Cedar Fair announces Geauga Lake will be water park only

Here is where CF screwed up on the park:

1. The Animals. We can all admit that. But if you have no clue how to take care of animals why get into it? Sure Disney took a risk doing Animal Kingdom and succeeded with millions of guests knocking on the doors was a given, but CF could have attempted the animal thing. Find some quality trained professionals, and start small. You dont have to have the whales right off the bat. Give the penguins, sharks and sea lions a start and work up from there. The could always do the touring thing in the off season like sea world did by going to the school and boat show.

2. The shows. I think they had what 2 stages. One small, one small-medium sized. Find something entertaining and you could draw people. Heck they could have even sponsored a weekend concert series and charged a cheaper admission after a certain hour. If Rockin on the River in Cuyahoga Falls could get 20,000 people there for free every friday during the summer, there is no reason why GL couldnt have got something going for like 5 bux a person after 7pm one day a week. Also you had a huge assett of THE LAKE! OMG USE IT! A stadium that could hold maybe a thousand or more would work great for shows, concerts, etc...

3. The cleanliness. I'm sorry but mommy always told me to clean up after myself. And what did they do, built a water park and let the old one sit and rot and look like vomit. not extreamly cheap, but somewhat nice for presentation would have been to bulldoze the old water park after they closed 2 seasons ago. West Nile was probably being bred in that filth. Also I dont think they were really trying to keep it that clean last time I was there.

4. The prices. Knock em down. If everything else is lower, make the rest lower and affordable. 3 bux for a Pepsi is a joke, 3.50 for gatorade was even worse. If you lower prices, people would probably come. and there fore you may have actually ended up making more money than originally planned. Cuz they pay around .60 for a bottle of pepsi and if they sold it for 1.50 thats .90 profit. and people would probably buy more instead of the one then filling it up with water from the fountians. Also compete with the food around you. If a burger and fries were 8 bux for example why would I stay there when i could walk across the street to McDees and get one with a drink for 5 bux? Now that is business there! Also parking @ 9 bux? Doesn't kennywood let you park for Free or for a very small expense like 2 or 3 bux?

5. The Atmosphere. I really didnt have a problem with this, the only thing i didn't like what that there was no life where Xflight and Steel Venom use to be. They should have brought in some flats right there and made it feel more like a family park and the way it use to be.

and lastly which hasn't been mentioned yet, I dont think anyway, is that last sunday when I went they were pushing the new season pass. I would love to know how many people will be lighting up their phone lines tomorrow b*tching about how they were duped into buying a season pass for next year and now all they will have to use is a waterpark. I bet their scripted excuse will be "Oh sorry to hear about your concern for your pass, but your pass is also good at any other Cedar Fair park, including Cedar Point." Man would I love to be a fly on the wall tomorrow in all the offices to hear the phones ringing off the hook about gripes and complaints!

I would not call this closure a 'conspiracy', but a 'business plan' that may have been part of their bigger plans for the park when they bought it all along. Yes, they tried to make the park work in their corporate mold at first, but it still failed, thus the closure. I predicted this EXACT scenario (minus the Wildwater Kingdom portion) back in March of 2004, but pretty much got brushed off.

http://www.coasterbuzz.com/forum.aspx?mode=thread&TopicID=37088

I was really hoping I was wrong then, unfortunately, I wasn't. Now, they have 'new' rides for their other parks at a fraction of the cost of buying them new from the manufacturers, and they now have land to sell to developers in a booming suburban market. Somehow, I think that they may earn their investment back between the rides moving to other parks and the impending sale of the property to developers, plus what small revenue the waterpark will maintain. Yep, I truly believe that was their intent all along. It was business, pure and simple. Buy out the competition to eventually elminate it to boost revenue at your flagship establishment. This way, no other competitor could come in again and threaten your stronghold in the region. I truly don't like what they did, but, then again, it's only business.... :(

You were dead on Dave..

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Jeff said:
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.

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Even if we assume for the moment that the group outings were most crucial to Geauga Lake, the problem I have is that Cedar Fair didn't even TRY to boost their group outings. How do I know? When I was at the CoasterEXT Q&A I spoke to a full time Geauga Lake employee (either from group sales or catering, I don't know) about their group business. She told me that more than half of the group sales staff was laid off at the same time last year as the public relations woman and that the remaining group sales staff at Geauga Lake had to take on the burden of selling groups picnics to Cedar Point too.

This to me proves that Cedar Fair didn't just give up on PR and Advertising... they gave up on group sales too. Did they really expect fewer group sales people to sell the same or more picnics? Or was it just more cost cutting to save a few bucks before the final day of reckoning?

welcome to MergerAmerica.

Everytime companies merge, something is lost. Mostly Jobs. But in this case, a perfectly good park in the name of pure profit.

It is a sad announcement. What was once a wonderful 2 day experience between Sea World & Geauga Lake is now a sad little waterpark.

Welcome to Cedar Fair, where history and nostalgia don't exist.

When Six Flags left town, the general public thought Geauga Lake closed for good back then. Six Flags advertised the heck out of the park- billboards, local TV, especially basic cable stations, local radio and print. Six Flags had events- Frightfest; Blues, Brews & BBQs; Gospel weekends; Bike nights, and concerts to name a few.

Cedar Fair came in and advertised for the past 4 years to the viewers of local news. No wonder the park's attendance suffered- their target demographic was pretty much ignored.

Had Dick K. ever even physically set foot in Geuaga Lake?

I wonder if maintaining the property as a water park is a way to avoid any majority shareholder vote that might have been required to accept closure of this asset. If it wasn't being completely closed, it may not have been a requirement and the board knows it will be easier for the stakeholders to vote accepting closure of a failing standalone waterpark next year.

It's a real shame that people from CF are playing God here in the way the closure was handled. It's as if they're getting off on deliberately failing to give local residents and enthusiasts a final chance to enjoy the park in order to punish them for the years when CF did not own it and those people spent money at GL instead of their flagship park nearby. It's pretty disturbing for a well known company such as Cedar Fair to handle Public Relations in such a blatently dubious manner. The little respect that I had left for that company is now gone and I will never attend another of their events at Cedar Point - this site should rename their upcoming event to BoozeBuzz and have people drown their sorrows in memories of Geauga and bemoan to the folks working the event about the horrible people they are working for who have decided that factory workers with three kids in the steel towns of WV and OH who cannot afford Cedar Point will no longer be able to enjoy their one day of the year when they splurged on a visit to Geauga Lake for their financially struggling families.

Interview with Dick Kinzel.

First 1:45 of the interview talks about GL. This interview was done I am assuming at the beginning of the 2007 season.

By Kinzel's statements and answers about GL, it sure sounds like they had their minds pretty much made up then to close the ride side.

A lot of people are really getting out of hand on here. I as well as everyone else am upset about the loss of the ride side, but that doesn't mean you can't have a little common sense.

R.A. wrote:
Welcome to Cedar Fair, where history and nostalgia don't exist.

To that I'd like to add:

Welcome to Cedar Fair, we made Geauga Lake history.

At least when Six Flags massacred Astroworld, they warned people so they had a last chance to enjoy it.

If CF wasn't so intent on eliminating the competition, then why not just sale the park to someone that is willing to keep it open? Because they don't want to worry about the competition.

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Cedar Fair didn't even TRY to boost their group outings...

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That's an unattributed load of crap. You don't know that.

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But in this case, a perfectly good park in the name of pure profit.

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I keep seeing things like this. What do you expect? This isn't a charity we're talking about. Every time a park closes that wasn't a sustainable business, everyone cries foul.

I realize it's an emotional issue, but you can't pretend that there isn't a fiscal reality. The wild accusations that they didn't try hard enough are ludicrous. If you want to accuse them of not executing well, that's one thing (assuming you can back it up with better ideas), but don't make the baseless accusation that they didn't try. It just ain't true.

Does anyone have any real stats for GL's attendance this year?

What would everyone think if this seasons attendance showed a marked increase and they still went and closed it? Say from 700,000 to 850,000 guests?

Yea, I don't know why CF did not cash in that opportunity to get people in for one last ride. That seem real silly on their part and they could have made more money for themselves on that park, by getting people to come in for one last ride that would have not gone otherwise. This is really the only thing here I don't understand about this ordeal.

Now about the ones that state they will never visit another CF park again. I look forward to having shorter lines next year. Anyway Its not like I really have a choice here in Kansas City to go visit another company's park. I know I got Silver Dollar City and Celebration City down the road 3 and Half hours from me. I simply can't afford to go down there as often as I would when I go to Worlds of Fun. I look forward to the 2008 season and the use of the Platinum Pass I plan to buy.

All of the news articles keep talking about how Cedar Fair pumped $25 million into the water park over it's three-year ownership of the park. How much did they invest in the ride side over that same time period? It's no wonder the water park is the most popular. They actually invested money into it.

I realize the ride side needed cleaned out because they couldn't support the maintenance cost of that many coasters. But, in all fairness to the park, they didn't really do much of anything to attract people to the ride side. By all means, take out the big coasters you can't afford. Close down the water park that costs a lot to maintain. But, clean up the mess you left by taking out attractions. Add something small and market it to get people in (corn hole toss doesn't count - I can build that for $20). Do something.

What I see here is a water park that saw investment surviving and a ride park that saw no investment closing. I don't really see how it could have gone any other way.

^^ First, I don't agree that Geauga Lake as an amusement park was not a sustainable business. Apparantly very few people are buying that. No major turnaround of a big business takes place over a mere four years, so people have every reason to assume Cedar Fair never gave the park a fair chance, especially when their business plan seemed to be not having a plan.

If there was a plan in place (as you and a few others have constantly asserted), the company failed horribly when it came to execution. And considering Cedar Fair is pretty good when it comes to executing plans, that further leads me to believe there was nothing major on the drawing board.

No effort was put into the park over the last seasons other than the water park. Rides were closed last season and removed and the end of the season, which made the park even less attractive for return and new visits. The park was a sustainable business. It was located in one of the largest metro areas in the state. It was just plainly poorly run first by Six Flags, then even worse by Cedar Fair.

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First, I don't agree that Geauga Lake as an amusement park was not a sustainable business

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No one went.

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especially when their business plan seemed to be not having a plan

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How many board meetings did you attend?

Just how long, as a company, do you keep pumping money into something only 6 people care about?

Seriously, if any of you went to GL the past 3years, you know you were the only people there. It was dead.

There will be no public outcry outside of enthusiast websites, because the public didnt care enough to go.

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What would everyone think if this seasons attendance showed a marked increase and they still went and closed it? Say from 700,000 to 850,000 guests

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Yea? And they all went to the waterpark.

*** This post was edited by OhioStater 9/24/2007 10:25:02 AM ****** This post was edited by OhioStater 9/24/2007 10:33:51 AM ***