Long Lines - Waste of Money

I mentioned that I was in Las Vegas. I stayed at Mandalay Bay. I found it very interesting that my first experience there was to wait in line for better than 30 minutes. I was only the 7th person in line.

I looked around and found something interesting about my situation. If you will notice in the image below, there are a lot of people waiting. There are a total of 26 lines where people can check in. Only 10 of them were manned (or womanned... as the case might be). At the point of taking my first picture, there were approximately 8 people in each line. It may look like there are more, but many people wait in line together. But still, that is about 80 people waiting to check into the hotel if you don't count their associates.

After I was done checking in, I decided to step back and take another picture. As far as I could tell, the lines doubled in length during that 30 minutes.

So, for 30 minutes 100 - 150 people (not including those with them) are standing in a line. Not shopping, not eating at restaurants and, more important to the casino's cash flow, not gambling.

It is fascinating to me that as businesses we seem to forget that people standing in line are not spending money. People standing in line aren't happy. People standing in line don't help us to grow. People standing in line tell their friends how long they had to wait in line.