Cedar Fair announces Geauga Lake will be water park only

I agree with you 100 percent, Ensign Smith! I have lost whatever faith I had left in CF.
*** This post was edited by phantomrider3000 9/23/2007 5:23:04 PM ***

If CF really contacted the ACE Museum committee, the correct thing to do is to tell GL to place the rides in good homes, and sell the remaining rides to other parks. All are in good condition to move. None of those those coaster belong in a museum.
*** This post was edited by Agent Johnson 9/23/2007 11:11:32 PM ***

Well, all this whining has been fun to read. I have even made a post or two in regards to the "state" of G.L. I am dissapointed to see the ride park become defunct. Like most others that have posted long before me, I am not suprised. In my many trips to G.L. I have never truly waited for an attraction other than on the water park side.

My wife and I will miss our trips to G.L. It was a very nice and quaint park. It did not require a lot of walking and there was a nice feel with all of the shops in the park. However, that damn blacktop could be overwhelming on a slightly warm day. We also did not mind the three hour trip from southeast Michigan.

I find myself enjoying all of the individuals who are threating to never visit a C.F. park again. That is ok. Obviously C.F. should have taken your emotional out-cries into consideration when the choice was made to close the ride side down.

Before all of you jump on me and say that I don't know what it is like to have a park close, does anyone remember Boblo Island? That park closed when I was 19. The boat ride to the island has been missed, the huge dance floor being packed with people at the end of the night, or just the setting of an amusement park in the Detroit River....the park was actually in Canada. The park had charm just like G.L.

Back to the individuals who do not want to return to a C.F. park because they are pissed about G.L. Don't go...I don't give a ----. You are one less person in front of me, spewing facts about every thrill ride in the country!

Do any of you think that C.F. might be dissapointed because they struggled/failed with this park? I do not believe that anyone can honestly say that the park was purchased with the intent to close it down. People seem to forget that all of the assets must be utilized for a park to be profitable. I seem to remember many times when Dominator and Thunderhawk were running with one train and it was still half-full.

The only thing that I will agree with is....it would have been nice if C.F. would have owned up to the rumors and encouraged everyone to get their final rides.

I honestly don't buy the argument that GL was not viable whatsoever. Not for a second. It was viable, just not under the management of Cedar Fair. Why? Because it's competition. Any attempt to keep all the infrastructure put in place under the SF regime while adding the CF touch would have made it a far fiercer competitor to CP than it was as a SF park. You're not going to strengthen the competition when you're on both sides of it. It came down to the fact that they felt the only way to protect CP was to kill the one thing taking numbers away from it (which I'm not confident it would have received anyway).

Frankly, if people wanted or were able to go to CP, they would go. GL gave a low-cost alternative. Much cheaper admission for what was a really enjoyable experience. It's this mentality, though, that the 700,000 former GL attendees will become 700,000 CP attendees that gets me. You know what? You'll likely lose the 700,000 attendees altogether. Over the course of their ownership, they got rid of every ounce of decent competition GL had with CP to try and bring the people to CP instead, and from what I'm reading, it doesn't seem like that happened. In my opinion, this is merely the latest and most drastic in a series of moves designed to boost CP's numbers. News flash! Maybe people just don't want to go to CP. The absolute most insane experiences at the park have outrageous lines every single day of the week, and I think that's probably a turnoff. After all, why waste my money to go there when I'll spend my whole day in line for only a few rides? I'll go to other parks with shorter lines and their own awesome rides.

My point is this: the place was viable, but not with CF running the show. I can't say that buying out their flagship's competition was bad business, but I can call out their bogus excuses that SF and the park itself are to blame. Their own inability to share the wealth and make moneymakers out of every park is the culprit.

