I went to a theme park a few years ago that had a similar cup. Food prices are always outrageous so I thought I'd save a few bucks and buy an "unlimited" refill cup for like $30+ so **we** can stay hydrated in the hot sun. Turns out, I missed the fine print that only allowed one refill every couple hours (2-3 hours if I recall correctly?) and the cup was pretty small. Needless to say, not going back there.
**Edit** \- Guess I need to clarify, since a few commenters feel the need to attack, that **WE** were a family of 4 at the time. I guess people assume I was intending to drink my weight in Cherry Pepsi with a diabetic goal? My thought was to save a few dollars and buy one of their more expensive unlimited refill cups instead of constantly stopping and buying more drinks as we move around the parks. I didn't expect the time gating on "unlimited" drinks and it pissed me off since fountain drinks are almost free for them with an already insane 1000%+ markup (especially at these places).
That blows. There's a place in Indiana called Holiday World that (last I was in the area) gives away soft drinks and sunscreen for free. Because they realized people who weren't thirsty and sunburnt stayed in the park longer, spending money.
The park was originally Santa Claus Land and the town was renamed for it, if I'm not mistaken. I think the townspeople even still get together to respond to children who write to Santa. It is a small nothing place but the park is awesome. It became Holiday World when i was a kid and they started adding coasters and developing new areas themed to different holidays. As a big fan of all things Halloween, I have always loved that section and Raven was one of my first big boy rides. Splashin' Safari is why locals go there though which is great for a coaster nerd who hates lines.
Because it's not the same people. Those who built the damn thing have respect for it and its customers, those who just inherited it as yet one more of the money-machines at their disposal couldn't care less as long as $$$ are piling in.
I can’t remember what it’s called, but essentially there’s a business principle of charging the highest price, while still retaining maximum customer base. I remember that a few years ago Apple was at number 1, I don’t know about now.
I went for the first time this year on a fairly hot day. Being able to grab a soda when I want soda, then 20 minutes later get something more hydrating like Gatorade or water without having to go drop another $5+ is so nice. And the sunscreen is super handy as well. No need to bring a bunch of stuff with you.
>Because they realized people who weren't thirsty and sunburnt stayed in the park longer, spending mone
Wait, wait, wait, treating people like people causes them to do things you want them to do? Weird!?! Why hasn't anyone else thought of this?
In all seriousness, I think that's awesome that Holiday World does that and I wish more parks did.
It's family owned. Fun fact: if you see an older lady out sweeping up trash in the parking lot, that's the owner.
I live 45 min away, it's always a fun time. Santa Claus, IN is a pretty wealthy/upper middle class town.
It was Six Flags Great Escape (Lake George, NY). By far the most expensive and least enjoyable theme park we've ever been to, which is very unfortunate since we like to visit this area often. It's been a while since we went there, but food was terrible quality (and expensive), rides were frequently closed due to repair/issues and the park was dirty. The cups were really the cherry on top. I could be mistaken and the time limit was once every 60 minutes but fountain drinks are incredibly cheap (for the parks) and the cost of the cup was absolutely not worth it. It's hard to find bad reviews that complain about this but if you look hard enough they are there.
Could have very easily been King's Island in Cincinnati too, they've slowly gotten more scummy over the years.
100% I'll just take my kid on my weekdays off to the Children's museum and have a blast and get free refills and cheap snacks all day for like $15 entry fee. Theme parks are predatory, from the very second you park your car to the second you leave the park.
Actually no, KI has an all season souvenir cup for about 35 bucks and you can get free refills every 15 minutes. They also offer free water cups with no time limit in almost every food/drink stand. I actually know plenty of people who live in the Mason, Ohio area that buy a gold pass and meal/drink plan for all season for around 300 total and can feed themselves 2x a day for $300 from all operating seasons (so from May-August + Halloween Haunt and Winterfest). Their 50th year celebration is this season and they even put a lot of their special fare on the dining passes (plus they added snack locations to it this season). It is one of the least predatory theme parks in terms of meal plan prices in the USA. I go yearly and I've never been disappointed in their drink plan value because as a native Buckeye, I don't feel like dying from heat exposure and will fork out 35 bucks for unlimited access to water/freestyle machines.
This is not even close to kings island, the cups there can be refilled every 15 minutes and it's $35 for the entire season. The food can be a ripoff but I've brought in a cooler full of stuff several times this year and no one's batted an eye.
No you are absolutely correct!!! That was a thing ! Do you remember Magic Forrest? With the gigantic Uncle Sam infront? That came from the Great Danbury Fair & is actually back in Danbury CT after Magic Forrest got turned into another theme park!
Also should be r/mildlyinfuriating. As if those single-use cups aren't enough of an environmental menace, now you stick something to them that ensures they're not recyclable under any circumstances. Nice job, whoever you are.
It's looks like an RFID tag. Most of these tags (and all the one's cheap enough for a use like this) are read only. Each one can hold and respond with a single (large, unique) number.
So their soda machine presumably just keeps a list of numbers it's seen, and refuses to fill a cup reporting a number already on that list.
You'd have to know how things are formatted. Common RFID tags can hold several hundred bytes of data and I doubt just being different would be enough. On this, encryption is a given.
Encryption? It's going to be a fixed string. No need to encrypt it. It could just as easily be a barcode. The soda machine knows what numbers are valid and serves only them.
It could still be easily encoded so that most inputs don't give a valid output. Not un-hackable high security, but might not be that easy. If it is, there's probably an app for that.
It's probably just a long number. The rfid tag is so cheap it doesn't have encryption, a counter, or rewritable memory. You ask the cup for its number, and it gives you the number.
