Cheryl Baumgartner   Medical...
This is another little post I wanted to hang on to from 2.0I little story from my younger days concerning a well known Amusement Park and what it means to give people what they want.  I grew up in WIlliamsburg VA.  Which Happens to be the home of one of Anheiser Busch breweries.  As a kid one of my foundest memories was watching the Clydesdales pull the beer wagon during the Christmas parade.  To be honest "Bud" is great at giving people what they want like the Hospitality Center.  A tour of the brewery topped off by  free samples of the product.  Eventually they went into the amusement park business with the opening Of Busch Gardens: The Old Country.Like any amusement park, the big attraction was the rides, specifically, rollercoasters.  Over the years they have spent big bucks on rollercoasters, each one bigger and better than the last one.  Rollercoasters are great, the get the people in the gate, but how to make money off the folks when they are in the park?One of the original attactions was sort of a midway and the crown jewel was the shooting gallery.  There was always a crowd and you had to spend extra money here.  If I remember correctly it was originally a quarter for 50 BB's which you could then use to shoot up the gallery.  However there was one item in the gallery that was on everyone's list.  The piano player.  The shooting gallery had several animatronic figures an owl that would hoot and flap it's wings, a traffic light that changed colors but by far it was the piano player that drew the most shots.You see in order to activate him you had to shoot the target, temptingly located on his rear end.  Shoot him in the butt and he would launch into a rousing rendtition of Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag.  I guess it says something about us humans that we would get him in a crossfire and make him play continuously.  Eventually the decision was made to remove the midway, shooting gallery included. So for a full season no piano player waiting to be wounded in the most embarassing of ways.  Many resident's who had season's passes either did not get them or stopped going.  The problem is that while season's passes may not seem to be of much importance, it's those local folks that bring money into the park during the off peak times.  Busch Gardens also realized this and looked into the issue.  The Shooting Gallery was probably the most lucrative attraction they had so the next season it was back complete with our favorite piano player.So what is the lesson here.  Busch Gardens took out the midway to try something new in it's place.  Understandable and trying new things can lead to big rewards.  But they in effect threw the baby out with the bathwater.  The shooting gallery was bringing in money, it worked.  They realized their mistake and corrected it when they realized just how much money it was bringing in.  The lesson is not to throw away what is a tried and true proven asset for you.  Don't go so far in a new direction that you lose out on your established income streams.
Oct 18th 2010 18:55