Honestly, though, what do I care. I now have even less reason to go to northern Ohio because I can now get those experiences at other, more desirable parks. Not only that, but I've been slowly growing into more of a SF fan over the past year or so, so I'll continue to enjoy my experiences at those parks instead. I know I won't get my MF or TTD fixes, but I've ridden those enough. I rather enjoy Dominator, so I'll go where it goes. I'm not going to boycott CF, as I think that shows a somewhat unhealthy fixation on GL, but I'm not going to spend exorbitant amounts of money to go to an overcrowded park when I can spend it on other trips to less crowded, more pleasurable parks with more to them than a billion tons of steel track.

This thread is just such a big ball of emotional reactivity.

Our first visit to GL was in 2005, and we rode every ride 7 times in 30 minutes. Booooooring. I cant believe GL lasted as long as it did.

CF made a great move; you buy the park, and ship the haf-decent rides elsewhere. Boom! Instant park upgrades at half the cost!

If the general public cared, then attendance would have been better at the park. Of course coaster-entuusiasts are going to flip out.

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The only thing that I will agree with is....it would have been nice if C.F. would have owned up to the rumors and encouraged everyone to get their final rides.

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I dont think a company would be wise to "own up to rumors" circluating on enthusiasts' websites. And besides, if there were such strong rumors, wouldnt you have visited the park just in case?

Not to sound cynical, but the park was a freakin ghost-town.

Time to cut the cord.

^^Many people did visit the park "just in case" and thats not really the point, anyway. Having Bill Spehn tell a big fat lie to your face about the park's future doesn't make anybody feel good.

*** This post was edited by Paul Blackstone 9/23/2007 8:02:27 PM ***

People keep coming back to this nonsense about how GL was competition. Well if you own the competition, then what kind of logic are you using that you don't want to make money from both ends? That's the most irrational thing you could possibly say. "I only want to make money with the left hand, not the right hand!" Think about it. Do you honestly think they'd care if they made money from one place at the expense of the other? The goal was always to make more money, by having them both. Sadly, GL never got beyond being a drag on the bottom line.

And besides, some of you talk about how Six Flags made all the wrong decisions and failed, and in the same breath say Cedar Fair wanted the park to squash it. Well if it wasn't competitive in the first place, why would they do that?

It sucks the park couldn't make it, but all of these conspiracies are laughable.

May I ask, Paul, how you know Bill Spehn even knew that the park was closing? I have a feeling that the decision was made a little higher up than Bill Spehn. It is possible that he may not have known about the park closing much before the general public; he likely found out when he was fired, promoted, etc. I know it is easy to label the man a liar, but you've given no evidence that he had any idea the park was closing.

Every report I have seen regarding Geauga Lake have depicted a barely populated existence. Never have I read anything about the park, at least the "ride side," being even half way full, let alone at full capacity. Because Geauga Lake was simply not a not-for-profit entity, I can confidentally assume that tales of poor attendence were readily visible on the books.

You're more than welcome to get pissed at me for using "business mumbo-jumbo," but you know, I think it's rather selfish for people to essentially say the park should be kept open in order to preserve history-- in other words, to make enthusiasts happy. The bottom line: The bottom line does matter. If the park is not making money, I would be more pissed off at Cedar Fair for compromising the financial security of the entire corporation and all of their parks by trying to please people who never seem to really be pleased.

I certainly hate to see a park close, especially one with such history. It's unfortunate, but obviously most people probably don't care about the park or its history. If they did care and enjoyed the place so much, they may have actually visted more often, in larger numbers.

Those who are threatened to boycott: You do realize you're only hurting yourself, right? Do you think the 20-30 of you boycotting are going to massively "depress" the books of Cedar Fair--the multi-billion dollar, publicly traded company? If you think that, please: boycott. But, in reality, it is you who will suffer, because you are missing great parks, coasters, rides, and fun. But the off-season is approaching quickly and this story will die down, and then all of those who said they were going to boycott, in an attempt to make a dramatic statement, will be purchasing their Extra Gold Platinum Maxx Passes and planning their coaster trips. The good news? Everyone will have forgotten.

