I was blessed that, for the first time in several years, my daughter, son-in-love, and two grandsons, Owen and Simon, from Portland, Oregon, were able to be with me for Easter week. On the Monday after Easter we decided to have an adventure and go to Busch Gardens, an African-inspired theme park in Tampa, Florida.
Although the boys had a good day, we were appalled with the lack of efficiency and the lackluster attitude of almost all the employees. The park has all the right attributes – amazing rides, beautiful animals, wonderful grounds and restaurant facilities. But what they don’t have is the magic that makes an experience truly memorable.
It started the minute we arrived at the park at 10:45 am. Even though we had pre-purchased our tickets, it took almost an hour in line to even get into the park. At least two of the security checks were not open, so four lines had to funnel into two, leaving people jostling one another and frustrated and upset. That day the park was running a wine and food special called “All Day Dine,” so I had also purchased tickets for that.
When we finally did get into the park, we found we had to wait in another line for almost 30 minutes to get our dining bracelets for the day. This concession was staffed by one VERY slow person (reminded me of the sloths at the Drivers License Bureau in the Disney movie, “Zootopia!”) who had to check each ticket individually, enter information into the computer for each one, put the bracelets on individually for each person, and at the same time serve and sell drinks to other customers – AND he was grumpy to everyone. It was 12:30 before we even had a chance to begin exploring the park!
When we later stopped for lunch in another area of the park, we found out that the employee who had given us the bracelets had given the boys children’s bracelets rather than the adult ones I had paid for, so they were only able to have the very limited kid’s meals which did not make them happy. Even though we had all the receipts, no one could (or was willing) to help us. They told us our only option was to go all the way back and wait in the line again for our sloth friend to give us new bracelets. Since we found out that the park closed that night at 7:00, it was not worth wasting more time to go back, so the boys were disappointed at every meal. If the employees had been empowered or had cared enough to take a risk to make a customer happy (since we had proof that we had paid the full amount), it would have greatly changed our experience.
We had expected the ride lines to be long and they were, However, even when we finally got up to get on the rides, the employees seemed bored and almost victimized instead of excited and welcoming to all the people who had spent a lot of time and money to be there. To most of them, it was simply a routine, boring job instead of fun, important work that made people happy. We even found that many of the long lines were unnecessary. On the log ride, for example, each car held four people, but at least half the cars were allowed to go with only two people in each, resulting in wait times of 45 – 50 minutes.
At 6:00pm all the customers with the All Day Dine bracelets were trying to find food to eat before they left the park. What we discovered was that the park had decided to close different restaurants at different times in the late afternoon, leaving only two or three places open at the end of the day for hundreds of people to eat. Sadly, this policy was never posted anywhere, so no one knew this would happen. We were lucky to have been close to one of the few open restaurants, so we only had to wait 30 minutes for some food, but there were many, many upset and hungry people leaving that evening.
We could not help but contrast this experience with ones that we have had at Disney where the procedures are of the utmost efficiency, all employees are committed to the mission of making it “the happiest place on earth,” and everyone goes out of their way to make it a mountaintop experience for the guests. Disney, Southwest Airlines, and Nordstrom are all clients of mine. How I would love to help Busch Gardens create a little bit of that magic!
To learn more about Barbara’s work, go to www.barbaraglanz.com.
