Cedar Fair expands C-suite, drops CMO role

It sure is crowded up in the corner offices. The optics of this aren't great. They toss out the only non-HR female senior exec and promote one good ol' boy from the Village Roadshow and Paramount days, and another who is an analyst type whose resume reads like an analyst/M&A guy. What's missing in the exec suite right now is people who fundamentally understand that they're running an amusement park business that caters to human feelings. That tends to get lost when it's all money people running things.

One thing is for sure, if you have any senior corporate position at Six Flags, it's pretty obvious that you're out of a job when that deal closes.

Zimmerman is a Paramount guy, all he is capable of doing is stacking the corporate office with official sounding jobs that end up doing nothing to improve the day-to-day operations. How long before the great Cedar Fair employees start to bail?

Senior Vice President of Business Intelligence?

😂

And I thought the world of administration in academia was bad.

Good luck, Cedar Six Fair Flags.

What a mess. Kelley Ford was Ouimet's first (and one of the few) external hires back in 2012 as Chief Marketing Officer from their days together at Disney. Kelley was the leader who ran all of the brand studies and huge proponent of the heritage, history and uniqueness of how each local brand resonated in the marketplace. She was CF's first CMO. She built the CRM capabilities, the sales function, etc. This is a loss for Cedar Fair - particularly given she's being replaced by a Fisher/Zimmerman crony from Paramount Parks and Fisher's disasterous run at Village Roadshow. Kelley is already gone from the leadership page, website and unsearchable. It almost seems more like a purge of Ouimet people.

Tim Fisher was probably the most significant misstep for CF over the past decade. He's the executive behind the "give-the-gate away" strategy - which has led to noticeable reduction in guest experience including significant live entertainment, programming and hours reductions.

You've got to wonder what Ouimet is thinking. Sad state of affairs for Cedar Fair right now.

OhioStater:

Senior Vice President of Business Intelligence?

Moves like this make me feel far less confident in the Six Flags merger, which didn't bring me much confidence in the future of the Cedar Fair parks to begin with.

What's missing in the exec suite right now is people who fundamentally understand that they're running an amusement park business that caters to human feelings.

I'm sure Ouimet is having quite the Iger moment realizing what he has empowered, and the loss of control over the CF board surely meant the brakes are fully of the Zimmerman/Fisher train...

But I look at it this way, the Paramount deal did sink Kinzel's rep, and strength, and it did take 6 years to get to Matt, but I am sure the hot potato that is SF, and the slow loss of the Ouimet glow in certain parts of the organization will sink the Zimmerman boat quicker then we think.

I'm reasonably certain that Ouimet is not motivated by the same things as Iger. If he was, he probably would have ended up CEO instead of Chapek.

If he was, he probably would have ended up CEO instead of Chapek.

Staggs was always the other Heir apparent.

And Chapek was always a money man, and climber, starting in Home Video, then Consumer Products, then obviously finally to Parks, where his getting Shanghai done impressed Iger. Whereas Matt although an accountant first, was instrumental at the Crusie Line and DVC before becoming head of DL, all very customer-centric operations rather money squeezing operations.

I am just saying stepping down as CEO, and becoming executive chairman, he ushered Zimmerman into CEO. Clearly, Zimmerman hid his angst towards old CF and Sandusky. And with Ouimet renewing and then leaving 3 months in, and now Sally getting the axe, the Paramount sweep has been completed.

They really are getting nasty at corp, now Lake Erie Lifestyles has been shut down for covering TT2. Sounds like they threatened lengthy litigation to financially ruin the guy if he didn’t submit…but who knows for sure.

Technically he’s still around but he had to change the name of the channel and also remove any TT2 coverage, past and future. He promised an explanation of it hasn’t been discussed already.
I don’t understand the reason behind any cease and desist there. I watched every single episode and as far as I can remember at no time did he hold himself out to be a representative of CP. There should have been a clear understanding that the channel was merely news oriented, nothing classified was revealed, and there was no trespassing. In other words, any of us with the time, money, and equipment would have equal access to the information. Maybe the park thinks that their videos with talking heads and close-ups of track sections are clever marketing but got a burr in their butt when someone killed whatever suspense they were building. I say too bad. Both forms of reporting were fine with many of us.

Sounds like a great move... If only the only thing that mattered in the world was pretty management dashboards. Unfortunately, these idiots don't realize that all of their widgets are going to turn red if they keep crapping on park level people and their customers. Don't like that they are axing the woman who did the research to prove that each park's identity is important in its local market. And really don't like that they're adding one of Tim Fisher's old cronies from Village Roadshow. Not good.

Too bad about the Lake Erie Lifestyles guy. CP as long been weird about controlling the message, but it didn't seem like he was doing anything damaging to the park whatsoever. We're all sort of speculating as to what happened, but seems likely it was something along the lines of a cease and desist. I enjoy the park's updates, but they're kind of infrequent to be honest.

