Business Lessons I Learned From Seaworld

Last week in between Techcrunch50 and Thinktank events in California I took my wife & kids to Seaworld in San diego. Now its $65 for adults to get in and $55 for kids 3-9 years of age. Not a bad deal. Park admission gets you into all the main shows and rides. As a student of marketing I am always looking for the angles. Seaworld has all the standard crazy markup on food and beverages you would find at any park in the world. The $15 free refill Shamu collector cup, $8 for a funnel cake with whip cream, ice cream and strawberrys (omg was it good though), ... etc etc. Here are a couple business/marketing items that got my motor going though: The Arcade: The arcade area is a lot like many carnival arcade areas. Throw the ring on the bottle, throw softballs in the basket, shoot basketballs into the hoop. But the big difference was these were legit games. Anyone with any amount of skill could fork over $5 and win a prize. Now where it got interesting is the prize model. You win 1 small prize for completing the task. 3 small prizes lets you trade up to a giant prize. And the giant prize is substantially larger. The small prizes are about the size of Paris Hiltons dog and the giant size is fricking enormous. Its like the size of a real orca (baby) killer whale:

Now I did not win this legitimately. I just asked the dude if I could give him 30 bucks for one and he said OK. I know, I know, it would have been cool if I actually would have won it but sorry I just greased the guy working the stand. Lemme give you a example of what I did see from someone playing the game:

Dude buys his 5 balls for $10
Dude makes 1 of the 5 balls for 1 small stuffed animal.
Dude gets another 5 balls for $10
Dude makes 1 of the 5 balls for 1 small stuffed animal. (now he has 2 of 3 needed for a big prize and a crowd starts to gather to cheer him on).
Dude gets another 5 balls for $10 - Makes 0
Dude gets another 5 balls for $10 - Makes 0
Dude gets another 5 balls for $10 - Makes 0
Dude gets another 5 balls for $10 - Makes 0

This went on for a while and I got bored. Eventually I heard the crowd roar as he made his final basket to get his 3 small stuffed animals and claim his large Shamu. I am guessing the guy invested about $100.00 or so for his giant stuffed Shamu where I only invested $30.00 for mine (and much less time). Some interesting take aways from the game: 1) Low point of entry and lots of pricing options. You can get 1 shot for $3, 2 shots for $5 or 5 shots for $10. 2) People who just make 1 basket get a piece of junk small animal and you still profit. 3) The more pressure mounts the more money there is to be made. If a guy has $50 invested and its only another $10 to keep going he will probably do it (until he is broke). 4) Just offer to grease people. Its way cheaper and saves you both time. What can they do say no? Feeding The Stingrays:

Seaworld had this section where you could feed the Bat Stingrays. It cost you $6.00 for 4 fish and they would come up to you and eat the fish right out of your hand.

Ok now this is awesome. Seaworld has to feed these fish anyway but its such a cool experience for you to do it that you are willing to pay to feed them. I mean that's like me saying hey come to my office and I will charge you 50$ to buy me KFC. But how can we adapt this model to what we are already doing online? Maybe we already do.