Canada's Wonderland announces Planet Snoopy for 2010

While I agree that the Nick characters are much more relevant to todays kids than the Peanuts gang, the fact is that no matter what theme they have there, families will flock to the park in droves. Therefore, it is a matter of economics.. pay a lot for a Nick liscence, or a little for a Peanuts liscence..... and get the same result when it comes to attendance.

john peck said:
Nope, the Geauga Lake rides Cedar Fair retained have new homes (sans the Carousel and Spider)

Yes, the Carousel is eventually supposed to end up at another Cedar Fair Park. I was told the spider which was originally sent to Kings Dominion was in too bad of a condition to reuse. I presume that it was scrapped and/or maybe used for parts somewhere.

However, there are a couple other rides that I was never able to get any information on. These were not part of the auction. Nor were they listed on Intermark Ride Group like some of the other rides prior to the auction. These rides include:

Merry Oldies, Dodgems and the Turbo Bungee. I suppose the Merry Oldies and Dodgems were just sent to other parks for use as parts or replacement cars. Someone told me the Turbo Bungee attractions may be leased. But, I never got conformation of that.

The only ride that was in the auction but didn't sell was the Pepsi Plunge flume ride. As far as I know it is still sitting on site. I imagine it will just be stripped for parts and the rest scrapped.

I for one am glad to see the Nick license go peanuts is funny sponge bob not so much so.

DaveStroem said:
You don't need to pay licensing fees for Santa.

Yeah, Santa comes cheap. However since the elves unionized, labor costs have sky-rocketed. That's why Santa had to ship manufacturing to China to keep costs down.

What I wonder is what it costs a park to change the brand from Nick to Peanuts. You have to pay to re-do the rides, lost merchandise, etc.

There's no question that it's a financial decision, but it strikes me as one that narrows the view entirely too far. At what point do you score more cash for Nick-related stuff (merchandise, photos, whatever)? I'm simply not convinced that they've thought it through.

Let's not forget that the Mall of America dropped the Peanuts license in favor of the Nickelodeon license (whether or not they were forced to is unclear). Clearly their thinking is the opposite of Cedar Fair's.

Its like Cedar Fair and Six Flags have switched spots over the last few years. CF adding a lot of very expensive and making potentially "bad" moves and SF parks getting "praised" for their new style of management

Yeah, but one has to wonder... a lot of the Nick stuff in the parks is already outdated... Lazytown? Little Bill? The Wild Thornberries? Even staples like Blues' Clues and Rugrats are kinda on the outs. There's a whole new generation of programming on TV to keep up with already (iCarly, the ride, anyone?).

Snoopy, on the other hand, is still battling the Red Baron, looking for the Great Pumpkin and saving little Christmas trees every year.

In the long run, the Peanuts' Gang will require less of an upgrade/upkeep.

Regardless of the relevance of Snoopy, it doesn't matter. This park is really the only game in town. They could turn it into Planet Poopy and people would still flock. Many Canadians, especially new Canadians dislike dealing with the border so won't go to Darien Lake unless passing through.

KD is in a more competitive market so will get more new rides to please the marketing folks.

Jason Hammond said:

The only ride that was in the auction but didn't sell was the Pepsi Plunge flume ride. As far as I know it is still sitting on site. I imagine it will just be stripped for parts and the rest scrapped.

The former Pepsi Plunge is on site at the new Schlitterbahn Resort in Kansas City, Kansas. They bought a dozen or so rides from Geauga Lake, and we got to see some of them when they gave ACE a tour in June.

At Kennywood yesterday, rode Garfield's Nightmare for kicks. I thought about how even Garfield is a better license to hold. I actually remember the Garfield cartoons on TV and actually read Garfield in the paper.

I know it has been said to death but Peanuts is so out of date and not cool!

Cedar Fair must think that kids are stupid or that they were all born in 1940. Honestly they think that they are going to save big on this deal, but eventually things like crazy high food prices and taking out beloved kids themeing and replacing it with stuff that screams "We're cheap we're going to use our Peanuts license we pay $5 dollars a year for!" is going to bite them in future attendance.