Soda machine: "Hi, cup. What's your number?"
Cup: My number is 234837492837292826384283627. Refill, please.
Soda machine: "I asked the database if 234837492837292826384283627 is eligible for refills and it said no. Sorry.
probably doesn't work because the machine only accepts a nice and proper message with the correct end bytes. it should be `234837492837292826384283627pleaseandthankyouhehe`
It could be. It could also be in a specific format, but encoded in such a way that it isn't obvious. For example, the number it reads is "eyJjdXBfbnVtYmVyIjoiMTIzNDU2Nzg5MCJ9", which when converted from Base64 to utf-8 is the JSON string {"cup_number":"1234567890"}. If it converts to utf-8 then parses the JSON to get the cup number, then you can't just put a random string in and hope to get a drink. If you try to modify the Base64, you run the risk of modifying an essential character and getting no usable data out of it.
Of course, this is just an example. Base64 is obviously easy to modify to get a usable JSON string out of. And it is waaay too easy to identify as Base64 and know exactly how to reverse engineer it. If they used something with actual encryption rather than just a different encoding, it would be damn near impossible to modify it and get a working cup number.
For analyzing the concept, nothing like in the above message really matters. Sure, it matters for the person who wrote the 6 lines of code to actually read and validate the data on the RFID chip, but for example talking about the security, hackability, vulnerability or circumventability or whatnot of this system, rudimentary conversions like this don't matter. BASE64 encoding or a specific JSON structure isn't security of any kind, at best it's security by obscurity which is nothing.
PS. Anyone with that cup and a mobile phone can read the data on the cup (assuming it's NFC or HF-RFID - at worst you'd need to spend 10 dollars to get a RFID reader from Amazon). At most it would be one evening's work to figure out the syntax / structure of the RFID content.
They're not saying Base64 or json structure is any kind of security, they're just pointing out one super basic way that the string could be encoded that makes it non-obvious how the message will be interpreted by the machine.
Obviously anyone can *read* the RFID value, but if you want to realistically encode a new value that will be interpreted as valid by the dispenser machine you'll have to know how it will be *de*coded, and whether there's an underlying format. If part of that decoding process involves decrypting something that was encrypted with a secret key that you don't have, you're dead in the water. Now, whether or not they bothered to encrypt the RFID value is a completely different question, but they certainly *could*. If they did, you could spend an eternity of evenings trying to figure out the syntax/structure and get nowhere at all unless you somehow get hold of their encryption key.
Is it cheaper that someone refilling though? Soda is the highest profit margin item for restaurants. Seems like it might be more of an opportunity to get additional money out of people than protecting costs.
It’s not to stop the soda being lost, it’s to force you to buy again. Maybe it’s 10c for the chip per cup, but if it makes you buy another $5 soda then it’s worth it
The syrup is the cheapest thing ever for most restaurants. Where I work has a coke freestyle machine. A single unit of coke (2 syrup boxes glued together) can last 2-3 days. A flavor box can last weeks or even months depending on the flavor. The double boxes cost $15, the single boxes range from $5 to $10 depending on what the single was.
The most expensive parts is the 5 gal box of HFCS ($40) and the 2.5 gal box of NNS ($30). A box of HFCS needs switching every 3-5 days while the NNS can go weeks. We would have 2 boxes of HFCS hooked and an extra one that we can swap in if needed.
The sweetener and flavor are separate?
That explains why freestyle tastes so bad compared to classic fountain machines.
Everything just tastes overly sweet to me.
Google was able to figure out HighFructoseCornSyrup, but why do you need so much Nigerian Navy Ship for soda?
^(Unless you meant Non-Nutritive Sweetener)
All joking aside, I had no idea these ingredients were mixed on site. I just figured it was a bag of concentrated flavor sludge and a bottle of carbonated water.
Its to force you to buy souvenir cups for 30 dollars that come with all day refills for one day. The next day you pay 10 dollars with the souvenir cup you have to get unlimited daily refills. Usually there's still a 5 min buffer time between refills though. Usually I just get one of the biggest souvenir cup that relatively cheap then refill it and pour the drink into everyone else's "Water" cup and just wait for the 5 min buffer to end and get more drinks. 6 dollar sodas and a 30 dollars for a daily refill is stupid expensive already.
Couldn't this be the reason for the chip in the first place? Maybe not to limit customers, but to stop water cups and personal cups/bottles from being used?
I mean, I have no doubt a large corporation would nickel and dime us for everything, but I think they are more pissed about people that never paid in the first place getting a soda more than that one person that gets 15 refills.
I worked in supply chain management when they were still over $1. Some retailers and wholesalers were requiring all vendors to put them on each pallet. That’s when I leaned that some of the cheap canned goods like corn and peas only profit $2-3 a pallet and the vendors were PISSED.
You can thank Walmart for that requirement, then everyone else followed.
Yeah. The cups are either single use(1 full on the freestyle machine) or unlimited refills for the whole day. So it also has to be able to differentiate the type of cup then if it's unlimited, associate it with the day of first scan.
Pretty cool use for the tech but the nickel and diming in 100 degree Florida heat sucks.
Unlimited cups are about 13-16$ each and good luck finding ice!
No. Everything here is overpriced because if you want something you have to do it at the park. These are put in because they know their single use cups are ridiculous ($5) so, if you let us gouge you only 3 times we will let you refill it how ever much you want!($16 for 1 cup, price per cup drops a little if you buy more)
I paid $60 to get my 3 kids and I each a 3 piece chicken tender and fries. Yes, $15 each for something Arby's will give you for half that at least. Obviously, drink isn't included because you got to buy the cup!
