Let me be perfectly clear . . . I do NOT blame the Pocono Raceway or the Organizers of this attraction for the weather and I do NOT blame them for closing down a wet track. My gripe is with their process for handling these weather cancellations and their lack of empathy or helpfulness to those disappointed people that paid a lot of money for the experience. I only lost a vacation day, food for 2, gasoline, and a hotel bill. There were others that lost airfare and much more. Here are the issues:
There are no rain "delays". If you book in advance, they stick you into the 8am time slot which is probably the riskiest since the sun is stronger at noon. Instead of respecting the poor souls that got stuck with 8am and making the lucky last minute booking 12pm customers share the pain of a rain delay, they CANCEL the 8am and if the track dries, all the other time slots are honored "on time"! Apparently, they don't charge enough money to pay OT for the employees having to stay late. If there are no open slots/cars for the times subsequent to your cancellation, you're out of luck. Ironically, they give you a "rain check" for one year. I guess it pays to book at the last minute to get a 12PM slot.
In my case, there were a "couple" of openings at 12pm but no process for securing those slots. They couldn't say exactly how many slots there were and NO PROCESS for securing them. There were people coming from Maine and Arizona. Who gets priority? Who knows? I guess they make you draw straws or duke it out.
Let's put it this way .. . even if they have a "process" for handling rain cancellations, nobody tells you what it is. Basically, they say "it's cancelled, it's not our fault, and don't let the door hit you in the back side on your way out".
I don't doubt the experience of the drive itself is 5 stars all the way. The instruction seemed very good and they did a great job stressing safety. I only wish I didn't have to wait another year to enjoy it as I wasted my last vacation day. They should at least have a schedule ready and allow you to rebook a Saturday opening without extra cost.
Poor management.
Réponse de l'hôte
Aug 2019
Thank you for taking your time to leave your feedback on our Rain Checking procedure and your experience taking our Drive session training class. We always value feedback whether it be negative, positive or both as we are always striving to provide the best experience possible.
Thank you for your praise on our instruction, we take great pride in providing an educational, safe and fun experience all in one! We look forward to having you back for your Drive Experience and to hear your feedback on the experience itself.
I’m sorry to hear that you did not get to complete your experience due to Mother Nature and that you felt we did not handle the Rain Checking procedure to your expectations. Unfortunately there are some things we cannot control, and Mother Nature is one of them. However safety is always our number one goal and that is not something that can be compromised. All of the issues you mention could have happily been rectified if you had spoken to one of our staff members regarding your concerns. I will provide you with my contact information at the end of this reply, if you ever have any issue going forward please reach out to me directly and I’d be more than happy to rectify any issues you are having.
You mention that we do not have rain "delays", that is incorrect, sometimes we do, it all depends on the situation though. Every day with rain is different, it depends on when it rains, the amount of rain, the current weather like wind/sun/cloud cover and so many factors that could change how the track will dry. We certainly do at times have rain delays, in situations where a light shower passes by and the track can dry quick enough, we will indeed just have a delay. However if the rain is like it was on your date and it did not dry until noon(delaying us 4 hours/half the day), then unfortunately we cannot just run on a delay. If you were scheduled in the 12:30pm session and when you arrived we told you you’d have to wait 4 hours before your class will start because we are running on a 4 hour delay and we are holding the 8am session to run first, I think you’d be even more unhappy with your experience. We also would then have to postpone the later sessions that are arriving to a dry track because we would run out of daylight to run every experience scheduled, again if you were in that situation of being booked at 12:30pm I think you’d be even more unhappy with the procedure you proposed.
Also it is not a matter of paying employees OT, it is a matter of daylight and the amount of experiences we can run within that time, there are days that we are there from 7am to 7pm. Depending on the time of the year we arrive at the race track when it is dark and head home when it is getting dark, so there is only so many experiences we can run within the daylight. We also strive to make our customers experiences as pleasurable as possible and if we were to overbook a time session with earlier in the day postponements and cause customers to wait extremely long wait times to do their experience it would not be an enjoyable experience.
As for your comment on “they stick you into the 8am time slot”, I’m not sure where that is coming from either. You as the customer have the choice of what time slot you book into based on what is available at the time of booking, we do not “stick” customers into time slots at random. You mention that we had openings at 12pm on that date, if you called/emailed our office and asked to move to the 12pm time session our staff would have happily moved your reservation to the 12pm time session.
As for your comment “In my case, there were a "couple" of openings at 12pm but no process for securing those slots.” If you had spoken to one of our staff members that day we would have happily secured you into the 12pm time slot if still available and you would have been able to complete your experience that day. We had some participants from the 8am time session do just that, they were unhappy with taking a Rain Check so they came and talked to us and we were able to accommodate them in the 12pm session and they ran their experience that day.
Again, I apologize that you felt your Rain Check was handled poorly, customer service is a top priority of ours and as you can see from reading any of our other reviews we usually succeed in providing friendly and helpful service to our guests. Unfortunately in this situation where you did not speak with one of our staff members we were unable to rectify any of the issues you had. Going forward I'd be more than happy to personally accommodate you with any changes or concerns that you have. I am always here in the office and I am always at the race track on our event dates. You can reach me by email at *(ian @ our website) or by phone at 877-786-2522 ext.225.
We look forward to providing you with the experience of a lifetime next season! See you then!
*Tripadvisor does not allow URL's so I could not provide my exact email address but it's my name @ our website.
Kind Regards,
Ian Roverana
StockCar Racing Experience
Phone: 877-786-2522 ext.225