Is theming for kids areas even that important especially to the target audience for whom these areas are built? I know as a kid, I was more concerned with rides and games as opposed to decorations and pretty colors. I think theming is something that grown-ups have more concern with as opposed to kids. I doubt kids will cry or care next year when all the Nick stuff is gone as long as all the rides are there (and the fact that even more rides will be added will probably be seen as a plus).

The MOA had no choice CF had an exclusive agreement for the Peanuts characters, and played hard ball with the MOA (get rid of us, you lose Snoopy.) There were tons of news stories about this a few years ago.

Jeff made this point earlier, but it bears repeating. While I doubt that the changing of the license will necessarily reduce attendance, it will hurt other revenue sources.

Kids line up all the time to have thier picture taken with SpongeBob or Dora and then shell out tons of money to buy the pics. Who's going to buy a pic of thier kid with Snoopy? The kids won't be begging thier parents to buy them a $20 Snoopy doll, but they are always selling through thier Nick Merch.

A very narrow decision. Snoopy is just not cool, and it's even less cool in Canada. A YTV license here would have been even cheaper I bet, and would have been kick ass for Toronto Kids... and I bet my American counterparts don't even know what YTV is! Way to do your homework CF!

DejaVuNitro said:

Cedar Fair ...taking out beloved kids themeing and replacing it with stuff that screams "We're cheap we're going to use our Peanuts license we pay $5 dollars a year for!" ...

I really got a kick out of that for some reason.

Arw84, I think that you are not giving the kids enough credit. I know some kids in my family who would very disappointed to find that their good friend Spongebob and his underwater pals have moved away at Kings Island, and Charley-someone and his Snoop Dog has moved in. Peanuts is just not as popular as they used to be.

Maybe they should have gone in the other direction. They could have updated the Nick theming to be even more current.

I will hate to see Ang vanish from the top of The last Airbender ride at Kings Island, if this does indeed happen chain wide.

Jeff said:
There's no question that it's a financial decision, but it strikes me as one that narrows the view entirely too far. At what point do you score more cash for Nick-related stuff (merchandise, photos, whatever)? I'm simply not convinced that they've thought it through.

Let's not forget that the Mall of America dropped the Peanuts license in favor of the Nickelodeon license (whether or not they were forced to is unclear). Clearly their thinking is the opposite of Cedar Fair's.

Come on now? You honestly believe they didn't think this through? I highly doubt they made a choice of this magnitude with out heavily researching this. They have had a few years of data now to see how well the Nick stuff sells per cap VS. Peanuts stuff per cap.

The only thing the company heavily measures is in operations because it's easy to quantify. This is more complex because the license has effects that are hard to track.

Regardless, I've heard from several sources that if they could have, they would've dropped the license the day Dick started inventorying the office furniture in Charlotte. Don't underestimate how many decisions are made because he knows better.

Isn't that better known as "micro-managing?" No wonder TUMS is DK's best friend.

I think this really comes down to creating a company-wide system. I'm sure all Cedar Fair parks will eventually have all the same licenses, vendors and even food and drinks. They are most likely "McDonaldizing" the company where you will get the same products and same experience, whichever park of theirs you go to.

This may be a stupid question, but is it possible that CF tried to renew the license agreement and Nickelodeon did not want them to, so as not to interfere with potential future plans for expanding the Nickelodeon Universe properties that are now starting to pop up (MOA, SFNO)? Maybe Nickelodeon/Viacom realized what a valuable thing they had on their hands and have set out a new direction for how they employ it (actually use it, don't dilute its value by licensing it).

To all those saying that the theme does not necessarily matter, I have done firsthand research with my 3 year old daughter, and she wants to go to Kings Dominion to see Dora. She had no idea who Woodstock was. And as for the attractions being outdated, she is very familiar with LazyTown, due to reruns, so maybe reruns make that less of a factor. We have season passes to Busch Gardens this year solely due to the fact that they added a Sesame Street land, which she and her cousin love. We would not be going there regularly for Charlie Brown.

That's definitely a possibility that I hadn't consider yet, but Nick seems pretty willing to whore themselves out to anyone who will pay up. Given the regional nature of the attractions with existing licenses, and that they're unique to each market, I don't think they'd turn away from that.