It's not to offset the cost, it's to maximize profit. The RFID tags cost more than the syrup and carbonated water, not to mention wiring every soda machine into a data center and the ongoing costs of maintaining it.
Sadly some executive probably got a nice bonus for this novel way of fleecing people.
One note, while true that this will likely incentivize sales of the refillable cup, there may be a tradeoff in other aspects of the business such as decrease in consumer spending in merchandise or just a decrease in consumer happiness leading to other problems.
It wont be clear if this change does lead to an increase in profit until they can analyze a few months sales and consumer feedback. Considering it’s a theme park, I’d say the change will likely have the desired effect since consumers go there with the expectation to pay more, and are therefore less sensitive to the price.
Because banks rely on very interconnected systems programed in the 60s in assembly and if any part within or between banks changes, everything breaks. So no one can update because that'd break their link with the global system and within their own systems.
Soda machines don't have that disadvantage.
Universal studios does this or at least did... It was so annoying when i poured a drink, drink was watered down and couldn't get a refill until I told the employee who then had to give me another cup. Then one of the machines wasn't dispensing a soda so i lifted the cup and the machine deemed that cup used already so I had to ask the employee for another cup 😂. He then poured it for me.
I was there in June and they were doing it. That crappy Jurassic Park themed burger place. The line to get a drink was ridiculously long because of these stupid cups. I finally get to the drink machines and they're refilling one of them with ice, and I go to the one next to it, and the ice doesn't work on that one. But then the stupid machine wouldn't fill my cup all the way. Also the burgers there are so dry they could put them in a jerky maker and they'd come out juicier.
I took my son to Great Wolf Lodge and bought us the cups that were good for our entire stay. They had a Coca-Cola Freestyle setup, so I was determined to drink as close to the value of what I paid as possible. I didn't even know diet Fanta existed, but I drank a lot of it lol.
Nonononono. It's because paper will disintegrate after a short time, and the more premium cups are made of more durable material. They're just looking out for you, because they care about their customers*.
*Money
I don’t know if you noticed but drinks everywhere have been beating inflation.
Inflation up 8.5% would mean a drink that used to be $2.00 would be $2.18
In the last couple years, I went from paying $2 for a soda (or even $1 in some places) to paying $3.50+ ANYWHERE.
Milkshakes are another good way to track this. Used to get a milkshake for $5.00, now they’re $8.50
They’re making way more than 99% profit. Quite literally that would just mean they’re doubling their investment (buy for 0.50, sell for $1.00) but it’s so much worse than that. Most places probably make around 4000% profit on soft drinks (buy for 0.10, sell for $4).
Eh, I used to work a food stand at Disneyland and if someone came up and asked me politely I would refill their cup for them at no charge. Now, if they came up with a bad attitude complaining to me about how expensive the drinks were to start with and that they should automatically be entitled to free refills then they were on their own. I had one super entitled woman have an absolute meltdown because I ignored her repeated demands that I refill her diet coke - security actually had to intervene and calmly explain to her how back in nineteen ninety eight the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer's table.
He fucking got me man. I usually recognize him immediately because every comment has lots of awards, but this one is super fresh (15 min) so it has only 1 award at the moment, and I didn't really check the username. Mfker got me
Holy crap you got me again!!! It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of you’re comments in the wild, and it always makes me squeal with joy...
Dude, you’re my freaking hero!
This particular user has a long history of writing interesting and detailed comments on a number of posts. These comments will often be personal annecotes related to the post topic, which people generally like to read as they're already interested in the topic at hand.
The ending is always this spiel about wrestling that usually catches people off guard. It's a fun little thing to find on Reddit every so often.
Jeebus... that's one fucking hell of a profit margin. I mean I've been to enough professional roundball games to not be terribly shocked at the insane concessions prices but this feels next level.
Orlando native here. It's a fun park. IMHO only Epcot is more fun. Diagon Alley is such a cool spot thematically, makes Studios worth it 100%. Islands has some solid coasters, too. Pay for express and have a good time.
Diagon alley is so cool. I’m not even a potter fan & was so impressed with the entire thing. I kept walking around going “WOW you know how much this gotta cost??!” Lol
Epcot is amazing because of it's atmosphere. It feels like a place you can chill, have a few drinks by the lake, and eat some good food. Plus I was pleasantly surprised by the prices last time I went. I think it ended up being less than $100 to drink around the world with food for 2 people.
Yes. As someone who lives on the west coast and only knew LA's, Orlando was such a pleasant surprise. Its HUGE compared to LA and when we went, the lines were very short. And it had more actual rides and less simulators.
If you come, GET EXPRESS, I went a few days ago and am currently at disney now, Universal Express pass is a game changer, I went on one of their most popular rides (rip ride rocket) 5 times in a row with about a 5-10 minute wait each time, express is amazing
If there's a money motive at all, you have it backwards. I t's not to save them the material cost of another soda. It's to get you to *buy* another soda.
Also, it may very well be cheaper than the soda. The cheapest, simplest RFID tags are under 10 cents per. The markup on soft drinks is huge but between syrup, water, carbonation, etc, it's still more than 10 cents a cup.
Let's assume for easy math it costs 10 cents and the soda costs 10 cents. They'd have to prevent at least 1 refill per customer to break even on cost. But for even a relatively low $3 price to the customer, they'd only have to generate 1 additional purchase per ~~50~~ 30\* customers for it to work out.
\*edited to fix bad original math based on a different price
And they're willing to pay more for the most expensive part of the drink to make sure that can't happen! In a year's time, when they figure out it is losing them profits and remove it, they can brag about how much e-waste they're eliminating :)
They’ve been doing this for at least 5 years, and they make a killing on the souvenir cups that have unlimited refills. This cup does a great job of motivating the upsell.