By the way, my intention with this post is not to "burn any britches." I am simply venting frustrations over my observations here and elsewhere. This post is not directly at any single individual and is more of a general statement (except the part regarding Bill Spehn). ;)

If I made it appear that I believe that some sort of conspiracy was afoot, then I'm sorry. I know most of my arguments lean in that direction, but I acknowledge that perhaps it was merely gross incompetence that killed the ride side of GL. After all, you can't seriously buy into the mentality that removing all those key rides was good for the park. Heck, remove Raging Wolf Bobs. It's less popular and it frees up money for, say, X-Flight. Not only that, but far fewer people would have missed it, and it quite possibly would have free up the necessary funds to keep X-Flight alive. Heck, even Steel Venom could go. Not like that was way up there in popularity either. Even more money for X-Flight. But no. They went for the most popular, albeit more expensive one. That's bad management, and no argument from anyone will convince me otherwise.

I know that RWB is cheaper to run, but that's offset by the many more people who were disappointed with X-Flight's removal that took their money elsewhere. It was either make more money with higher expenses, or lose money but keep lower expenses. I'll take the former as you can recoup that more easily. You're not shortchanging anyone.

And Jeff, it's obvious CF would much rather prefer to make the money with Cedar Point. I'm sorry, but if they wanted to maximize the revenue from GL, they would have brought in the customer service and kept the animals. Even with them gone, they would have made WWK everything they first advertised it to be. However, doing so would've hurt CP somewhat, or at least I'm inclined to believe it would have. If nothing else, it's better than Soak City for the people who live close to both. And as far as a new coaster was concerned, perhaps if they added a mini B&M hyper as was rumored for several years, it would have brought some more people to check it out.

However, when you're removing things like the Haunt, which really doesn't cost too much extra to put on, at least when compared to the extra money that type of event brings in with the cash-cow nature of Halloween celebrations, you aren't trying to get more money from the park. You're worried that if it's done too well, it will hurt CP's numbers. It's so blatantly obvious. If CP was really all that incredible of a park, why does it have to continually add coasters to rake in high attendance numbers when other parks can increase attendance with no major additions, even in the same state (did not KI experience higher numbers a few times without any major coasters?)? It's not, but by weakening or eliminating the alternative, you free up people for your event at your more expensive park.

I don't hate CF for this, but there isn't much of a positive spin to put on things. GL was not a lost cause. CF just didn't want to spend the money to upgrade it. I honestly think that if someone else had taken over it, we might be seeing a different outcome. Sure, without SeaWorld, which was a big loss apparently, the battle is twice as hard, but not at all impossible. If nothing else, more room for extra stuff. WWK was the right idea, but CF cut back on it as well. Of course you're not going to net the people you thought you would if you decide not to add some of the things you advertised. Heck, I was there on a Wednesday and the place was absolutely packed. It was quite popular. Should it have become a very important focal point? Yes, but the rides side didn't have to be sacrificed for it. Keep Dominator, Big Dipper, X-Flight, Thunderhawk, Beaver, and maybe Villain. You can keep both sides that way, and most of your more popular rides are still there. They simply removed all the wrong things and that's why they never recovered.

Fine if it's not a conspiracy, but they still goofed up. As I said, keeping those five would have cut down on expenses but probably maintained or even increased the revenue the place would earn. Higher profit margins would have been the order of the day. Then they can start to re-add new attractions and the attendance would increase once again. They just picked the boneheaded approach and got rid of too much and waited too long to replace anything, and that's why the place died.

While I personally didn't have any fond memories of Geauga Lake, it's still sad to see it close. I had TONS of memories from Sea World and was really bummed when it closed. So, I know what many of you are feeling that used to frequent Geauga Lake back in the day when it was fun.

