Cedar Fair expands C-suite, drops CMO role

OhioStater:

If you browse Pointbuzz or Facebook, one gets the impression that drones can fly wherever, whenever, and all these rules are just made up.

I don't think anyone suggests that, but as a drone owner, I'm reasonably familiar with the rules for hobby and commercial use, the latter of which requires a license from the FAA. But airspace restrictions are not some deeply held secret either. There are no FAA restrictions over CP. In fact, you can't even fly a DJI drone into restricted airspace. I live in the edge of the Disney bubble, and can't fly from home. Mine also stopped at the edge of the controlled airspace near my in-laws' house near Punta Gorda's airport, where I was already limited to 50 feet.

Beyond that, without a license, you're not supposed to fly over 400 feet, need to take the TRUST test, fly within line-of-sight, and if it weighs more than 250g, you need to register it with the FAA. With a license, you can go higher, but in every case the drone needs to broadcast Remote ID. And something that I recently learned is that if the drone is 250g or less and has propeller guards, you can fly it over people not involved with the flight.

What's the deal with the YouTuber? I dunno, I guess only he knows.

From Cedar Point's website: https://www.cedarpoint.com/...t-creators

"The use of drones over Cedar Point property and its guests is strictly prohibited. Any unauthorized drone(s) observed over Cedar Point will be reported to the FAA and local law enforcement, regardless of its point of origin or operation. Drones may pose a potential safety risk and may violate FAA guidelines."

I don't know to what degree Cedar Point can enforce this policy, nor do I know exactly where the Lake Erie Lifestyles drone was flown. If he did fly directly over the park, then I guess Cedar Point could send the take down notice. If he avoided flying directly over the park, then I would certainly say that it is in bad taste for Cedar Point to threaten to sue him.

And maybe we are just beating a dead horse here, but then why does Cedar Point have an "all drones are prohibited....regardless of their point of origin" policy?

EDIT: Og obviously just referenced the same thing but whatever.

I guess I'll just copy paste what I posted on the Pee Buzz:

My guess would be that 1) he was asked to cease all the unauthorized footage for whatever reason, 2) he ignored that because he "didn't have to", 3) the park simply waited for a reason to happen, and 4) something finally did happen, and the park jumped on the opportunity.

Maybe none of that happened, but I would certainly guess that #1 happened, and that would mean #2 also happened.

I mean, you can report it to the FAA, but I don't imagine they would have any grounds to do anything unless it violates Part 107. When the park is open, yeah, obviously you'd violate §107.39 flying over the park, but in the off-season? I don't know, I'm not an expert.

Chicago07:

It's clear the Paramount sweep has been completed.

The weird thing about that is that, according to two people I know from those days, the only significant mandates from parent Viacom were "don't lose money" and "don't damage the brand." It didn't seem like they were viewing the endeavor as a strictly transactional business. And even though Disney and Comcast expect profit and free cash flow from their parks, they still understand the importance of the product.

Which leads me to another observation. In every technology company that I've ever worked at, there were product managers. It's a separate role from engineering, marketing and "the business." The product people guide the "who," "what" and "why" of the business (engineering is the "how"). As far as I know, a lot of companies that make durable products have this role as well. Disney has it in Imagineering, culinary, IT, live entertainment, etc., as does Universal. They both use a lot of research and data to understand everything from how to package things to how you most efficiently check-in resort guests. I know we had those roles spread around at SeaWorld Entertainment as well (before the Scott Ross era, at least). And the thing is, there is always correlation between seemingly intangible things like efficient check-in and NPS scores.

At Cedar Fair, I believe this is a thing in the culinary wing, for sure, but I'm not convinced that it exists anywhere else. Dismissing Kelley Ford definitely puts a stop to it in marketing. Operations seems to have abandoned it a long time ago. Efficiency and up-time are not mutually exclusive of safety, either. For all of the goofy seatbelts on redundant hydraulic restraints, they did at one time move a lot of people through rides.

So if by "strategic" moves they mean "focus leadership completely on a making this a transactional business" instead of one that considers the experience to drive the transactions, then sure, that's what they're doing. These execs are selling tickets, not experiences. We've all seen that movie before. It's not a North Star.

Jeff:

At Cedar Fair, I believe this is a thing in the culinary wing, for sure, but I'm not convinced that it exists anywhere else.

