dellsguy wrote:So what your trying to tell me is you hire J-1 students on a Quarterly basis and know exactly how it works right? Because by you post I can see that you have never dealt with hiring J-1 students or the third party that you hire them from in your life. You can only train someone so much, and you can't fire everyone or you have no one to work for you. belive me when I say that the students that those are the good J-1 employees. the other ones are usually doing behind the scenes work such as housekeeping. oh yeah and by the way this also goes for americans too. I go to that park on a weekly basis and I can tell you that the americans are meaner than the students.
Evidently you have no experience training work and travel students, because I certainly do, and so does BP/19. The fact that both the local and international employees are mean shows that it's poor management. They are too lax with their employees. Lack of a hiring pool is a piss poor excuse given that several other parks in the same area have higher quality local and international employees. I know of several parks that use a third party company for their international students and still fly overseas to interview them directly, and their is no reason that Mt. Olympus shouldn't be doing this.
Bottom line is this is 100% the managements fault.
Evidently you have no experience training work and travel students, because I certainly do, and so does BP/19. The fact that both the local and international employees are mean shows that it's poor management. They are too lax with their employees. Lack of a hiring pool is a piss poor excuse given that several other parks in the same area have higher quality local and international employees. I know of several parks that use a third party company for their international students and still fly overseas to interview them directly, and their is no reason that Mt. Olympus shouldn't be doing this.
Bottom line is this is 100% the managements fault
Do you see where I live.....of course I hire and train international students. And i'm not saying that management is not partly at fault but there is only so much that they can do. I have worked at almost all of the big attractions in the dells (Kalahari, Wilderness, Noahs Ark) and one thing that they all had in common was that some of the internationals where trash. also, none of these places out here go to the countries to hire any of there internationals just to let you know. So if you have all this experience hiring J-1's then you know that you don't always get the greatest person, but when you are working with a minimum staff because your trying to cut cost (Mt.O) then you don't have the luxury of firing someone just because they where mean to a guest or something. it sucks but until you work in this town that is run by internationals then you have no idea what your talking about.
BP/19 wrote:The management of the park should be making sure their employees are not terrible, and they are, so the parks management is obviously not very good. Do they not do interviews and clearly spell out the expectations of their job? That's what all other theme parks do when they hire overseas I don't see why it would be any different for Mt Olympus.
Bottom line is Mt Olympus doesn't care about their customers at all and probably doesn't care about their employees either. Never have, probably never will unless there's an ownership change, so no point in arguing over it.
And I fully agree. They don't do interviews until the people are already here and they have offered them a job. The way they pick them is by the profile that the hiring agency sends to the park. That is when they figure out what kind of slave labor they will be partaking in that summer. You said it yourself the park does not care about the employees or guests so thats why they don't go to their countries and hire them themselves. I do agree that they need a big change or that park will be going nowhere fast thats for sure.
BP/19 wrote: Bottom line is Mt Olympus doesn't care about their customers at all and probably doesn't care about their employees either. Never have, probably never will unless there's an ownership change, so no point in arguing over it.
They don't care about their rides either. The one good thing at Mt Olympus was actually the food. People say it's gross but i really liked their Mozzaralla Sticks and $10 got us a lot more food than it would at CP or SFGAm. Mt Olympus also has free parking while CP charges you $10 and SFGAm charges $20. Otherwise i can get into CP for $5 more than Mt Olympus if i stay on property. CP>Mt Olympus BIG TIME
Mt. O. has a third party involved with the hiring of international students. The only reason why I know this is because I'm a manager at Timber Falls and one day a woman who helped bring all those students over was wondering if we also wanted to hire some. Thankfully, our GM doesn't like to hire foreigners, so we didn't accept her offer. Mt. O. has plenty of applications from locals, trust me. Last year, we (Timber Falls) received well over 100 applications for employment, all from the area. To say that locals don't want to work in the Dells is a joke; they do, it's just that the bigger attractions exploit the workers for cheaper salaries, trust me. I was talking to a foreigner one day, and he told me that in the end, they really don't make anything. They have to pay for their own housing for the summer, food, etc. and they get paid less than minimum wage. All of the tip jars that are out? They get none of that money either; I was told the manager collects them at the end of the night and they never see it again. It's no wonder that their customer service is pathetic; if they're being treated badly, they are not going to want to treat the customers well either. They are just exploited for their services so Nick can make more money. I'm not saying that foreigners are great either, though. I work the Skyscraper every now and again, and they think they can do whatever they please on it; it gets really annoying after a while and all you want to do is kick them off the ride. I'm glad we only hire locals, because just trying to train a foreigner for a ride? I can't even imagine the horror. Oh, and to make this stay somewhat on topic, I think they are gonna get another up-charge attraction. Just my two cents.
It seems like the park intentionally has their coasters running 1 train so that guests aren't satisfied with a single day visit. Maybe this is their way of getting people to spend more than one day at the park and turn their visit into a "vacation". I've been to the park many times and after last years visit have had enough. Waiting 1.5 hours for Hades is unenjoyable, especially with people smoking and cutting in line. They recently added "A Night at the Park", which costs $5 to add on 2 hours of not so exclusive "ERT" after park hours. Basically this allows you to ride Hades two extra times if you play your cards right and are the first one into the event.
I think long term the park will realize that people will be unwilling to return, because of the long lines and the declining quality of the rides. Also, people at amusement parks don't like being treated like children at a swimming pool, which is exactly how many of the ride operators treat guests. I don't think that the workers from eastern Europe don't know how to speak English. I think it's more of a tactic to interact with guests less.
In the near future, I'm sure this park will have an accident, because of their operations. Walking across coaster tracks is dangerous and shouldn't be done, even if they are running one train.
As far as the new ride is concerned, I could see them adding some sort of tacky steel coaster to try and bring back guests. I'm sure no matter what it is, they'll have one train.
^Thing is, the coasters don't matter all that much. The water parks and go karts are the draw there. The fact they include coasters is more of a bonus than anything.
I would say its the water park and not the coasters. If people want to go to an actual admusement park they can just drive another hour or two and go to SFGAm. Where we have good rides that dont try to kill you.
^To go with that, ValleyFair, Nick Universe & Little Amerika (sp?) are not that far either. It's the same deal at Holiday World. People say the coasters are the draw but look at the lines once the water park opens. It's ERT the entire time. Mt. Olympus would be the same way if they cared about ride operations.
According to Mt. Olympus's Facebook page their will be a "huge" water attraction for 2012! It does not specify that t is a slide, and they do use the word "attraction." Maybe its not a slide, But it looks like no coaster for them this year.
"Laskaris plans to hire another dozen employees to staff the new property and another eight to 10 people to work at an outdoor attraction he’s adding to Mt. Olympus Water and Theme Park to open for Memorial Day."
^Why would they add DJs to que lines? They don't even speal in the stations.
I bet it's going to be another upcharge attraction. I have a strange feeling it is going to be some lame interactive animal/aquarium...like sting rays or something. I have no info to back this up what so ever, but with their history this just seems like something they would do.
True. But I was thinking of an "aquarium" as in MT O style. A slightly bigger then average kiddie pool with a few stingrays or other fish inside a temporaty shack. They can then sell you a photo of you during the experience, and then sell you a T-Shirt saying "I touched it" or something. And of course, the new consession stand which will be right next to it selling cheesy named generic ice cream bars and treats. Don't forget, they need to add an additional bathroom to bring their total count to 3! They also need to upgrade their current addmission computer system with 2...that's right 2...walmart toolboxes with a computer inside to speed up the lines for the hundreds of people waiting in line at opening.
...But a ropes course also sounds like a good guess too
