A Possible Reason For A Drop In CP Attendance

Gator, I agree. Along with that, they could nock down some food prices as well, and find a way to 'up the ante' in the Customer Service Dept.

hi. I am a mega-enthusiast, but brand-spankin-new (as in '5 minutes new') to the site. What's hot in Inidiana?
Thanks,
Brian

For starters, posters posting on-topic?

sorry on-topic-man. I just read through the posts, and responded (specifically, I thought) to the guy who said he would not be going back so same-old CP, but that he would be hitting 'somewhere' in Indiana. I was asking what park was hot there because I didn't know of anything there.

Dannerman, what about PKD? The poster before you said he'd had no trouble getting on any rides at PKI, so I'm not sure how different things would be at PKD.

I'm not that familiar with too many rides at PKD since they decided to shut down the whole park when I was there in August because there was a T-storm somewhere in Virginia. I only had 4 rides that day, one of them being the elevator in the Eiffel Tower. So I'm just putting all their coasters at the bottom of my list in the polls. Take that, Paramount! :)

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bdridgway said:
..would be hitting 'somewhere' in Indiana. I was asking what park was hot there because I didn't know of anything there.

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Two parks that are among the best in the country.

Holiday World & Indiana Beach

You won't find too many people with something bad to say about either.

I have something to say bout both!

They aren't close enough, and I've yet to visit.

I agree that unless you have drastic drops in attendance, and are over 3 million Cedar Point is doing ok. Geauga Lake when it was Six Flags Ohio/Worlds of Adventure, took a nose dive after a year or two after adding 5 coasters and spending millions worth of new rides, parks, etc. This is not the case with Cedar Point, and one year of slight decrease in attendance, although disappointing, is not the end of the world.

The weather, local economy, among other things besides what the new ride was, likely was the reason for a down year. However, I don't think that was the case for Kings Island, which I have a feeling had another increase in attendance and was near the 3.5 million range. Cedar Point is trying to market large high capacity flat rides the last year or so, and that is not a bad way to go for a non coaster year. However there next coaster, has to be something to bring people through the gates, and have minimal downtime. The only manufacture that I know of with a proven track record to deliver that, is B & M, but then your looking at spending 15 million or so.

The issue of having seat belts, or restraints that restrict bigger people to ride, is something I don't have an issue with. It is the same idea of having a height requirement. Yeah its disappointing that you can't ride because your either too short, or too big, but the restraint has to be engineered/designed to safely secure riders of a wide variety of sizes. That is not always possible unless you have a certain height limit, or weight/size restriction. For those that are two short, they can always wait till next year, and for those that are too overweigth, you now have a reason to try and lose weight.

That makes sense why I have yet to see a B&M with a height restriction less than 54" - they can cater to the.. umm.. "bigger" people that way.

To be honest, I love Flyers and wouldn't mind seeing one at CP. (or 2? Duelers? I know the rumors are grandiose, but I don't think it'd be a bad idea).

Also, with a dueling flyer "coaster", they'd up their coaster count by 2 in one year, get their "Coaster Capital of the World" title they treasure, and start adding more family-friendly rides for a few years.

Beast Fan, comparing Cedar Point to Geauga Lake is a good way to look at this. Cedar Point has had a couple of years without a major new "WE GOTTA GO TO CEDAR POINT!" expansion, and with a very high profile flop at the same time ("I'd go to Cedar Point, but I wanna ride Dragster and that thing still doesn't work!"). The park is at that point where it can't maintain attendance without putting in something new, especially when there are other external factors that prompt people to stay away (gas prices, anyone? Detroit economy?). When you combine all that stuff and their attendance is down, but not really down drastically...well, the decline is almost predictable. It's not terribly frightening, at least not yet.

But Geauga Lake is an important story, and something Cedar Point needs to be acutely aware of. Six Flags invested scads of money into that park, built a bunch of new rides, and was rewarded with a sudden precipitous *drop* in attendance. In other words, not only were those shiny new coasters not attracting people into the park, something that park was doing was actively driving people away. In relatively short order, Six Flags managed to almost destroy Geauga Lake, and Cedar Fair is now in the position of having to build it back up again, to even get the attendance back to where it was in the last days before the Six Flags conversion. That's something Cedar Point needs to be cautious of, because in the past two seasons at Cedar Point, I've seen the same kinds of things happening at Cedar Point that were ultimately the undoing of Geauga Lake. They have to be careful, because things are okay right now, but the way park service has gone recently, Cedar Point is getting dangerously close to the point of pushing people away. Let's hope it doesn't get to that.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.