Management Product and Service Design Essay

Enchanted Kingdom is a theme park in the Philippines. It is located in Santa Rosa City, Laguna, operated by Enchanted Kingdom Inc. (formerly named Amtrust Leisure Corporation). Like any other amusement park, it got numerous attractions and rides that serve the best interest of people of any ages especially children. In the point of view of operations management, as a whole, Enchanted Kingdom is designed to cater ingeniously each guests fancy and offers a total enjoyment for everyone. With their catchy phrase, â€Å"Where the magic begins†¦Ã¢â‚¬  they should provide customers an overall satisfaction with all the products and services they offer and still come up with innovative ideas to keep people especially in the nearing cities to come and go with a fulfilled experience of magic, how far would they render to make people’s imagination as realistic as they can be? I. Product and Service Design Positive From entrance to exit, the place is very exquisite. Customers find themselves astonished with sight of infrastructures built; we all know that the scenic atmosphere endows what Enchanted Kingdom is all about. It is designed in such a way that would cater all ages. They put up rides and fun-filled activities such as arcade, band appearances, games, souvenirs, mascot parade, street dancers, evening fireworks and a lot more. As years passed by, they keep on adding new rides and attractions such as Xtreme Paintball, Kart racing, Triassic Laser Tag, 4D Discovery Theater, Exodus the Ride (All-terrain vehicle Adventure Trail), Lake Spa (foot, back massages), Space Shuttle Max, and SRRX (Haunted attraction). They also started seasonal attraction such as the Biki Waterworld during summer. Their ticket promo is also something people are watching out. They have a variety of ticket rates depending on age and season. They also have discounts for students and residents of Sta. Rosa, and every sem breaks they offer â€Å"barkada† discounts or packages to their target college students. Negative Bringing of food and drinks inside the park is strictly prohibited. Customers are then induced to buy monopolized and expensive food and drinks inside, otherwise they still need to go out the park. Tickets are not so affordable. Their souvenir products are too expensive. There is no place or specific spot, where people could rest when they got tired, only benches sparse at the park. II. Capacity Positive EK has really the capacity to conduct business like this. With 17 hectares of land area, they could really accommodate a large number of people and put all the park zones, shop and food outlets, kiddy rides, adventurous and extreme rides for adults and other attractions together. They have rides that give so much fun and excitement to customers. Their staff and crew are skilled, well trained and do excellent jobs. Their operations hours are enough to most customers to fully enjoy and explore the whole magical place. Negative Although they could cater to large number of people, there are really times especially during special occasions when the whole park is full of visitors or tourists. These create long lines in different rides creating disturbances to the enjoyment of their customers. III. Service Process Positive Buying of entrance tickets is easy. They could choose between limited tickets or ride-all-you-can tickets. Also, EK provides necessary precautions and made the theme park as accessible as it can be such as brochures so you might not get lost. There are staffs all over the theme park for immediate concerns, and accessible customer service office. Negative If there were too many people, it would take 30 minutes to 1 hour before you can take a ride because of long lines of people. The hardest and most tiring part is that you’re standing while you are waiting for your turn. Too much-crowded amusement park makes customers not to ultimately enjoy their trip and be dissatisfied. IV. Facility Layout Positive The age appropriateness and other requirements for efficiency of their facilities are viewed largely as one of the best features of Enchanted Kingdom. They have it all! From land, wind, water, digital and to sports! They offer a variety of fun. The layout was designed in such a way that it is sparse out probably because they want their customers not only to be condensed to one side of EK but also to go all around and see all the other landmarks they constructed. Their rides are distributed according to different themes such as Spaceport, Portabello, Brooklyn Place, Victoria Park, Boulderville, Midway Boardwalk, and Jungle Outpost. The Boulderville is where most rides for kids could be found. Negative Sparse layout could be tiring for some customers. Walking too many steps is tiring and a little bit exhausting to those older people. The adult rides like space shuttle and anchors away would take about five (5) minutes of average walking in between. V. Location Positive Going to Enchanted Kingdom comes handy with private vehicles especially those coming from Manila for it is located near the South Luzon Expressway Exit. It is also isolated from other landmarks such as factories that could ruin the stunning ambience of EK. Its location is also near from exclusive subdivisions that could give them rich customers. Negative The location of EK would most likely be very inconvenient for public commuters. Since it is far from the national road, it is hard for them to locate it. Also, the trip from the national road is prone to heavy traffic. Finally, people who opt to eat outside of EK due to its expensive food and drinks would cost them about 10-15 minutes and additional transportation costs because of its isolated location. VI. Quality Positive Well, every business tries to serve their function well. For some, it is affordable with all of its accommodations. Enchanted Kingdom is the biggest theme park we have here in the Philippines. This is probably the closest to having our very own Disneyland. They provide better quality of rides and scenery compare to others. They are a member of International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions which can assure us that Enchanted Kingdom follows extreme quality standards and measures similar to other amusement parks in the world. Negative The â€Å"newness† factor is somehow missing in Enchanted Kingdom nowadays. When you frequently visit EK, you would probably ask for new major rides. There are added attractions but they are lacking of building new major rides. The most exciting and challenging rides of EK would probably be still Anchors Away and Space Shuttle which is now Space Shuttle Max – not like Star City who has now the â€Å"Star Flyer†. Also there are rides which are not well maintained particularly their Grand Carousel. The issue of safety assurance also comes into the picture when the Space Shuttle, one of their major attractions, hung in mid-air twice. Recently was in the year 2007. VII. Recommendations for Improvement For improvements, we are not saying that this isn’t a good place to go to for a fun day, but Enchanted Kingdom will need more than a few rides to impress everyone. First off, there aren’t enough rides to accommodate a huge number of people, during peak seasons. You will always end up waiting in line under the blazing sun for an hour or so, only to come out a minute later disappointed that it wasn’t as thrilling as they had advertised. Then the food is too expensive, and you can’t bring your own food – not even a bottle of water. Now that would have been fine if the food inside Enchanted Kingdom’s food court tastes decent, but sometimes even the bottle of water isn’t cold. . There is a small cafe outside; but it doesn’t serve anything worth eating. The bathrooms though clean and well kept had a bad odor and stained tiles. Enchanted Kingdom needs a renovation too, and they need to do it fast before one of their rides collapse. And for 500 pesos entrance fee, they should at least make it a point to upgrade some of their rides and add more chairs and benches for the people. Maybe they could also plant more trees, as the heat can get to you especially during summer. Continuous improvement means total quality management. They should invest more on TQM for this will generate more revenues to their company. If they have TQM, people will not question anymore their entrance fees as to be so expensive. More people would be satisfied and be converted to long-term customers. Most importantly, this would provide safety assurance for all valued customers. Lastly, we support the continuation of their proposed plans of creating Enchanted Kingdom General Santos, Enchanted Kingdom Davao, Andromeda City (Iloilo), Mars World (Cebu), and Planet Enchanted (Batangas City). These proposed projects will make EK accessible not only to people living in Luzon area but also to other parts of the country as well. A project that will boost up economic growth by attracting more tourists and creating more jobs for those unemployed.