Snö Mountain amusement park (formerly known as Montage Mountain) is located in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, USA, and includes an alpine ski resort and water park. Snö Mountain now uses RFID technology to identify staff, identify visitors, and identify rentable ski equipment and equipment. In addition, visitors can also use plastic RFID smart wristbands to purchase items, services, and ride ski lifts.
In the fall of 2006, the ownership of Montage Mountain amusement park changed, and it was renamed Snö Mountain in January 2017. At present, the amusement park has deployed an RFID smart wristband management system to manage ski lifts and cashless payment POS machines. Visitors to Snö Cove Water Park can use this RFID system to enter and exit the park and pay for food and other services. Visitors to the park can choose to buy a season pass (an ID card with a photo of the skier) or a day pass (RFID wristband or ankleband). Both season and day passes use RFID technology and have built-in RFID chips that operate at a frequency of 13.56 MHz and implement the ISO 15693 standard.
If skiers buy a day pass, they will have to pay for the ski lift, ski equipment rental and other fees. They can also deposit a certain amount of money on the RFID wristband to pay for items such as food; the relevant consumption information will be written to the RFID wristband tag. In other words, with the RFID smart wristband, skiers no longer need to carry a wallet at all times.
There are 35 smart POS machines in Snö Mountain Park, where visitors can use their season pass cards or wristbands to purchase souvenirs, food, drinks and related services. The operators of the six ski lifts in the park use handheld RFID readers, which are linked to the read-write devices.
According to Jim Held, technical director of Snö Mountain, each ski lift has an RFID reader that can read the skier's ID code (season pass card, wristband, etc.) within a distance of 3 inches (0.25 feet), and the system can use this to confirm whether the skier has paid for the cable car for that period. If a skier's service time is up and he wants to continue playing, he will be sent back to the ticket office to renew.
The amusement park also uses RFID systems in other areas, including RFID ski sleds in the rental store. Each ski has an ID tag, and the system will match the ski ID with the ID of the skier's wristband who rented the equipment to effectively carry out daily maintenance and management and ensure that the equipment is returned in time.
Under the RFID management system, each staff member and visitor has his own unique ID, which allows Snö Mountain to better track their whereabouts. For example, when the operator of the ski lift starts operating the cable car, he will scan his RFID badge, and the system will record the corresponding time information. Snö Mountain uses six different types of reading and writing devices in the amusement park, with a total of 50 units. Among them, there are two types of reading and writing devices on the cable car: fixed and handheld. It is understood that Snö Mountain is the first ski resort to use RFID technology in all devices.
Held said that at the beginning, tourists did not understand the RFID wristbands very well and lacked enthusiasm; later, slowly, everyone thought that wearing an RFID wristband was a "very cool" thing.
The biggest benefit of using an RFID management system is better control of staff, more timely understanding of when tourists use the cable car, and more effective hotel and store fund management. Snö Mountain hopes to improve service quality through the RFID system to attract more tourists. Snö Mountain hopes that the number of tourists in the ski resort in winter will exceed 170,000, and the number of tourists in the water park in summer will exceed 500,000.
