Getting Guests to Do One More Thing at Morey’s Piers with Tyler Jacobs

Tyler Jacobs (00:00)
For years, we fought over how to do this And I came in one morning and said, Tim, what if we just made it dumb? What if it just looked for two pieces of information, matched it up with this one table that we have in the database. And if it matches you're in.

You scan at a ride five to seven minutes later that's processed through all And we can push you a notification that says, Hey John, there's a milkshake stand right at the exit. Here's $4 off that milkshake or $5 off or a free milkshake or whatever it is based the many levers.

John Pendergrast (00:25)
Right.

John Pendergrast (00:47)
Today we're joined by Tyler Jacobs, Director of Digital Transformation at Morey's Peers. Tyler first joined Morey's as an intern over a decade ago, and since then he's become the person leadership turns to when they need to bridge legacy operations with modern technology. Most recently, Tyler and his team launched FAM Club, Morey's first ever loyalty program.

In just four months with a team of three, they integrated multiple systems, cleaned years of guest data, and rolled out a points-based program that delivers real-time offers as soon as the guest steps off a ride. What makes this story remarkable is that Morey's has always been known for its no-discount philosophy. Loyalty at Morey's isn't about coupons. It's about creating value, nudging behavior, and getting guests to do just one more thing.

I'm excited to dive into how Tyler and the Morey's team pulled this off. So Tyler, welcome to Signal.

Tyler Jacobs (01:40)
Thanks for having me.

John Pendergrast (01:41)
first off, the problem that we have here today is that we know you. And by knowing you, this is gonna be like the most informal thing ever. And I do actually truly pity Gerry trying to edit what's likely gonna be a lot of laughter.

which probably means we're going to have to give her a raise.

But maybe what I'll start with today, at least the first question is, there's a bit of an elephant in the room and that is that you and Tim have known each other for years. You started as an intern under Tim at Morey's You still talk.

The script says almost daily, but I know it's like minute by minute. At any given time, if Tim's on the phone, it's at least 50 % chance he's on the call with you. It's been a while since Tim's been at Morey's and yet that conversation continues. How does that relationship work? And how did we end up here?

Tyler Jacobs (02:15)
twice daily sometimes.

Tim Samson (02:27)
Yeah, how does it work, Tyler? I want to hear this too.

Tyler Jacobs (02:29)
Tim and I have worked together for a long time. Tim was my first boss in the real world. Arguably, really, he faked it and I reported to Jack Morey. But I reported to Jack through Tim. we worked really closely together. I moved into a full-time role from that internship.

Then we sort of got into this around COVID time. I mean, that was six years or seven years into that relationship, but around COVID time, we sort of found ourselves sitting literally side by side for many, many, many hours a day to the point where when we were home, not allowed to be in the office, we would have teams up and be doing our own work, but it just...

Tim Samson (02:52)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Jacobs (03:08)
felt better because we were next to each other. We were getting more done that way, as weird as that is to say. ⁓

Tim Samson (03:14)
We were

quietly working on different things with the screen open and then randomly talking.

Tyler Jacobs (03:16)
And,

John Pendergrast (03:19)
Wait, quietly working? I don't believe that.

Tyler Jacobs (03:19)
but it was, It was interesting because, Tim was really focused in marketing. I had a guest service ticketing admissions. but the relationship, I think, I mean, correct me here, Tim, but I think the relationship really came to be because prior to this, they were really sort of disparate and.

I'm going to speak for myself. I'm sure many others who will listen to this will agree. Marketing liked to give marketing messages and everything was come do this thing. Everything was great. And then the tickets would show up and admissions would say, why does it say this on here? We can't do this. this sort of became really great for everybody. because we balanced those things, you know, the marketing message along with

what the guests needed to do when they got here. And that continued to grow through COVID. We were then sitting beside each other. The projects got more and more complicated, you know, bigger. And we leaned on each other's thought processes. So, you know, Hey, Tim, I'm thinking about this thing. And Tim would be super honest with me about how bad of an idea that was. And then I wouldn't take it anywhere. Or he would come.

Tim Samson (04:19)
We had a list,

we had a whiteboard on the wall in one of the offices and we had a list of Tyler sayings. Every time he would say, can't be that hard, we would write it on the list so that later we could go back and reference just how hard that thing was. Most of the time, there are a few things that we were wrong on.

John Pendergrast (04:33)
how wrong he was. Yeah, how wrong he was.

Tyler Jacobs (04:37)
Now that

Tim is gone, I got to do those hard projects by myself, by calling him, but nobody was here to stop me. And now we have a loyalty program in a couple of months time. How hard was that, Tim? How was that time?

John Pendergrast (04:50)
Well, mean,

Tim Samson (04:50)
Yeah, well it was hard. Hey,

I set it up for you. got all the wheels.

John Pendergrast (04:54)
an old thing, right? Like, why let the facts get in the way of a good story? Right? Like, is that that kind of mentality, which is why let the details of it get in the way of a great idea? And I can imagine Tim and marketing would have been like, you know, we should do inflatable blimp. But, you know, and just. Yeah, yeah, I miss.

Tyler Jacobs (05:04)
Right.

Tim Samson (05:11)
this is a real conversation. You're giving me PTSD,

Tyler Jacobs (05:13)
We did a lot of research

on that blimp actually.

John Pendergrast (05:18)
Yeah, sure you did. Sure you did.

Tim Samson (05:18)
We did.

We almost bought like a little one that was tethered to the waterpark.

John Pendergrast (05:24)
See, never did I think I was creating something new here. I knew, having spent a fair amount of time with Tim now myself, that indeed Tim has great ideas. And some of them are even implemented.

Tyler Jacobs (05:25)
I

Tim Samson (05:34)
Mm-hmm

people people would argue with that but

Tyler Jacobs (05:37)
He has ideas. so look, the relationship continues because we, I need somebody to bounce ideas off of as does he. So it's every morning, it's not, you know, what you have for dinner last night or how's the family. It's like we're still sitting next to each other in the office.

John Pendergrast (05:51)
Yeah, Somehow you've managed to convince Tim he can call you, or that you can call him anytime and ask him Morey's questions and not get paid by Morey's. It's actually a pretty kind of beautiful circle of life.

Tim Samson (06:02)
No, you know, it's one of those things where you work with a family organization and especially for as long as I have I don't think you ever get out It doesn't matter where you are. Like you're still connected in some aspect

John Pendergrast (06:03)
Yeah.

Tim Samson (06:15)
I guess I've been lucky it's created more work for me half the time. But I've been lucky that I've been able to still be connected to these things that are happening, you know, on the ground, especially from like a technologist side, right? Because he knows this, but he doesn't know this. Like he's sharing things that are happening on the ground in the park. And then I'm also thinking about what this relates to and solutions and things like that as we move forward.

With what we're doing, I think sometimes he puts those stories in because he knows. Like I'm doing that at the same time, like, I can get this little thing in if I just, you know, kind of frame this a certain way.

John Pendergrast (06:48)
So, I mean, what a great segue. So what you're talking about is that you have an incredible amount of loyalty. And we're going to talk today about loyalty programs. So like this really great segue. Thanks, Tim. That was beautifully set

Tim Samson (06:58)
Right.

Tyler Jacobs (07:00)
It's a little bit of a segue into, you said this in the intro that we did it in a really short timeframe with a really small team, right? There was a lot of people that touched it on at Morey's who are really important to it. Gave a lot of great ideas, a lot of insight, a lot of work from everybody, but sort of on the day to day.

⁓ there was myself, Aaron, member of our IT team, and then actually a third party doing some work on the side. his name is Jeff, who's awesome. but we also had.

not only the internal support, but I'm talking to Tim every morning. I have this problem. How do we work through this with me? How do I solve this problem? The team at Spotlio, how do I solve this problem? The, you know, the guys from Blue Gator from Salesforce, and these aren't meant to be call outs, but it really was a ⁓ family of people that have been doing this for a long time together.

that really engaged in this to get it done and that's why we got it done. It wasn't head down work by three of us.

