0.2 Touring Lobster Land: The Gold Zone
Lobster Land’s arcade, the Gold Zone, is another one of the park’s biggest draws. With an area of more than 7500 square feet, the Gold Zone boasts a collection of hundreds of different games. These include both new and old games, games based on varying degrees of skill and chance, and games involving various degrees of physical activity.
Visitors to the Gold Zone can play any of its hundreds of games for the chance to win tickets; these tickets, in turn, can be redeemed for prizes. Prizes range in size and value from Tootsie Rolls and single pieces of Bazooka Joe bubble gum (3 tickets and 5 tickets, respectively), up to PlayStation consoles and drone aircraft (22,000 tickets and 15,500 tickets, respectively).
The Gold Zone is a major revenue source for Lobster Land. In order to play the games, visitors must first purchase game tokens at the Gold Zone customer counter. For one dollar, visitors can purchase four tokens; for twenty dollars, they can receive 100 tokens. Some games, such as Monopoly or Indiana Jones pinball, can be played for just a single token. A first-person car racing game costs four tokens, and a two-player round of Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution requires eight tokens.
The games inside the Gold Zone have varying ticket payouts. A winning round of Connect Four Hoops (a game that costs eight tokens to play) will earn a player 16 tickets. Some games of pure chance will typically return very small numbers of tickets, but with occasionally large jackpots of 500 or 1000 tickets.
Most of the prizes “won” by the players are very inexpensive. An oversized stuffed animal, for instance, can be redeemed for 500 tickets. Lobster Land purchases these items from a wholesaler for approximately $1.70 each. The most commonly redeemed items from the prize counter are candies, pencils, erasers, and other knick knacks that cost Lobster Land just pennies apiece.
Furthermore, Lobster Land estimates that nearly 30 percent of all the tickets awarded by the Gold Zone’s machines are never actually redeemed. In many cases, people casually play a few games with friends and pocket the tickets, only to empty those pockets at home later on, and stuff the tickets into a drawer or a wastebasket.
Every year, Lobster Land sells memberships to the Gold Zone Players’ Club (GZPC). In exchange for a $250 fee, die-hard gamers can join the GZPC in order to be eligible to purchase discounted game tokens throughout the season. The membership fees, plus the high level of game spending among members of this group, make the GZPC a lucrative revenue source for Lobster Land.