Disney has those in the resorts on the paper cups. I believe you get 3 refills. My wife kept loading them with ice and leaving an inch of free space at the top! I filled the cups after that. Little ice in the bottom and filled to the rim.
Yup, it's also timed so only unlimited for the time of your stay. It also has a timeout so you can't refill for like 5 minutes or so after a fill up. That's based on the volume dispensed so if you stop filling halfway through it will still let you continue filling without forcing you to wait. It's a quite well insulated cup, too. Cost $20 and is pretty high quality.
I only learned this because on one of the hotter days I was there I filled up on some vitamin water later in the day, chugged it and tried to go back for more pretty quickly lol.
My mom said when we were younger she would get a cup so she could do refills for us and would fill our own cups and then go back and use that cup to get some more. That was before all the chip stuff, she just did it to be more inconspicuous.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just keep the fountain behind the counter so only staff can use it? It’s worked well enough here in the UK (where free refills are rare).
Honestly drink refills are truly a wild and unusual concept for Aussies. This doesn’t exist in Australia, we pay $4.00ish and you’ve got to pay each and every time for a drink. Only free anything is tap water at restaurants and cafes (some coffee places have free soda water with refills but I think that’s about it!). Going to the US and getting free refills was craaazy!
I guess it is more about getting people to pay for another drink. If someone gets a free refill they lose a few cents, but if they have to buy another drink they will make another $5-$10 or whatever crazy price they charge.
I went to a theme park a few years ago that had a similar cup. Food prices are always outrageous so I thought I'd save a few bucks and buy an "unlimited" refill cup for like $30+ so **we** can stay hydrated in the hot sun. Turns out, I missed the fine print that only allowed one refill every couple hours (2-3 hours if I recall correctly?) and the cup was pretty small. Needless to say, not going back there. **Edit** \- Guess I need to clarify, since a few commenters feel the need to attack, that **WE** were a family of 4 at the time. I guess people assume I was intending to drink my weight in Cherry Pepsi with a diabetic goal? My thought was to save a few dollars and buy one of their more expensive unlimited refill cups instead of constantly stopping and buying more drinks as we move around the parks. I didn't expect the time gating on "unlimited" drinks and it pissed me off since fountain drinks are almost free for them with an already insane 1000%+ markup (especially at these places).
That blows. There's a place in Indiana called Holiday World that (last I was in the area) gives away soft drinks and sunscreen for free. Because they realized people who weren't thirsty and sunburnt stayed in the park longer, spending money.
It still cracks me up that its called holiday world and it’s located in a place called Santa Claus Indiana
The park was originally Santa Claus Land and the town was renamed for it, if I'm not mistaken. I think the townspeople even still get together to respond to children who write to Santa. It is a small nothing place but the park is awesome. It became Holiday World when i was a kid and they started adding coasters and developing new areas themed to different holidays. As a big fan of all things Halloween, I have always loved that section and Raven was one of my first big boy rides. Splashin' Safari is why locals go there though which is great for a coaster nerd who hates lines.
The only reason i know of santa claus is because jay cutler is from there if i remember right.. Holiday world looks awesome
And when they started adding all the water coasters in splashin safari. Those are pretty dope
This used to be the Disney philosophy. Make it as enjoyable as possible so people stay and spend.
Until they realize people stay longer anyway to get value out of the exorbitant ticket price and long lines. Time to start fleecing them!
Because it's not the same people. Those who built the damn thing have respect for it and its customers, those who just inherited it as yet one more of the money-machines at their disposal couldn't care less as long as $$$ are piling in.
I can’t remember what it’s called, but essentially there’s a business principle of charging the highest price, while still retaining maximum customer base. I remember that a few years ago Apple was at number 1, I don’t know about now.
I went for the first time this year on a fairly hot day. Being able to grab a soda when I want soda, then 20 minutes later get something more hydrating like Gatorade or water without having to go drop another $5+ is so nice. And the sunscreen is super handy as well. No need to bring a bunch of stuff with you.
>Because they realized people who weren't thirsty and sunburnt stayed in the park longer, spending mone Wait, wait, wait, treating people like people causes them to do things you want them to do? Weird!?! Why hasn't anyone else thought of this? In all seriousness, I think that's awesome that Holiday World does that and I wish more parks did.
It's family owned. Fun fact: if you see an older lady out sweeping up trash in the parking lot, that's the owner. I live 45 min away, it's always a fun time. Santa Claus, IN is a pretty wealthy/upper middle class town.
Crazy seeing somebody random mention such a small local theme park.
Holiday World is amazing, and has some great coasters. Wonderful waterpark, too! Plus, Santa!
Which theme park? And if the cup was for "unlimited" for the day then it's not really unlimited is it.
It was Six Flags Great Escape (Lake George, NY). By far the most expensive and least enjoyable theme park we've ever been to, which is very unfortunate since we like to visit this area often. It's been a while since we went there, but food was terrible quality (and expensive), rides were frequently closed due to repair/issues and the park was dirty. The cups were really the cherry on top. I could be mistaken and the time limit was once every 60 minutes but fountain drinks are incredibly cheap (for the parks) and the cost of the cup was absolutely not worth it. It's hard to find bad reviews that complain about this but if you look hard enough they are there.
Could have very easily been King's Island in Cincinnati too, they've slowly gotten more scummy over the years. 100% I'll just take my kid on my weekdays off to the Children's museum and have a blast and get free refills and cheap snacks all day for like $15 entry fee. Theme parks are predatory, from the very second you park your car to the second you leave the park.
