Theme parks and the likes - Best approach?

Monzo Chat
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After visiting Disneyland Paris last week for a few days, it sparked a small chat with @Rika Yesterday on the community Slack about merchant enrichment and how big places like Disneyland and Alton towers, with possible multiple categories and locations should be treated and Rika has said the internal guidance is unclear, and to open it up to the community for discussion! So here I am!

Right now, for both Disneyland Paris (DLP) and Alton towers (I’m sure there are other locations across the world!), all transactions are just grouped as the theme park name, however in the transaction I can see that the shops for DLP (Parc Boutiques) at least are different transaction ID than the park gates (Parc Tickets) lets say, which is different from the bar in the hotel (DL Hotel Rest)…

Now, I agree that having them all marked as “Disneyland Paris” is probably the most ideal in 90% of the cases, as indeed, all these transactions do count as Disneyland Paris. However you end up with a feed looking like this…

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Not easy to see where you spent your money right? The bar for example in the Disneyland Hotel is called “Café Fantasia” and personally I’d like it to have that name, while that might not be completely possible due to the way the merchant sends the data in the first place, some distinction between the different things would be nice.

I’d like to see all the shops be “Shops @ Disneyland Paris”, “Fast Food @ Disneyland Paris” etc etc… Or, some more sensible naming I can’t decide on that!

I think building on that for the app, it’d be great to have a merchant and a “friendly name” potentially… but this does depend on how much data comes back from the transaction. The most ideal case would be all these transactions belong to, and are searchable as “Disneyland paris” as a merchant, however they have the “Friendly name” of “Café Fantasia” or, “Parc Shops” or similar. That way you can have a nicer feed and see where you spent your money a bit easier, yet still get a bigger picture?

What’s everyone’s thought on this? (Doesn’t have to be related to Disney or Alton towers) Not completely sure I’ve voiced my thoughts quite as clearly as I think but lets get a discussion going!

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I think the best would be cafe @ Disney etc ,

There is alot that needs for example petrol stations at supermarkets.

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Yeah a little differentiation would be nice “Cafe - Disneyland Paris” or “Disneyland Paris - Cafe”
would probably be my preferred option.

Unless they can put the name of the cafe into the notes field maybe? That way it still shows up on the feed underneath.

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Yeah, my first thought was to go and figure out everything individually and put my own notes/#hashtags on them but I had 4 days in a theme park ignoring the feed so I mostly ignored it :smiley:

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Didn’t think of the Petrol station example to be honest!

Tesco Petrol Station and Tesco Superstore would be very nice, certainly if there was a higher level of “Tesco” that covers both of them too!

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Question: when you go into each transaction, does the raw merchant information at the bottom change? :slight_smile:

If it does, this can be done fairly easily. If not, I’m afraid it can’t as it means Disney are using the same POS information for each terminal :disappointed:

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So if this can be done fairly easily could we do it for petrol stations at supermarkets? As those transaction details change as described :wink:

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Yes we could :wink: I am happy to do that if I have examples but the issue is doing at scale :+1:

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In the case of DLP, They do seem to have different data -

Shops seem to be “PARC BOUTIQUES MARNE LA VALL FRA” or “WDS BOUTIQUES MONTEVRAIN FRA”
Food/fast food/snacks seem to be “PARK SNACKS MARNE LA VALL FRA”
The main Hotel bar is “DL HOTEL REST MARNE LA VALL FRA” (Now, this might cover both the Bar, and the restaurant in the hotel which do have slightly different names…
Park Tickets on the gate seem to be “PARC TICKETS MARNE LA VALL FRA”

Would be nicer if the actual restaurant names came through but that’s as close as we’ll get I imagine!

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I will have a look at this for you :eyes:

No promises though!

Edit: I updated Shops and Food for you :+1: The other two were more ambiguous so I didn’t think changing them was appropriate.

@SeMond Do you have any of these petrol stations?

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I was horrified to find out last year that some of the smaller shacks and pop up selling points in Disneyland Paris did not even have a card reader, with staff looking at us like we were aliens and telling us that the ATM is right over there.

One said (in the late afternoon) “oh yeah we do have a card reader somewhere” - rustled around in a pile of junk under the counter, wiped the dust off and booted it up. Clearly everyone was paying in cash except us.

So rather than having the first world problem of wondering which spend was in a Disney cafe and which was in a Disney shop - we had the more primitive issue of having big unknown cash withdrawals on the list and having a pocket of weird coins to take home :frowning:

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Can’t say I experienced that per say but I didn’t shop at any of the smaller stalls tbf! I did find it weird how the contactless limit was €20 or below even for apple pay though! Real #firstworldproblems there!

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Yeah, there’s “ASDA Superstore” and “ASDA Petrol” which is the main one I use

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Done :slight_smile:

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If I was feeling picky it should say “ASDA Fuel” as some people use diesel :wink:

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Petrol at Sainsbury’s , if you pay inside it has one pos code pay at pump it’s another pos code and I’m not sure if every pump is a different one,

There really needs to be a way of doing it in bulk, maybe by every supermarket transaction if say over £10 it should have a little slide button or something asking if that’s petrol until that’s specific pos is confirmed either way after a couple of people voting.

For me keeping my petrol and groceries separate in summary is high up on my list.

Or working out the patterns of the codes for each chain.
For me petrol is Sainsburys PFS… or Sainsburys OPT…

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Love this idea, but yes “Filling Station” seems to be a more universal term perhaps?

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I agree about the petrol station thing, my payments always need to be re-categorised if I pay at a supermarket petrol station, which is fine if I do it immediately but annoying if I forget and need to figure out which payment it was later

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For a café at Disneyland Paris, the “Café” part should definitely be before the “Disneyland” part otherwise the function of the merchant might be cut off.

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Seems to be a couple of standard patterns across Asda and Sainsbury’s and Tesco.

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