Seeing Santa Hacks

By Jake • December 22nd, 2011 • 10 Comments

My daughter is about nine months old now, and she’s thoroughly enjoying all the hubbub of Christmas.

We’ve taken her to a nearby grower to cut down our tree, to the zoo to see all the lights, and of course, to sit on Santa’s lap. That last one was an adventure, one that could have been greatly improved with technology.

It took four tries to see Santa. In retrospect, I’m sure more experienced parents have this trick down pat, but given the lines, it looks like a lot of people are just suffering in line. An old friend used to call that “building character.” I’m not a fan.

Lucky for us, seeing Santa was a treat for parents, not for baby, otherwise it might have been even worse.

Here’s the problem. The lines to see mall Santas are longer than amusement park lines in mid-Summer, there doesn’t seem to be a pattern you can exploit, and no one has bothered to use technology to solve the issue.

First, we tried on Saturday evening, and unsurprisingly, the line was long, probably close to three hours.

No worries, we figured an evening during the week might be better. It was, but only barely, maybe a two-hour wait.

So, maybe first thing in the morning, right when the North Pole opens at 10 AM. Nope, fail. We arrived at 10 on the nose, and there was already a line of more than a hundred people queued up; I swear they camped out overnight.

In each case, there was no way we were waiting. My daughter wouldn’t have done well with a 30-minute wait, let alone a two-hour one. Besides, time is money.

By this time, I was already designing a solution in my head that would allow me to spy on the line from my mobile device. I can’t believe the company that does these Santa productions doesn’t have something like this already. After all, I doubt they like dealing with parents who’ve been subjected to several hours in line with kids.

Turns out one company does have a system in place to alleviate the waiting. One local mall has a virtual line that can send manage your place in line and send you texts when you near the front.

They also show how many people are already queued and how long the wait estimate is. And even though it’s about 45 minutes before they open, there are already  nine people in line. That has doubled as I write this.

Insane.

Given the length of these lines, I wonder how well people who have waited hours would react when random people cruised up and jumped the line. This seems obvious to me, but of the local malls, only this one has any kind of virtual system in place. Seems it might be unique nationally too, since it made the WSJ yesterday.

Anyway, this was my Plan E, but happily, Plan D worked. We figured the downtown mall would be sparsely populated around quitting time, and definitely not full of suburban families who would have to drive through rush hour and park.

This assumption turned out to be correct, and we arrived to find a line with two families in it. Win.

So, alls well that ends well, at least this year. Frankly, I’ll bet the Santa we saw was much cheery than the ones in the suburban malls who have to see hundreds of kids in a day.

As a footnote, the photos we bought were delivered digitally, in addition to printed on site. The process for retrieving these images online was one of the most painful I’ve ever seen. It took about a dozen steps.

Why? The company tries very hard to get you to buy crap before delivering the images you already paid for; so the design is awful and convoluted on purpose. It’s anti-design.

The process was so frustrating and obviously on purpose that it actually made me less likely to give in to the upsell.

If only they had spent resources on making the line process smoother. I’ll bet investing in a system to speed the line with technology (cams, notifications, etc.) would produce happier customers who are more likely to buy additional schwag after the visit.

So, that’s my Santa ordeal. Luckily, I’ve learned some hacks to apply in future years.

Anyone out there have hacks or nightmares to share? Find the comments.

And enjoy the Holidays. You earned it.


Possibly Related Posts

  • http://only4left.jpiwowar.com jpiwowar

    Best Santa hack I’ve found is to have a kid who’s freaked out by Santa at an early age, to absolve oneself of the desire to stand in line for photos. :)  

    Back when my daughter was smaller, I worked at a company that was just the right size to pull off a “Breakfast with Santa” event (big enough to have enough families w/ small kids, small enough to not have a mob). Manageable line, no annoying photo website — HR took pics and posted them to the internal website, or you could BYOC(amera).  Of course, that’s not applicable to your situation or mine, but others reading this might lobby their HR departments…

    You realize, BTW, that you can save a bundle on Christmas gifts this year (and maybe even next) by wrapping empty boxes and letting her have a ball tearing off wrapping paper and playing w/ the boxes?

    Have great holiday; yours will be cuter than you can possibly imagine. ;-)

  • Mark Bennett

    Perfect example of “it’s been solved already and just needs to be reapplied to a different version of the same problem.” There might be some hitches though due to unique circumstances. Disneyland and other theme parks developed the virtual line idea to both relieve parents of the stress and heatstroke of waiting in line (thus enhancing the “delightful experience” aspect), as well as their cash as they would now be browsing shops and overpriced food concessions while waiting for their number to come up (thus enhancing the “revenue generation” aspect.)

    Malls ought to see a net economic benefit, but might be slow on the uptake as there could be a “People need to see the long line to know the Big Guy is here” signal needed. That could be addressed by tweaks to the line management algorithm. The other might be because the nature of the participants is incompatible with the idea that you could just walk up but only after your number is pinged. In any event, it seems there is ample opportunity to create a “win-win” (sorry) situation from an enhanced “Santa Experience” beyond just a photo.

    The empty box hack reminded me of that post about the five best presents, which included “box” and “stick” I think.

    Mark

  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    I suppose fear of Santa would work, but that’s something you’d probably want to restest each year, just to get the experience, right?

    Santa at the office would be nice, like that one.

    I like the box trick, but I doubt my wife will go for it :)

    Enjoy your holiday too.

  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    Part of the problem here is that this is a seasonal issue, so I’m sure the investment looks too steep.

    You’re absolutely right that there would be added benefit spread across the merchants as parents and children happily browsed while they waited on Saint Nick. 

    I’ll probably avoid this company next year and go to Washington Square for two reasons the lack of technology to solve this basic problem and the purposefully awful and offensive ecommerce site.

  • http://only4left.jpiwowar.com jpiwowar

    No, no, empty boxes for your *daughter*, not your *wife*.  Pardon my vague pronouns.

  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    I got what you meant. My wife has bought tons of toys, so empty boxes wouldn’t be well received, even though they’re sure to please :)

  • http://empoprise-bi.blogspot.com/ John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises)

    You hit on the solution by going to see Santa at a downtown location, but another option would be to find out when Santa will appear at a non-profit event, such as a local Kiwanis event or a school event. This not only has the benefit of shorter lines, but also helps you to avoid the upsell tactics since you can often take all of the pictures that you want.

  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    Good suggestions. Maybe I’ll solve the problem myself and sell it to the mall Santa companies. One benefit beyond the production value of the North Pole experience is the photos are professional, at least much better than our camera phones could muster.

  • http://www.garry.to joel garry
  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    Ha, nice. Probably next year and 2013 we’ll be in that contest.