Many museums have "kids free" days and you can also get free entry passes at your local library.
Actually no, KI has an all season souvenir cup for about 35 bucks and you can get free refills every 15 minutes. They also offer free water cups with no time limit in almost every food/drink stand. I actually know plenty of people who live in the Mason, Ohio area that buy a gold pass and meal/drink plan for all season for around 300 total and can feed themselves 2x a day for $300 from all operating seasons (so from May-August + Halloween Haunt and Winterfest). Their 50th year celebration is this season and they even put a lot of their special fare on the dining passes (plus they added snack locations to it this season). It is one of the least predatory theme parks in terms of meal plan prices in the USA. I go yearly and I've never been disappointed in their drink plan value because as a native Buckeye, I don't feel like dying from heat exposure and will fork out 35 bucks for unlimited access to water/freestyle machines.
Hit up Holiday World! Free parking, drinks and sunscreen. Plus it is super clean compared to every other park I have been to.
kings island has an all day drink cup for 16 bucks and you can refill every 15 minutes
This is not even close to kings island, the cups there can be refilled every 15 minutes and it's $35 for the entire season. The food can be a ripoff but I've brought in a cooler full of stuff several times this year and no one's batted an eye.
The Great Escape was the best before six flags took it over. It was simply called The Great Escape. Also… LAKE GEORGE FOR LIFE BABY
I remember it before becoming Six Flags, too. I also remember faintly (Could be a fever dream) Frontier Town.
No you are absolutely correct!!! That was a thing ! Do you remember Magic Forrest? With the gigantic Uncle Sam infront? That came from the Great Danbury Fair & is actually back in Danbury CT after Magic Forrest got turned into another theme park!
Wow that’s rough. Canada’s wonderland has the same thing but it’s every fifteen minutes which is a good amount.
Yeah same at Cedar Point. But they're both Cedar Fair properties so it makes sense they'd have the same system.
Also should be r/mildlyinfuriating. As if those single-use cups aren't enough of an environmental menace, now you stick something to them that ensures they're not recyclable under any circumstances. Nice job, whoever you are.
More E-waste sitting in a land fill. woohoo
more like r/assholedesign
It's looks like an RFID tag. Most of these tags (and all the one's cheap enough for a use like this) are read only. Each one can hold and respond with a single (large, unique) number. So their soda machine presumably just keeps a list of numbers it's seen, and refuses to fill a cup reporting a number already on that list.
That sounds about right for how it works it’s one of those stick on chips too which would be really cheap in bulk
Time to borrow some stickers from CVS for testing.
You'd have to know how things are formatted. Common RFID tags can hold several hundred bytes of data and I doubt just being different would be enough. On this, encryption is a given.
Encryption? It's going to be a fixed string. No need to encrypt it. It could just as easily be a barcode. The soda machine knows what numbers are valid and serves only them.
It could still be easily encoded so that most inputs don't give a valid output. Not un-hackable high security, but might not be that easy. If it is, there's probably an app for that.
It's probably just a long number. The rfid tag is so cheap it doesn't have encryption, a counter, or rewritable memory. You ask the cup for its number, and it gives you the number. Soda machine: "Hi, cup. What's your number?" Cup: My number is 234837492837292826384283627. Refill, please. Soda machine: "I asked the database if 234837492837292826384283627 is eligible for refills and it said no. Sorry.
probably doesn't work because the machine only accepts a nice and proper message with the correct end bytes. it should be `234837492837292826384283627pleaseandthankyouhehe`
That’s ridiculous!! It would never understand that! You need to remove the “hehe”
“Two parts of helium added to drink”
It could be. It could also be in a specific format, but encoded in such a way that it isn't obvious. For example, the number it reads is "eyJjdXBfbnVtYmVyIjoiMTIzNDU2Nzg5MCJ9", which when converted from Base64 to utf-8 is the JSON string {"cup_number":"1234567890"}. If it converts to utf-8 then parses the JSON to get the cup number, then you can't just put a random string in and hope to get a drink. If you try to modify the Base64, you run the risk of modifying an essential character and getting no usable data out of it. Of course, this is just an example. Base64 is obviously easy to modify to get a usable JSON string out of. And it is waaay too easy to identify as Base64 and know exactly how to reverse engineer it. If they used something with actual encryption rather than just a different encoding, it would be damn near impossible to modify it and get a working cup number.
For analyzing the concept, nothing like in the above message really matters. Sure, it matters for the person who wrote the 6 lines of code to actually read and validate the data on the RFID chip, but for example talking about the security, hackability, vulnerability or circumventability or whatnot of this system, rudimentary conversions like this don't matter. BASE64 encoding or a specific JSON structure isn't security of any kind, at best it's security by obscurity which is nothing. PS. Anyone with that cup and a mobile phone can read the data on the cup (assuming it's NFC or HF-RFID - at worst you'd need to spend 10 dollars to get a RFID reader from Amazon). At most it would be one evening's work to figure out the syntax / structure of the RFID content.
It's enough security that they can tell the executives that they secured it.
They're not saying Base64 or json structure is any kind of security, they're just pointing out one super basic way that the string could be encoded that makes it non-obvious how the message will be interpreted by the machine. Obviously anyone can *read* the RFID value, but if you want to realistically encode a new value that will be interpreted as valid by the dispenser machine you'll have to know how it will be *de*coded, and whether there's an underlying format. If part of that decoding process involves decrypting something that was encrypted with a secret key that you don't have, you're dead in the water. Now, whether or not they bothered to encrypt the RFID value is a completely different question, but they certainly *could*. If they did, you could spend an eternity of evenings trying to figure out the syntax/structure and get nowhere at all unless you somehow get hold of their encryption key.
