96% uptime at Cedar Point

Last Friday I was invited to a construction tour at Cedar Point, at the end of which we got to do a little Q&A in one of the maintenance shops with Monty Jasper, the VP of construction and maintenance. He told us something that absolutely blew me away. The park as a whole does 96% uptime with their rides. That includes barf closures and everything.

I post this not because I'm a huge CP fan, but because I find that to be remarkable! The reason he mentioned is something that we've heard before, especially from Dick Kinzel (the CEO): They want opening day, closing day and every day in between to be considered the only day a guest may ever step foot in the park.

He also mentioned he has 130 people working in the off-season and another fifty working during the season. Can you imagine the activity in the park on third shift?

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

More evidence as to why Cedar Point runs such a classy operation. To be honest, I much prefer a cross country visit to CP than even IOA or Disney. That's how well the park is run. :)
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Have you ever considered that it may not be the park that's the problem, but YOU???

That's phenominal for a big corporate park. Too bad that kind of thing is the exception, and not the norm when it comes to parks of that size and scope. For 20+ years I have visited CP every year and have only seen a coaster significantly down once....Magnum in 1994 when they were forced to shut it down for a few days to replace track. They hauled *** and had it running days before they said it would be done. Other than that, I've seen a few2 barf closures and that's it.

Anyone else wonder how higher that % would be without Demon Drop? Since I rode it opening year it's ALWAYS had problems and I don't think I've ever seen it open a whole day from start to close.
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- Peabody

*** This post was edited by Peabody on 1/28/2002. ***

Wow, that's awsome. Did you take pics and stuff, Jeff? I wonder what the uptime at other parks is like.

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Father Lucifer, you never looked so sane. You did always did prefer the drizzle to the rain

I don't think it's close to that Ravenguy, at least in large corporate parks. Small parks are a different story.
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- Peabody

*** This post was edited by Peabody on 1/28/2002. ***

I wonder what kind of figures the other CF parks have?
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Ride the New England Bush!

That just goes to show that CP knows how to run a park!

Compare that to a visit of mine to another large corporate park last summer... The park (not a Cedar Fair one) had FOUR of their coasters closed. And to make it worse, the signs showing which rides were closed were in the park. You could only tell what was closed AFTER paying to enter the park. (I generally keep negative comments out of www.CoasterGallery.com, but I had to mention that on the website. Thank heavens the park can't sue me for telling factual information!)

It might be hard to quantify, but I think CP also does a great job running the rides. Ride Ops fill seats and hustle to get trains safely and quickly out of the stations.

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If only other parks could learn how to open all their rides on-time, at full capacity, and all day long. Interesting tidbit Jeff, but this can't include H2O rides, and half the park thats closed every Fri. in October does it? If so, I find it very hard to believe the percentage is that high. Props to CP maintenance crew.

the answer to how a seasonal park can turn over those kinds of guest numbers AND keep the guest satisfaction high IS...lots of coasters, lots of maintenance! Never have I seen a "corporate park" where employees work harder to keep lines moving. Now if they can only figure out what to do with MS, the last reasonable "complaint" about CP in my opinion...
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PoTP acolyte - remove fear to reply
Son of Drop Zone - PKI CoasterCamp I Champions!!!

They really do have the right formula. On-site housing, high capacity rides, and set work ethics. With 6 people on the Raptor platform, its not rocket science to get the idea that dispatches are on time almost every time. Yep, only if every park made this kinda money, now that would be sweet.

Coasterman Mike - who does like CP but feels he is getting that been there done that feeling to it

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Now, a card carrying member of ACE.
Total rides on Pittfall: 255
Total rides on Superman:UE : 633

LTLWcbYbe, I'm reasonably certain that the 96% uptime figure is based on the amount of time each ride is scheduled to operate. So for a ride to be closed that was planned to be closed because its season was ended or that part of the park was closed, or whatever, shouldn't count against the park's uptime numbers.

Also, I presume that's an aggregate figure for all rides on all operating days. With a 140-day season (2002) a 96% uptime would be the equivalent of having every ride in the park shut down for a total of 5.6 operating days. Of course, some rides may be down more than that, but then some may never go down at all.

All those qualifiers don't change the fact that it's a damned impressive statistic!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Although these numbers do seem pretty cool, they might seem cooler if someone else had similar figures for, say, a competing park?

Off hand, in my experiences at Great America, 96% was probably pretty regular for quite a few of the rides. But a few of the rides dragged down the park total for sure.

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"I'll bet that thing hits 5 Gs going through that loop.....faaar ooouut!"

does "96% uptime" include weather?

Monty says it includes weather, protien spills, and precautionary shutdowns as well as breakdowns.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

impressive...most impressive.

and when I go there this summer (knock on wood) I'll be able to experience it first hand.

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Knott's Berry Farm Cuba ~South Park

Peabody said:

Anyone else wonder how higher that % would be without Demon Drop? Since I rode it opening year it's ALWAYS had problems and I don't think I've ever seen it open a whole day from start to close.
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Probably a point or two higher! All those old Intamin freefall's break down constantly. Too many moving parts... it's a very complex operation, then add that to a decade or two.... you get the picture.

Yeah, when you factor in weather, it's that much more impressive. The park down the road doesn't have 90% operation on a nice day, and that's not even getting into capacity.

In all of my visits to BGW, I've only seen one ride down (a flat). The rest haven't been even close.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

If a ride could be closed that much out of the season, I don't know how impressive that is. I would like to see numbers from other corporate parks, especially in the Paramount, Busch, and Silver Dollar City park chains as well as others in the CF chain. Without even one more set of numbers, I really can't understand how great that it.

When I went to SFGAm last summer, they were hauling butt like I've never seen at a park before and had every single ride open. I was overly impressed with the park as a whole because of that, so their numbers would be the most interesting for me to see just based on that visit. BGW, BGT, PKI, and Dollywood are all fairly impressive in their operations as a whole to me as well. I've rarely if ever seen a ride down at any of them. PKI has had a few problems with Face/Off since it opened as well as SOB, but for the 2001 season, I think everything was as operational as possible.

Besides that, I'm glad to see that CP isn't 100% "perfect"..... Just kidding! It's incredible to see this kind of dedication overall from a park to continue to strive to be the best possible! Great job and hope to see you in the Final Fou..... Hmm, I think I went from CP to UC. Who knows? Keep it up guys!

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Danny, who's last reasonable complaint is that they won't run two trains on Wicked Twister!! ;)

*** This post was edited by Koaster King on 1/28/2002. ***

Jeff does 96% include when Iron Dragon was down for chain proplems in Early July? I went to CP just after 4 of July and Iron Dragon was down for the week i was out there. It seemed like a chain or lift problem on the 1st lift because of where they were working and the tons of spair chian and parts they had scattered.
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I may be from IL, but i sure can't get enough of the FORCE. MF!!!

I would think that would be included in this statistic. I believe Iron Dragon had chain issues twice this year and was down for between 1 and 2 days both times. As Rideman said, 96% uptime would mean the average downtime for a ride would be 5.6 days per season. Most rides are not down for days at a time unless its a major event such as a chain break (ID) or the cable situation that MF had during Millennium errr Magnum Mania. Its the hour or two here or there because of sensors and such that add up over the course of the season. Of course as people have mentioned, there can be a few rides that bring down the numbers. At CP, Demon drop would probably be a good example of a ride that breaks down more than average. For that matter, I bet MF is also above average.

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-Matt
2001 Magnum Crew