Six Flags VIP Access: a Different View

What happens when a bunch of dudes show up in one of these?

Last night over dinner, my wife disagreed with me on the matter of the new VIP access policy at Dan Snyder's Six Flags parks. It started as a spirited discussion between two people with advanced degrees touching on the sociopolitics and -economics of the policy, and when we realized we were in an Outback restaurant, ended as so many discussions on race do, with us hunched over the table having a Seinfeldian back and forth on whether we should be discussing it in the first place.

As I wrote yesterday, I am of the mind that this is a disastrous policy, because even if we assume the policy is not intended to be discriminatory, the racial and economic makeup of the region will still frame it that way based on who can afford it and who cannot.

Further, as I was having an online discussion with another Redskins blogger, who shall remain nameless but whose name rhymes with pin skatrol, it dawned on me that if this new policy truly generates the negative attention of which it is capable, might it not spill over into Dan Snyder's other Prince George's County business, Redskins Stadium? With the cost of attending Redskins games placing the team 120th out of 122 pro franchises in affordability rating, might that not have the potential to make Dan look like he's trying to get PG County coming and going?

How much of the menial labor required to make 90,000 ticketholders happy comes from PG County, and what is he paying them? Considering Circuit City just fired 3400 people making anecdotally no more than 19 dollars an hour for inside customer service because they were 'overpaid,' I'm guessing 12 dollars an hour of less. Maybe they are union, I don't know, but the point is that he charges 25 dollars to park, 7 dollars for a beer, pays a few dollars to sling burgers and now wants 200 dollars for private enjoyment of his amusement park and it all could look as though he is lining his pockets specifically on the backs of PG County residents, where they can least afford the diversions.

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Anyway, Mrs. Folsom had a different take on the matter. She thinks the market will take care of itself when it comes to multi-tiered access models. If Dan gets through a whole season and there have only been three takers at the VIP price, then we pretty much know it's not a popular policy and it will probably be ended. If there are hordes and it generates no negative attention, then it will persist and if it does result in negative publicity, they will end the policy out of social economic concern.

But the really insightful point she made was this: what happens when a posse of dudes in a couple of Escalades show up, and it's not Tom Cruise or P.Diddy? What if I stop thinking about this as an economics problem that plays out as a white-back problem and think about it purely as an economics problem?

And PG County is tough these days. It's leading the area in homicides with 11 in the last 11 days, and PG County executive Jack Johnson has forced nine PG County clubs to shut down, accusing them of being "magnets for violent crime."

If you troll through the DC area, many car dealerships and used car lots have signs out that say they will not accept 'drug money.' Leaving aside the question of how one tells when one is being given drug money without considering discriminatory factors such as skin color or whether the buyer 'looked like he should not have been carrying around ten thousand dollars in cash,' if a bunch of tough-looking dudes wants to come in to the park and pay cash for the entourage, will the park accept it? If they then quietly changed the policy so as only to accept credit cards for VIP access, would that constitute fair business practices or discrimination?

We already know that policies that say management reserves the right to refuse service to anyone are not enforceable 100% of the time and trial-lawyer apocrypha says that you can walk into a reputable establishment in rags acting weird and when they throw you out you can immediately start planning on how you and your attorney will spend the discrimination suit settlement.



Escalade from here.