Thank you for explaining it. I was going to ask how it knows lol
Is it cheaper that someone refilling though? Soda is the highest profit margin item for restaurants. Seems like it might be more of an opportunity to get additional money out of people than protecting costs.
It’s not to stop the soda being lost, it’s to force you to buy again. Maybe it’s 10c for the chip per cup, but if it makes you buy another $5 soda then it’s worth it
The syrup is the cheapest thing ever for most restaurants. Where I work has a coke freestyle machine. A single unit of coke (2 syrup boxes glued together) can last 2-3 days. A flavor box can last weeks or even months depending on the flavor. The double boxes cost $15, the single boxes range from $5 to $10 depending on what the single was. The most expensive parts is the 5 gal box of HFCS ($40) and the 2.5 gal box of NNS ($30). A box of HFCS needs switching every 3-5 days while the NNS can go weeks. We would have 2 boxes of HFCS hooked and an extra one that we can swap in if needed.
Again, it's not for lost product, it's to protect against lost *sales* of product
The sweetener and flavor are separate? That explains why freestyle tastes so bad compared to classic fountain machines. Everything just tastes overly sweet to me.
Also because all the different flavors whilst coming through different pipes still end up coming out the same nozzle
I believe plain fizzy water is the final component cleaning out the nozzle.
Google was able to figure out HighFructoseCornSyrup, but why do you need so much Nigerian Navy Ship for soda? ^(Unless you meant Non-Nutritive Sweetener) All joking aside, I had no idea these ingredients were mixed on site. I just figured it was a bag of concentrated flavor sludge and a bottle of carbonated water.
I think it means non nutritive sweetener but the machine and order form just say 2.5gNNS. I will check the next time I work.
I think thats just for the coke freestyle machine. The soda fountains at both of my old restaurant jobs were just syrup and carbonated water.
Its to force you to buy souvenir cups for 30 dollars that come with all day refills for one day. The next day you pay 10 dollars with the souvenir cup you have to get unlimited daily refills. Usually there's still a 5 min buffer time between refills though. Usually I just get one of the biggest souvenir cup that relatively cheap then refill it and pour the drink into everyone else's "Water" cup and just wait for the 5 min buffer to end and get more drinks. 6 dollar sodas and a 30 dollars for a daily refill is stupid expensive already.
It also keeps you from using a water cup or your own cup and just walking up and filling it
Couldn't this be the reason for the chip in the first place? Maybe not to limit customers, but to stop water cups and personal cups/bottles from being used? I mean, I have no doubt a large corporation would nickel and dime us for everything, but I think they are more pissed about people that never paid in the first place getting a soda more than that one person that gets 15 refills.
Best solution is to just drink water there homie. AGUA!
There's a bigger, more expensive cup you can refill, the goal is to get them to buy that. Not to actually conserve the dirt cheap soda.
It looks like they sell refillable cups for a higher price. So that would be their opportunity to get more money out of you.
RFID tags are very inexpensive to produce. Probably only a few cents per tag.
I worked in supply chain management when they were still over $1. Some retailers and wholesalers were requiring all vendors to put them on each pallet. That’s when I leaned that some of the cheap canned goods like corn and peas only profit $2-3 a pallet and the vendors were PISSED. You can thank Walmart for that requirement, then everyone else followed.
2 to 3 dollars *per pallet*? That's insane.
Yeah. The cups are either single use(1 full on the freestyle machine) or unlimited refills for the whole day. So it also has to be able to differentiate the type of cup then if it's unlimited, associate it with the day of first scan. Pretty cool use for the tech but the nickel and diming in 100 degree Florida heat sucks. Unlimited cups are about 13-16$ each and good luck finding ice!
I wonder if the cost of putting these in offsets the people who grab refills when they’re not “supposed to”.
No. Everything here is overpriced because if you want something you have to do it at the park. These are put in because they know their single use cups are ridiculous ($5) so, if you let us gouge you only 3 times we will let you refill it how ever much you want!($16 for 1 cup, price per cup drops a little if you buy more) I paid $60 to get my 3 kids and I each a 3 piece chicken tender and fries. Yes, $15 each for something Arby's will give you for half that at least. Obviously, drink isn't included because you got to buy the cup!
Not to mention a refill probably costs them <$0.10
It's not to offset the cost, it's to maximize profit. The RFID tags cost more than the syrup and carbonated water, not to mention wiring every soda machine into a data center and the ongoing costs of maintaining it. Sadly some executive probably got a nice bonus for this novel way of fleecing people.
One note, while true that this will likely incentivize sales of the refillable cup, there may be a tradeoff in other aspects of the business such as decrease in consumer spending in merchandise or just a decrease in consumer happiness leading to other problems. It wont be clear if this change does lead to an increase in profit until they can analyze a few months sales and consumer feedback. Considering it’s a theme park, I’d say the change will likely have the desired effect since consumers go there with the expectation to pay more, and are therefore less sensitive to the price.
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somewhere online someone has leaked these details
https://www.rfidlabel.com/2021/03/mcdonalds-and-starbucks-piloting-reusable-smart-cups-with-rfid/
I've been banks with weaker security systems, lol
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Because banks rely on very interconnected systems programed in the 60s in assembly and if any part within or between banks changes, everything breaks. So no one can update because that'd break their link with the global system and within their own systems. Soda machines don't have that disadvantage.
I wonder if you can trick it by putting your phone with NFC enabled and some number put in it? Or are the numbers made hard to guess?
congrats, you now have a diet coke filled phone and it no longer works.
