Cashless Games

[King Ding Dong]

The other night we were there. Wife wanted a giant pink monkey. Machine at the game was out of cards. game person directed me to Machine across the way. The line was 10 people deep and the first one in line appeared to not understand the concept of how to make the machine work. Wife said screw waiting, and we left. If the game accepted cash instead of cards, I probably would have spent $40 not winning that monkey.

That kind of nonsense is for a girlfriend not a wife.

(Going on 21 years this September)

[The Interpreter]

...with the girlfriend, the wife or both?

Terp, who likes to ask questions---exiting stage left.

[freaks76]

Huh, I must be doin something wrong.

Freak, who is going on 15 years.

And has more stuffed bears in his room than he knows what to do with.

[gad198]

They could do what Disney does.... Link the season pass card to your credit card and allow the season pass to be used at the games.

 

I've heard a number of passholders mention this, and it would certainly be nice to have the ability to merge the pass and game cards together.  They would need to merge together the two software systems together somehow.  If the game card system stays around for more than just this one year (meaning there was some financial benefit derived from the game card system) they may look into that possibility.  It would definitely make things more convenient.

 

I'm usually at the park once a week playing games.  It looks like some games have been affected by the introduction of the game cards more than others.  The various basketball games and Ring Toss seem largely unaffected, and I think that most of that is the fact that there is a game card station right next to all of those games.  The further someone has to go to get a game card the less likely it is they'll do it.

 

"Impulse" buys keep getting brought up.  I'd say that probably 99% of people who go to a park and decide to play games are "impulse" buyers - that they don't decide ahead of time that they're going specifically to play games.  With that in mind, I'd group most game players in two categories:

1. Those that are only going to spend $1 or $2 at a time playing games.  These players typically have pre-set limits as to how much they're going to spend on games and that's it.  Have the game cards affected the total game play of this group?  It probably has.  People in this group may decide that spending $2 dollars on a game isn't worth getting the card. 
2. Those that are willing to spend $5 or more at a time.  They're more likely to put more money on the cards upfront and they're generally willing to play at the higher priced games (3 Point Challenge, Ring Toss, etc.) more often.  These players can be extremely profitable.

Game cards will also mean that the game transactions go much quicker.  A swipe of the card is much quicker than taking time to handle money, which means that you can get through more transactions in an hour which makes the park more money.  It's an interesting experiment for sure!   

[thegajone]

Can you use a credit card to load the game cards? If so then I'm way more likely to play games now seeing as I almost never have any cash on me

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk

[ohioparksrock]

Yea, you can use a CC

[teenageninja]

I assume that the main benefit to the game cards is it doesn't require the majority of games personnel to touch cash, wherein the past all games associates were trained on money handling.

 

That department had trouble staffing and with retention in the past few years.  Not to mention huge theft issues in the past.  I could be wrong though.