Hershey Park (an amusement park in Pennsylvania) and Bobby
Flay's restaurant, the Mesa Grill, in New York City, may seem unrelated to you,
but to me, they both made statements about the relationship between money and
perception to me over the last week.
We did the small family vacation thing this year. We spent
two days in Hershey, Pa. There's an amusement park and it is the home of the
chocolate company, founded by Milton S. Hershey, way back. It's a cool place to
go, just to see a good example of a business that built a town and to take the
tour, replete with animatronic, talking cows, that explains how the chocolate is
made. But, we are also a roller-coaster-loving family, and some of our faves are
in the park.
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| 1st Class Cabin, Titanic |
Since we were going small, this year, we shelled out a
pretty obscene amount of money to rent a cabana at the park. Doing this made
every fiber of my musician/teacher's body tremble with Scroogiosity, but we had
saved the money just for vacation, so...what the hay?
The cabana got us a shady place to sit when we needed a break. It also gave us instant access to "The Lazy River" -- no line
waits. We got a refrigerator stocked with water. We got "free" towels
(I figure they were more like, maybe, thirty dollars a piece). We got a tote
bag for "free" towels and a little restaurant stand that was just
for cabana people: no waits, and they would bring your food right to the cabana.
We also got a "free" soda machine we could use with out
"free" souvenir cups.
