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just a short few this time... (well, shortish... first one is longer because of background explanation)
first. when we get full, like we are this weekend, the wifi gets spotty. heck of a lot better than it was a few years ago, tho. now it actually mostly stays on (evidenced by the fact that i'm actually making this post while the park is still full). a few years ago you were lucky to get faster than dial-up when the park was only moderately full, and when the park was packed to the gills it just shut down. we're also still working on it and tweaking the system and experimenting to try to weed out the hotspots that are getting overloaded and keep things running, but the fact that we're still working on it means it occasionally needs to get reset. and we have signs up EVERYWHERE (literally, in the correct meaning of the word.) to that effect. anyways.. we're full. wifi is getting spotty, and yesterday afternoon i had a pair of teenaged girls come in the office, and one of them asks why the wifi isn't working. i forget exactly what i said, but it was some variation of "spotty wifi because of load blah blah etc etc". she gets catbutt face and immediately breaks out the classic..."i'm paying a lot to stay here..." in a snotty tone. friendly sympathetic katz goes away... "well, our wifi is free, it does tend to get spotty when there are 900 people in the park, and *points at the sign RIGHT BEHIND MY HEAD* we're working on it right now to try to improve the system, and sometimes it's going to go up and down as we make the changes, but *picks up the radio and holds it ready* i can gladly call the person in charge of the internet and find out what's going on." she says nothing but still has catbutt face. i call... and the answer i got was "we know there's wifi outages rolling through the park, we've been tracking and fixing them all day" and then he asked where the guest was located in the park, and promised to look at that node next.
when she walked out i turned to my co-worker and said "I'm paying a lot to stay here??? she was a teenager! geeze they're starting the sucky customers young." and she laughed.
second. hour or two after the other wifi complaint, a younger teen walked in and asked what the wifi password was. we currently don't have one... currently it just directs your browser and you click "connect" and that's it. i told her that, and she was like "oh. ok. we couldn't get our Netflix to work..."
i stopped her and said she couldn't run Netflix, we didn't have enough bandwidth for that. she seemed accepting and went away without complaint.
and last.... about 10 minutes before we were planning on closing the jumping pillow (like a bouncy house without the house) for the night anyway, am older teenage boy comes in and informs us that his bare heel had punched a hole in the pillow. the jumping pillow... the single most popular kids attraction at our park aside from maybe the waterslide... it's nothing to have 20-30 kids on it at a time... and at $3.75 a head per day, it's not the biggest money maker of the park, but it still turns a decent daily take. and it now has a cross shaped rip in it about 8-10 inches long on one side and maybe 3-4 inches on the other... when i went up to get breakfast the pillow was still deflated... the maintenance guys are trying to settle on a glue that will hold the patch in place.. AND stand up to the abuse that the pillow endures (remember... 20-30 kids and adults etc etc) BUT... we have one of the oldest jumping pillows in the Big Yellow Campground system, and i'm (and one of the co-owners is also) worried that we've just discovered the lifespan. but WHY did it have to be right in the middle of 4th of July weekend?!?!? 
on the bright side, by the time i go in for work this afternoon, most likely all the parents that bought today's wristband a day early last night will have probably already come up for their refunds and i won't have to deal with much of that. yay >.>
first. when we get full, like we are this weekend, the wifi gets spotty. heck of a lot better than it was a few years ago, tho. now it actually mostly stays on (evidenced by the fact that i'm actually making this post while the park is still full). a few years ago you were lucky to get faster than dial-up when the park was only moderately full, and when the park was packed to the gills it just shut down. we're also still working on it and tweaking the system and experimenting to try to weed out the hotspots that are getting overloaded and keep things running, but the fact that we're still working on it means it occasionally needs to get reset. and we have signs up EVERYWHERE (literally, in the correct meaning of the word.) to that effect. anyways.. we're full. wifi is getting spotty, and yesterday afternoon i had a pair of teenaged girls come in the office, and one of them asks why the wifi isn't working. i forget exactly what i said, but it was some variation of "spotty wifi because of load blah blah etc etc". she gets catbutt face and immediately breaks out the classic..."i'm paying a lot to stay here..." in a snotty tone. friendly sympathetic katz goes away... "well, our wifi is free, it does tend to get spotty when there are 900 people in the park, and *points at the sign RIGHT BEHIND MY HEAD* we're working on it right now to try to improve the system, and sometimes it's going to go up and down as we make the changes, but *picks up the radio and holds it ready* i can gladly call the person in charge of the internet and find out what's going on." she says nothing but still has catbutt face. i call... and the answer i got was "we know there's wifi outages rolling through the park, we've been tracking and fixing them all day" and then he asked where the guest was located in the park, and promised to look at that node next.
when she walked out i turned to my co-worker and said "I'm paying a lot to stay here??? she was a teenager! geeze they're starting the sucky customers young." and she laughed.
second. hour or two after the other wifi complaint, a younger teen walked in and asked what the wifi password was. we currently don't have one... currently it just directs your browser and you click "connect" and that's it. i told her that, and she was like "oh. ok. we couldn't get our Netflix to work..."
i stopped her and said she couldn't run Netflix, we didn't have enough bandwidth for that. she seemed accepting and went away without complaint. and last.... about 10 minutes before we were planning on closing the jumping pillow (like a bouncy house without the house) for the night anyway, am older teenage boy comes in and informs us that his bare heel had punched a hole in the pillow. the jumping pillow... the single most popular kids attraction at our park aside from maybe the waterslide... it's nothing to have 20-30 kids on it at a time... and at $3.75 a head per day, it's not the biggest money maker of the park, but it still turns a decent daily take. and it now has a cross shaped rip in it about 8-10 inches long on one side and maybe 3-4 inches on the other...
when i went up to get breakfast the pillow was still deflated... the maintenance guys are trying to settle on a glue that will hold the patch in place.. AND stand up to the abuse that the pillow endures (remember... 20-30 kids and adults etc etc) BUT... we have one of the oldest jumping pillows in the Big Yellow Campground system, and i'm (and one of the co-owners is also) worried that we've just discovered the lifespan. but WHY did it have to be right in the middle of 4th of July weekend?!?!? on the bright side, by the time i go in for work this afternoon, most likely all the parents that bought today's wristband a day early last night will have probably already come up for their refunds and i won't have to deal with much of that. yay >.>
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