Tim Samson (07:52)
So Tyler, if I can just kind of pick that statement apart a little bit, what I really think you're saying is you optimize the resources that you had at hand. I think lots of times we look at these big projects like loyalty or different things and you go out and you say, okay, who can build this for us? Right. And often it's who can build this piece or who can specialize in this, this aspect of it and how can we do it differently? And I think that's something that I found.

Really interesting about the way that you built this with the team and resources that you have

Tyler Jacobs (08:19)
And yeah, I think on top to add to that, we've talked about doing something in the realm of a loyalty program traditionally like this for a long time. I think, I mean, Tim, you were here, you had tenure on me, but from what I talked to Lee, who's our guest services manager, she's been here for over 55 years.

Tim Samson (08:38)
She has worked for more is longer than Morey's Piers has existed. Like she has worked for the Morey family. So I guess she would be actually considered employee number one in some aspects, but she's still there. She is a force to be reckoned with. She's one of those people that is just

part of the fabric of Morey's in general

Tyler Jacobs (08:58)
And she couldn't believe that we are actually going to launch this because it had been talked about for so long. But, ⁓ you know, all the things that I didn't think would be that that hard were in some ways. You know, strategy, how many points does a dollar get you and how many

points does a free bucket of french fries or I guess it's not free you're paying to earn points. How many points do you have to redeem to get that bucket of french fries? There's a ton of strategy that goes into making those decisions and we leaned on know cognitive who's sort of the engine behind it right now to help with that. Then we took that information and we said okay how do we get it out of the food system? How do we get it out of our admission system? How do we get it out of our parking system?

and then try to, well, try and successfully connected many of these dots and many of these dots will continue to get connected into the future.

Tim Samson (09:45)
Yeah, this is, you know, this is a little interesting for me because, although the team at Morey's and Spotlio and cognitive all implemented it in like four months. like I was also part of it in my previous role at Spotlio, like kind of moving this and getting it forward. So I got to peek under the covers a lot of the different strategies of what makes a loyalty program.

Important. What makes it functional? how do you kind of justify? I want to say the expense right but they either the ROI or the cost of inaction of like not doing these things And just to kind of iterate off Tyler's words. It was really interesting like how much Thought process knowledge goes into it it's easy to give out a coupon like it's easy to give someone points, but

What those points do, how you want to accumulate those points, whether you want them to be tied to like spend or whether you want to mask spend or things like that. There's all these questions that you have to ask that's what I think makes it even more impressive is I knew where you guys were. And I knew when you started actually doing the implementation to get it up and running.

And to be able to do it in four months is pretty awesome.

John Pendergrast (10:52)
Tyler, like you said, like this has been an idea for a long time. But why now? Like what was a catalyst that finally made, you know, Morey's go, this is it, this is the moment?

Tyler Jacobs (11:03)
So if you're not familiar with us for those listening, we are a amusement park, water parks. We have four hotels as well. The park itself is spread out over a mile of beach, we'll call it, connected by a boardwalk. We manage everything.

On one side of the boardwalk has, you know, 60 some attractions, two water parks and whatnot. There are a number of food stands, games, full service restaurants, bars, you know, the full plethora of things that you would expect. On the other side of the boardwalk, you know, just feet away, is every pizza stand, t-shirt shop, you know, all of the same things that we offer, but right there. So the competition is it's like an amusement park mall.

as you sort of push for, how do we generate more revenue? How do we create better experiences? How do we get people to do more things? preferably with us, the opportunity presented itself to hop in with, you know, some of the people that we already work with.

to build out this system with the intent of getting our guests to do one more thing. And that was really what the meeting was. How do we get you to do one more thing? If you get off a ride, how do we get you to get that slice of pizza with us or buy that t-shirt with us or play one of our games versus walking across the boardwalk? Because there's nothing there to stop you. I didn't say this in my spiel, but there is no gate. And that's what makes us really interesting.

John Pendergrast (12:22)
Yeah, that's great.

Tyler Jacobs (12:24)
and I think why now also speaks to many years now, at least five of groundwork that we had put in place in updating our, you know, sort of data infrastructure and moving over to a snowflake data lake, feeding all of our systems into that, reliably.

So that we can then pull the data back out to really use it. And we've been leveraging it, I think smartly, um, you know, through marketing and personalized messaging and emails and driving sales and all of these, you know, Buzzy things that everybody talks about. and that's all very actionable. but this sort of takes it to the next level because we have a lot of interesting data points. We know when every time you get on a ride, you scan a piece of media at that ride.

so we know that you got on at this time and within five minutes you're getting off in most cases and sort of where you are and what you're doing. If we can figure out who you are. And that was really the thing. Who are you? How do we un-anonymize a lot of this? so the right time became, we now have the infrastructure in place. we are using it. We use it frequently and consistently. What's the next layer?

John Pendergrast (13:28)
I also really appreciate your description of the boardwalk. You said it has pizza places and t-shirt shops. And ⁓ I've walked that boardwalk a number of times and that is literally 87 % of the boardwalk.

Tim Samson (13:38)
it's one of those really interesting places because it's a I think one of the last kind of authentic places because it's not homogenized. There's not really big brands, I mean now there's a Starbucks so I guess but for the most part they're mom-and-pop places and when you don't have a gate and you don't have a way to keep people in Competing with a pizza stand that sells pizza cheaper than you

across the street is hard and part of it is, you know, the value proposition, which you get for the money. But the other part is building this loyalty. and that kind of was the precipice of the conversation for, I'll say two decades. Like it was as long as I was at Morey's that we were talking about loyalty, before loyalty was cool before the Starbucks app came out, before those types of things.

And I think as an industry, we've always done that because we've done couponing and, bounce back coupons and all these things to kind of get the next visitation. And we did that in a way that was still anonymized, right? Like we didn't know who you were, but we were still doing these things from a marketing perspective to get you to come in. So I think this is kind of the next forefront of where the industry needs to go, to really not only enhance the guest experience, but increase a share of pocket.

how much these people are actually spending in the attractions and in turn enhancing their overall experience.

one of the things you mentioned Tyler earlier was the hardest part of like creating this whole thing. we've talked about it a lot, but it wasn't the data because the groundwork was all set in

you mentioned that the perks were the hardest part. It wasn't the data. It was deciding what to give away and what the value was with it.

I know how slow organizations make decisions in general, but

how did you get there? How did you get buy-in from stakeholders? How did you determine what those things were? Cause you did it in a very short period of time.

Tyler Jacobs (15:15)
Well, I think there was some benefits of doing it in a short period of time because it was a, hey, we're going to do this. So let's, you know, in some ways disagree and commit. And, in my tenure, that's been few and far between scenarios, which is what made this even more kind of special here, I think is that we spent minimal time in a conference room, debating what to do and what to give and when to give it and more time one-on-one with team members saying, you know,

Hey, Jordan, who's our director of food and beverage. Here's the 52 things that I'd like you to approve to give out. Do they match the costs? And Jordan said, yes, go or, you know, Kathy or who manages the food stands where these are actually getting redeemed. Give me five ideas, please. Um, you know, and really brought it down to a more one-on-one level and let that team do what they're good at.

think a lot of it was driven by and you mentioned this earlier that we have a history of not discounting. we're big on hey, these are prices we do a Christmas sale or a winter sale around Christmas time and New do a spring sale around Easter time and then we open for the season. So there's sort of three chances to buy two chances to buy discount tickets before we open for the season on the food side.

