Contrary to popular belief in enthusiast circles, attendance did decline at some SF parks due to weather. It's just to bad the execs decided to use that excuse more than it should.
That's still normal for CP, especially in a year with nothing new. Anything over 3 million is about where they should be.
I don't take a lot of stock in the numbers overall though. I know for a fact that their 2003 numbers for SFWoA weren't even in the neighborhood of being correct, as managers from other parks in the chain enjoyed having some of the heat deflected from their own parks for not hitting numbers.
"Twelve of Six Flags' 13 parks on the top 50 list had attendance that was either flat or declined by as much as 13 percent from last year. The stagnant figures were caused by weather problems and that Six Flags didn't roll out a lot of new rides this year, said James Zoltak, editor of Amusement Business. "
Any predictions which was the lucky SF park that actually went up?
I guess PKI is now the highest attended seasonal amusement park in the country. They have now surpassed CP in that regard. I don't know if this is the first time or not though. Boomerang Bay really must have done wonders.
I'm surprised about the 2.3 million attendance figure for SFGAM. Considering they added all those rides this year as well as the mouse coaster, that's quite disappointing. Maybe weather was a factor at this park.
2.7 million doesn't look too good either for SFMM. They were usually at least in the 3 million range in years past not too far behind Cedar Point's attendance. I guess those days are over.
The trouble with SFGAm and their new additions is that they really didn't market them.
The occasional "New Mardi Gras area" was briefly mentioned on TV ads and radio spots but they didn't go into detail of what it had to offer along with the new rides. Kind of ashame because they probably missed out on added attendance in that regard. Weather did play a part in the early part of the season as all of May and some of June were for the most parts washouts due to rain.
I don't think they will be making the same mistake with the new waterpark going in.*** This post was edited by Chitown 12/14/2004 2:09:23 AM ***
While SFGAm added 5 new rides this year. They didn't really market them at all. They had a few radio ads...but no TV Commercials for the new rides and area, just the standard Mr. Six ads.
The lack of advertising for the new rides I think is probably a major factor in the flat attendence at SFGAm.
Edit: Scott beat me to it :(*** This post was edited by CoasterDude316 12/14/2004 2:09:01 AM ***
Suprise suprise, Six Flags uses weather as an excuse.
I too wonder which SF park actually went up, maybe SFEG since they added the Half Pipe, that is the only "major" addition that I could think of to really boost attendance.
Universal Orlando really impressed me with the 13/14% increase, and with all of the hurricanes late in the summer, for the Orlando parks to increase so much is an even more amazing feat! (sorry, just realized that one of the articles already brought that up)
On the local news I saw that US parks increased 4%.
Maybe we will start to see an increase due to the promising figures... oh, and maybe rain clouds won't hover over SF parks next year.
One last note, a quarter of a billion people visited amusement parks last year (that just impresses me, nothing special I guess.)
"Twelve of the Six Flags parks had attendance that was flat or declined" I would say for those that were flat, that is an improvement over last year when 99% of their parks had attendance decline.