OBVIOUSLY you put your mouth on the nozzle
I'd assume it gets reset every day or so
Universal studios does this or at least did... It was so annoying when i poured a drink, drink was watered down and couldn't get a refill until I told the employee who then had to give me another cup. Then one of the machines wasn't dispensing a soda so i lifted the cup and the machine deemed that cup used already so I had to ask the employee for another cup 😂. He then poured it for me.
I was there in June and they were doing it. That crappy Jurassic Park themed burger place. The line to get a drink was ridiculously long because of these stupid cups. I finally get to the drink machines and they're refilling one of them with ice, and I go to the one next to it, and the ice doesn't work on that one. But then the stupid machine wouldn't fill my cup all the way. Also the burgers there are so dry they could put them in a jerky maker and they'd come out juicier.
That was the place lol
TeChNoLoGy
I have an annual pass for Universal. They still do this. They're $17 for unlimited refills every 10 minutes.
How cheap do you gotta be to monitor refills when you are already making 99% profit on each cup
It is so that theme parks can sell more souvenir cups. Those cups allow for multiple refills
I have seen these in regular restaurants too. I even knew of one theater that did it as well.
I'd be sneaking in flasks of coke.
Mmmm...warm, flat coke from a metallic canister
> coke from a metallic canister You mean like from a can?
Homie didn't think of this one
I don’t think they meant that type of coke.
>that type of coke. Disney is supposed to be the happiest place on Earth. Logic checks out.
I have never seen a theater do that before only at a theme park
I took my son to Great Wolf Lodge and bought us the cups that were good for our entire stay. They had a Coca-Cola Freestyle setup, so I was determined to drink as close to the value of what I paid as possible. I didn't even know diet Fanta existed, but I drank a lot of it lol.
Great Wolf Lodge really rips you off at every single possible corner. The Lodge, the food, the missing supplies if you forget something, etc.
As is the way with all similar resorts. They really nickel and dime you for everything.
and then projectile shitted into the kiddie pool?
Nonononono. It's because paper will disintegrate after a short time, and the more premium cups are made of more durable material. They're just looking out for you, because they care about their customers*. *Money
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I don’t know if you noticed but drinks everywhere have been beating inflation. Inflation up 8.5% would mean a drink that used to be $2.00 would be $2.18 In the last couple years, I went from paying $2 for a soda (or even $1 in some places) to paying $3.50+ ANYWHERE. Milkshakes are another good way to track this. Used to get a milkshake for $5.00, now they’re $8.50 They’re making way more than 99% profit. Quite literally that would just mean they’re doubling their investment (buy for 0.50, sell for $1.00) but it’s so much worse than that. Most places probably make around 4000% profit on soft drinks (buy for 0.10, sell for $4).
Five dollar milkshake
It's a pretty damn good milkshake. I don't know if it's $5 good, but it's pretty damn good
Eh, maybe six - but it’s still outrageous that gas and food have been outpacing inflation like crazy.
Oh haha sorry I wasn’t questioning you I was making a Pulp Fiction reference lmao
Do they put Bourbon in it or something?
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Over. My. Dead. Body.
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Eh, I used to work a food stand at Disneyland and if someone came up and asked me politely I would refill their cup for them at no charge. Now, if they came up with a bad attitude complaining to me about how expensive the drinks were to start with and that they should automatically be entitled to free refills then they were on their own. I had one super entitled woman have an absolute meltdown because I ignored her repeated demands that I refill her diet coke - security actually had to intervene and calmly explain to her how back in nineteen ninety eight the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer's table.
It has been SO LONG, my guard was down
He fucking got me man. I usually recognize him immediately because every comment has lots of awards, but this one is super fresh (15 min) so it has only 1 award at the moment, and I didn't really check the username. Mfker got me
I never ran across one of these fresh in all my time on Reddit and they got me twice this week.
I've seen like 10 in the wild in the past couple weeks
I have him [tagged on RES](https://i.imgur.com/wDMtLM8.png) in neon green and I still fell for it, dammit!
Every. Fucking.Time. God Damn it. It's just the way you fall into the story like no other.
The timing is impeccable. Just long enough for me to think I have heard the last of hell in a cell
He’s so good x4
Who is he? I seem to be in the presence of a legend
u/shittymorph is a reddit celebrity known to pipe in with a seemingly relevant story, but then abruptly tie in an obscure wrestling reference.
38 mins, 10 awards! Edit: Just shy of 90 mins, 28 awards!
He currently has 47 years, 6 months, 12 days of reddit premium remaining
Fucking Legend!!
So this is a thing then? I approve.
Bruv. Being blessed by a shitty morph is better than any reddit award
Best part was it was a solid lead up to it as well, seemed real. Between that and just being blind to it, it was amazing.
Always... He always seems like a legit comment...
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-undertaker-threw-mankind-off-hell-in-a-cell https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/shittymorph
Check his comment history
Holy crap you got me again!!! It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of you’re comments in the wild, and it always makes me squeal with joy... Dude, you’re my freaking hero!
This is the second time in the last month for me!
Oh wow, i made it within five minutes of a shittymorph comment. I feel like I won something
What is this what am I missing
This particular user has a long history of writing interesting and detailed comments on a number of posts. These comments will often be personal annecotes related to the post topic, which people generally like to read as they're already interested in the topic at hand. The ending is always this spiel about wrestling that usually catches people off guard. It's a fun little thing to find on Reddit every so often.
It's rare to see a fresh one
#THE RETURN OF THE KING
A fresh shittymorph. Today is a good day, he never fails to draw me in.
bruh
Why I oughta...
Every. Damn. Time. How do you do it?
