The Experience Economy, Tech’s Role, and the Biggest Blind Spot in Attractions

Tim Samson (00:00)
I don't want to say we need to stop being as accommodating as we are.

But the fact that we are accommodating creates this non-standardized version and allows people to do things that are not in their best interest.

John Pendergrast (00:08)
Yep.

And I think fundamentally that the business itself isn't order-based.

Tourist attractions aren't order-based, they're guest-based. If you dig into any owner, operator of an attraction and ask them why they do what they do, they're gonna give you a story about some family that just had an incredible experience, right? That's what they do it for. And I think we just have such a misalignment between what we have on the market what we sell and the tools that we have.

and what the actual business is doing.

welcome to Signal, the podcast for attraction operators who want to look around the corner. I'm John.

Tim Samson (01:14)
I'm Tim and in the next 30 minutes, but it's probably going to be more than that because we talk too much. We're going to break down the key trends shaping our industry today and explain why we're starting a podcast anyways.

John Pendergrast (01:27)
Mm-hmm. It is interesting when you're trying to start a podcast the the ideas you have on the podcast and then the recognition of having to sit down and actually do them And it's always this in-between stuff. That's always the hardest, right? So, okay. Well, so Tim I'm gonna interview you because this is definitely not part of the scripts I'm gonna interview you a little bit and ask you what is your background? Where do you come from?

Tim Samson (01:36)
Right. ⁓

Yeah.

Right.

Where do I come from? Well, first off, I have to say, like, there's nothing typical about, like, two guys over 40 starting a podcast. Like, that never happens anywhere, right? so. I said over. Yeah, so my background, so.

John Pendergrast (02:03)
I wish I was still 40.

Yeah.

Tim Samson (02:10)
right out of high school, I kind of had a, I won't call it love affair, but I always really loved roller coasters. I loved roller coasters as a kid. I wanted to design them. We were lucky enough to grow up in Michigan, which is close to Cedar Point, for those of you that are familiar, very large park. So that was kind of our home park that we always went to.

So as a kid, I had this fascination with roller coasters, right? And designing them and doing different things. And I think that eventually led to a fascination with the industry. So you fast forward to my senior year of high school, and I'm at Cedar Point, busy with some friends, and I got lost, and I'm sitting on a bench. And a guy in a suit comes over and goes, do you need help? This happens a lot in my life. People say, do you need help? I must just look like I'm lost.

But he goes, you need help? I said, no, I'm just going to sit here friends come around. And this was pre-cell phones, right? But anyways, long story short, he was like, well, why don't you work here for the summer? And I was like, I don't want to work in amusement park. Like, who wants to work in an amusement park? And then long story short, I ended up coming back and working at that park for the first time.

summer. And I don't think that was the point when, when I fell in love with the industry, but that was. That was the start where I saw, there's, there's something here more than just pushing a button on a roller coaster. so that led me to start to really look at the industry in a different light and look at what we, what we did. And I think because a lot of my.

John Pendergrast (03:25)
start of it.

Tim Samson (03:41)
favorite memories were in these places associated with rides or theme parks. I started to associate with that and I thought, well, what better industry can you get into than something that just brings joy to people, right? Like you see that on daily basis wherever you go. So I ended up looking for a full-time gig in the industry and went from Cedar Point to Michigan's Adventure and then ultimately through the IAAPA job board.

for those of you that aren't familiar, the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions. I was on their job board and saw this little park in New Jersey that was hiring an assistant ops manager and said, I'll do that. I'll do that. So I got the job. I thought I would be in Jersey for a year. 20 years later, I found myself still there.

Right. At the same thing, going through a number of roles from operations to generalists, operational change to marketing and automation and a little bit of tech side. And during, during my time there, I was fortunate enough to be mentored by one of the owners, Jack Morey, who was this larger than life person who always taught people to explore edge cases of everything. And was really a proponent of.

public spaces, like designing places for people to actually live and engage rather than just open spaces. He spent a lot of money trying to do that in Morey's, but there's really some beautiful things there. I was fortunate enough to do that through his passion and through that journey, I fell in love with what the industry provides. And over the course of 20 years, learned a lot about the industry, about different aspects of it.

in really engaging with guests. And then was fortunate enough to fall into the tech side or the dark side, the supplier side that I call it. Sorry. Sorry, John. You've always been on the dark to fall into that and realize that the impact there could be much greater because you can help a lot more, a lot more attractions and it actually has,

Expanded my view of like what an attraction is like passenger vessels and tours and other things immersive experiences And different things like that that kind of fall in that weren't really in my purview originally. So So that's the long-winded this is why I said it's gonna go over 30 minutes but this is the long-winded version

John Pendergrast (05:45)
you

It's alright, the section that our producer put in there was two minutes. you ⁓ used the two minutes. ⁓ I'll give a brief, I'll try and give a brief, I'm not good at brief either, but I'll try and give a brief where I come from as well. So, I mean, and you know some of this story, Tim, but for the rest of our loyal viewers.

Tim Samson (05:56)
hahahaha

Yeah

John Pendergrast (06:14)
I actually wanted to be a pop star. wanted to be a musician. That was my goal in life. And that was what really, really drew me in was this idea of building things or writing music in this case. Prior to that, I wanted to be a aeronautical engineer. So you can see that there's wild swings in the things that I'm interested in as a young man. But eventually it was that wanted to be a pop star. I went to music school. Don't know why going to music school was going to make me a pop star, but that was in my head. So I went to music school. I only had two problems. I wasn't

very talented and I wasn't very good looking and you can't miss both. You need like one or the other and so I didn't have either of them. And I ended up getting a job working at a computer store and I already liked computers. I was doing electronic music and so I already had some experience. And you know one thing led to another and I got into programming and I started to write code and that led to a bunch of different jobs over the years.

Tim Samson (06:46)
No.

John Pendergrast (07:09)
And eventually led me to working with a company out of Niagara-on-the-Lake called Whirlpool Jet Boat Tours. they needed a rewrite of their Windows 3.1 reservation system, and they wanted to be able to sell online at a time where really people weren't doing that yet inside of our space. Like, that just wasn't a thing. And so I started writing software and getting into that space and learning about it. And what I realized very quickly was that...

problems, there were many of them. And that technologically, we were very, very far behind most other spaces. Like movie theaters got kiosk ticketing, online ticketing easily a decade before the tourist attraction space did. And just recognizing

that itch that you had to solve problems was going to be really well scratched by this industry. And over time, headed into writing more and more software for this space and eventually launching this company and working to really continue to try and improve the industry's technological capabilities and to continue to try and solve these problems. there's always a new set of problems to solve.