I know there are a ton of people on here and PointBuzz that only talk about money and business. While I completely agree that parks need to be a business, the heads of those parks also need to have a love of the industry. If you're only in it for money, things are not going to work out. Why do you think Disney was so successful? Walt was obsessed with theme parks and making the environment perfect for people of all ages to enjoy. His brother was the financial one that ensured the park continued to make money - and it was TOUGH for many years. Take a look at Holiday World. It's obvious the Kochs also have a deep love for the industry and look how successful they have become. This love is reflected in the park and that's why so many people keep returning to the park and bringing their friends.

The same can be said for any business. If you own a hotel, restaurant, bookstore, theme park or anything else and have a LOVE for the business, your customers will see this. When you end up being in it just to make money and secure your own future, the end is near for your business. Thankfully Eisner was removed and Disney is getting back on track. Hopefully the same will happen with Kinzel so we don't see Cedar Point heading for a downward spiral in ten years.

There's more to life than just money folks.

If someone wants to boycott Cedar Fair for closing Geauga Lake, so be it. I think that IS an effective way to make yourself feel better. I've been boycotting the Discover Card for about 15 years now. (Every time they send me a mailing I send back the pre-paid envelope with nothing in it just to make them pay.) Do I think Discover misses me? No. But, I do feel a little better.

Cedar Fair (and Dick Kinzel) respect the amusement park industry possibly more than any of the other corporate chains running parks. Why? Because, unlike the other folks...it is they ONLY business they are in. Do they respect the industry enough to continue to operate a money pit in order to not offend a small segment of society? No, of course not.

There is no doubt in my mind that if they really thought it was going to get turned around in a reasonable amount of time they would not have made this decision.

Again, you can bad mouth Cedar Fair all you want. And, some of it is valid, but the death of Geauga Lake had many accomplices.

I dont know where any of you live (Im in Columbus), but if you are near any of the other Cedar Fair parks, you should be rejoicing, as the other parks are going to reap the "harvest" of GL.

Of course it is sad to see any park close, especially if you have childhood memories, etc., tied to it. That said, you can not escape the fact that no-one came to GL.

It doesnt take a genius to figure out why.

I barely knew GL existed in 1992 when I took my son (then 6) to Sea World. Seeing GL across the lake, we decided to cut our day at Sea World short and went to GL. It was a quaint little park, but even then there were little to no lines for any of the rides.

I've been back twice after CF took over, and only because my season pass got me in. Both times the ride side was literally dead.

Did Sea World/Busch leaving make a difference? I am one who believes it did. Did CF's initial blunders after taking over add to the demise? I believe that too. But I don't for a minute believe that CF intended for the park to fail.

I know full well how sad it is to lose a childhood memory. I still get all gooey when I think about the abandoned Henry Miller coaster, the Flying Dragon that sat like an old ghost for years when Walled Lake Amusement closed down. Same for Edgewater Park and Boblo. So many memories are wrapped up in all three of those parks.

I understand each park in the CF chain must stand alone on it's own merits. Removing the new steel was required for the park to cut costs on maintenance, but high prices for entrance and food isn't a good thing when removing rides and not replacing them with others, especially in a market as depressed as the area around GL. Would it have made a difference had they brought in more flats while cutting costs on the big steel? I'm not in the business so I can't say.

But I've been on the forums long enough to remember all of the discussion of how SF was losing money and attendance after Busch sold Sea World. CF did clean the park up. They tried running it with everything. Then they tried removing the two largest maintenance nightmares, dropped the entrance price and still couldn't bring the attendance up on the ride side. It's not like CF doesn't know how to run a park.

Will I miss GL ride side? Not as it was when I went the last two times, no. Cedar Point is closer to me and has much more to offer. But I do have an emotional attachment to the "old" Geauga Lake I visited the first time with my son.

I won't make a three hour drive just to go to the water park, even with the Platinum Pass. I doubt there will be many people making a special trip to GL. But the locals will continue to flock to the water park which I'm sure will sustain itself.

It may not be the most popular decision CF has made, but it's probably the only direction they can go.

