Look at it this way, You get a discount if you are willing to wait a bit longer in line!
I’m not really sure how ethics plays into this. There isn’t any type of squatter’s rights or “I was here first” rule of law applied to lines. :dubious: Ok, arguably, there is, if you want to bring in grade school history and culture. 
However, economics, particularly, capitalism, allows for a fair and orderly exchange of value. Here is a classic example of price conveying information. If there are too many people in the express line, the easiest thing to do is to raise prices overall. If for some reason or another the raise in price (i.e. price senstivity) creates a reduction in demand overall, then the park can just raise the price of the express line. Either way, this allows for a more efficient market, and does a better job at supplying info to the park so they can plan better. Hopefully, my statements puts statements like this into context:
Sure it’s two levels of service: one service has slow lanes of traffic, the other has faster lanes. It’s a value/utility argument on how you want to spend your money. The raise in price, and the fact that people are willing to pay it, tells the park that there is a market for those who want to pay more. The others who don’t want to pay it won’t use it, or can simply boycott the park outright. This is no different than charging more for the better rides. Which, if you think about it objectively, is the same thing. However, it’s more efficient to set up one kiosk/pay center for all the rides with excess demand, rather than try to collect all the money at each ride.
I’ve always thought amusement parks are a tricky business. You’re selling, basically for a flat fee, not goods or services but the opportunity for your customer to avail himself of goods and services. This opportunity, unlike the price, varies wildly from customer to customer depending on many factors (weather, breakdowns, number and the customer’s own ability to efficiently negotiate the grounds) but hinging mostly in an inverse ratio to how many customers you have. The more money you take in on a given day, the lower the quality of the experience your average customer will have. Because you can’t just wheel out another roller coaster whenever you need one, and you’ll go broke if you try to bribe disgruntled clients with free stuff, you need other ways to manage your customers’ experience (or at least their perception thereof). One way to do this is crowd control.
Fortunately, most of the time crowds are self-regulating: people are attracted to open spaces. Unfortunately your other attractions are not remotely equal in your customers’ minds and that can seriously disrupt an even flow of bodies to and from the various points of interest. So you have a choice.
Choice 1: Set up a system to steer people away from high volume areas. This is what Disney’s FastPass and similar systems do, by constantly drawing a percentage of the crowd away to return at a later time. This works because the bulk of your crowd arrives early and stays late; newcomers dwindle as the day goes on. This has the advantage of not enraging the rest of your customers, once they understand what’s going on. Everybody understands the concept of making an appointment and why that earns special treatment, and it’s a choice equally available to all.
Choice 2: Charge a premium for legitimized line-jumping. This does not draw off the crowd so much as repel it, by making waiting a less predictable and thus less attractive means of getting to the attraction. This has the advantage of, hey, more money, plus most of the crowd, once they understand the process, will not be enraged by it because they understand the concept of the corrupt maitre’d. The problem with comparing this to first class/second class service is that whereas an airline will seat their first-class passengers first and in roomier seats, the other people who have paid for their tickets still get to ride when the plane takes off. They’re not left out in the hot sun, or if they are, they’re compensated for it.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently unethical about an amusement park’s choosing this option, but I would advise against it because it breaks an important rule of amusement parks: you want people to spend their money, not *think about * money, certainly not in the sense of how greedy you are for it.
But I’m not going to tell Six Flags how to run their business. If it works, it works. They have little to fear: most of the hard-core Marxists are at Busch Gardens anyway.
I think we should go all the way. If we’re going to apply free-market principals to amusement park rides, we can do MUCH better then simply charging a flat-fee to let the better people skip to the front of the lines.
Each ride has a certain capacity; for every day that the park is open, say, Space Mountain, can give a ride to so many people. What we need is a market where people can buy slots on the rides they wish to buy.
The way I envision it, instead of people entering Disneyland and seeing a meticulously landscaped logo in front of the train station/line, they should enter and see a large electronic billboard that will, for each ride, display the current price per slot, the number of remaining slots, the number of slots that have been traded, and any recent trends in the price of a slot. As families enter the park, they can determine which rides they wish to use that day and buy slots accordingly at the market rate (it will, of course, be up to the park to set the initial price based on expected demand). Orders can be placed with a small comission and with the appropriate slot-taxes paid through apropriately costumed Disney cast members–Scrooge McDuck and Pluto would be apropos. After purchasing their slots, the families are given a pager which will notify them when its their turn to use the ride. They could sell their slots prior to use if they so chose.
