Operation Secrets

Glean some lessons from a veteran of the trade that can help smooth your amusement facility’s operation

By Allen Weitzel

As the amusement industry grows, more people are entering this field from other industries. Consequently, the average tenure among management staff is declining. With that in mind, we give you rookies some often-utilized but seldom-mentioned tricks to running a park.

We begin our hidden tricks tour where our guests begin their visit: the parking lot. Place bold signs showing the parking fee along the entrance road. Guests want to be ready when they reach the attendant, and you do not want to slow traffic flow because of guests fumbling for their money at the booth.

Parking and front gate employees are the first impression guests get of your facility. Those workers should be well trained, well groomed and helpful. Theirs is a thankless job; so get and keep good people by making sure you compensate them well in pay, perks and job satisfaction. A bad impression at the front gate will stay with guests all day.

Keep your parking lot well lit, clean and freshly painted (striped). In car parks with faded, hard-to-see lines, vehicles take up too many spaces, cutting into revenue. Number your lots so guests know where they parked.

Place a park map outside the front entrance so guests can identify the locations of guest services, stroller rental and restrooms. Install a ride and safety sign listing all ride height requirements at the front gate that guests can view before buying tickets.

A veteran employee working guest services is a must. This office receives its share of weird requests and unreasonable demands; employees need to think on their feet and know which staff members to call. Write set procedures for freeloaders who do not know any park personnel but want free comp passes and will hold up the line just to get their way. Guest services should log and investigate all complaints, allowing management to track and resolve any developing negative trends.

Inside the park, most guests move to the right. This is an issue for park designers, but helpful for park managers in knowing how to schedule labor and what parts of the park to open first. This is still a standard in traditional parks.

Always place one garbage can in sight of another. Guests and employees alike must be able to see a nearby garbage can the moment they have trash in hand. Guests will toss trash in a receptacle if it is only a few steps away. Receptacles must be emptied frequently, allowing them to get no more than half full. Otherwise, if a large crowd gathers in one section of the park, the receptacles will overflow.

Parents determine food value by the price charged on fries and sodas. If your soda or fries prices are high, the family will think ALL food prices are too high, whether they are or not. Use fries and soda prices as lost leaders to prompt other sales. Why are these items the benchmark for value judgments? Because outside the park, families know how much fries and sodas normally cost.

The fun and gaiety of the park experience prompts guests to buy things they normally would never consider purchasing. Portable sales carts strike right at the heart of impulse buying, located on the walkways where guests move from one attraction to another. A cart could outsell a permanent restaurant, suggesting a cart should open before the restaurant, with a better labor percentage as well.

Your park should have a cash handling training program. All the money comes into your park through the hands of your employees. Employees should practice with cash behind the scenes with a trainer before serving the public. Have your employees look under and inside drawer trays when closing to locate loose bills.

Schedule your best ride operators to work kiddie rides. Children are unpredictable and could put themselves in harm's way without thinking. Parents can be even more unpredictable. Some parents want their child to ride even if the child is frightened or crying. Some parents like to reach over the fence and high-five their kids while the ride is running. Some parents want to help load and unload their child, sometimes at unsafe times. Many parents want the ride stopped for no apparent reason. A quick-thinking employee is a must on kiddie or family rides to deal with all these variables.

For scheduling ride operators, newer employees should be placed on team rides staffed with a well-oiled crew. Shy employees, or those who prefer less guest contact, might be best suited to work the top of the chute on a flume ride. On any three-day holiday weekend, the middle day will normally be the busiest. Schedule your most efficient staff on the busiest day or the manager's day off.

If guests stay in the park for longer periods of time, they spend more money. Increase length of stay by providing rest areas, park benches and trees or other shade. Place benches in unused nooks and crannies. If mom and dad can rest for a few minutes, they will muster enough energy to allow the whole family to stay a few hours longer.

Guests, today, are more safety conscience than ever before and not afraid to call and ask park officials about safety procedures. Most calls come from people bringing a group to the park. Some even ask for a copy of the company insurance policy (declaration page) or documentation they need to send to organization headquarters before a field trip can be approved. Your insurance broker can help you with this task. Regarding the park's safety record, it is good to have the public relations director prepare a script that employees can relay to the caller. Responding to these types of inquiries provides an excellent avenue for parks to promote their dedication to safety.

Guests sometimes get involved in unfortunate incidents and may be directed to first aid. When the guest describes the incident, they often say something like "I was injured on one of those spinning rides." Which spinning ride? Place photos of each ride in a binder and label each attraction. When the guest has difficulty describing the attraction, let them look through the photos and identify the correct ride.

Thorough documentation of an incident as soon as it occurs better protects the park. Get witness statements quickly following the incident, especially signed Employee Witness Statements that include the worker’s name and address so the events of the incident are captured forever. Several years later if a case goes to litigation it will be helpful to have this data. Once you have the employee's Witness Statements filled out from all involved staff, send copies along with the nurse’s report, security report, manager-on-duty report and scene photos to your claims personnel or insurance company right away. This information is a powerful weapon in defending your position and may even prevent incidents from entering litigation.

Always require that employees tell the truth. If your legal counsel knows the truth of the incident early on he or she can properly defend the park's position

When your park is running a special promotion you may get a higher number of customer complaints. Promotions bring in patrons who have never before visited your park and are unfamiliar with park procedures. Management needs to keep this in mind: the promotion was established to bring in new patrons, so be nice to these new guests.

Do you have a complaining guest you just cannot satisfy? You’ve offered them tickets for a return visit and they refused, so offer them tickets to a competing amusement park or attraction.

For the security force training new recruits, have them patrol in civilian clothes while walking with a veteran uniformed officer. Guests will ask questions of the uniformed officers; the rookie can observe how questions are answered.

Set up a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) with your local law enforcement agencies so both you and the local police will understand the role each party will take in an emergency. Offer facility tours to the local police and ask them to review your security program.

Look for the little details. Your guests do: signs that need repainting, broken fence posts, trash lying in the corners of queue lines, dirty ride seats, oil on the ground near rides. Guests look to see if management and security personnel are visible and carrying radios. Guests are bothered by a long list of "these rides are not open today" and out-of-order arcade machines. If you close off an area, do so in a professional manner, don’t merely pull a piece of tape in front of an entrance. Guests also notice if the park is understaffed for the day. Not enough employees could equate, in the guest's mind, to an undesirable condition.

Use professional shoppers to evaluate your park. Think the consulting price might be out of your league? Use complimentary passes. When you receive calls from friends, local business owners and neighbors seeking free tickets to your park, make a trade. You give them comps, they provide you a list of all the good and not-so-good things they discover during their visit. Be sure they tell you about good employees so you can reward your super star workers. That's important!

Management is about spending time in the park and continually improving. Your desk should be the park itself. Got too much to do? Try to complete one project a day; you will then finish about 250 a year. Finally, take care of the employees. They are the ones taking care of your guests, and your guests are the ones paying YOUR salary.

Allen F. Weitzel is a California writer who is entering his 35th season in the amusement industry. He is the author of the first compiled list of amusement industry terms, and his business articles have been featured in many national publications. Allen lives in San Jose with his family and is the historian for the Frontier Village Amusement Park web site .

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