Summary

In this end-of-year retrospective episode, Nick and Don cover the Top Ten Insights of 2023. Also in this episode, mitigations for low-ceiling environments.

Transcript

Nicholas Hogan:

Good morning, Don. So, we are post-Christmas officially now. Did you have a good one, there in Illinois?

Don:

good. How about you?

Nicholas Hogan:

Well, regrettably, after having managed to evade Covid for the better part of four years, it finally caught me. Went down last Wednesday, and today is my first full afternoon out of bed. So, it was a very quiet Christmas, featuring a lot of sleep.

Don:

Oh, boy.

Nicholas Hogan:

As we discussed yesterday, I think I’ll be taking a bit of a backseat on this episode, as my lungs and my pipes remain plenty torched.

Did you guys get any snow there in the Midwest, this year?

Don:

No, not even close. Christmas Eve night, when I left my daughter’s, it was 63 degrees at 10:00 at night.

Nicholas Hogan:

Oh, wow. Yeah. Those are not normal winter temperatures for your neck of the woods.

Don:

It was actually warmer on Christmas than it was on Halloween.

Nicholas Hogan:

Wow. That’s an interesting stat. Okay, very good.

All right. But hopefully you did get some downtime, managed to jam yourself full of all kinds of great food, and all that kind of stuff.

Don:

I did. It’s always nice to eat around the holidays. The food’s always good. And it’s always good to see the family, and share some smiles and some love.

Nicholas Hogan:

Yeah, indeed.

Don:

Always a good time of year.

Nicholas Hogan:

Agreed, agreed.

Don:

Thanks for the Christmas card, by the way.

Nicholas Hogan:

Oh, you’re welcome. You’re welcome. I had some reports that those were coming in very late, so I’m glad to hear you got yours.

Don:

Yep, got ours. Thank you, man.

Nicholas Hogan:

Good, good, good.

Okay, so listener questions. We have two of them this month. Before I dive in, let me say that we’d love to tackle any questions that anybody listening may have. If you have a question about what we’re presenting, or something you’d like us to present, please drop us an email at reelcast@realmetrics.com. Again, that’s REELcast@realmetrics.com.

Our policy is to keep all questions anonymous, so please speak directly, and don’t worry about us revealing your identity. That is not something we do.

Okay. The first comes from a general manager in the Midwestern US, and it’s a great question. Rather than reading it verbatim, though, I’ll just sort of paraphrase it. He’s a relatively new GM, and he has a major issue with low ceilings. And as the heights of cabinets have grown ever skyward, the problem has become so acute that he’s actually been granted budget to raise the ceilings, venue wide. Talk about a construction project. Wow.

Now, as one might imagine, this is pretty complicated. First, there are a ton of considerations regarding what’s already in those ceilings. You have sprinklers and other life safety equipment, hundreds of surveillance cameras, networking equipment cabling, all your ventilation ducts, et cetera. In fact, there’s so much going on in there that he’s really struggling to get contractors on board with his vision. So, now he’s wondering, what should he do? Should he dial the whole vision back? Or should he first focus on some preliminary mitigations, and see how those go? Just generally, he’s looking for some ideas.

So Don, as a guy who struggled with this very topic on a daily basis for many years on end, I think you’re pretty much perfectly situated to tackle this one.

Don:

Yeah. This is a pain point. I’m having flashbacks, now.

Yeah. I spent nearly 30 years on a multi-floor riverboat casino. It had very low ceilings. I could reach up and touch a couple of them. I’m not that super tall.

Nicholas Hogan:

Wow.

Don:

But I completely understand the problem. I only had a couple areas where I could place anything like a double arc, or a helix tower. You end up being very careful on how you select your games, sign packages, slot toppers, all that type of stuff.

It boils down, you probably have three options that I can think of. I did all three of them to get the taller machines on the floor. The first was to take over any area that had taller ceilings that wasn’t already part of your slot floor. We had a casino host area that had really tall ceilings, so I relocated the casino host area to another spot on the floor, and used that for slot machines.

Nicholas Hogan:

Sure, that makes sense.

Don:

Right. There was another place that was a deli, another guest services area. Take that walk on your floor, scout it, and see if there’s some opportunities to relocate things. That’s probably the first cheaper option.

Nicholas Hogan:

Mm-hmm.

Don:

The second one was, look for areas that had drop ceilings, or easily removed low-hanging decorations.

Nicholas Hogan:

Mm-hmm.

Don:

I was able to raise the ceiling by a couple feet by getting rid of some drop ceilings in the center section of one of my decks. And the only reason I didn’t get the whole thing was because of the duct work.

Nicholas Hogan:

Yeah.

Don:

Once the duct work got in my way, I wasn’t going to mess with that, but I was able to increase the height on about 50% of that floor, just by doing that.

Nicholas Hogan:

Yep.

Don:

And then, the third way is to do what you’re doing now, is raise the space. It is a challenge. Like you said, Nick, there’s a lot of electrical surveillance, lighting, duct work. There’s all sorts of stuff, up there.

Nicholas Hogan:

Mm-hmm.

Don:

Surveillance probably shouldn’t be an issue for you. Because the surveillance people are usually really good about finding areas where they can put their cameras, and all that type of stuff. But it is a lot of time, a lot of research, a lot of different vendors.

Relocating the duct work was something