Whole system still feels very OTT. I got a new phone in January and haven't dropped it once yet, I am nervous that won't be the case after boozing at Crevettes and some clumsy scanning on Alice.
Having everyone (apart from those without a phone!) getting their phone scanned right before getting on a ride seems like a bad idea. Previously it was just a few people scanning their Sp**dy P*ss. I guess it makes little difference to those of an age who have their phone surgically attached to their palm anyway, but for the rest of us it’s a bit of a pain. I mean it’s simply enough to present your phone to the scanner, but as you say, how many phones are gonna get dropped, someone accidentally deletes their eTicket, loses phone signal / can’t access email, their battery dies right at the scanner having waiting in a long queue, etc?
I’m not even sure how the on park phone charging facilities work anyway. All I can picture is the old charging stations which I think were in the little Big One shop which is now the donut shop, and that’s going back a few years. I’ve never used a park’s phone charging service in my life thus am not familiar with how they work, but am interested to know about them. Are they still fixed charging points, where you go back in say an hour to collect them? Or do they loan you some sort of power bank? Perhaps not the latter actually as I think I saw on the FAQ that you can buy power banks in the merch shops. If you did buy one, would it even be ready charged though? Again, I’ve never owned a power bank so I hardly know anything about them. It just seems like an extra, annoying thing to have in your pockets on rides to me. If they still have fixed charging points, that would be quite laughable right now as it would mean that effectively you couldn’t go on a ride whilst your phone was charging, unless you went to get a wristband from Guest Services I suppose.
I do wonder though, on rides like Big Dipper where you scan your phone then seconds later board the train, how many phones will be dropped onto the platform / track / bottom of car. It doesn’t seem like a great idea for everyone to have to be fiddling with their phone seconds before boarding a ride, that’s all.
Another thing is that it really should be easier to acquire your physical season pass card. When we went to try and get ours, the queue was long and slow moving, with only 2 or 3 staff on duty giving them out. On the third attempt, we got to the front only for the card printer to run out of ink. Staff had to call to request that an ink cartridge be brought over. Surely a spare should be sat next to the printer ready to install if they are expecting to be doing a lot of printing on opening day. The Globe then shut at least 20 minutes before they said they would, so we couldn't return to collect our cards, as we had ben told to do. Surely they should be posting out the cards, especially at the moment. I'm sure most people would happily pay a fiver for tracked home delivery, rather than lose time queuing to receive their card. Also in previous years, once you had paid for your season pass, it was printed ready, and when you arrived to collect it, it was there ready to simply hand to you. We all had to register our passes online, surely the cards could have been pre-printed at that point. It's not rocket science, they know you've paid for your season pass and already uploaded a photo, so why they couldn't have them posted out to you, even for a small extra charge, or printed ready, I don't know. Also with everyone getting park entry straight under Noah's Ark, I don't see why the Ticket Centre couldn't be open even just for the first week or two of the season, solely for season pass collections. But this is BPB, so logic and common sense goes out the window!
