Rate Your 2007 AquaPalooza Event!

[marqbloq]

Hello fellow Sea Ray owners - this is the big weekend for most of us (July 21&22) and I for one am wildly excited! Being a 3-time Sea Ray owner and a person fascinated with marketing, public relations and advertising, I am curious how you would rate your AquaPalooza event.

So let’s hear it, what do you give yours on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being “a complete waste of timeâ€, 3 being “totally averageâ€, and 5 being “utterly perfectâ€)?

Personally, I would love to dive into the SR marketing departments’ data for ROM on this event and try to understand how much positive business value this event brings SR versus the cost to provide it. Is it easily traceable to increased sales, improved owner satisfaction and pride, does it drive name recognition and so forth?

So much of the success for the weekend’s events rides solely on the regional dealers themselves and that too is an intriguing aspect. Did your dealer lay out champagne, caviar and a catered spread or hot dogs, chips and beer? Did your dealer have an array of new boats to let potential buyers test ride? Did your dealer go above and beyond to offer a truly extraordinary experience that made you feel proud to be part of the Sea Ray family?

As for me, I feel very fortunate to be a member of the Sea Ray family and even more importantly, a member of a local dealer that has treated me like a VIP for nearly six years. The dealer experience in my opinion is more important than the product experience and what a difference it has made!

Finally, did you take notice of the sponsors, were they present in some way at your event or do you care who helped put this major event on? These include Mercury-MerCruiser, DCS, NBOA, Boater’s Choice, Raymarine, Boating Magazine, GMC and Sea Vision. Let's try to keep this post constructive please and thanks.

HAPPY AQUAPALOOZA to all, and to all a wonderful weekend!

Marq
:smt038

 

[Shining]

Great idea Marq,
I'll be attending Sat. on the Great Sacandaga Lake. We are very much looking forward to our first event. I contacted the girl setting up the event and said she would have our T-shirts and welcome pkg. ready for us when we get there. Hopefully, the weather will be nice. "Rain or Shine", the event goes on.
I think it would be nice to turn this thread in to a "poll" numbered 1-5 and people could add comments.
-Mike

 

[RiverRat]

Our local event isn't until the 4th of next month... But it will be interesting reading everyone elses reviews before our event even happens. I think this will be a very good way to rate individual dealers marketing efforts... or lack of.

 

[marqbloq]

That is a great idea to add a poll Mike but I tried and can't figure out how to do it.

Maybe a webmaster can help us? Please

Thanks,

 

[Morpheus]

That is a great idea to add a poll Mike but I tried and can't figure out how to do it.

Maybe a webmaster can help us? Please

Thanks,

The poll option I believe is only available when you first start the thread after you have created it you can not and go back.

The admin's might be able to though.

 

[Dave S]

Marq

I think in order to put any dealers event in perspective you also need to understand where the dealerships are located, how big they are, and what kind of an event they are capable of throwing. For instance, some dealers are not on a lake site and that's quite a bit more challenging to arrange something for them compared to other dealers that may be right on the water and may even have their own Marinas. Others may have access to a beach facility while others don't. If you are anchored in twenty feet of water, getting food around to everyone is difficult even if it's free. So if we do start some kind of poll, we ought to try and take some of that into consideration too.

Dave

 

[marqbloq]

Dave:

I agree and let's not forget demographics. Some dealers sell mostly sport boats and small cruisers like my dealer and others sell lots of yachts and such. No doubt there are big differences in the regions. In some cases gathering around a camp fire and eating hot dogs and sharing stories will rate a "5" for lots of people, but in Palm Beach Florida that likely would not fly and it would rate a "1" so it all depends for sure.

 

[Bridog]

I am curious how you would rate your AquaPalooza event.

So let’s hear it, what do you give yours on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being “utterly perfectâ€, 3 being “totally averageâ€, and 5 being “a complete waste of timeâ€)?

Marq
:smt038

Great idea but your scale is reversed. #1) should be poor and #5) should be great. People might get confused with your scale.