Tim Samson (08:11)
Yep.

John Pendergrast (08:11)
So

that's kind of where I come from. You know, this podcast, the purpose of Signal as a whole, I think, and Tim, feel free to jump in here with some additional thoughts, but the purpose of Signal, is really to just have conversations about things going on in the industry and to discuss kind of important decisions that are happening in the space or directions that the space needs to go or...

know, recapping what other journeys have been. We're gonna have lots of interviews with lots of different people throughout this first season. And really hearing other people's stories. We want this to be an optimistic experience. We want this to be an opportunity to not just...

kind of bitch and complain about what's happening in the world out there, but rather look at it and say, okay, so there are problems, but what are the solutions? And so today's podcast, I think is really just gonna be about what's going on out there? What's happening in this space? What do we see? What are our possible solutions or what are the directions we need to go, we think, to actually find some solutions? And really just kind of break that down a little bit and see if that resonates with any of

viewers but throw whatever you've got in there as well.

Tim Samson (09:21)
Yeah, I think you summed it up pretty well. I think the only thing I would add is  industry

Needs another source of what's going on. What's the pulse, you know? And I think a lot of times people may view it as this is a tech company that's doing this. So therefore everything is going to be tech based that's gonna to be true to a point right because we are a tech company But that's not where my passion lies and I don't think that's where your passion lies John in

John Pendergrast (09:39)
Right.

Tim Samson (09:49)
In that aspect of we really care about the guest experience, how we can make operators' lives better, how we can move that and whether that is a solution like a hand stamp that I remember from taking a couple of guys to Hershey park or whether that is some digital solution. Right. There are lots of ways to approach problems. And I hope that the podcast can give everyone who's listening.

Kind of that mindset of how they might be able to approach something a little bit differently that fits within their operation.

John Pendergrast (10:20)
Yeah, I agree. I think we're all searching solutions and answers to problems. And the industry continues to innovate and change and progress. So yeah, let's jump into it. So the very first trend that we're kind of seeing in this space is that the experience economy is maturing. What does that mean? What does that mean to you?

Tim Samson (10:43)
that is maturing. You know, it's really, it's interesting because I think about it's been hundreds of years since this economy has been around, right? You think to like ice runs in Russia and the Ferris wheel during the World's Fair of Chicago and all these different things like, so to say that the industry is reaching a maturity level seems a little immature, quite honestly.

John Pendergrast (10:44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tim Samson (11:07)
because there's always gonna be this need for air in your face kind of experiences. You can only get so much on the phone. You can only connect with other people so much through technology, right? Like we're doing right now. We're in different locations talking through a computer, but there's something about being in a space and being with people that's magical, right?

So I don't think it's going away. I think that people are, are, are changing, ⁓ what they expect out of these experiences, right?

There's a little more technology, there's a little more immersiveness. You just can't like throw a ride down on a concrete jungle somewhere and call it done, right? They want these memorable things that really resonate with them. So the bar has been raised, but I don't know if the industry is mature. Now we do see it merging into these other sectors.

like retail and things like that where there's crossovers, transportation, retail, hospitality, kind of all those things. And it's becoming, it's becoming more kind of inducing to the collective of things. But I think that we have to remember that, you know, the attraction type things have been around for a long time. These really immersive experiences.

have only been around from like the sixties, like when, when, Disney started building things other, other than that, it was just parks, right? There wasn't a lot of theming. There wasn't a lot of IP. There wasn't a lot of storytelling for lack of a better term. So I'm, so I think it depends how you look at it is, is, is the experience economy maturing or, is it evolving into something that's different? That's more encompassing.

John Pendergrast (12:41)
Well, I think technology has changed it. It's a slightly embarrassing story, the other day I was looking for something and I went and I was like, I wonder if it's in the yellow pages.

This is the thought that went through my head. And I went, there's gotta be a phone book around here. And then I went, hold up, that died a long time ago. Like there might be Yellow Pages online still, but they don't print these giant Yellow Pages anymore. And these do get delivered to your house once a year, right? Like you get the Yellow Pages. And then I was at the doctor's office and they said, what's your wife's phone number? And I went, I could tell you what my phone number was at five, but.

I don't know my wife's phone number and I had to go look it up and I looked, I felt like all humiliated and like I'm a terrible husband or something, right? But this is how technology is working, right?

Tim Samson (13:18)
You

John Pendergrast (13:28)
Are they maturing? I would agree with you. I don't know that attractions are maturing in the sense of their mindset is different. I would actually argue that in some sense, as attractions need to go back to some of original mindsets of how their founders thought of the world, which was, we're here to delight people. We're here to take them away to somewhere else. We're here to let them put the world's problems down for a minute and do something. We're here to help you find joy next to somebody you might not even know on a roller coaster

and you might not even speak the same language, but you can have the same experience together. Like this kind of magical experience. And go back to more of that, because I think in some senses, the digital revolution, this digital maturity kind of thing, that we're starting to say, that's what we mean when we're talking about experience economy maturity, is it's all about the digital side. Those are all just tools. Those are all just the commodity or the tool of the layer that does it.

And can you use this device to help people get into an attraction? Yep. Can you use it to help them experience the attraction through AR or some other kind of format? Sure. But if your entire thing is reliant on that device, I don't know why you're going to that attraction. And so I'm hoping that maturity doesn't just mean digital maturity.

Tim Samson (14:33)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I mean, you look at different industries and you know, we've had conversations about how other sectors are far ahead of where attractions are. Like, retails decades ahead. Right? Like we're now seeing stuff within the space that they've been doing forever. So, we've seen a huge change in retail. Like we've seen actual stores close and these things, but, what's interesting, particularly with that case is.

Say that they're 20 years ahead of where we are. But what are they adopting now within the retail space? They're adopting experiences, right? Like we've talked about all these things. So brands are becoming these experiential immersive things. Yeah. Well, the Apple store has always done it. Like you go into the Apple store and it's curated. Like everything is exactly how it is. They welcome you. You feel like you should be there. They're there to help you.

John Pendergrast (15:16)
Mm-hmm.

What's old is new again, right? Like, yeah.

Yeah.

Tim Samson (15:37)
They basically have taken everything that the attractions industry strives for and said, we're going to make money off product with it. Right. And moved it. so if they're moving to that, then how can the experience economy be dead? Right. Because they're ahead of us.

John Pendergrast (15:50)
Right. okay, so that being true, like, the another one of other trends we're going to talk about today is technology. So technology is no longer optional, it's foundational.

That's the statement that we have. Do you actually like based on what we're just talking about now, is it mandatory? Yes. I would say in many senses now it's mandatory. Although you still come across the occasional attraction that gives out paper tickets that you buy on site and is absolutely booked out all the time. That they have no problem with that at all. And that brings me back to this idea. Like, listen, I'm a tech, I run a tech company.

Right, like clearly I should be saying techs that you need, know, but at the end of the day, if you don't have the magic, no amount of tech is gonna save you, in my opinion.

Tim Samson (16:36)
Yeah, there's there's nostalgia to that. And it's it's how do you balance tech? Like I just recently went to Providence, Massachusetts from Boston and took the ferry. And it's a really interesting mix of like technology and not technology. So you book online and you do all the things you process your credit card. And then when you actually get there, they give you a paper ticket that has a Sharpie written on it, you know, that has the date and the time that you're going to take the ferry. ⁓ And as a technologist,

John Pendergrast (16:45)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Tim Samson (17:04)
I get that paper ticket in my hand and I was like, this could be so much like they could do all these things. They could, they could do dynamic pricing and they could do all these things. You could put it on your phone. You wouldn't have to use these sharpies. You wouldn't have to pay for the printed ticket. But then at the same time I got mad because when the ticket taker ripped my ticket, he ripped the middle part with the picture on it that you keep as a souvenir, right? Like, it tore the edge. So, ⁓ so it's a little bit of, ⁓

John Pendergrast (17:08)
Yeah, put it... Just on your phone. Yeah.

Right.

Mm-hmm

Tim Samson (17:33)
Both. So where does nostalgia and where does how it's been meet technology and interact. And I think that's where smart technology comes into play. Like not going too far over and really meeting guests where they are for the experience. They have phones in their pockets. The industry has fought fought against phones for a long time, not being able to take them on rides. They're starting to circle back to it because they have phones like

It's there. It's in their pocket. You should use it to your advantage, right? Yeah. But balance the experience. Not too much, not enough. And if the experience doesn't require the phone, or it gets in the way of the guest experiencing it, then do your paper ticket. Or lock the phone away. Or all of those different things.

John Pendergrast (18:02)
It's a kiosk in your pocket, Like, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Well, mean, I think a lot of the ways that technology is being used is just literally to facilitate rapid delivery and rapid data storage, right? Like the ability to take that information easier. Because it used to be as paper tickets. And then what would they do? They'd count the stubs at the end of the day and tell you how many people have been in your park. ⁓ OK, nice. OK, so already smarter. Yeah, that's good.

Tim Samson (18:37)
You don't just count them, we used to weigh them. Yeah.

John Pendergrast (18:45)
So you look at it now and you're like, ticketing hasn't really evolved. You're like, okay, so originally we did ticketing by, here's a rock, it's a special rock, it lets you come into this whatever, gladiators arena or whatever it is. And then we moved up to paper, because now we could actually afford to use paper. And we started printing paper tickets. And then we decided to take the paper ticket and put it on a phone. I mean.

the level of technology, right? But it's not really any different, right? And you're like, it's just a tool. And I look around it's very interesting watching attractions try and grapple with phones because you're standing there at a park and you're watching families. And you've got dad there on his phone on a call and you've got mom trying to take pictures with her phone and also probably browsing Pinterest or Insta or something like that.

while the kids are on the roller coaster. And you're like, is this the thing? Is this what was the thought when we got here was that we'd have all these interruptions and the device itself almost provides more interruptions than it does benefits at times. And then taking that and going, is there a way that we could use this to your point in balance, but also not? The idea.

Tim Samson (19:55)
Mm-hmm.

John Pendergrast (19:58)
is we have to have our ticket on here and we want you to pull it out and scan it and all these other kinds of things. Is that really what we want? Do we want to break the immersive experience by constantly having you pull out your device and find your barcode? I don't know, just different thoughts and ideas of where we need to go. And I think facial rec and that facial recognition technology is really interesting. Also really privacy concerns about it and things like that, but really interesting because it's the thing that might actually be able to set

you back into not having to pick up your phone and just going and doing things. Which is kind of a flashback to the past when that's how it worked.

Tim Samson (20:38)
Well, you know, it's interesting that you say facial rec because I think it's a misunderstood technology. Right? Like everyone thinks, they're going to have my picture, they're going to store my picture, they're going to do all these things. That's not what it's doing.

John Pendergrast (20:46)
I'm sure it is.

Tim Samson (20:53)
Right? Like it's created a number based on measurements of whatever, and then getting rid of the photo. so, so are the measurements of your face, a privacy concern, you know? So there's, there's lots of interesting things, but I think a lot of concerns or ability to not adapt technology or to meet the guests where they are, are based on. Misconceived notions of how the technology actually functions.

Right. And I think if we go back to what are you trying to do or what are you trying to solve and will this help it as long as it adds benefit, I think the guests are okay with it. Right. Like if it's going to make their visit easier, faster, cheaper, any of those things, then it's probably okay.

John Pendergrast (21:30)
Yeah.

Yeah, mean, maybe. mean, there's social questions around those kinds of things as well, right?

is in some parts of the world, those technologies aren't used exceptionally well for people or in the human condition. So there's questions around that as well. I wonder, so trend number three was high demand meeting operational headwinds. And so I wanna kick this off by saying, I think this has always existed. And I think we've approached it in different ways. Like if you look at the 90s, early 2000s, there was a real push to,

I don't want to say it this way, but it's the only way can think of saying it, which is there was a little bit of the cattle mentality of get as many people through the line as quickly as you possibly can and shove them in to the park or onto the boat or whatever else. you got these big turnstiles and you're just trying to move people. And I think...

around 2005, somewhere in there, 2010, it became this kind of thing that that was the focus of just trying to put as many people through the line as possible. And then as we started to head further later into the 2000s, we started getting this thing coming. the first time I heard it was actually at AZA, at the Association of Zoos and Aquariums show, where they started talking about experiences and that people didn't want to just be a number and they didn't want to get the same thing that that person got.

They don't want an adult ticket. They want an adult ticket that's going to give them something that they can brag to their friends about, and post on Insta. I look at it I go, high demand still exists and operational headwinds around high demand still exist. But the expectations are a lot higher to have a different experience. Do you have any comments on that?

Tim Samson (23:21)
I don't think it's isolated to the attractions industry. And I think a lot of it is about right sizing. So if we look at like the restaurant industry, which I think is a really good example post COVID. So they reduced their operating schedule because of lots of reasons and they never went back to having late night menus. Most places aren't open anymore.

John Pendergrast (23:31)
Yeah.

It's true.

Tim Samson (23:43)
Like they

do one seating and that's it. Like they're not trying to get two or three turns out of the table because what they realized is the cost and the return is out of balance with those two things. We see the same trend happening post COVID within these attraction spaces. And you combine that on top of what you just said about guest perception of wanting these VIP curated experiences. So when we look at the operational effects of this.

well, if we reduce our operating hours or we only allow so many people in, or we do these things, then we can have less staff or the staff can be more efficient or different things. Now, does that mean you have less staff? No, but it now frees up staff members to do these other things, right? Which are these VIP experiences in totality. Your revenue is.

John Pendergrast (24:25)
other things. Yeah.

Tim Samson (24:31)
increased because you're making more money over here with the VIP experiences and you're right sizing your operation over here. but you're also meeting the demand on the market. Now the con to that, right. Is as operators and as individuals that run attractions and experiences, you want as many people as possible to experience it. unfortunately, because of reduced capacity and increased demand and the need for these VIP experiences,

I think in a lot of cases we're pricing people out of the market. We're pricing people out of the attractions. And you look at for-profit and non-profit and they have different needs and different structures.

John Pendergrast (25:07)
So let's talk about that for a second, because I think this is actually playing itself out really, really strongly in Europe right now, where Europe is going through this kind of difficult transition, because there's a mass amount of overtourism. Like in huge areas of different countries inside the EU, you're seeing places where they're literally putting up like...

Tim Samson (25:12)
Mm-hmm.

John Pendergrast (25:29)
walls so that you can't take that selfie because there's just too many people there. And you got towns going from 500 people to 500,000 people in a summer. There's just no way to manage that kind of infrastructure.

And I was having this discussion, the irony was I was in, I think I was in Vienna at the time I was having this discussion, so it was kind of like I am the problem. But I was sitting there and I was saying to myself, and to my wife we were talking about, but the fact that this problem doesn't have an easy solution and the solution that I think exists is actually kind of socially not acceptable. But.

The solution, I believe, is going to be that they're going to start charging more to go. So cost is going to go up. To your point, exactly what's happening in attractions. So more curated experiences, higher price. Well, I think there's going to come a point where that higher price is going to continue to rise to the point where only the very, very well-off can attend some of these things.

And I think that that kind of like rides against some of the social responsibilities that we feel as a culture that we have to say everyone should have similar opportunities. Do you have comments on that? I could go on, but this is kind of...

Tim Samson (26:43)
Yeah, it's, been. ⁓

It's been something that has really irked me quite honestly, probably from a different perspective than you think. I personally in my life have been fortunate enough that I can afford those experiences and do those things, but I fear that other people can't. And when we talk about...

You know, we were just talking about a sense of play and how play is important to wellbeing and all that. So if you price people out of these experiences where, they can recharge, right? Well, what does that mean for society? But then when you look at creating these tiers, of people, right? Like, like, what does that do? And how is operators can we consciously do this? Right?

How can we not let people into the attraction? Because we find our joy in their experience in our attraction, not in the amount that they pay, although that keeps the lights on and the doors open and all that stuff. But no, but it goes back to, I can tie this back to misunderstood technology at the same time, because this is not isolated and we look at things like dynamic pricing or pricing structures or things like that and they get a bad rap.

John Pendergrast (27:39)
So, sorry, continue.

Tim Samson (27:56)
because it's, you're going to charge people more. But in theory, they don't because it opens the door to those people that you priced out of the market at the same time. So there are solutions to this in ways to do that, but you have social responsibilities to other humans. You have social responsibilities to culture, like in the case of Europe or Japan that are doing tourism tax, like you want to expose that culture to other people.

John Pendergrast (28:23)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Samson (28:24)
and you have this kind of like to your business and to make it successful into if you're public, you know, there's lots of other responsibilities with like equity to shareholders and all that. so it's not difficult. It, it, or it's not an easy question to answer. Like how should you approach these

John Pendergrast (28:42)
Yeah, and I'll say it this way. So I was born in the 70s. having been born in the 70s and then growing up in the 80s and early 90s, it was very uncommon to have someone that I knew who went on big trips. It wasn't something like you'd have the occasional friend who was clearly well off who went to Mexico, right?

Very, very rarely did you hear of anyone who went to Europe, just full stop, at least where I grew up. I grew up in the wilds of Canada, so maybe this isn't quite as transferable. But this is how I grew up. It is endemic now that people take one, two, three trips a year because they want experiences. And we've built a culture around an experienced culture in some senses that go and have these experiences.

It seems to me, and I think Hawaii is a really interesting cautionary tale about this as well, which is they pushed really hard during COVID to shut tourism off because they were over-touristed. And I felt like I was there sharing some of that in my job here at RocketRez as I was there for some of that. And I understood what they were saying because I was driving around an island seeing things and there was no one there.

and then they would describe what it was like and I'm like, I wouldn't even want to come to this. And they're like, yeah, now try living here. The trouble now is that they're almost on the other bank now, which is how do we come back to having tourism that is sustainable and is going to continue to drive our economy?

⁓ And so anyways, we're a little bit further afield about high demand meeting operational headwinds, but I think they're all connected to each other because I think at the end of the day, we want to let as many people through the door as we possibly can of all economic capabilities and give them the experience of the attraction that we're running or servicing so that people of all walks of life can experience that sense of joy and wonder that is the reason we do our jobs, right?

Tim Samson (30:36)
Jack, Jack Morey used to say this thing and I'm not quite sure where it came from, but I guess I'll give him credit. He, well, he always said that, you know, good artists create great artists steal, right? Like they steal other people's ideas. so we'll give him credit for this, but, it was always a statement about Wildwood, which is the town where Morey's Piers is located. Wildwood is for anyone, but it's not for everyone. Right? Like it's welcoming anyone is welcome here.

John Pendergrast (30:55)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Tim Samson (30:59)
But it's not going to be your style. It's not going to be your taste for some people out there. And I think that as operators, we do that a lot and we need to think in that context. Right? Like we want to welcome everyone. Like we want to welcome all socioeconomic classes, diversity of people, know, different ability levels, things like that. But you're not going to be for everyone and you have to be cognizant of that. Like you can't please everyone.

John Pendergrast (31:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, choose your, choose your ICP, right? Yeah. So trend number four is economic uncertainty is shaping consumer behavior. And we've talked a little bit about this already. We've kind of touched on this topic to a certain extent. I'll just expand on what I said about growing up in the eighties. While I didn't take these big trips, I did do a lot of.

Tim Samson (31:25)
Right. ⁓

John Pendergrast (31:44)
local market kind of things, where I'd go to the zoo, I'd go to a water, like, uh,

Back then, they didn't really have water parks quite the same way where I was, but similar. And we do these outdoor kind of things and do a lot more of this community-based kind of vacations together, kind of thing like that, where you go play baseball in the park every Wednesday or with a group of people that would show up. And there's a lot more of that. And I think that the infrastructure we had around that, like the zoos we had, the different aquariums, whatever else we have in our area,

museums almost felt stronger in some senses back then because there was just such a loyal following of people who that was their vacation, that was their thing to do. Now that may just be a feeling that might not actually be able to be proved out. But to my mind, economic uncertainty always just opens up another door.

Tim Samson (32:37)
Yeah, I agree. I think it's the changing consumer though, which is really this and like over, over my years at Morey's, I was able to see this, this pretty drastic shift, right? and what has happened was these families would come for a whole week and they would do that year after year. there's actually really cute stories about the hotels.

John Pendergrast (32:53)
Right. Right.

Tim Samson (32:57)
you know, where the family would put a quarter above the ceiling tile every year. So there's like stacks of quarters. So when Maury's like remodeled that room, they would take the quarters out, put them in a storage thing. And then when it was finished, would put them back exactly where they were. Right. ⁓ and those are kind of those guests experience things, but the trend went from these weeks to five days to four days to three days.

John Pendergrast (33:12)
Cool.

Tim Samson (33:21)
And then at some point it shifted and when it shifted, it shifted to, we're going to come experience Morey's and they may never come back again. And I think we're seeing that across all the attractions that we serve is you're getting a lot of this one and done. And I look at that as the generations changed.

and I'm thinking of China, like not the country, but the dishes, right? My mom has a lot of China and she's trying to find someone to give the China to, To pass it along. And I don't use China. No one in my family use China. no one, no one.

John Pendergrast (33:58)
thinks that way anymore.

Tim Samson (34:00)
value I don't want to say no one values the China enough because there's lots of memories around those but No one Really really wants it like and really will use it and get value out of it and I think that correlates to how generations are changing because We went from these

generations and probably even including mine that we're all about accumulating things. Like I'm going to accumulate all these things. have to, I have to buy a house. I have to do this. I have to buy these things. I want knickknacks if that's a word or tchotchkes or whatever you call them around the house and you accumulate things. And we went to these very minimalistic things. and the generations now are, I want to spend my extra income, that I have on experiencing things, but I don't want to experience the same thing over and over again. So.

So I think attractions have been a little slow to adopt this, this one time visitor mindset, right? But we, but we see it shifting and, I think we're seeing that in economic behavior, because if you don't want to accumulate things, then you're not going to buy a lot of stuff in the gift shop. Right. But you may buy more food and beverage because you're there for the experience. So it's really thinking about the totality of the operation and how the generations are going to interact with it.

John Pendergrast (34:50)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

I wonder if it's just because our attention spans are less now. Like, I was watching Casablanca a few years back.

And if you ever watch Casablanca, one of the things that you'll notice is that the camera shots are eternal. Like, they'll stay on the same camera shot for a very long time. And it's kind of the charm and also the pain of watching old movies. so I was reading an article about this, and it was my generation of Gen camera shots were, down to 30 seconds. The longest you'd see is 30 seconds. And then by the time it got to my kid's generation, it was four seconds.

Tim Samson (35:24)
Mm-hmm.

John Pendergrast (35:44)
or three seconds. Now it's microseconds And you'll see this in movies now where there are like 17 different angles of the same thing that happen inside of 20 seconds. And I wonder if it's attention span. So people are like, I don't want to go do the same thing again. It's because I've seen it. I'm going move on. This big world. Let's go see other things.

Tim Samson (35:55)
Yep.

It might be because there's just so much media to consume on a daily basis and it comes at us from all angles. But then we talk to operators or attractions where they're fully immersive and you have this magical moment where you get immersed in the attraction and you lose sense of time.

John Pendergrast (36:21)
Right.

Tim Samson (36:22)
And I think those are really valuable. if you can immerse someone in an experience and it's four hours pass and they think it's been 30 minutes, right? Like, like that's really powerful when you think of that. so there is in, I don't know if it breaks the norms of how we consume stuff or if it's just, You know, Mr. Beast, right?

John Pendergrast (36:33)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Samson (36:42)
He talks about the purple cow, like we're all used to seeing cows, but if you see a purple cow, like you'll stop. So it's these things that are outside the ordinary that catch your attention, that engage with you and allow you to kind of like drop everything that's going on around you and really focus. And those are special.

John Pendergrast (36:42)
Yeah.

Yeah, and those are rare. Those are really rare.

So what's the biggest blind spot for operators today? I think the reality is that technology is something we all recognize that we need. And yet what we're doing at this point in time is we're concentrated on technology of.

the selling of the ticket, the collection of the money, those kinds of things. And it's very, very order-based. It's very, very transactional-based. And I think fundamentally that the business itself isn't order-based. ⁓

Tourist attractions aren't order-based, they're guest-based. If you dig into any owner, operator of an attraction and ask them why they do what they do, they're gonna give you a story about some family that just had an incredible experience, right? That's what they do it for. And I think we just have such a misalignment between what we have on the market and what we sell and the tools that we have.

and what the actual business is doing.

And because technology is taking a bigger and bigger role, that technology is becoming more and more impactful to the business. And you're more more dependent upon it, that misalignment is just continuing to grow. And I think that's a blind spot of how we actually think about technology. And I'll throw a RocketRez into that bucket as well and say.

When I started this company back in 2011, I had a vision in my mind of what I wanted to accomplish. We haven't achieved that yet. We're still working on that. There's things to come that are going to be very, very different than what we've done before because the reality is that we really have to...

We really have to view technology through the lens of what the business's primary focus is and really come to terms with the fact that technology is a tool. And a really great day in technology is when you don't think about the technology at all. It just works.

