Q&A: IT is a moving target for Six Flags CIO

With 20 parks and nearly US$1 billion in sales, Six Flags is the second-largest amusement park operator in the world. Since coming to Six Flags as part of a management reorganization two years ago, CIO Michael Israel has overseen a bottom-up rebuilding of the IT architecture in the parks and in the company's data center, which moved from New York to Dallas. Israel describes the amusement park business as a shopping mall with rides. "Spend per attendee is everything," he says.

How is the role of amusement park CIO the same as -- and different from -- any other CIO position?

The IT operations at Six Flags are a bit different in that there's a lot more operations involved here. We don't have a lot of that knowledge at the park level [because] we are a seasonal business. We are thin-staffed during the off-season, and there are times where the business is stretched in terms of people and operations knowledge. There are times when I'll be sitting in a park looking at how things are being done so I can get a better understanding of how we can reinvent that process.

What is your biggest challenge?

We're dealing with an outdoor environment. So something as simple as [wanting] another point-of-sale terminal in this location means that you're digging up the ground, laying conduit, laying cabling -- and your cost to get to that location is very high.

This environment is changing; it moves. New rides go up each year; retail stands get moved. Combine that with the fact that it is a seasonal business, and you have to take everything apart at the end of the year and put it back together on a very finite schedule.

How has the IT infrastructure changed since you joined Six Flags?

We've completely recabled our parks and laid new fiber. Everything is standardized. The data centers have been rebuilt with new cabling [and] new core switching, and the computer systems have been re-architected. About 70 per cent of the point-of-sale terminals have been migrated to HP, and we're working on the balance. We have about 3,200 POS systems and about 3,000 PCs in the network, and about 400 servers. We have Windows/SQL databases.

Is there any interaction between the IT systems and the ride systems?

No. Each ride is completely independent.

How did you split up IT operations between the parks and the data center?

Certain applications are at the park level, like our POS applications. Our core applications are in our data center, but necessary park applications are localized, because if we lose our wide-area network, the parks still need to be able to operate.

The park data centers are completely redundant internally, from our NetApp filers to our server farms. The farms are clustered, the servers use iSCSI boot, and there's dual power and dual network interface cards to everything.

How do you handle backups?

All servers boot up off NetApp boxes, and the data is snapped back to our central location, and all backups are done in our central data center. Before, we did local backups at each park, and those were stored at Iron Mountain. We eliminated the Iron Mountain contracts locally, plus I have a set of data at the park, I have a second disaster recovery set at the data center, and I have a third set that goes out on tape to Iron Mountain.

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Have IT initiatives helped produce revenue?

Yes. We have two inventory systems we've rolled out over the past month: one for retail and one for food and beverage. Those allow us to increase our revenue potential. If a food stand is running low, we know at midday instead of at the end of the day.

How many employees do you have to support?

We go from 3,000 employees in January to 33,000 by the end of May, and [seasonal positions] turn over at least two times during the season. We have high school [students], college kids, foreign nationals and senior citizens that we bring in to work. There's a tremendous amount of training that we have to continuously work on.

How do you deal with that?

[In March] we rolled out our first computer-based training system, which is hosted externally. It's a modularized system with different modules for basic point-of-sale operation, food operation, front gate and retail, and it takes them through the basic operations for each of those scenarios. We also keep a database of who has passed what training, so if this person is trained on food and retail, we can use them in both locations.

You're considering biometric technology for your season pass. How will that work?

We're looking at a new ticketing system which, instead of taking a picture to identify the season-pass holder, will do a biometric scan. It doesn't take your fingerprint, but creates a numeric [value] out of certain spots on your finger.

What are the benefits? It eliminates the need to have your picture taken at the season-pass office, saving time. It allows access to the park a lot quicker. It also reduces fraud, [where] people give their passes to someone else to use. Even though passes have pictures on them, on a busy day, are our gate attendants checking every single picture? They tell us they are, but this would eliminate a potential oversight.

What are the privacy implications? Will the public accept that?

Out in the park, I've talked to folks in our season-pass lines waiting for two hours to get their pass processed. I asked people myself: If we did this instead, would you have an issue with it? So far, I haven't run into anyone -- when I explain it correctly -- who has had an issue.

What's a little-known fact about running an amusement park business?

The electricity cost for a large roller coaster can come to US$600,000 per year, [and] overhauls each season can run into the millions.