 

[lorenbennett]

This is a bit of a rant about ours. Its next weekend and there are three mm dealers holding it on lake havasu. Seems our dealer didn't think it was needed to contact us and let us know anything. Finally called one of the other stores and got the info but of course the block of rooms is gone. So I am a little upset. I'll wait and attend before unloading on Searay about how this dealer is treating there customers. Yep a little rant. :huh:

 

[cr0ck1]

This is a bit of a rant about ours. Its next weekend and there are three mm dealers holding it on lake havasu. Seems our dealer didn't think it was needed to contact us and let us know anything. Finally called one of the other stores and got the info but of course the block of rooms is gone. So I am a little upset. I'll wait and attend before unloading on Searay about how this dealer is treating there customers. Yep a little rant. :huh:

i recieved no notice about the one by me in tampa bay in egmont key and wheni did find out i went to register and it was too late. :huh:

and im on the email list! :smt101

 

[jamesgang]

I registered on the Sea Ray site back in June. Last Friday I called our local Sea Ray dealer, Erwin Marine in Huntsville, who is putting on our first local event. "Fred" :grin: was nice enough to explain to me how things will go that day and verified that we were on the registered list. Erwin emailed their itinerary to all registered participants. Got ours on Tuesday. They will have bannered boats out on the water and you pull up to one and claim your t's, goodie bag & lunch. Visit w/other boaters till 4pm when the band starts up. First AquaPalooza in our area so we really don't know what to expect. And we have rain in the forecast for the 21st but we're going, rain or shine!

 

[thunderbird1]

So Marq: Have you heard anything more about the Portland OR (Trudeau's Sea Ray) itinerary? I'm wondering if our dealer has anything exciting planned this year. I was going to joke with you about the food budget (I hear hot dogs and soda), but I'm reading elsewhere on the site that some dealers are hosting a "bring your own food" event. Geeze.

 

[SeaBird]

Just received our captain's letter and the Aquapalooza scheduled for Long Island NY's south shore has 140+ boats registered.

This is my first one and it's going to be incredible with that many participants.

Best of luck to all attendees this weekend!

 

[Buckeye Boater]

We were in the local MM dealer this past weekend and they have Aquapalooza sheduled for July 28 in Kelley's Cove at Kelley's Island in Lake Erie. Since it is literally a cove with a beach, at an island, there is no dockage available. And if the winds aren't favorable, it can get rough in the cove.

MM is having a barge brought over to the island to provide an area for dockage/rafting. As of last weekend, they had 75 boats registered.

This will be our first Aquapalooza. Hope the weather cooperates. We will post pictures.

 

[marqbloq]

Our event begins tonight, we are heading up this afternoon. While we are there our Service Manager is going to fix a few light issues on our boat (talk about great service). Thanks everybody for their inputs thusfar.

M

 

[Carpedmman]

Marq-
I hope you have a great time at the 'Palooza event this year. I was looking forward to going as I missed last year's event. Unfortunately, Trudeau's decided this year to have it up at Detroit lake and not where any of us larger boats can get to without a trailer. You are a fortunate one to keep your baby at this lake! I'll be interested to hear how it turns out.

You mentioned that Trudeaus mainly sells sport boats and small cruisers. Additionally, this dealer is one that won't provide service unless you purchased your boat from them. :smt018
So tell me how that gains Sea Ray support?

Have a great time! Wish I could be there!
Stuart

 

[marqbloq]

Just got home from AquaPalooza 2007 and I had a wonderful time! Here in Oregon we have been enjoying unusually stormy weather and Friday was awful and Saturday morning started out on the wrong track but by noon it turned spectacular and Sunday was great too. Because of the weather more than half of the registered boaters cancelled and lots more did not even show up. Regardless, my family and I had a wonderful time and it was a great memory. Though the party moved to the campgrounds where food and drinks were served, we choose to stay rafted up with our friends and hang out well into the night. There were lots of give-aways (very cool shirts, cups, Frisbees, soda jackets, wine opener, and blow up toys). Our dealer brought a few sport boats including the new 260 Sundeck which I really liked. While there, my service manager spent some time working on a few light issues with my boat including doing diagnostics on the engines (typical outstanding service as always). For me, I’ll have to rate this one a “4†and it could have been a “5†if more people showed up. Already looking forward to next year!

Thanks Trudeau’s!

Marq :thumbsup:

 

[thunderbird1]

Marq: Tell us more! How many people/boats attended? Did Trudeau's provide entertainment? Were there planned activities for kids? Given the Weatherman turned out to be wrong, I wish now that we had driven up.

 

[SearayPaul]

This was the first time for Sea Ray of Greenville to put on this event. My guess is about 30 boats showed up and about 75 people. They hired a band, had prizes, and had plenty of left over food at the dock. They had almost as much staff on site as they did participants.

This was the first time I have had the boat out since I got hurt in May so I had a great time. A fellow brought his 1963 30 or so foot wooden cruiser that he and his dad built many years ago. The boat still looked and ran good.

 

[Turtlesboat]

Well I didn't attend the local palooza because I was lazy and didn't sign up, and then it was "full". But it was held about 500 yards from my marina so I popped over. looked pretty lame if you ask me. about 15 boats in a raft up. There were more sea rays anchored at croton point around me than were in the raft up. they were really only there for about 3 hours and then they went home. :huh: