Lots of new attractions at Cedar Fair parks next year...HMMMMM.

Delusional? Soap opera? You guys are the ones living the fantasy with your season passes and all your free time being spent riding the same rides over and over. You are both addicted and brainwashed to your childhood - grow up and realize not everything is fair, logical, or wraps up in a happy ending!

*backs away slowly*

Oh, my.

Not to take this off-track.....OK, precisely to take this off-track....

Just picked up our 2014 CF Platinums...kick-off is Dorney once Kozmo tosses my butt out of KG Sunday...

The Kool-Aid tastes pretty good to me!

So SnoopyDoo, what do we owe you for this session?

It's like Dr Phil and Judge Judy had a love-child....

SnoopyDoo said:
Delusional? Soap opera? You guys are the ones living the fantasy with your season passes and all your free time being spent riding the same rides over and over. You are both addicted and brainwashed to your childhood - grow up and realize not everything is fair, logical, or wraps up in a happy ending!

Wow, it takes a carefully considered, well thought out, and flawlessly delivered rebuttal like that to make me realize my life is a sham. I can't go on living this fantasy. I am going to cancel my Platinum Pass, give away all my possessions, renounce my citizenship, and become a Himalayan Monk so I can make the world a fairer, logical, happier place.

Seriously, you had to join for that???

To be fair, he obviously knows quite a bit about being delusional.

SnoopyDoo said:

You are both addicted and brainwashed to your childhood - grow up and realize not everything is fair, logical, or wraps up in a happy ending!

Says the guy who wants equitable cap ex programs among Cedar Fair's children, er, parks.

Well, it IS called "Cedar FAIR"...

Apparently I'm doing it wrong. I don't have a season pass, and the only rides I've ridden this year were at parks I'd never been to before.

Going back to Cedar Fair's purchase of Michigan's Adventure. Three reasons they bought the park.

1. To take out MA as a competitor, as the Jourdens planned to expand the park, by adding a hyper coaster to their ride line up. And, also to get their hands on Shivering Timbers, which was drawing a lot of customers away from Cedar Point. Though their promise to expand was greatly toned down, the minute the park switched hands.

2. To keep Six Flags from buying the park. As Six Flags also put in a bid with the Jourdens to buy the park. Cedar Fair offered more money, and the Jourdens saw them as a more wise investment for the future of the park. One reason why Camile Jourden is still with the park.

3. To tighten up the midwest market. As Cedar Fair now owns a good majority of it's former competitors. Though it is really stupid that they see their own parks as competition with each other. If you look at the Cedar Fair website, it lists Great America, Kings Island, and Cedar Point as MA's competitors for business.

As for the Geauga Lake comments. Geauga Lake was not too big for it's market. Cedar Fair just saw more dollar signs, in buying a large competitor to strip it down, and use the attractions at their other parks, which probably saved them millions of dollars in having to build new. Plus, you can bet that Geauga Lake in it's new form, is probably raking in more cash, then it did as an amusement park. Cedar Fair also sees the real estate around the park as a bonus, which they can sell. There was talk of a builder wanting to build a mall there.

MA will not be like Geauga Lake. Without the ride and water park combo, the park would suffer greatly. It's in the middle of nowhere, unlike Geauga Lake which was close to several large cities. There were other water parks in Michigan, and almost all of them have closed. People think the water park is the main draw. Though take away Shivering Timbers and Thunderhawk, and MA's numbers would drop like a rock. The Water park alone, would not draw the huge customer base that it currently has.

My main beef with Cedar Fair is, they made a promise of great expansion to the park, only to nix the Hyper Coaster that MA had planned, and add very little excitement to the park. While they continue to beef up their other parks. It's not that MA can't handle a larger ride park, it's that Cedar fair doesn't seem to want to do anything more with it, than make a butt load of cash that they can use at their other parks.

Cedar fair has only added 3 major rides since it bought the park, and little attractions here and there in 13 years. While their other parks have been seeing great new attractions almost every year. Though they claimed it would be much grander when they purchased it. That's why I have a problem with them.

I'd love to see proof of this promise of great expansion.

You are so delusional. Even in Dick's most egotistical days, he never bought anything out of fear for the mothership. Every park was bought to make more money. Every time.

I don't understand how you can be so ridiculous. This has been explained to you over and over again.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes an amusement park company buying an amusement park is just an amusement park company buying an amusement park. Not a nefarious cutthroat move to stymie competition.

Which I know falls on deaf ears, but Judge Judy is in a commercial break right now, and I've already seen the Restasis commercial.

^^ ummm, buying something "out of fear for the mothership" and buying something "to make more money" are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, buying out your competition is pretty common in business--it expands your business AND gets rid of the competition. Both can increase profits.

That's based on the asinine idea that MiA (or GL) ever competed with Cedar Point. It never happened. Don't humor the stupidity.

Timber-Rider said:

My main beef with Cedar Fair is, they made a promise of great expansion to the park, only to nix the Hyper Coaster that MA had planned, and add very little excitement to the park. While they continue to beef up their other parks. It's not that MA can't handle a larger ride park, it's that Cedar fair doesn't seem to want to do anything more with it, than make a butt load of cash that they can use at their other parks.

Cedar fair has only added 3 major rides since it bought the park, and little attractions here and there in 13 years. While their other parks have been seeing great new attractions almost every year. Though they claimed it would be much grander when they purchased it. That's why I have a problem with them.

It was a business transaction and continues to be a business decision. I don't know how many more ways this can be said, "They don't owe you ANYTHING!" Not a single thing. It's their park. They could turn it into charm land with a tire swing and a rusty slide and you still wouldn't have any recourse whatsoever. Why? Because it's THEIR park.

But they promised!

No they didn't.

If you believe that these parks weren't in competition with Six Flags and each other, you are the ones that are looking at the world through rose colored wine. And by the looks of it, many "bags" of that liquid.

The entire concept of why not to invest in a area that supposedly won't support it, really holds no support either as Disney has built up their property in Florida that would otherwise be swampland or Orange groves in California.

After all, Sandusky Ohio holds little to draw to tourism without Cedar Point - it's just another quaint coastal town. The company has systematically (OK, I will use your terms "entered into a conspiracy") made the business decision to go massively into debt to protect their core business (i.e. existing parks) by purchasing the competition and then milking them for what they could as "feeder" parks. It's a classic survival and growth plan that will always work for the short term.

Years ago, there were tons of automobile companies (Packard, Hudson, Desoto, etc.) and one by one, the big three systematically (your translation - conspired) to result in the market we have today (go and watch the movie Tucker). Eventually though, even these survivors find that they can't support this new empire, it gets split up, and the whole process starts again.

I really wish life was fair, but in reality, it isn't. That is not due to a mind set it is based on a bad youth, but on the school of hard knocks and experience. Cedar Fair is selling me something with an admission ticket, and they do owe me something in return for that transaction. If you are giving them your money under the assumption they don't owe you anything, why would you ever consider giving them your hard earned money?