I would have made it work closer to how the system currently does now. There would be a stack of pagers and someone associates the pager number with the reservation number. Only instead of the host doing this job, the guest will.
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Panera Bread, a chain of sandwich shops, has a system where you walk in and order at a kiosk and take a pager like device (see photo) which you associate with your order. Of course, this system has the benefit of bringing the food to you similar to Be Our Guest. Fortunately, unlike Be Our Guest or Panera, this system is simply a check-in. Hopefully, the difficulties associated with ordering kiosks will not be present here.
The difficulties would be when one is willing to wait for a window seat, outdoor dining or a particular server as indicated earlier. Other requests like booster seats and high chairs will have to be brought up to the host showing you to the table. It also limits the opportunity to confirm special requests made at the time of the reservation or ensure a cake was delivered.
Depending on the number of kiosks, it might be slight more time efficient. It will obviously more cost efficient as few hosts are required. But it is definitely a substantially less "warm" welcome being greeted by a kiosk.
If I was not staying at Yacht/Beach, or possibly Boardwalk, Cape May is not somewhere I would have gone out of my way to visit. With the Boardwalk Bakery nearby and all of Epcot next door, it would not take very much to convince me to go elsewhere. They chose a good restaurant to run the pilot on. If reservations are not adversely affected here, it will be a good indication they will not be affected elsewhere. A better question is will they wait long enough to see an actual change. As reservations are made six months in advance, I wonder how long it will take for this change to affect reservations, if at all. If they declare the system a success in 3 months, we'll have an answer.