We've dabbled in some coupons way back when, and those coupons never were valuable. my favorite to make fun of Tim about was buy one chips at the taco stand, get a second chip free. Like, who wants two chips? chips. So, buy four hot dogs, get a fifth. Like, who wants that many hot dogs? So, that...

Tim Samson (16:37)
Hey, that was not my doing. That food and beverage decided that someone needed two bags of chips.

John Pendergrast (16:48)
You

Tyler Jacobs (16:50)
So that's, the coupons they were an attempt at driving people to sort of, outlets that needed help and, or products that needed help. But at the time we didn't have the data to really justify what, what was selling and where and when and why. so we took two approaches here and a big one that, you know, my boss really, beat me over the head with through the process was.

the offers have to be valuable. Don't just give away chips. You know, make it things that people want. I think that sort of changed our approach going into this, which in the past it was we didn't really think about, you know, we sold food, you went up and got the food. If you have a season pass, you get a discount on food. Other than that, you go up, pay and that's it. It was let's give something valuable away that will draw people's attention and get them to actually want to engage with

John Pendergrast (17:35)
So Tim characterized that the perks was the hardest part.

John Pendergrast (17:38)
but the data only works if you have, like you can only do these kind of programs if you actually have good data.

Did you just find your data was like perfect? I mean, you did it so fast. I mean, clearly your data was perfect. Or you just snapped on top of it and off you went? Or were there some kind of processes that had to take place?

Tyler Jacobs (17:54)
So the data has been there. I think that's the key. It's sort of been there and sitting and waiting in some cases. We use all of this. It was really the same stuff that we use regularly. We just looked at it through a different lens. it's flowing into Snowflake where it comes back out for accounting reporting and for our revenue reporting and general operations type of reports and dashboards. We looked at it less.

there at the product level prior to this. So it wasn't necessarily how many milkshakes did we sell at Serpent Sweets, it was okay. How do I see how many milkshakes we're selling? How do I give you points for those milkshakes? And then how do I decide who gets milkshakes for free or should we let you use points to get milkshakes?

⁓ Milkshakes was a key topic of the whole thing.. that's sort of

John Pendergrast (18:38)
Well, it's because they're really good.

Tim Samson (18:40)
There is this like weird thing around milkshakes and more. He's like, I can't really explain what it is, but it's like, and I was on a giveaway of milkshake, like push people to milkshake stand. I'm not sure. Maybe it's, maybe it's just not like a boardwalk food, like walk around with milkshake.

Tyler Jacobs (18:50)
We just can't take it to it.

John Pendergrast (18:54)
don't know. Delicious

is what it is.

Tyler Jacobs (18:58)
the data was there. It was really what lens to put on it. Um, and then to confirm that, you know, when you get into these things, it's is the cost, right? You know, is it too expensive to give away? Um, does it have any of these other impacts? we learned a little along the way about how the systems work, but the, the data was mostly there. Is it clean? It's pretty hard to navigate. Um, but there's a few of us who have a really.

you know, good knowledge of where it is and what it is to be able to tear, to pick that apart. and then we sort of leverage what we knew.

Tim Samson (19:29)
so a lot of the data was structured there because of the stuff that you were doing in marketing, automation and customer service and things like that. And I know that this is only the beginning of like a multi-year phase out of the loyalty plan in general.

So, so what's next and do you have the data to support what's next?

Tyler Jacobs (19:45)
No. yeah, no, next. so that is the data to support what's next a little bit. ⁓ I think that what's next is we're going to, close up here in three more weekends, something like that. ⁓ second weekend in October, we will reevaluate what we gave away.

Tim Samson (19:47)
Hahaha!

John Pendergrast (19:47)
That

was easy answer.

Tim Samson (19:50)
Next question. Lightning round done.

Tyler Jacobs (20:07)
And sort of the usage, I think we're generally satisfied with how many people we had sign up and engage with the platform, but it's not enough to make major, major overhaul changes going into next year. So I think we're going to go into next year with a pretty similar approach. We're going to redo the perks, the rewards. We called them perks as part of the branding. The rewards that are being offered to our guests and then we'll.

fine-tuned the promotions so promotions are eat at this outlet on this day get double points or do this thing and get this thing not necessarily points redemption, so we're gonna Re-evaluate the promotions and that sort of step one. We'll use that information to run more targeted even more targeted

I can stick to that. So one of the things that we added on fairly late was push notifications through our app. And because of the sort of data points that we have on where you are and what you do and when you do it, we started to do some push notifications based on what ride you were going on and what food outlet was near that ride or right at the exit of that ride in some cases.

John Pendergrast (20:57)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Jacobs (21:13)
And the cadence at which this data is updating, You scan at a ride five to seven minutes later that's processed through all systems. And we can push you a notification that says, Hey John, there's a milkshake stand right at the exit. Here's $4 off that milkshake or $5 off or a free milkshake or whatever it is based on the many levers.

John Pendergrast (21:28)
Right.

Tyler Jacobs (21:35)
So that we did some of this year, it went reasonably well. I think we're satisfied. We had seven to 20 % redemption on some of those. We're talking about smaller numbers, know, hundreds of people, not tens of thousands, which is when really say this is successful, which hopefully we get to next year. But in my research, the baseline for that would be, you know, two to 5 % on an offer like that.

John Pendergrast (21:48)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Samson (21:50)
Be

Tyler Jacobs (22:00)
So that's been super impactful. And I think it speaks to personalization in general and, highly targeted messaging. that's super actionable. Hey, you are standing in front of this thing. You want a milkshake John. I knew about you

John Pendergrast (22:12)
of the Moka ones. Yeah, that sounds good. Right now, that'd be great. You want to send one over? So it's good question because I think, I mean, one of the questions that I wanted to ask was in regards to guest experience. like you put together this great platform, this loyalty program. It's got a bunch of perks.

Tim Samson (22:14)
⁓ we did. We did get

Tyler Jacobs (22:18)
to go.

John Pendergrast (22:28)
Obviously the point is to drive revenue and to increase guest experience. So people go, hey, I really, really like this. It's something I want to use because it helps me stay in the park and stay in the magic, so to speak. How is that different now that you've launched? Like how has customer experience been or like that guest experience been now that you've launched fan club as opposed to before? Can you quantify that yet?

Tyler Jacobs (22:53)
I would not say that we can quantify it with the data specifically guest feedback so far has been awesome By one or two hiccups, which you would expect with a system that was built this quickly and rolled out We rolled it out the week after 4th of July. So the peak of peak season

John Pendergrast (22:57)
Mm-hmm.

Great.

Right? Yeah.

Tyler Jacobs (23:09)
so you would expect some things with, retraining a team who had. Just actually learned how to do what they were supposed to do day to day to now do this other thing. So minimal hiccups, guest feedback has been really fantastic. it seems that our season pass holders really, really enjoyed it. and that's as quantitative as I can get

John Pendergrast (23:26)
Right.

Tyler Jacobs (23:26)
what I hope to do next is to leverage this data because we've been able to align what tickets you've purchased? With who you are the person the guests specifically

we've added parking into that and we've been on this sort of path to add more data points to get lifetime value of a guest and figure out really what each person is doing and be able to use that smartly to create a better experience, to generate more revenue, to do all of the many things that an amusement park does. And I think a layer of that is now with a loyalty program, we're able to layer in food.

which has always been an anonymous transaction for us unless you're a season pass holder. with this information, I'm hoping to be able to say, this is John. We know that John likes milkshakes. really nailed the milkshake thing today. just rode this ride. There are three stands in this area that offer some semblance of a let's serve John and offer specific to that.

But really to figure out what in reality, is the likelihood of the person coming off of this attraction going to do next and be able to push them to where we want to push them in. I mean, we're talking, I don't know if it can get more real time than five minutes at this point.

