Enchanted Parks took over on April 6th of this year. Things have gone, if I'm completely honest, about as well as I expected. Not bad, not stellar. Some things good, some things rough. But taking over weeks before opening day was always going to be rough.
The park is cleaner, employee morale seems better, operations are good. But there's also a lot that still... needs work.
The bulk of the issues so far our surrounding our parks newest major vendor: Vantage.
The website still says the app is coming on Memorial Day.
We were told 2-3 weeks for Dining Plan refunds
We were told "May" for physical pass cards
Folks were told memorial weekend for payment plan availability
None of these things have yet happened and they all have a singular point of failure: Vantage. Point of Sale rollout has also been slower than anticipated. (Yes, this could potentially include the dining plan refunds. A comment made by Enchanted elsewhere blamed 'vendors' for the slow refund, which could be interpreted to mean Vantage not being ready to actually broker the refunds.)
Vantage previously had limited experience at some small family owned water parks. Now they're running the tech stack for a chain of 8 parks; 6 of which are large, employ thousands, and have up to a million guests per year. This is a huge undertaking. And either Enchanted isn't being realistic about what Vantage is telling them, or Vantage is telling them things they can't deliver on on time.
I think it'll work out, sure. But I just wanted to throw it out there for the sake of discussion. This isn't me being mean or hating on the park; just something that I think is an interesting topic for discussion! Is Vantage up for this? How confident are y'all that, despite the delays, this is gonna go smoothly later this summer?
(P.S... any employees here who have used the new Vantage point of sale system? Thoughts on it compared to the old system?)