Woah all of your horses here. How many of you have listened to the episode? I have. A lot of it is taken out of context and lost in translation. The interview takes place in English and I've gone a little out of my way to transcribe it all for you, well, at least the bits referring to the annual pass holders. I do encourage people to listen to the interview in full though, to make up their own minds, before commenting further. It's not the best interview in the world, but it's heartfelt and I don't think that she's beating up on annual pass holders. Not in the way that's been portrayed anyway.
Amanda:
But Robert has done a superb job of creating his stamp on his park. I mean, wow. Yeah. He has really, really changed the way people look at Fantasy land and I'm visited his I mean, hats off to what a great job he's done. Fantastic. And he's getting backlash as well. If you just see or look back when they canceled all the annual passes and didn't bring them back in the game, well, that was a thing.
But it makes sense. At the end of the day, if you have limited space and limited capacity, of course you want to have the fans inside, but also you want to have the full players inside and families. I think what's really difficult is, is understanding your market and when you've got such a limited space, when things like COVID came along, really, we all had to cancel annual passes because that was something that we just couldn't run with because it just didn't make sense.
We wouldn't have parks today if we had to keep them going. And so I think it's very hard for people to understand the actual business behind the business that we're throwing at people and, you know, really, they shouldn't have they shouldn't know the intricacies of it. But I fully appreciate that people get very upset when you take something away from them.
But, you know, season passes are great if you want to go every week, but to be honest, it would be nice that all those people that had season passes were really positive about everything that happened because sometimes they go, so often they take everything for granted and and they believe that they sort of own a bit of the park and that can be quite difficult. and it is difficult because I don't want people not to have a good time when they come to the park. I want people to have a great time when they come to the park. And I don't want people to walk around criticizing certain areas that maybe need another coat of paint quickly. But you don't always have time or the money available to be able to do that constantly.
And they compare you to the likes of Disney, which they go to once a year and it is complicated for all of us that have these family owned parks that try and produce something that's going to give pleasure to a lot of people. And it is difficult. But you know what? I'm grateful for everyone coming to the park because, you know, at the end of the day, fans are great for us and it's really important that we embrace them and we listen to what they say.
Sometimes I take notice, sometimes I don't. But, you know, at the end of the day, I have to run my business as a business. Yeah. And I can't always kowtow to what I'd like to. Well, I can't. I can't do what I'd like to do. Let alone what they want to do. So it is difficult.
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