispatches, then dispatches become the focus of their employment. You'd hope it wouldn't happen, but the sad reality is you then run the risk that other things can fall by the wayside in pursuit of dispatches; namely safety. The nightmare scenario for management is that an incident occurs that comes down to human error (or shortcuts) and it comes out that management has been paying staff to speed up dispatches. Don't get me wrong; there's ways of being able to do this, but it requires a lot more oversight to make sure you aren't putting the guests or the business at risk.

Yeah, that's a very ordinary menu. Rick's used to be what made eating at the park tolerable.

That's... a bit naff.

Yeah, I also found Super Ripper to be very slow, to the point that you almost stop.

For a place struggling with staff numbers they always seem to have enough to push churros and so-cones...

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but you're not really getting a lot of support here for your point of view. The customers seem pretty upset about it too. Maybe - just maybe - you might be living your own reality on this one? I know you love to defend the VRTP properties but this one is a bit of a stretch.

Who was caught off-guard? Are you telling me now that the issue was not actually availability of staff but that instead the parks were just caught off-guard? That seems at odds with comments you made earlier. I don't for a moment believe that the park was caught off-guard. I think they knew what type of attendance to expect, and captain surly on MW's Facebook page would even have to agree. It's unfathomable that they did not know. And yeah, people know the last two years have sucked. That's been part of the marketing to get them to the parks; get a break from the last two years and have fun. What you don't get to do is engineer a situation where demand greatly exceeds supply, still charge those people full-whack, and then hand-waive it away as "well the last two years has sucked". Lots of us are struggling for staff. If we don't have enough staff then we have to forego the work - rather than me just taking the money, spreading the crew too thin, and screwing my customers.

Well, pretty easily given for the last six months the industry has been advertising for people to do just that. If you advertise for it to happen, and then you sell tickets that would suggest people are going to do what you advertised to get them to do then it probably isn't on the punters. After all, we do not tolerate a hotel selling rooms that they do not have, we do not tolerate restaurants taking bookings for tables they do not have and we do not tolerate cinemas selling more tickets to a film than there are seats in the theatre. The expectation from a consumer is that their tickets will be fit for the purpose they intend. No consumer intends to spend all day in line and be able to do two attractions. At some point you need to stop selling rather than blaming the customer.

I just can't imagine what would give the public the impression the parks were ready, willing and able to welcome back the public... I mean, the messaging has been all about "we can't wait to welcome you back" and "it's great to have our parks open and firing on all cylinders again", rather than "but not too many of you because we don't have enough staff to cope". If you know you're running thin and you don't have any levers to pull to increase capacity then you either choose to collect the cash and let people have a shitty day, or forego the cash and look after the customers. Being turned away at the gate for one reason or another (in this case because the park is full) is something that the park knows how to handle, and is a one-off disappointment to a customer (that, I might add, you could probably do something about in advance) compared to letting those customers in and having a full day of misery that you present as the genuine experience.

Take the lead from businesses that are already universally regarded as anti-consumer, money-grubbing pieces of trash? Yeah, good one. Well, yes, they probably should have. Otherwise at what point do you shut the gates? I mean, if you hit the number you can safely admit to the park you're having to say exactly that anyway, so it's not like you're never prepared to say that. Same outcome as shutting the park on days where the weather is unsuitable to operate ("sorry you paid, but we aren't opening today"). Contingencies exist for handling that situation - it's not like it's impossible. The notion that you just keep admitting as many guests as turn up no matter what it does to your brand is lunacy, and I'd think you'd be above seriously suggesting it as a viable option

I don't think that's what people are accusing them of. Instead they are variously accusing them of incompetence, laziness, and money-grubbing at the expense of the bigger picture. Can you really, honestly say any of our parks haven't ably demonstrated each of those in at least the recent past?

Tbf, if a restaurant churned out the trash I had at the VRTP parks a few weeks ago they wouldn't stay a restaurant for very long. You either play properly in the restaurant space and as such can make comparisons to what is and isn't allowed in restaurants, or you keep doing what you're doing now with abysmal offerings and turn a blind eye.

If it's as unavoidable as claimed they don't have to keep admitting people to the park.

That looks bleak!

Yeah, just on the staff shortages thing "because Covid" or whatever. To the paying customer when they can seem to find plenty enough staff to wheel around popcorn or churro wagons or operate cheap upcharge carny games but can't adequately staff the attractions people have paid for you tend to feel pretty ripped off. I appreciate these are differing skillsets, but we are talking about by-and-large unskilled labour here for both, and Covid ain't new.