Tim Samson (24:29)
And then once you have the milkshake as soon as you go to the next ride and he knows where you're at He can send Park Services to clean it up Right

John Pendergrast (24:35)
Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I was thinking as well. Like, and there went the milkshake. Now you can eat another milkshake. So like, you're good.

It's interesting though, you talk about this, and we're a little lost, scripture, but I mean, and you know, you know, I'm passionate about this kind of stuff as well is that.

What you're talking about as guest is a guest 360. Where you're able to go, this guest is doing this, this is what this guest is likely to do, this is the next step of this, this is how I help guests have a better experience. And in turn, guest spends more money and it's this kind of circle of life, so to speak. But that piece of just trying to gather more and more information and less anonymity and more identifying who that guest is.

I mean, it sounds like that's the dream you're heading for.

Tyler Jacobs (25:17)
Yeah, 100%. I knew as I was saying that I was like, man, I really teed that up for John. it's really, it's more than just more information because we've, we've got all of this stuff and it's like, how do you even, how do even use it? And I think we can poke you guys on that thought, but it's really, you know knowing that John likes milkshakes. We're going to stop using that example after this.

John Pendergrast (25:21)
You

Tim Samson (25:22)
Ha

John Pendergrast (25:25)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Jacobs (25:39)
is only meaningful if we're going to use it for something. So does John get a milkshake on his birthday? realize that John's had too many milkshakes and steer him clear of milkshakes so that he fits in the suits?

John Pendergrast (25:48)
There

you go. It's a legitimate question, right? Like, yeah.

Tyler Jacobs (25:52)
So how do we take this information and really leverage it? And I think it's two sided. It's not always about how to make more money. We're all in business. We're all trying to do what's best for our businesses. But how do we make that experience better? Because what we all really want in the industry at Morey's is for people to leave here thinking, what a great time. I want to come back. I want to tell everybody about it.

John Pendergrast (26:12)
I have a vague

memory of saying this in another podcast. So if I have in the audience listening, just put this up to my inability to have enough stories or remember what I've said, but essentially Disney, you look at Disney and you go, well, Disney figured out a while back.

that what they really wanted to do was when you walk past the actor in the park playing Jack Sparrow, that they wanted him to be able to say your name. Say, hey, John, how's it going? And they actually figured out how to do it quite quickly. The problem was is that nobody liked it. Like it was really creepy.

Right, so it's like how are you gonna manage that process of trying to, you know, maintain a certain level of people like to feel a little anonymous at the same time as very much wanting you to know who they are at certain points. Do you have any thoughts on that? I know it's a little bit, 10,000 foot and all, but.

Tyler Jacobs (26:58)
I'm probably the wrong person asked this question to, so I might defer to Tim. So for me, I remember specifically, I think Tim was in this conversation being outside of a room at IAAPA the buzz was that Alexa was always listening, right? it's always listening to everything that you're saying and it's using it and everybody.

John Pendergrast (27:12)
Right,

Tyler Jacobs (27:17)
And the conversation was like, well, that makes me uncomfortable. What are they listening? You know, what, are they doing with that information? And I, my response was if it gives me better ads for things that I really want instead of serving me junk, I'm okay with that. so I wonder a little bit if, if, Disney was ahead of its time in that sense, because, know, we look at some of the data and it's like, Hey, when we send an email that has your name in the subject line, our open rates skyrocket

John Pendergrast (27:28)
Yeah.

Tyler Jacobs (27:41)
And that's sort of common practice. But on the other side, is it weird when you don't check out and you get an email that says you haven't put in any of your information yet, but you get an email saying, Tyler, you left something behind. Don't forget your ticket card or your, your water park admission. and so where is too far? I think that's a really good question.

Tim Samson (27:59)
I think we're on a moving scale of this. I look at Amazon and recommendations and everyone thought that was creepy at first and now it's like, well, no, this does make sense. Like I do want these things, Going back to like using your name, like that's very personal. And it mentioned two different use cases of that, like Jack Sparrow in the park using your name. As a guest, I haven't really given permission for that.

⁓ On the other hand using your name in an email. Yeah, I subscribe to the emails I did all these things I expect them to use my name and actually they should they should know who I am, right? So So there's a disconnect between How far you can go and just because you can do it doesn't mean that you should just because you can use the name when someone walks by Doesn't mean that it's appropriate to do it or that guests will actually appreciate that thought

But I think we're, uh, don't want to say an inflection point on this because it was really early when you could start connecting these dots. And I think Disney did a few things that, that were really cool, you know, from a technologist standpoint, but were also a little creepy from the guest standpoint. and then we move into similar things to what Tyler and the teams are doing at Morey's with, uh, loyalty. And I think that's kind of like the, base layer because.

You've self identified to be part of those programs. I know I mentioned Starbucks and like airline stuff I have self identified to be of that. And that's closed loop on the data points and allowed you to kind of piece those things together and then have this anonymous data. I think marketing retails ahead of us, in knowing like, I don't know who you are, but based on these things that you did, this is the persona you've fallen and therefore you should do X.

Right. think we're going to get really close to that as an industry, without crossing over to that creepy personalization piece until the guest is ready to share that. at least that's where we need to go. So things like loyalty, it's really cool. It fits it. It's going to move the needle. for Morey's. but what does it look like in five years? is there a sign up form? Do you have to sign up for it? Do you just get it? Is it inherently

offers and values and recommendations. So I think that's where we're, I think that's the next step. But really your guests is going to tell you what you can do and can't do. Right? Like they did it to Disney. They said, this is creepy. We don't like this. Roll this back. But you also shouldn't be scared to try some of those things because every, every market is a little bit different.

John Pendergrast (30:10)
It's

Tyler Jacobs (30:11)
well.

John Pendergrast (30:12)
incredible what works, So there's this famous story of a diaper manufacturer sending out bunch of diapers and baby things out to...

pregnant mothers.

The problem, yeah, was it Target that did it? Yeah, yeah, and I think you talked about this and of course the reality was none of them knew that they were pregnant or hadn't told anyone yet. And so it was just this fascinating thing of they figured out these markers and were able to use those markers

Tim Samson (30:21)
Target.

Yeah.

Tyler Jacobs (30:25)
the habit.

And it's happening. It's happening in a lot of ways. And it really, it's about finding the line, right? But it's happening in a lot of ways that I think if done really well, you almost don't even know in a lot of cases, you know, we looked a, a tool from Salesforce a couple of years ago called personalization and it basically lays over your website. And if it knows that I have a family that with kids under a certain age, it would show me pictures of kiddie rides.

If they knew that I was into thrill rides, you know, roller coasters, and if it knew that I only ate with us, then it would talk about food. and it did that automatically based on recognizing who you are and your persona. You wouldn't even know. It didn't say, Tyler, stop eating so much. It said, Hey Tyler, no, ⁓ you know, here's, here's what you're interested in. And retail does that now in a really big way, you know, when you sometimes too, obviously. but I think it's about finding that line.

John Pendergrast (31:15)
Here's your food. ⁓

Yeah.

Well, and I think to a certain extent, I think you mentioned it as well, is that you start becoming, you start coming to the point where you really like those features, right? you go log into Amazon, it shows you seven things you didn't really know you wanted, but now you kind of do, and that's now a service. Like, you don't think of that as invasive anymore, you think of that as helpful. ⁓ I bought those garbage bags last time, I liked them, I wanna buy them again, and here they are on my recent list.

These kinds of things have become services and features. And I think that's what loyalty does too is, is that over time it literally becomes a service. I don't use a lot of loyalty stuff. ⁓ I don't know if I'm not in a demographic. My wife uses them all the time. So I don't know what my excuse is, I'll take my son out and then we're going to like Starbucks and stuff like that. And he doesn't even ask anymore. He just literally inserts his phone into the points collection side and grabs whatever points when I buy.

and he doesn't even ask anymore because he collects points like mad, right? So it's just this whole different kind of demographic of who's interested and who's not.

Tyler Jacobs (32:23)
Yeah, I mean, look, I didn't really use many of them until we started this project. And then as, as part of my exploration, I started, yeah, now I have a bunch of them. McDonald's is going off on my phone beside me right now. ⁓ but now my kids like Happy Meal. I, in the McDonald's app, collecting points, using them all the time, but it's made my experience

John Pendergrast (32:27)
I use all of them.

Tim Samson (32:29)
Thank

John Pendergrast (32:35)
Yeah.

these like, there's these great videos and I don't know where I saw the first one, but there's this lady who shows up at the supermarket and she takes and fills three carts full of things and there's tons and tons of duplicates of things and she gets to the till and you just watch the person at the till's face just fall.

and everyone starts kind of swerve around and then you realize that she pays a dollar fifty for nine hundred dollars worth of groceries because she's cut coupons and i'm like it is a little bit like that right like you you literally can do that as long as you want 700 of this item you know and have coupons for it

Tyler Jacobs (33:12)
you

Tim Samson (33:13)
Yeah, maybe she has a bunker somewhere. Like, why are you judging her?

John Pendergrast (33:16)
Maybe? I'm not judging. I'm impressed. I'm not

judging. Also, I'm gonna go to the express line and avoid all of that crap.

Tim Samson (33:23)
I think it comes down to implementation and John, we've talked about this a lot. Like ⁓ ideas. Great. It all comes down to the implementation with it. Amazon does a great job of saying like, if people bought this, here's the other things or buy these together or do different things where it feels like you're helping me because I might need that thing. But lots of times it's reminding me like, ⁓ you need to order toothpaste. Right. And we're getting closer and closer like to that point with it.

John Pendergrast (33:26)
Yeah.

Tim Samson (33:49)
But then you go to these other sites and after you check out Here's an offer. No, don't want to here's an offer. Here's an offer. Here's an offer and that becomes an annoyance, right? It's essentially the same thing one is way more annoying

John Pendergrast (34:01)
Yeah, it's true.

Tyler Jacobs (34:02)
Also, it's, you know, look, we've built a loyalty specific program here at Morey's Piers now, but we've had many different iterations of loyalty for a lot of years. And I think when you talk about it in terms of experience, you know, we use ticket cards. So each ride takes a certain amount of tickets. You buy tickets and packages. Let's say you buy a hundred tickets. Rides range from three to 10 tickets a piece.

We can use this same technology to say, hey Tim, your ticket card is running low, you should add some more tickets now. Or you've got four left and you need five to go on your favorite ride, so make it really easy to serve you up that option to buy those tickets.

John Pendergrast (34:31)
Right. Right.

Tim Samson (34:39)
interesting because lots of people think of loyalty like in a certain silo, right? Like this is loyalty. But from from our conversations, you know, we've talked about entitlements to pass holders and discounts to food stands and promotions for this and these other pieces. And it feels like they're all merging together under the loyalty umbrella in a way.

They're just kind of different levels of memberships You like your season pass holders versus the people who are coming for vacation versus the people that are coming for the day Their personas within that and ultimately The goal I would think and Tyler I would ask you what what your goal was with this as soon as I stopped talking but but ultimately the goal is to Progress people through the customer lifecycle journey, right?

to take it from a one time visitor to a season pass member or in Morey's case into hotels, eventually to buy a property in, the condominium Phillips, right? Like it's even further than most people go That would be the ultimate life cycle all the way down. And then, then you have multi-generational families that are coming year after year because they actually have a residence so when you look at that, have a short-term goal

And loyalty was always a big topic at Morey's. So what's the short term and long term goal? Like, why did you do this?

Tyler Jacobs (35:52)
So they're going to get a little blurry, but ⁓ short term is to get much more engagement. So going into next year, we're talking about ways to get more people to sign up and really leverage the platform. I think there's some operational efficiencies that are going to come from doing season pass perks differently or offering them differently, giving more flexibility to those perks and how people engage with the platform and with the place. So that's sort of really short term.

we're sort of one step off the ground, but really getting many steps off the ground. But I think the goal is going to remain the same here for a while long-term. one, it's gathering data, which is too almost too easy to say at this point. How do we know more about you and then use that smartly? But two, it's getting you to do one more thing. I think that's still the goal. I think that's going to remain the goal.

It's getting the season pass holder to visit one more time because we know that after nine visits, the retention rate, you know, increases 20%. We know that there's pizza right across the boardwalk from our pizza. And we want to give you a reason to eat with us. Even if it's a small thing, like a free soda with it, which has very low cost, but to us, reality, it's a $6 spend. Soda is expensive here.

Tim Samson (36:59)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Jacobs (37:03)
So it's how do we get everybody to do one more thing? A hotel, stay one more time, come back again the next year, maybe visit one more time in the same season. There's a lot of levers. It's really different for each person and it speaks a little bit to the persona comment that you made. Everybody hopefully has a different experience with it, positively, and I think that makes it pretty special.

John Pendergrast (37:23)
I think people like collecting things. I think that's just kind of the human condition. And I've used point systems before occasionally back in

earlier days where I had a point system and I always found that I never wanted to spend them. I was like, I'm collecting them and I'm collecting them for some bigger thing and I'm never going to spend them. And so you have all these kind of points that sit out there that are never, I mean, what was it? Was it aero plan or something like that, that had like 17 trillion points that had never been used and they finally closed the program. And it was like the amount of liability around that program was insane. They know what to do with it. Because people would just stockpile these things and never use them. Do you have any of that?

Tim Samson (37:53)
Yes.

John Pendergrast (37:59)
I mean it's your first few months of running this. Have you seen usage of points or are seeing people largely stockpiling?

Tyler Jacobs (38:05)
Um, so we've set up the program for this year to make sure that you don't have to rush into spending them. We've in our research, it was really no matter what we do, there's some segment of people, a large segment of people who are only going to be able to visit once in a season, right? We're two, three, four hours from, from your house. You come the one time. We didn't want you to feel like there's no reason to sign up because I'm not going to be able to use my points.

So points that were in this year expire at the end of next summer. So I think we'll have better information about this later, but I do think it's interesting. Our season pass holders now started the program with a sort of starter set of points, but anybody who had been visiting prior to us launching the system, the program, had been occurring points from opening day this year. So if you were buying food using your season pass, we wanted you to get credit for those points. So we, backloaded them in.

And I thought our season pass holders would dive in and all of them would be eating this it's about 50 50 the user base, you know, half season pass holders and half non pass holder so far. there's some holding, but there's some using and time will tell.

John Pendergrast (39:08)
Yeah.

And I assume that they have to use, like, they're using your app to sign in for these. So are you seeing, I mean, this is one of statistics that I'm sure you guys are looking at, typical adoption of that app, I'm guessing, kind of hovers around that 17 to 20 % of people install your app on site. Is that pretty close? Yeah.

Tyler Jacobs (39:17)
Yes.

Don't

give us skewed numbers. Don't give us skewed numbers because you don't like apps. These are supposed to be an unbiased conversation here.

John Pendergrast (39:39)
No, I understand, but I think the number is probably likely.

Tim Samson (39:40)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

John Pendergrast (39:43)
I love apps if people would install them, but people don't install them.

Tyler Jacobs (39:46)
Our app had

minimal, minimal pickup before because you had no reason to have it. It was a glorified map almost. Yeah, that was really it. Other than that, it was web links, all that were accessible to the same place at the same experience through our website or just general information. A brochure maybe is a better term than an app. Digital brochure.

John Pendergrast (39:53)
That was what it was, yeah.

Yeah.

Tim Samson (40:03)
digital brochure here.

John Pendergrast (40:04)
Yeah.