Tim Samson (38:49)
Yeah, I'll kind of reiterate on that. I think that we have to think of the guests first with technology when we apply it within attractions. Like how is the guest going to engage and how can it make it easier? but second is how does it make the business better? Like does it increase operational? How does it let you spend more time with your guests? That's ultimately what every operator wants to do ⁓ or enhance these relationships. so it's, it's.

John Pendergrast (39:08)
Yeah.

Tim Samson (39:12)
Interesting because ticketing has always been ticketing. Like we talked about this before, right? Like it was a rock or a paper ticket, maybe rock, paper, scissors, but it was a rock, a paper tickets, something else. It's on your phone. It's moving. And is the industry underserved by thinking that monolith monolithically about, about ticketing and admissions when we really should be focused on.

John Pendergrast (39:20)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Samson (39:36)
on the guest and how the guests consumes the attraction, how the guest experiences the attraction and how the use of smart technology can enhance both those. Right. but ultimately, like you said, the best technology is invisible technology. Like it exists to serve a purpose, but you never see it. So

John Pendergrast (39:52)
100%.

Tim Samson (39:53)
So I do think it's a blind spot. I think it's a blind spot from the industry in general because they think that the hurdles are so big with it. The other is they don't know how to implement it. They don't know what to do and they don't have access to curated data to support those decisions. They have access to data. They just don't know what to do with it. Right.

John Pendergrast (40:11)
Yeah. I agree

with that. I also say this. We're an industry with very few standards inside of technology. We have standards enforced upon us by government agencies saying this is drinkable water. You can't run without this. You have to have this many bathrooms, this kind of stuff. You have these kinds of things. But when it comes to technological roles, you just don't have a standardization that's really happened.

And so I'm an entrepreneur, I've been an entrepreneur almost my whole life. As an entrepreneur, you very much think that your way of doing things is the way that it should be done. And you see that across the industry. There's so many different ways to approach similar problems. And we're starting to see a little bit of standardization taking place throughout the industry. We are starting to see parts and pockets of it.

but there's still such a wide variety of, well, this is how I'm gonna sell, or this is the order that I'm gonna do it in, and so forth and so on. And I think we're really missing an opportunity as an industry to recognize something, and that is that, and I'll use a simple metaphor, and maybe you're a Mac user, and then this doesn't work for you at all, but in Windows, Windows put the start button in Windows 11 in the center of the screen.

Every other OS release, they put it on the left-hand side. And they didn't allow you to fix that for the first year. Someone wrote some sort of software you could install to fix it yourself, but they didn't allow you to fix it. And then they finally did a release that allowed you to do that yourself without any third party. One of the most popular things that was ever released into Windows. And you go, well, what does it matter?

was because there's a standardized way of thinking on how you do that process. And everyone knows you just go there, click that, and now you've got what you need. And by changing that somewhat arbitrarily, you actually broke that mold. And the challenge we have in our industry is that we don't have enough of those standards.

to understand how guests purchases. And I think when you look at the retail market, we understand in the retail market, there's an expectation by guests that these things are gonna be available to them. And I think we don't have that yet in our market space. And I think there is ⁓ a real differential between I bought on Amazon and the experience I had there. UI aside, you might not love the UI, but the experience is a certain way. And it shows up tomorrow or whatever.

and buying a ticket on RocketRez or any other platform, you buy a ticket. That experience is just not at that same caliber or that level of maturity yet. And I think we have work to do as an industry to get there. And it's gonna require us to think differently because it's gonna require us to go, maybe we should do this in a more standardized way rather than I want my pink button left corner over here. I use that metaphor all the time, yeah.

But like, I want this super stylized, super customized thing. And really you're just messing with your user. Our producer, ⁓ Gerry is a designer and a technologist of her own right. ⁓ And she's not, you can't see her at all, but I'm gonna out her a little bit. She probably remembers Adobe Flash back in the old days. And Adobe Flash, and we're all old enough to know Flash. Adobe Flash is amazing, right? Cause you could do anything. Now ask yourself why Adobe Flash died.

I think the problem with Adobe Flash was website standardized. They have a bar at the top, they have a bar at the bottom, they have a menu on the left-hand side. You only have this many buttons. Your user account button's up at the right. Flash was all about infinite possibilities and in some senses, art.

But that wasn't conducive to an environment that everyone could understand. And so everyone went to the same website look because it was the most usable of all of them. And I think that's what we really have to tackle now in our industry is how do we become the most usable to guests? And that's the real challenge.

Tim Samson (43:58)
I think you're right. There's a lack of standardization. I think that part of the issue of that is there hasn't been a demand from the guests to do it. Right. And I think as technologists, we haven't done a good job of letting the operators know the cost of inaction.

The cost that it's costing them to not change something because there is lost revenue with having your order sequence out of order, right? Or not having upsells or not selling to take it effectively.

John Pendergrast (44:25)
right order, Tim? And this is my point. So yes, I agree with you, but all on one page, multiple pages, like wizard process versus page by page by like our single page, there's a real problem here. I think, I'm just gonna keep cutting you off, I think it's a data problem. There's no way of understanding what's industry norm, because there isn't one.

Tim Samson (44:48)
There isn't one, but where I was going is we haven't done a good job as technologists to say this will result in X if you do it this way, it'll result in X and we haven't done a good job as technologists of ingesting the data and saying this is what you should do, but we've kind of attached ourselves to the

John Pendergrast (44:55)
Yes, agreed.

Agreed.

Yeah.

Tim Samson (45:10)
I'll call it old analogy or old thought process of every attraction, every attraction is unique, right? Which is true. Every attraction is unique, but it's the same guests going to all of them, right? Like it's the same persona. So, so you can have your pink button.

John Pendergrast (45:22)
Yeah, that's super important, yes.

Tim Samson (45:27)
on the left left or right hand side, whatever side you said. So you can have your pink button over there and you can you can make the cursor a rock and you can do whatever but you should follow this flow and you should be doing these things to increase your revenue. And I'll argue that the lack of standardization comes from a lack of information. Right.

John Pendergrast (45:27)
Yeah.

So I'm

not going to disagree with you there because I think the fact of the matter is that you need to prove these things and you need to prove them scientifically or as scientifically as you can. I don't think anyone's really effectively done that. I would agree with that. We haven't done that either.

When I started Rocket Rez all those years ago, one of the things I was looking at some old paperwork on this, one of the things I said I believe we need to do is to provide standardization to the industry. And here's what's really interesting. I don't think we've done that. In fact, I would actually argue that in many senses, we, like every other ticketing company I've come across, has decided to be opinionated right up to the point where we had customers saying do it different.