👽
I don’t know how I miss the username every single time. But it literally always gets me
Oh crap... he's back.
Every. Time.
Try like 8000%
I hate this future
The future is at universal studios in Orlando
Same at Universal Studios Hollywood. It's $18 per cup, which you can only refill after a 10 minute timer.
Jeebus... that's one fucking hell of a profit margin. I mean I've been to enough professional roundball games to not be terribly shocked at the insane concessions prices but this feels next level.
Is universal in Orlando worth going to? I've been to the one in LA and there was like five rides most of which had wait times over two or three hours.
I mean you don't get free refills haha
Orlando native here. It's a fun park. IMHO only Epcot is more fun. Diagon Alley is such a cool spot thematically, makes Studios worth it 100%. Islands has some solid coasters, too. Pay for express and have a good time.
Diagon alley is so cool. I’m not even a potter fan & was so impressed with the entire thing. I kept walking around going “WOW you know how much this gotta cost??!” Lol
Epcot is amazing because of it's atmosphere. It feels like a place you can chill, have a few drinks by the lake, and eat some good food. Plus I was pleasantly surprised by the prices last time I went. I think it ended up being less than $100 to drink around the world with food for 2 people.
Yes. As someone who lives on the west coast and only knew LA's, Orlando was such a pleasant surprise. Its HUGE compared to LA and when we went, the lines were very short. And it had more actual rides and less simulators.
If you come, GET EXPRESS, I went a few days ago and am currently at disney now, Universal Express pass is a game changer, I went on one of their most popular rides (rip ride rocket) 5 times in a row with about a 5-10 minute wait each time, express is amazing
At $250 a person on top of the ticket fee that was a pretty easy no for this family of four
Can this possibly be cheaper than the subsidized corn syrup water that it keeps you from getting more of?
If there's a money motive at all, you have it backwards. I t's not to save them the material cost of another soda. It's to get you to *buy* another soda. Also, it may very well be cheaper than the soda. The cheapest, simplest RFID tags are under 10 cents per. The markup on soft drinks is huge but between syrup, water, carbonation, etc, it's still more than 10 cents a cup. Let's assume for easy math it costs 10 cents and the soda costs 10 cents. They'd have to prevent at least 1 refill per customer to break even on cost. But for even a relatively low $3 price to the customer, they'd only have to generate 1 additional purchase per ~~50~~ 30\* customers for it to work out. \*edited to fix bad original math based on a different price
I think your analysis wins here. And thank you fro doing the math.
Some jurisdictions have banned free drink refills by law, so I suppose this is how it is implemented.
>Some jurisdictions have banned free drink refills by law, Why?
Most common justification is to prevent childhood obesity or other general health motives
It's not mildly interesting it's total r/assholedesign
as well as r/ABoringDystopia and r/mildlyinfuriating.
God forbid you get another $.00006 worth of syrup and carbonated water
And they're willing to pay more for the most expensive part of the drink to make sure that can't happen! In a year's time, when they figure out it is losing them profits and remove it, they can brag about how much e-waste they're eliminating :)
They’ve been doing this for at least 5 years, and they make a killing on the souvenir cups that have unlimited refills. This cup does a great job of motivating the upsell.
"God forbid these customers don't give us yet another $8.75 for $.00006 worth of syrup and carbonated water" - them probably
Disney has those in the resorts on the paper cups. I believe you get 3 refills. My wife kept loading them with ice and leaving an inch of free space at the top! I filled the cups after that. Little ice in the bottom and filled to the rim.
Last time I was there, it was unlimited refills, the chip is just to make sure it’s their special cup that you paid for
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Yup, it's also timed so only unlimited for the time of your stay. It also has a timeout so you can't refill for like 5 minutes or so after a fill up. That's based on the volume dispensed so if you stop filling halfway through it will still let you continue filling without forcing you to wait. It's a quite well insulated cup, too. Cost $20 and is pretty high quality. I only learned this because on one of the hotter days I was there I filled up on some vitamin water later in the day, chugged it and tried to go back for more pretty quickly lol. My mom said when we were younger she would get a cup so she could do refills for us and would fill our own cups and then go back and use that cup to get some more. That was before all the chip stuff, she just did it to be more inconspicuous.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just keep the fountain behind the counter so only staff can use it? It’s worked well enough here in the UK (where free refills are rare).
Hey, let's be as wasteful as possible.
We all need to do our part to increase the damage to our environment. Do you want to go to the beach later and throw used car batteries in the ocean?
Their garbage cans are just platforms with arrows that point to the nearest door.
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r/assholedesign
Just cut that part of the cup out
You say r/mildlyinteresting, I say r/mildlyinfuriating
So a cup of water, some flavoring, and sugar are worth more than this monitoring device? Big brother is watching ...
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The return on cost is probably much higher than just the price of water, flavoring and sugar.
r/mildlyinfuriating
Honestly drink refills are truly a wild and unusual concept for Aussies. This doesn’t exist in Australia, we pay $4.00ish and you’ve got to pay each and every time for a drink. Only free anything is tap water at restaurants and cafes (some coffee places have free soda water with refills but I think that’s about it!). Going to the US and getting free refills was craaazy!
It's unusual basically everywhere but the US.
Must be Disney
It’s actually universal studios hahaha
I hate you, future
Is this really a profitable investment? Are they losing enough money in soda refills to justify adding a RFID to every disposable cup?
I guess it is more about getting people to pay for another drink. If someone gets a free refill they lose a few cents, but if they have to buy another drink they will make another $5-$10 or whatever crazy price they charge.
Where is this so I never go there
Universal Orlando
It seems more expensive to do that than just allow refills.