We should have known from the beginning something was going on and I'm talking about 2004. Cedar Fair failed miserably at advertising the park. I do recall Jeff consistently saying that they needed to increase and improve advertising for the park. "Mr. Fun" didn't really sell the park.

This was the first year I had seen consistent airing of commercials on TV, much more than last year yet there was a big lack of billboard advertising while Kennywood continued with their billboards in the Cleveland area. So in a sense, getting the word out (or lack thereof) is all CF's fault.

In all my years of posting here, I don't think anyone has made more sense than AJ is making right now. If I didn't know better, I'd assume he was watching over the whole situation from above for the past few decades. I can certainly appreciate his insight and realistic approach to all of this. But I digress...

I really don't understand why some people believe that Cedar Fair did everything they could do save the park. How long did they try to fix things? Four years? I'll bet that no one here can mention a case involving a complete turnaround of a large-sized company within a period of four, five, six or seven years. When something big is headed in the wrong direction, it takes a long time to correct the damage done. It seems to me that CF made a semi-serious attempt the first two years, phoned it in the third year and gave up entirely by the start of the fourth. There is absolutely nothing that proves major attempts were made to right the park as a whole. Money was wasted by replacing a relatively new waterpark with another new waterpark, yet other improvements were limited to a new coat of paint for Thunderhawk and some minor work on Villain and RWB. What did Kinzel say about waterparks only making sense if they can be acquired cheaply? The company paid $110 million for the entire SFWoA complex, and five years later it's going to be nothing but a waterpark?

Seems to me that Geauga Lake is turning out to be quite an expensive waterpark.

Making a profit is all well and good (as I've said a million and a half times by now) but there is more to a business than making pure profit. A company is supposed to be an honest, positive part of the community it serves. Closing a well-loved amusement park after telling people they were going to do what it takes to make it right doesn't seem so honest and positive to me. And frankly I'm sick of this crap about Cedar Fair showing absolutely no respect for any kind of history, as if things of any kind of nostalgic value are a cancer. There are plenty of companies that profit from their history, so why can't Cedar Fair do that from time to time? The company as a whole seriously underestimates what history means to many people. Sooner or later that is going to come back and bite them in the ass, and if Agent Johnson is to be believed, that day is about to come, seeing as how they are going to have to answer to a lot of people about this.

Getting back to the idea of a boycott, I realize that's not going to do much good as far as getting the company to change their ways, but personally I feel better about not giving my business to a company that I don't agree with. I hate Wal-Mart with an incredible passion and even though the loss of my business isn't going to hurt them one bit, I know I feel better about myself for avoiding those stores like the plague. I'm not saying I feel the same way about Cedar Fair but right now I'm not happy with them and choose to spend my hard-earned money elsewhere. Maybe- just maybe- the actions of a few will bring attention to what's going on. Maybe it will make the paper or the 5 o'clock news. Maybe negative press will create pressure, and if things don't get changed this time around, another misstep might be avoided in the future.

As far as I'm concerned, it's time for Cedar Fair to show what they're made of, as both a company trying to turn a profit and as a member of society where part of the population is hurt by this latest manuever. Relocate some rides, including the Dipper, to the waterpark. Show people they are listening. The few million it would take to do that is a drop in the bucket compared to what was already spent on Geauga Lake, so it shouldn't be a problem. The way I see it, a small price to pay to do the right thing by a lot of people... people that don't give a rat's ass about who ruined the park in the past and only acknowledging the blood on Cedar Fair's hands. There are countless people and companies that should be blamed, but all eyes are on the last person out the door. That last person is Cedar Fair, and it's their problem to deal with this.

*** This post was edited by Rob Ascough 9/23/2007 9:30:55 PM ***

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Infamy said:
May I ask, Paul, how you know Bill Spehn even knew that the park was closing? I have a feeling that the decision was made a little higher up than Bill Spehn. It is possible that he may not have known about the park closing much before the general public; he likely found out when he was fired, promoted, etc. I know it is easy to label the man a liar, but you've given no evidence that he had any idea the park was closing.