Tim Samson (46:23)
Mm-hmm.

John Pendergrast (46:24)
And then you have this customer says do it this way, that customer says do it that way, that way, that way, and you end up with a whole bunch of features and toggles and bells and whistles for those specific cases.

but you're not actually really helping solve the problem in some sense. You might have that individual company go, I'm really happy with this, but you've provided no numbers on it. It's still a theory that they have. And I think there is a wherewithal that needs to take place inside the industry to say, no, this is the right way to do it. And if you don't want to do it that way, that's totally fine. But then maybe that's the other ticketing system you're going to use in the process. I don't know. These are kind of risky thoughts, but there is a watering down that happens.

Tim Samson (47:00)
Yeah.

John Pendergrast (47:04)
by not being opinionated about how things should work. And I think you can't be opinionated if you don't have data to back you up, because otherwise it's just gut. And I think we're proving pretty substantively in the world right now that gut is good, but data is where you're really going to drive value. And the insights that you're going draw from. Yeah.

Tim Samson (47:23)
Yeah, the data usually validates. Usually

validates your gut feeling. Now there are times when it doesn't, and then you have to decide what you're gonna do. And I will tell you that in my career, almost always, leadership went the opposite way. Right? Like they went with their gut, right? And that's, ⁓ no comment, no comment. ⁓

John Pendergrast (47:31)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. And were they right? Maybe we had to bleep that part of the episode out.

Tim Samson (47:46)
No,

but I mean, sometimes, sometimes, but it's, it's a rarity. Like if you follow the data, as long as the data is clean, right. And it was sourced properly. If you follow the data, you will. You will 90 % of the time fall on the right decision, right. But it may not seem like it right away. Um, but you can also manipulate data to support any outcome. So, so you have to be careful with that too. Right.

John Pendergrast (48:02)
Right. I would agree with that. I would agree with that.

Right.

Tim Samson (48:13)
I think there's a need for standardization. do think there is a need for any, any vendor, like I'll say any vendor that serves the industry to kind of like stay in their lane and say, no, this is how you need to do it. Whether it's technology or it's the food and beverage supplies or it's trailer or whatever. I don't want to say we need to stop being as accommodating as we are.

But the fact that we are accommodating creates this non-standardized version and allows people to do things that are not in their best interest.

John Pendergrast (48:38)
Yep.

Tim Samson (48:41)
Right? ⁓ So we have to be more opinionated, but we have to have the data to back it up and say, yeah, yeah.

John Pendergrast (48:41)
100 % agree with that. Yeah.

Yeah, can't just be an opinion is what you're saying. Yeah, I would

agree.

Tim Samson (48:52)
And I think that we are behind other industries, but we can look at the retail industry with Amazon and others. We can look at the airline industry. We can look at a few of them. And we may have lots of feelings about how they conduct business, like specifically airlines, but the flow and the process and how they do things in the order, we should be taking cues from those because our guests have been trained by those systems.

John Pendergrast (49:04)
Yeah.

Yes,

yes, we are definitely a following industry in that sense. We're following the technology that our guests have been trained on. And we need to actually take that very seriously and really build with that in mind because I do believe we're a generation behind, just full stop across the board, no matter how new the ticketing, quote unquote, ticketing system is. I think we're a generation behind in our thought processes.

Tim Samson (49:33)
And I haven't been in this role. It's a really exciting role for an operator to be head of product for a technology company, right? I know enough to be dangerous. So I would challenge all the operators that are listening.

Hopefully there's more than two of you right now. But I challenge all the operators that are listening to really think about the outcome of what you're trying to achieve. Because in my short amount of time here, I have heard from multiple operators that say, we do it this way because of X, and Z.

But X, Y, and Z is usually a decision that was made by someone that's no longer at the attraction that was there 10 years ago. For some reason that doesn't exist, that doesn't apply to the system. So I challenge everyone to think about what is the outcome that you want and then remove the process from that decision.

John Pendergrast (50:05)
Yeah, 30, 10 years ago,

Tim Samson (50:17)
I want guests to be able to renew memberships, remove the process. Don't follow this step by step.

John Pendergrast (50:23)
Right, okay, so I'll riff off of that for a second. I think

Because ticketing systems have been, there have been a lot of them. I think at one point in time in 2020, I did a bit of research project and came up with there was 155 different ticketing systems in the tours and attraction space. Now the vast majority of them, like 135 or 140 of them were actually in the long tail, competing for the Fare Harbor and Peak Pro and Rezdy kind of categories. But.

this is where they really sat. you go, that's a lot of ticketing systems. How could there possibly be that many ticketing systems, right? because of that, we end up in an environment where it's like, we provide you the software, but you provide the expertise. And I actually used to say this, I'm really good at writing software, you're really good at running your business, I wouldn't have a hot clue how to do that, therefore it's a great marriage.

I don't know that I believe that anymore. I actually think what I've come to is that because of the breadth of operations that we work with now and the experience that we now have within the walls, we as a team are often quite opinionated. And I can imagine other larger ticketing companies feel the same way. We're quite opinionated about how you should consider doing things. Not because we have skin in the game for...

your specific attraction in some sense, but also we do, like we definitely do have skin in the game. But also because we've just seen so many different versions of things and have started to recognize to your point intrinsically or instinctually, this is what works, right? And.

I'd love to see a world where we can get into that partnership and we have customers, we have that partnership, but I'd love to see a world where ticketing systems aren't just, okay, plug it in, turn it on. All they do is it's the ones and the zeros, but that there's more of a partnership relationship where you go to your ticketing system and you say, listen, we're trying to accomplish this goal of doing this. How would you guys, what did you guys see? And we'd have a relationship where that could be like almost the boardroom discussion. there's a missing element here that's

happening, but I think we're heading in the right direction to have those kinds of conversations more, because we already do and now we're seeing more of them. But I think the technology has to follow to support that as well.

Tim Samson (52:33)
my only caveat to this would, would be, and I'm struggling with how I just, how to say this without sounding, without sounding weird about it, but,

I think as technologists and as solution providers to attractions, we need to be honest with them. So we need to be honest when we say you should do it this way because this is the only way our platform supports it. And we should be honest with them to say, you should do it this way because it will be better for you because of XYZ. Yeah. because both of those, both of those cases are true. And I will tell you from being on the operator side,

John Pendergrast (52:55)
Yeah.

Yeah, so to say the why.

Mm-hmm.

Tim Samson (53:08)
Right?