Tyler Jacobs (40:05)
So we, had big goals of doing push notifications and leveraging it smartly on the marketing side. but again, connecting disparate systems was difficult until we did this project. So we went from, I don't know, a few hundred installs to thousands of installs here in a month. to put that in terms of a percentage of total visitation.

John Pendergrast (40:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, of course.

Tyler Jacobs (40:26)
It's sort of hard to tell because it's hard for us to tell what our total visitation is, right? We think we see 5 million people a season, right now, let's say 10,000 people are engaged in this.

John Pendergrast (40:31)
Yeah, no gates, a hard thing to figure out, yeah.

Yeah.

Tyler Jacobs (40:39)
But that happened in a really short period. And again, because of when we launched it, marketing was separate. We had already had a campaign set for the year that we needed to see through. So this sort of came out on the side of that, So we'll have a more integrated approach next season. And then I think it'll really take off. But I hope 20 % of the people who visit download it because that'd be something.

John Pendergrast (40:59)
I think that apps are a much better solution to the problem of interacting with your guests than anything else. Disney is an example of this. Disney uses an app. Now Disney kind of makes you install it by being Disney. You're gonna install their app because you're there for five days and They kind of don't take no for an answer.

I've only ever been at one other attraction in the world that forces you to install an app, and that's actually Sagrada Familia in Spain, in Barcelona. And they do it because you can't get your tickets without downloading the app.

Tim Samson (41:25)
Mm-hmm.

John Pendergrast (41:30)
which is such a fascinating concept because there's ⁓ definitely gonna be gaps where people are like, I don't have a phone, right? And what do you do in those I mean, there's less and less of those kind of scenarios, but that app is gonna be really valuable. And I've thought for a while that there has to be a fair transaction between the guest and the park.

in so far as each of you has to get something out of the equation. Of course, them installing your app gives you lots of things. There's lots of potentiality there, what you can do. But it's really struggled to give them much. And you said like a brochure or a map, what do they get out of it? Even if they had to get their tickets,

But loyalty is that trade-off, right? Where you give them loyalty points and that's the thing that engages them enough to install the app. And there's something to be said for that. So it'll be interesting to see as the years go by how the statistics work on that, if that drives engagement.

Tyler Jacobs (42:21)
Yeah, you articulated that much better than I could have. So I'm glad you said it and didn't lean on me too, but it is really that trade off. And until we rolled this out, there was no good reason we weren't giving you anything, downloading the app. it's like, why, why would we ask you this, especially in an environment where some guests come up, purchase 10 tickets, go on one ride and leave at 10 30 at night.

John Pendergrast (42:32)
Right. Yeah.

Yep.

Tyler Jacobs (42:46)
What value is there to you as the guest to add this your life zero, right? So what we did in the program that we launched was everybody got a free soda. Everybody got a free soda for signing up period along with a couple other smaller things, but the free soda was a big one. And it's like, even if you're here just for one ride, that soda comes with real value. It's about $6 for a soda.

John Pendergrast (42:49)
None.

Tyler Jacobs (43:08)
On us. You don't have to buy anything else just download the app and sign in and I think that's a big piece on the other side as I I Hate experiences that are solely app based Tim and I have had many a conversation on this in the past I hate being at places and everybody looking down at their phone trying to figure out how to navigate a place. One of our big things it's this vintage.

your grandparents came here. They brought your parents, your parents bring you, we want everybody to be able to enjoy it all the same. The app, the loyalty program, all of these sort of technological advances that we're rolling out need to really fit into, to that experience and be an enhancement to them, but not the only way to experience it. So grandma and grandpa still need to be able to come up, and experience it all the same, which is a.

John Pendergrast (43:49)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Jacobs (43:54)
purposely pause here, as I say, a funny conversation that I have with your team often when I say, yeah, but what is grandma going to do when she buys these tickets at Christmas? And everybody's like, what do you mean? Why are you so worried about grandma? But that's why, right? We want everybody to be here and experience it the same, But you can do it this other way. We think that if you do it this way, you'll get more out of it. You'll have a better time.

John Pendergrast (44:01)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Samson (44:03)
I have I have the same same conversation

John Pendergrast (44:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tyler Jacobs (44:16)
That doesn't mean that grandma's gonna have a bad time. She doesn't have to, but it's more of the key to a new door or a new way of experiencing.

John Pendergrast (44:23)
Yeah, that

makes sense.

Tim Samson (44:24)
feel like Disney has gone too far. Like they've gone over the threshold. Like you can't experience Disney without downloading the app. There's no way, right? There's almost no way. I'm sure there's a way. There's always a way, but you're not going to get as much out of the experience if you don't do it. And the industry has been back and forth on phones for a long time.

John Pendergrast (44:30)
You can't. That's true.

Tim Samson (44:44)
especially when it comes to our rides and loose articles and taking things on. So there is a juxtaposition between that of, where does technology fit we've had conversations about enhancing the guest experience. As long as it offers value and it offers them more than they can do on their own, then it makes sense to kind of push that forward.

But if it doesn't offer any value and you can do things the other way, like if you could get the loyalty program another way, see them on a web page, use a card in your wallet, whatever those things are, that could be really beneficial, To the overall experience. And I remember, when we switched to digital maps from paper maps,

at Morey's There were some people that couldn't access the map because they didn't have a phone right now times have changed and that and that has gone on Jack always used to not want maps around the pier never wanted to give out maps Because he wanted people to have a sense of discovery like what's around the next corner? What's the next thing you can find? and Yeah, you can only plan the beginning so

Tyler Jacobs (45:40)
You can only have a good beginning.

Tim Samson (45:43)
I think that as technology evolves and as we do these things, we have to kind of balance how much information we're using the guest and ensure that the experience kind of still fits for what it is.

John Pendergrast (45:54)
Yeah. It's an interesting idea. I think, and I also think that every park's different, right? Like I think Morey's, the ethos of Morey's and the way that Morey's thinks and the impact that the Morey's family has had on that thought process over the years is going to be different than the next park or the next attraction.

Tim Samson (45:55)
That was a really long tangent.

John Pendergrast (46:12)
everyone's gonna approach this from different ways ⁓ and you need to have the ability to do that and to experiment and with all the data that you, like I like the way you put it, we have lots of data, we have tons and tons of data, what the heck we do with that data, that's a different question but we have lots of it. I actually think you guys are unique in the fact that you have lots and lots of data, although I'd argue a lot of people have data just not very well formatted, I think you guys have the ability to have well formatted data.

as well as having the data. But even in that scenario, it's what do you do with it? So I'm going to segue slightly here though and say, you know, because I think people that launch these programs always want to know a little bit of the dirty dirt secrets of, you know, what happens behind the scenes or the things that are funny. And that is what's been the biggest surprise that's happened since launch? What's the oddest thing that's happened in your loyalty program? What kind of stories can you tell that are like, well, that we didn't expect?

Tyler Jacobs (47:02)
every time I see a transaction come through. I just go over and type the points in.

Tim Samson (47:06)
⁓ guy,

one guest.

Tyler Jacobs (47:09)
Can I share that publicly? Is that fair game? We worked really hard at this. Everybody did. It wasn't just three people, our team in the field who actually deals with it every day. I just get to sit up here, you know, watch. But there's a lot of people that worked really, really hard at this. And it got to the end of the season. And this guest wrote in saying that it didn't work the way that he had.

Tim Samson (47:12)
Thanks.

John Pendergrast (47:12)
you

Tyler Jacobs (47:34)
He had hoped his experience did not meet his expectations, which is something that Tim taught me to say many many years ago But he was very blunt about it and our team This is actually my team specifically in the ticket booth had sold him season passes, It was an edge case that I knew was a was not accounted for because we sell nearly no season passes on site

John Pendergrast (47:35)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tyler Jacobs (47:55)
At this time of the season, late August, year, we sold no season pass period So it's like, okay, this is an edge case. If the team handles it perfectly to the T of the training then we'll be fine. But they were never actually trained on it because they don't sell them on So my, my hope and my dream was that if one came up.

John Pendergrast (48:09)
Right, yeah exactly.

Tim Samson (48:11)
Sorry.

Tyler Jacobs (48:17)
they would turn around and ask for help. The manager would come out and do it in transaction and now it'll be okay. Obviously that did not happen otherwise it wouldn't have happened. Yeah. But that was, you know, there, was many edge cases. That was one that I knew was just, I don't know how to fix this because I've got 60 people who haven't been trained to do this and I'm not going to, none of them are even going to see it. So the way that the season passes were sold,

John Pendergrast (48:25)
Hope is not a plan.

Tim Samson (48:26)
Hahaha

Yeah.

Tyler Jacobs (48:43)
there was no connection to his account period. The way the whole system is architected, getting all of those into one place was impossible to do through the backend of all of these many systems that this is going into. And the real only way to solve the problem was to refund them and resell them into a different account. Problem is that if we did that, I had to admit to this guest that

John Pendergrast (49:06)
loyalty.

Tyler Jacobs (49:07)
that we make.

And the way that he was emailing, was just like, I can't, I can't do it. I'm not at this point, everybody's worked too hard to admit defeat. We're not going to do it. So I, it's funny. I'm not proud of it. I should have called the guy and I should have, ⁓ you know, owned up to it and fixed it and said, I suck. Not the system or the team. It was me.

John Pendergrast (49:14)
Yeah.

Tyler Jacobs (49:27)
But yeah, long year. So we went and tried to fix it through the many workarounds that we were all coming up with. Ooh, what if we do a refund, but he won't see it, but we'll resell it just in the database and we'll put it all in his account, all four of them. And I was like, yeah, do that. And then we did that. And now everything is working right. So now he's getting all of these sort of, I don't want to call them alerts, but his transaction history is showing this, that these other things and the points are stacking up by the thousands.

So now he's writing me I'm telling him it's fixed I can't I didn't have insight into what exactly his phone was seeing I can only see the back And I'm saying okay, it's fixed now and Sorry, you know misunderstanding you're good well, I Don't have enough points or all these things are wrong and now I did it again after three times of me trying Trying not to admit defeat

Tim Samson (49:55)
you

Tyler Jacobs (50:20)
we, finally got it worked out and he still thinks that I suck, but Hey.

John Pendergrast (50:23)
So I mean, Tyler, you're describing the life of a technologist. This is what life is

like quite often, which is there's this magical edge case that you can possibly ever think of that comes out of nowhere, and you're like, how on earth? It's funny. If it can happen, it will happen. But there's no way of knowing what is in the can list, right?

Tyler Jacobs (50:44)
Two days later, another guest came up last week of the season. I happened to be sitting in guest services and they came in after I told them this story because I was like, you guys aren't going to believe how deep I dug myself into here. The guest service supervisors kicks the door open. You're not going to believe this. I have somebody out here that wants to buy two season passes.

What do I do? And I was like, I'm going to sell them to him. way. Yeah, I got it. Yes. No, issues. Right. Isn't even the right way of putting it. I did it the way that I knew the system works. The person who actually did it, did it just fine. It just wasn't how the system was designed to accept it.

John Pendergrast (51:08)
Yeah, I'm gonna do it. Did you do it right though? Yeah. Okay. Because that would have been even funnier if you hadn't done it.

Would work, yeah.

What's so funny, like

I had this moment once where I was standing on a beach in Ireland with my son you can see a bunch of fish surfacing out in the water and he picks up a rock and I turned to him and I said, if you can hit one of those fish, I mean, the chances of that are infinitesimally small.

He throws the first rock and bloop, a fish comes up and it's floating on the surface. So I send him out to get it. And it turns out he didn't like fish at 12. He just didn't like that at all. But he brought it to the shore and a seagull swooped down and ate it. But that's not the story. The story is, that if it's possible to happen.

even if it's infinitesimally small, it'll happen and probably at a very inopportune time. And it's just funny how this works. So that's a funny story on your side of you trying desperately to try and fix this thing without having to say, oh, we hadn't thought of

Tyler Jacobs (51:56)
Right.

Tim Samson (52:11)
one of those times where, you know, you talked about life of a technologist in the edge case. And if that had been if that had been us that developed that this guest is yelling at Tyler and Tyler would be yelling at us, right? You know, because that's how it works.

John Pendergrast (52:23)
Of course. Yeah.

Tyler Jacobs (52:24)
I would never yell

at you.

John Pendergrast (52:26)
And of course, just because it's an edge case for you, the next person is going to be like, we sell them all the time. How could you not have thought of this? Of course, this is how this should work. But this is how it is. It's always like this.

Tyler Jacobs (52:37)
there were certainly some hiccups, like I said, some training things and whatnot. a little bit of, I'm going to call it system confusion. We couldn't combine two discounts. Um, and that something that we worked through, but it was really, really great that.

what ended up coming out the other end that we turned this thing around so quickly, launched it. You know, we have 1700 employees that work here in the summer and I've got one bad experience to speak for it and that was done by me. So I take ownership of that.

John Pendergrast (53:04)
Yeah,

Tim Samson (53:05)
It's a little bit of agile development, right? I think a lot of times we decide like, hey, we're going to do this thing. We're going to make it perfect. We're going to launch it. It's OK if it's not perfect, as long as you can correct it quickly. And I think that's what you did. And that's one of the best ways that this program is going to evolve over the years, are these incremental changes quickly. Because some stuff just won't work, and some stuff will.

John Pendergrast (53:06)
Yeah.

Yeah,

there's a of testing involved and there's a lot of assumptions that you go in with assuming that this is the right way and then discover that indeed your guests don't believe that and that's not how they want that to work.

Tim Samson (53:36)
so looking ahead, how do you see the fam club evolving over the next couple of years?

Tyler Jacobs (53:41)
We have less awkward family photos. Yes, that was good.

Tim Samson (53:44)
I'm so happy you got to use this.

John Pendergrast (53:46)
You

Tyler Jacobs (53:47)
so prior to we had planned to do Awkward Family Photos as marketing it took a lot to get everybody behind this. Our creative agency, One Trick Pony at the time, it's still not even at the time, really pushed us, they did a great job. We went, hired models, and did this whole shoot.

It's all staged, but really, really great. And then COVID came and we canceled the campaign for that this very expensive photo shoot got put on the shelf and never saw the light of day. fast forward five years, our creative agency is pitching us what to call our loyalty program because Morey's loyalty does not sound very good.

And one of the options was the fam club among among a few finalists and there was some contention in the room very much divided, but we had a, as I mentioned earlier, a disagree and commit moment and everybody got behind it and went for the name.

Then the agency came back with the creative behind the name and they pitched back this photo shoot and all these hilarious pictures. And then we all sat around and looked at them and as uncomfortable as it made everybody, now would be half the family who was for it was against it. The half the family that was against it was for it. no, everybody saw it was like, wow, this is actually too fitting. Like we gotta do it.

John Pendergrast (55:12)
Yeah,

your slogan, isn't it something along the you don't love your family, join a different one or something like that?

Tyler Jacobs (55:18)
ever wanted a new family or something along those lines.

John Pendergrast (55:19)
Yeah, ever wanted a New Family

Tyler Jacobs (55:23)
I think that it's going to become an integral part of visiting Morey's Piers. I think it's going to drive a lot of our marketing. It's going to drive a lot of our decision making the data that we'll be able to tie together through it. It's something that you and I talk about all the time, Tim, and I know you talk about it with John, but it's really

going to push, how we evolve in using that information. And as we add, hopefully, games and hotels here, and that really rounds out all of our offering into it, I think it's going to become a really great thing for our guests to experience to make their experience better, while also really driving the business decisions to potentially places that we never expected.