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If a Vice President & General Manager didn't know the fate of his park until the day of reckoning... then I think Cedar Fair has even bigger problems than I could ever imagine.

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And Jeff, it's obvious CF would much rather prefer to make the money with Cedar Point. I'm sorry, but if they wanted to maximize the revenue from GL, they would have brought in the customer service and kept the animals.

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Huh? Which part of that is obvious, or even logical. This is not an emotional issue of an enthusiast, this is a publicly traded company accountable to its unit holders. The customer service was far better than it was as Six Flags, and the animals were not theirs to keep. Weren't you paying attention?

I did for the longest time feel that the marketing was an issue, and frankly I suspect it was part of the reason they gave Liggett-Stashower the heave-ho. But marketing, like anything else, has to show ROI to justify the expense, and I suspect that's why they didn't spend more. Would it have made a bigger difference if they spent more this year? I'm not so sure. Even in the Funtime days, it was the group outings that paid the bills, and while better this year, I'm not convinced they were all that much better.

I think my biggest surprise, honestly, is how indifferent I am. I mean, as someone who lives here, I never even went there between 1988 and 2000, save for a visit to do some TV work there for a couple of hours (which doesn't count). The only thing there from my childhood was Double Loop and Big Dipper, neither of which I was that fond of even as a kid. It makes me wonder how many other people felt much the same.

When I say kept the animals, I meant purchase them, assuming they were given the option. If not, I at least provided an alternative. Mind you, I'm obviously no park manager, but I'm just not going to buy into the GL-wasn't-viable mentality.

I'm game also on the marketing issue. If I've seen worse advertising than that for GL, I don't recall it. It was pretty bad, and that's going to hurt, especially when you're fighting a Pittsburgh institution on one side and, though they were sister parks, a much larger park to the west. However, you would think word of mouth would have compensated (which it obviously did not).

I'm just curious, how can one argue that GL was not a competitor to CP? Because they were owned by the same people? What difference does that make? People are still going to go to one or the other. It's not like they magically had money to do both since they were under the same ownership. However, I still believe that GL was given a raw deal. Take the season passes for instance. Buy a season pass for 1 of the 2 and the other was an extra charge. However, had I bought one at KBF, I could get both. Why not add both in? It would bring more people to GL. Same with the Haunt. There's no better explanation than it took numbers away from CP, so that's what I'm going with.

However, I need to acknowledge a gaping hole in my argument. GL's numbers dropped, but that didn't mean CP's went up. They've been relatively stagnant for years. Therefore, one can infer that some of GL's guests stopped going to parks altogether (or at least those 2). But then, if CP wasn't picking up those numbers, why continue to ruin GL?

I'm not gonna lie, SeaWorld was obviously a very important part of the SFWOA experience, and perhaps CF didn't see it. Still, though, I think that they could've done a far better job with GL, so I retain that even if SF was partly to blame, and AB as well, CF still made the worst blunders of all and ultimately killed the place.

To be sure, I doubt this will hurt CP very much, and better it be that way. I honestly don't think CP can continue to be run the way it is and continue to bank on major rides every couple of years, so they need to keep what people they can. I just find it funny that Kinzel comes out and publicly admits that the place will get major attractions every few years, the SAME mistake SF made for all those years, and yet it gets far less criticism.

One of the things the company gave up on was marketing. Assuming Six Flags did give the park a horrendous reputation, it was going to take more than four years of doing things right to reverse the flow of people. People needed to be coaxed into returning so they would see the changes and tell others. One of the first rules of any business is that it takes much more effort to gain the trust of a lost customer than it does to get the customer in the first place.

Indifference... I'm sure people will be split on this. Still, even if it's not 50/50 and more like 75/25 indifferent/upset, that means there are going to be a lot upset people.

I wonder how this will effect the tax dollars that local gov. was getting?My bet this time next year there will be some unhappy local people.