Like you ultimately hear this way is better, right? But this way is better for the solution platform, not for the operator. so I think if we have more open and honest conversations as the industry with the attractions that we serve, the easier that boardroom discussion will be. Right? Like they will feel empowered to have those discussions with us.

John Pendergrast (53:15)
for this solution platform.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah, no, I

sense. I think that makes sense. Well, and these things are complex, right? Like these systems that are out here, like ours and others, are complex. They're very, very complicated systems. Okay, so one other question here is, what is signal and what should we be listening for? How would you answer that? Yeah.

Tim Samson (53:38)
Mm-hmm.

How would I answer it? Right.

Look, it's branded as RocketRez. It lives on RocketRez but. But I I believe it's really our answer as.

people who are really passionate about the industry to talk about the things that matter. that seems a little high level and generic, but there are lots of different aspects of things that affect our operations or just topics that no one is talking about or that there's too much talk about and not really any expert in the room. So I don't want to say that we're both experts. Like we are both very opinionated. We have very different experience within the industry. But what we wanted

do

a signal is to bring in those subject matter experts that have really compelling, interesting stories to talk about their path and the things that work for them where they might have failed and with their perspective really give you a viewpoint on the topic, right? Now, hopefully you can take one or two little nuggets away and say, okay, well, I'm going to implement that in my thing. Or you come out of that saying,

they know nothing what they're talking about and we're going to go and we're going to implement it that way. Either way, we have helped you make a decision, right? We have helped you move in the direction you want to go. So we just want to be the catalyst to help push that decision over the edge in the topics that we talked about.

John Pendergrast (54:55)
Right, right, right.

I think that's a great answer. I don't know that I have a ton to to add to that answer. Maybe I'll add this. I think it was you that told me a story of one of the roller coasters at Morey's. But the fact that you ordered it, it was like, takes three years to get installed. the time that you say I want this, you get ready for it, you've done all the planning, and it takes three years. Technology is like this too. And I think that there's...

there's an expectation that, this is the new cool thing. Why don't you already have this? And of course, I live this on a daily basis. Now you do as well. Welcome aboard. But like, you live this on a daily basis. So if that cool thing's out, how can you possibly not support it yet? Or this, we don't do this this way anymore. Can you change everything and make it work that way? Or why does it do this this way? Because 10 years ago, that was how we did it. And that part of the system hasn't updated or changed in that time. So it's just a very big thing.

Tim Samson (55:33)
You

John Pendergrast (55:55)
And I look and I go, Signal is an opportunity for not RocketRez like, listen, we'll talk about a little bit of RocketRez stuff here, but that's not the focus of this podcast. Like, I agree with you 100%. This is because we both love the industry.

and we want to see the industry do well. But I think it's important for everybody to recognize that their ticketing provider, whoever that is, there's a lot going on behind the scenes that are trying to be balanced. And you're going to see signals of what your companies are working on through their communications. this is, while we might not talk directly about RocketRez you will hear signals of where we are going as a company and what we believe. And I think that's important to go, hey, do I believe in that?

Like, do I believe in what they're saying? Do I get behind their why of why they get up in the morning? Or don't I? I think Simon Sinek has the great talk about why, right? Is you don't buy what people sell, you buy why they sell it or why they're doing it. And I think that's important for us to talk about is our why.

So think we've said some of this. I'll say a little bit and then Tim maybe you can throw some things in as well. So I mean, here we are at the end of our first podcast. I think it's pretty obvious that both Tim and I like to talk. Second take of the first one, But we both like to ramble we both like to talk and we're interested in ideas. I just wanna say like, we don't have enough of these kind of conversations in history available to us. There just isn't enough of this kind of content.

Tim Samson (56:57)
Yeah.

The second take of the first one. Yeah.

John Pendergrast (57:23)
Most of the operators that I talk to desperately want to talk to other operators and sometimes have a group of people that they do that with. And they come from all different sizes, like from the very, very small operators all the way up to the larger operators. Everybody is part of this industry together.

Right? And we are as And we are definitely stronger together, how we are approaching these things. And these conversations, we're just, we ask you to join us. Will every word that drops out of our mouths be engaging and awe-inspiring? Probably not. We are a lot like everyone else, right? Like we're just average people in an extraordinary industry. And I think there's an opportunity for us to learn and grow together.

And so for me, I think Signal is an opportunity to hear from a bunch of guests that we're gonna bring on, and hear their stories what works for them and what doesn't. And then just to be really honest, and I encourage you to engage as an audience and send in questions and disagree with us and like, let's turn into a dialogue. We need more of this, not less of it.

So I'm John and my co-host Tim here can add to that.

Tim Samson (58:32)
⁓ yeah, I, you know, I, I agree. I would add that I think there is benefit to, you know, a rising tide rises or lifts all ships, right? Like it lifts all boats. And, ⁓ I think that too often the industry stays in their lane. Like,

John Pendergrast (58:44)
Yeah.

Tim Samson (58:53)
Water parks are over here, amusement parks are over here, passenger vessels, observation towers, immersive experiences. And we have conversations in these silos, but we don't have conversations collectively. And I think there are lessons to be learned from different sized attractions, different attractions located geographically, and also different types.

John Pendergrast (59:03)
you

Tim Samson (59:16)
Right. Because they're all the same guests. mean, we've said this a couple of times, the guests that go to a passenger vessel, the same guests that go to the observation tower and the same ones that show up at your water park. Like they're all the same people. So why are we not talking about these things? Why are we not talking about the commonality of threats? Because this topic may be affecting passenger vessels today, but it's going to show up at the front gate of an amusement park next month. Right. And it's the same thing. so having the open dialogue, pulling in.

Interesting people with interesting stories that can talk about topics, you know or people that We consider experts within that field, right? Again, this goes back to you can agree with us or not So so you may agree with our guests or not too, right? But we're often going to try to bring people in that have multiple different viewpoints so that we can collectively look at the topic and say This is what it is. I don't know that we'll always end up with an answer at the end of it, right? We might not

We might not have a clear path of like, this is what you should do, but you'll at least explore the topic a little bit.

Thanks for listening to Signal.

John Pendergrast (1:00:20)
Thanks for listening to The Signal, I'm Tim Samson.

Tim Samson (1:00:22)
No!

John Pendergrast (1:00:24)
I saw my opportunity. Thanks for listening to Signal. I'm John Pendergrast.

Tim Samson (1:00:25)
⁓ yeah, had to get that one in there.

And I'm Tim Samson and until next time, keep listening for the signal amongst all the noise.

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