The possibilities are endless–an enterprising family, could, on a hot day, make a run on the water-ride slots and resell them during the hot afternoon hours at a tidy profit. Long lines would be a thing of the past, because everyone who purchased a slot would only have to appear for their dose of joy when notified. And futures! Think of it: At any given moment a mechanical failure or injury could shut an attraction down for the day. Why not speculate on it?
As with all other problems that exist, a market would be an ideal solution. Of course, some would complain that poorer families wouldn’t be able to enjoy the park as much, but what’s the alternative? If you gave everyone equal access to all the attractions, there’d be no incentive for people to work hard and make a lot of money to buy slots on the nice attractions. This would lead to the Magic Kingdom becoming some kind of sick commie welfare state. Mickey likes people who work hard and earn their place in society, and he fucking HATES poor children. So make Mickey happy, kids: Tell your parents to get off their asses off the couch and get that second job so your god-given right to make a childhood trip to Disneyland is as good as it can be!
I apologize for the above post. It’s Friday, my work day is done. I can go home now, and I’m feeling mildly euphoric.
I would soooo be willing to shell out for the line-jumping options.
And, come to think of it, it might actually reduce the amount of money you spend overall.
Let’s face it, there are a limited number of rides you want to go on. The rides themselves are quite short – what, five minutes or less, with a few exceptions? So by buying the LineJumperPass, you likely can do ALL the rides you want to hit in a single day, saving you the expense of a multiday pass AND reducing how many inflated-price meals/drinks/snacks you ‘have’ to buy to keep your kids happy.
Sounds like a good deal to me.
And perfectly okay, morally/ethically, too. We make these choices of more money+better aspects vs. less money+poorer aspects all the time.
Where did you stand on reading the new Harry Potter book? Which mattered more to you: getting it right away or getting it for less money? The former group shelled out for their own copy of the hardcover, the latter group got on waiting lists at the library or wait for used copies to show up at secondhand stores or just borrowed it from a ‘gotta have it now’ type friend a week later.
Ethical … well, it isn’t unethical. Yes, it’s capitalism. And (you didn’t ask) yes, it’s rather tawdry and ugly. Even if I had the money to buy it, I’d feel like a heel passing all the proles stuck in the cattle chutes. Something like this would make me less likely to visit the park (not that I like theme parks anyway) because it would make it even more apparent than it might otherwise be that my “hosts” are seeking to wring every penny from me. It’s tacky.
The moral benefit of freedom (including the economic freedom found in capitalism) is that it lets people be who they want to. The downside is that some people choose to be greedy assholes.
Here’s a capitalistic solution. Let people sell away their right to board a ride. The amusement park could have multiple pricing structures.
-
Pay extra to go to the head of the line
-
Pay normal to wait in line
-
Pay less for a restricted ticket that excludes high demand rides.
My wife hates roller coasters. She wouldn’t ride in one for any amount of money. So she could either pay less for a ticket that doesn’t include riding the roller coasters, or maybe stand in line for an hour, get to the head of the line, and then offer her spot to the highest bidder.
How does that work? Is there a central database that makes sure you’re only waiting for one ride at a time? What happens if, during the wait for Batman, you try to enter the virtual queue for Superman?
It seemed to not even begin counting down wait for the second ride until the first one that you had reserved had been ridden (or timed out, if you don’t show up for the ride in a certain window of time). Both when reserving a ride and when actually arriving to ride the ride, you place the device next to the sign for that ride, and it initiates a communication, likely with a central repository of some sort.
Are you able to sell your spot in line at any of these amusement parks? For example, could I pay someone to wait in line for me?
Although Metacom’s plan (which warms by free-market heart) was meant in jest, I think amusement parks could do much better with line management than the currently do. Why don’t they have all-electronic lines?
Give each customer a scannable badge. Each ride/amusement would have a scanner out front where you’d swipe your badge and it’d record a reservation for you at the earliest possible time. A paper receipt could be printed, but maybe having little kiosks all over the park that will display your reservation times would better.
Each reservation would have a time window that it’s valid for, to give some leeway. The system would be smart enough not to double-schedule rides for you.