That was an okay answer. I don't love it, but we'll take it.

Tim Samson (56:06)
Yeah,

it's you can only you can only plan in the beginning, right?

Tyler Jacobs (56:10)
That's

true.

John Pendergrast (56:11)
He clearly

didn't find the middle or the end, so that was, you know.

Tim Samson (56:14)
I'm just really happy you guys got to these photos because they're great like they're awesome

John Pendergrast (56:16)
Yeah, they're fantastic.

I didn't know about that either, that's hilarious. Okay, we're gonna move into the lightning round. We always preface the lightning round this way, because it loosens everybody up, which is that Tim and I are the reason the lightning round does not Although with you, I will argue that you might also be the problem in this scenario. And that is that...

Tim Samson (56:36)
I'm sorry.

John Pendergrast (56:37)
By design, it's supposed to be rapid fire questions,

and Tim and I aren't good at that. So we're go through, we have a handful of them, and the intention is to answer quickly and then get on to the next question.

Tim Samson (56:49)
All right. Here we go points or discounts

Tyler Jacobs (56:51)
We already blew it.

Tim Samson (56:53)
Yeah, right. You blew it. Yeah.

John Pendergrast (56:55)
Biggest loyalty program mistake you see others make.

Tyler Jacobs (56:58)
He really should have prepped me better for this.

Tim Samson (57:02)
This is

the fun part!

John Pendergrast (57:04)
We love this part.

Tyler Jacobs (57:06)
Too much, giving too many options.

Tim Samson (57:10)
⁓ native app or web app.

Tyler Jacobs (57:12)
Native, but depends.

John Pendergrast (57:13)
Best guest reaction you've gotten so far.

Tyler Jacobs (57:15)
We've had some great ones from people who love the pictures. We've also had some from people who said the program sucked. I quote.

Tim Samson (57:23)
It's better than some of the letters I got over the years. Most overrated loyalty program feature.

Tyler Jacobs (57:25)
Yeah.

when I think of ours, I don't see one because it's pretty minimal. you know perks promotions Redeem your points get rewards pretty simple. think it's more about how people would use it that might lead to Unnecessary things, you know how how it's leveraged

John Pendergrast (57:38)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Samson (57:42)
Buy one, get one nacho chips.

Tyler Jacobs (57:43)
I guess that is definitely

John Pendergrast (57:47)
Yeah, get one

free hot dog for every four hot dogs you buy. Yeah, that's the same logic. Yeah. good segue, good segue. Scan cards or mobile only.

Tyler Jacobs (57:51)
Yes, that's a little punch card approach. That's...

Tim Samson (57:52)
Yeah.

Tyler Jacobs (57:58)
But think you need both. You gotta have both.

Tim Samson (58:00)
Retention or acquisition?

Tyler Jacobs (58:02)
loyalty is built for retention.

John Pendergrast (58:04)
Data privacy, worry or overblown.

Tyler Jacobs (58:07)
Overblown.

John Pendergrast (58:08)
Ha ha ha!

Tim Samson (58:09)
Should you ask legal counsel before you answer that question?

John Pendergrast (58:11)
I want to ask Will Morey that

Tyler Jacobs (58:12)
Yes, let me consult

with... Yeah.

John Pendergrast (58:15)
question.

Tim Samson (58:16)
⁓ next feature your building.

Tyler Jacobs (58:18)
having games go into the program would be the next thing that's being scoped.

John Pendergrast (58:23)
Yeah. You made it. Yeah.

Tim Samson (58:24)
Alright, you made it. You made it

John Pendergrast (58:26)
question for me is, Tyler, you've proved that small scrappy teams can deliver enterprise level innovation. For operators listening to think loyalty programs require massive budgets or giant tech teams, what's your message?

Tyler Jacobs (58:41)
something that Tim said to me earlier, said against me earlier. It's not that hard. connecting all the disparate systems is certainly a challenge, but it's definitely feasible. You know, had a lot of that in place. We had the groundwork in place, which made it easier for us, but I would not shy away from.

trying to connect these dots again. And I don't think that's something that people should be afraid of. I think that across the industry, everybody's here to share, to work together, to help each other. I think that's the beauty of what we do. And on top of that, we're all in it to create fun. So all of those things combined, there's a ton of resources, there's a ton of people. Low cost, high cost, you can find a way, but I would say I would not be afraid of.

John Pendergrast (59:03)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Jacobs (59:27)
of trying to connect those dots yourselves.

John Pendergrast (59:28)
trying to connect with us. Well,

and Tim said it's not that hard, but Tim also didn't do it. So you did it after he left.

Tyler Jacobs (59:34)
You're

not doing it. Tim did not do it from this seat that used to actually be his seat. it's certainly helped. And I think, again, the other thing is a lot of great people, you know, helped.

John Pendergrast (59:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tim Samson (59:46)
Yeah, I would argue it with this. A spirit of incremental improvement. I think that everything that you've done that now seems like, crap, they did that? With the resources that they have has started. Like you can only plan the beginning. And I think you started with small incremental improvements.

John Pendergrast (1:00:04)
Yeah, I think that's.

Tyler Jacobs (1:00:05)
Yeah, over 20 years.

John Pendergrast (1:00:07)
Yeah.

Tim Samson (1:00:08)
sometimes not

1. I still remember the wallet thing of like

just make it dumb, right? And now look at it, so.

Tyler Jacobs (1:00:14)
this.

Yeah, I love this. That was a classic. It can't be that hard. well it truly we had for years beat each other up. How do we do this? How do we get your ticket card into your phone's digital wallet? And one morning I came in here and I said, or it was actually not that it was season passes. How do we get you to upload a picture of your season pass and add that to your digital wallet?

John Pendergrast (1:00:26)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Jacobs (1:00:36)
For years, we fought over how to do this and ran in all these things. And I came in one morning and said, Tim, what if we just made it dumb? What if it just looked for two pieces of information, matched it up with this one table that we have in the database. And if it matches you're in. And he looked at me literally just like this. ⁓ that we got to call it. We got to call Jeff.

John Pendergrast (1:00:54)
So dumb it might just work.

Tim Samson (1:00:57)
Hahaha!

John Pendergrast (1:01:01)
Yeah. And then you

Tim Samson (1:01:02)
Yeah.

John Pendergrast (1:01:03)
discovered Apple going, no one's ever managed to do this before. It's amazing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's funny.

Tim Samson (1:01:06)
Incremental improvement, yeah.

Tyler Jacobs (1:01:08)
We got the

attention of them and they've us along the way for sure.

John Pendergrast (1:01:13)
This has been an absolute blast, I love hanging out with you. ⁓ Every time I get the chance to come out and ⁓ hang out with you on the pier, it's always a good time.

We laugh way too much to valuable podcast without really trying to stay focused because otherwise we're just pretty much laughing most of the time you're also a passionate guy who really passionately believes in what you're doing and what you're trying to achieve and so it's been really great to pick your brain today and I hope really get to see your process and how you've kind of gone about it and are inspired to do the same.

Tim Samson (1:01:28)
Hmm.

Tyler Jacobs (1:01:44)
Sure, thank you for having me and you know to stick to the spirit of what I said just a bit ago. If anybody is taking this journey and would like to pick my brain or anybody's brain who we've worked with to do this, out to us.

John Pendergrast (1:01:58)
It's awesome. I love the way this industry works for that and that you're continuing that is awesome. You want to say thanks as well, Tim?

Tim Samson (1:02:05)
No, no, I don't.

Tyler Jacobs (1:02:06)
Yeah, thank me too.

You guys are making me uncomfortable.

John Pendergrast (1:02:09)
You're gonna call him in five minutes anyways.

Tim Samson (1:02:10)
Yes.