The only thing I can think of is that Lake Erie Lifestyles was in violation of Cedar Point's drone policy. I do fully support Cedar Point in enforcing a policy that prevents drones from injuring anyone. However, this seems like its going to create more negative publicity than the risk of injury was work. Cedar Point should have tried to work something out to allow him to film stuff while still adhering to their drone policy.

I was surprised when the drone videos started knowing there could be issues with air space but the guy always seemed to follow all the right rules/protocols, didn’t even seem to be in CP airspace above the park, and produced really high-quality and professional content about the project. It’s petty for CF to go after an enthusiastic fan of the park who created even greater excitement to coaster fans around the world when the updates from the park, frankly, suck and I dare say are probably the worst I’ve seen over the last few decades of promoting a new attraction of this magnitude.

What’s next, are they going to complain about commercial airlines flying to Detroit and Chicago from Cleveland above the park that passengers might see something?

Drone rules are surprisingly stringent--it's not just about airspace, but often within X miles of Y thing. For example, almost all of the U-M property is a No Fly Zone, because you can't fly within five miles of a helipad w/o written notification, and the hospital (with its helipad) is smack in between North and Central campuses. It's one of the reasons we built the Drone Cage, because that makes the flights "indoors."

https://robotics.umich.edu/about/mair/

Does CP have some similar sort of implied restriction? Who knows? Probably not. But maybe.

I am just saying stepping down as CEO, and becoming executive chairman, he ushered Zimmerman into CEO. Clearly, Zimmerman hid his angst towards old CF and Sandusky. And with Ouimet renewing and then leaving 3 months in, and now Kelley getting the axe, the Paramount sweep has been completed.

The bolded above is what makes little sense to me. 11.5 years had passed from the Paramount acquisition to Zimmerman becoming CEO. He obviously has a lot deep-seated animosity for the way Kinzel/Falfas handled the Paramount acquisition (and they made more than their share of screwups from both a strategy and talent perspective) and I think it's bleeding into how he views Cedar Point, in particular, and legacy Cedar Fair people. He either hid it extremely well for 11.5 years even fooling Ouimet or hiring Tim Fisher (who was fired by Kinzel in the Paramount purge) as COO reignited the feelings.

I don't think it's a coincidence only 3 of the 11 GMs are legacy Cedar Fair - and park operations (which is seemingly the only area GMs have oversight over any longer) is the area in which legacy Cedar Fair was exceptional. Add in 1) the CEO, COO, CCO, SVP of Creative and Design (Rob Decker's replacement) and both Regional VPs are all Paramount folks 2) the legacy Cedar Fair and/or Ouimet people let go and/or pushed out over the past 4 years (I can think of 6 senior, corporate or executive VPs off the top of my head) and 3) Tim Fisher's Paramount and Village Roadshow strategy of giving away the gate, trying to make up for it in volume and in-park spending, and taking an axe to the guest experience being forced upon all parks including Cedar Point and Knott's.... It's clear the Paramount sweep has been completed.

Someone else said it earlier - I don't think anyone is necessarily thrilled about the FUN and SIX merger. But would feel a heck of a lot more confident with Matt Ouimet leading the combined company. Tim Fisher and Selim Bassoul.... what could go wrong?!

I do think there are differences in the situations of the Iger to Chapek succession at Disney and the Ouimet to Zimmerman succession at FUN.... but man, wish we could hear Ouimet's thoughts on Fisher and Zimmerman and where they are taking FUN particularly given his abrupt resignation from the Board prior to the SIX/FUN announcement and what seems like a purge of Ouimet's top people over the past couple years.

Brian Noble:

Drone rules are surprisingly stringent--it's not just about airspace, but often within X miles of Y thing.

If you browse Pointbuzz or Facebook, one gets the impression that drones can fly wherever, whenever, and all these rules are just made up. And that there is no possible chance Lake Erie Lifestyles violated any actual rules. Just a good ol' hard-workin' content creator getting taken down by the evil empire.

Gunkey Monkey:

...when the updates from the park, frankly, suck and I dare say are probably the worst I’ve seen over the last few decades of promoting a new attraction of this magnitude.

I disagree with that. As far as projects I have followed, I thought that the promotion of Orion at Kings Island was worse. I appreciate that Cedar Point is doing semi-frequent video construction updates. Kings Island did not get that with Orion. There were posts on social of the drop and such being completed, but that was about it (prior to COVID). The area around it was rethemed into Area 72 and they built a new food stand, and instead of promoting that Kings Island was getting a new land, there were no construction updates with any of that at all. Updates on the overall project from the park felt very sparse. Users on the KI Central fan forums were admonished for posting things that could obviously be seen from outside the park such as adding the last piece of track, testing, and the lighting package being turned on.