Such a system would have a high capital cost. But customers not standing in line are happy customers. Happy customers who can then wander about and spend there money in the shops and restaurants. It’s just a matter of time before some park thinks of this.
This is how Disney Fastpass works, with the exception that Disney is not electronic-only. While you are waiting for your reservation time, you can go and physically queue at a different ride. Fastpass works by putting your entrance ticket in a kiosk by the ride. It then prints out a slip of paper telling you what time you can come back and do the ride - you get a one hour window. You cannot register for a second ride until 5 minutes after the window opens for the first ride. Note that you can register for a second ride at that time, whether you have taken the first ride or not. This allows you to optimize your Fastpass usage it you register for your second ride as soon as the window opens (plus 5 minutes) for the first, then you go ride the first.
Fastpass does not monitor when you take the ride - you hand your slips of paper to an attendant, but they are not registered back into the system in any way.
With Six Flags Fastlane you are given a time and you can go to the ride from 5 minutes before that time. You then use your Q-Bot to register that you are now at the ride. If it is more than 5 minutes early, it will reject you. If you do not register for the ride within 10 minutes (I think) of the time given, it will time out and you lose your reservation.
But from what you said in the OP, that the tickets are restricted to certain times and are limited. (they sell out)
So now instead of chosing when you want to ride a particular ride, you only go at a certain time. This allows the park to controll the ‘express’ line as tickets are limited in number and the time they can be used. If your ticket says 4 pm, then you wait till 4 pm to ride the ride. You are waiting. You just aren’t waiting in line, you are out spending even more money on snacks or stuff. That is why these programs are being set up. When you are waiting in line you aren’t buying anything.
I think the idea is fantastic. Personally, the prospect of waiting in line for over an hour to get on a rollercoaster is not very compelling. I’ve turned down my last few invitations to go to amusement parks just because they’re not fun for me. I might reconsider now that I can upgrade my ticket to the point of not sucking.
What happens when the Q-Bots rebel and start killing everybody on line? That’s what concerns me.
Actually, I think the park would look at it in a different light. People standing in line aren’t buying $5 bottles of water or $5 hotdogs. Free them up from waiting in line and people will probably make more of the over-priced impulse buys that tourist traps love.
Last time I was at 6 Flags (Over Texas), about 3 years ago, we took advantage of the spend extra and wait less feature. Paying a few extra bucks is so worth it to not have to stand around in the Texas sun.
I agree that a system needs to be arranged to rescue people from standing in lines. The old-fashioned way -handing the guy running the ride a $500 bill- was vulnerable to ‘uncorruptible’ attendants, and of course you had to be prepared to defend your rights against outraged mobs. I’m not certian the six flags way is much better; it is after all simply a ‘bribing the politician’ take on the same system. You don’t have to worry about attendant corruptiblity anymore, but you might still need the bodyguards.
The mouse house seems to have a better system, but aren’t they flirting with a critical supply problem? I mean, if everybody can just walk in and book their flights, er, rides easily and conveniently, aren’t you going to reach the point where people arrive at 11 am and the entire park is booked up for the day?
I’m not sure I understand why everybody feels they have to go to amusement parks on weekends and holidays. Granted, of course there’ll be situations when that is the only way, but I’m under the impression that most people who can afford to go at all are going to be in some sort of employment situation where they can adopt the revolutionary strategy of going on a weekday. In other words, plan a month or so in advance, ask for the day off, and go to Six Flags then. We went to Disneyland a couple of summers ago, while I was on a vacation from work. We went on a Monday, and never had to wait more than 20 minutes to get on a ride.
Logically, then, we should not allow car dealers to sell different trim levels of cars, because there is an inherent classism in you paying $2000 extra and getting a leather interior and nicer wheels.
You are not being treated like a second class citizen. You could have paid the extra money; it was your choice not to. Yes, the business class passengers get a nice lounge and get to board first, but they are also a lot of money out for that; it’s an even tradeoff. You don’t get as nice a seat but you were allowed to pay a much cheaper price. How is paying less money NOT a benefit?
This is what we just did. I’d rather go to my job on a holiday than try to go to an amusement park on a weekend. Hubby and I took a Tuesday off, went to Kings Dominion, and walked onto every ride we wanted with maybe 10-15 minute waits for the very popular coasters. Four to six hour waits for one ride? Why even bother?