This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Customer Service
Jul
10
2014
Our recent trip to Cedar Point was our second trip this year. The first one did not go so well. Let’s back up about 3 weeks before our successful trip…
I had planned a special father-son trip with Alpha, our oldest. He had never been to Cedar Point. I hadn’t been in over a decade. And I had never stayed at the on-site hotel. Since I was planning the trip, I decided to splurge and stay in the hotel. (Tickets are cheaper that way, and you get into the park 1 hour early. That part is key to this story).
Friday afternoon, June 6 – the big day. He gets home from school and I get home from work. We eat dinner, with the rest of the family of course, then load up the car and head out to Cedar Point. A couple hours later, we are there. We check into the hotel, walk along the shore of Lake Erie, and look into the park from the edge. We go back into the room, watch an episode of Treehouse Masters, see what we can of the Luminosity show (i.e. fireworks) from our window, and go to bed.
Everything’s going fine.
In the morning, we wake up, go downstairs for breakfast, and finish around 9:15. The park opened for early entry at 9:00, so we figure we will check out and go into the park. Back up to our room we go. One last potty break before embarking on our amusement park adventure… and the toilet doesn’t flush. And the sink doesn’t work.
I call the front desk, asking if it’s just our room. She replies that it is the whole hotel. So we check out, put our luggage in the car, and go into the park.
The water in the park isn’t working either. Toilets aren’t flushing. Drinking fountains aren’t fountaining.
But we are there, so we walk around.
I show the rides to Alpha, and he ponders them. He is interested in the water rides, but they aren’t going.
We eventually make our way to the Sky Ride. Alpha hasn’t wanted to ride anything up to that point, so I tell him that we are going to ride the Sky Ride.
So we do.
And that takes us to the front gate.
We had entered at the back of the park, because that’s where the hotel entrance is. Now we are at the front entrance of the park, and it’s about 10:15. It’s after the starting time, but no one is coming in the gates.
In fact, I see a line of people standing outside the gates. I think of the water problem. It could be that Cedar Point doesn’t want thousands of people in the park with non-functional toilets. That could be a mess. But we are in the park, and the rides are still going, so we will be okay.
Our walk takes us by Blue Streak. “How about that?” I query Alpha. “I want to start with Mine Ride” is his reply.
So we head back to Mine Ride.
Halfway there, an announcement comes over the loudspeakers, informing us that the park has closed – due to the break of the water main – so everyone must leave the park. Tickets will be honored another day, or people can get a refund.
We go back to the back entrance, and there is a line of people waiting for refunds. Before getting in the line, I ask a worker about our options. She notes that our tickets came from the hotel, so we must go back to the hotel for our options.
There is even more chaos back at the hotel.
Not only are all the people who stayed there last night trying to get their refunds/rain checks, but many of the people who are staying there tonight are already there trying to get their tickets too. The lobby is full.
I do not want to stand in the very long line for the counter. I glance around, and I see a couple families talking to a management-looking guy with an official nametag. I edge closer to hear what he is saying.
He is explaining that if you bought your tickets online through Cedar Point, they have your information and they will automatically refund your payment. “Even our hotel room?” asks a lady. “Hotel room, tickets, everything,” comes the reply.
At this point, I am in the circle around this official guy. (Never did read the name on the nametag, but he was wearing a pinkish-colored button-down shirt.) “So I don’t need to wait in line?” I ask. “No, you don’t need to do anything,” says the official guy.
Sweet.
I grab Alpha, figuratively, and we head out to the car.
This story is long enough, so I won’t go into details about the rest of the trip. We made it home that afternoon. When I checked my credit card statement some days later, everything I paid to Cedar Point had been refunded. Even though we stayed a full night in the hotel – refunded. No paperwork needed, no questions asked. They had my information, they used it well.
In the time between when I left Cedar Point and when the charges were reversed on my card, I had some doubts: what if that guy wasn’t authorized to do that? I didn’t have any written statement or even the guy’s name. What if he was talking to people about to check into the hotel, and the refund would apply to them but not me because I had already stayed a night?
But I should not have worried – Cedar Point did it right.
The water main break was the fault of the city of Sandusky, from what I can tell. Cedar Point didn’t address the problem from their own point of view – they addressed it from the customer’s point of view.
Once you make the decision to close the park, you have thousands of upset customers. They made an effort to make people less upset.
Some companies want to take you down with them if they have a problem. That would be bad customer service.
But Cedar Point tried to make sure you were affected as little as possible when they had a problem. That is good customer service.
Who will confront him with his actions,
And who will repay him for what he has done?
Job 21:31
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:54 am and has been carefully placed in the Mishaps category.
July 10th, 2014 at 9:46 am
I bet the hotel was extra busy dealing with unreasonable requests like “Will you refund my gas money, food I ate along the way, and pay for plane tickets so I don’t need to take more vacation time when I come back again?”
July 10th, 2014 at 10:13 pm
I’m sure there were some unreasonable people, but I left as soon as I heard I didn’t need to wait in line for anything, so I didn’t get to hear the variety of requests. I had to wonder, though, why all those people were waiting in line. Most people these days book online with a credit card. Therefore, Cedar Point should have been able to make an announcement – just like the statement the guy made to me – and clear out much of the lobby.