In my time there it wasn't a thing. Decisions were made at the local leadership level simply based off of their years of service in that department. That is why you rarely saw anyone come in from the outside or move laterally within. You spent time in your department and that made you an expert enough to make major decisions. No research, no looking at other parks in the chain, no trends, no paying attention to the competition. It made it difficult for some, like myself, who was always looking at what other parks were doing and asking why we couldn't try something that was working for another park. We hid behind the "Best Amusement Park" title whenever someone challenged our way of life.

taking an axe to the guest experience being forced upon all parks including Cedar Point and Knott's

After having been to KD and CP this year though the gap still exists and is wide. I do think some of the whack to Live E at CP is obvious (Adventure Isle, Snake River Exp, Lusty Lills) but they still have the best Live E in the chain, and the two shows they put on both got Golden Tix. Judging by Fiesta Village and Scary Farm and the Camp Snoopy Revamp Knott's seems to be doing pretty well, especially compared to any SF park.

It is also year-round, has to compete with DL, and has an identity may be even stronger than CP.

But halfway decent Live E could do wonders at other park's guest experience.

Selim Bassoul.... what could go wrong?!

Say what you will about Zimmerman, but he's def preferable to Selim, and what is ever left at SF.

Decisions were made at the local leadership level simply based off of their years of service in that department.

This was the backbone of Kinzel CF, particularly CP. However, there was the cross-company GM experience plan, which does it even exist anymore? Dick loved talking about running VF, being on the ground, and then having young GM prospects from CP go to the other parks. I'm also sure this is another thing could of irked Zimmerman in the PP takeover. This was also true of Ops if you were a really good area manager at CP, you could go to Dorney to be in a bigger FT role, and then come back to CP in a bigger role.

research and data to understand everything

This is where more corporate planning research for CF/SF really makes sense, and hopefully not a bunch of MBA people with an axe to grind. The amount of branding and nostalgia that recently went into the really good CP marketing was great, but every park is sitting on a pile of this stuff, esp Carrowinds and KD. Disney knows better than anyone to pull your heartstrings and wallet together.

The new park app is great. but after ordering from a restaurant or riding a ride you should be able to log a review, hell review your whole day get a free meal or dessert, and submit it.

Efficiency and up-time are not mutually exclusive of safety, either. For all of the goofy seatbelts on redundant hydraulic restraints, they did at one time move a lot of people through rides.

The Steel Vengeance crew this fall, and whoever the area manager was for that zone, were old-school CP. I went twice and they were rolling every time. I think it took them to mid-Summer for Ops people from last year to become leaders, and then to trickle down to the rest of the crews, and for their pay increase to finally make sense after the rest of the market cooled. After I went to CP, I went to BGW and KD, KD was perhaps the worst Ops I have ever seen, and BGW was the slowest I've experienced at a Seas Park.

In my experience, the Steel Vengeance crew has been able to really turn it on when they want to each of the last two years - usually toward the end of the night when they want to go home. The same didn't seem to be true when it was time to be up and running on time in the morning. Now this is most likely not all due to the crew. In fact, it's more than likely due to maintenance issues with that ride, but for such a great ride, it can be darn frustrating to ride it. It's a far cry from Dragster, but still is pretty tough on most days since there's no early entry and they never seem to open on time even for 10AM. I think on half my trips this summer, I found it running two trains rather than three and I'm reasonably sure it wasn't a mechanical issue because the parked train would switch from one day to the next. There's also the rumor that it's a corporate decision not to enable multi-move (Twisted Timbers has it - same year, same manufacturer and controls company) in order to get the next train into the station faster. This would give an extra 10-15 seconds to either speed up dispatches a bit or just make things less hectic.

Really crossing my fingers that TT2 will be reliable and popular so that it pulls some people away from Steel Vengeance and Maverick.

Magnum crew is usually among the best in the park, but that ride seems to have had its budget slashed and they now only seem to run two trains pretty deep into the season.

Don't get me started with the way Gemini is operated these days.

On closing day this year (2023) Magnum was the only ride in the park that I saw the "1 million rides this year" sign in the control booth. Now, I wasn't paying close attention, so I could easily have missed it on other rides. In past years, it seemed like all the big coasters would have the 1 million sign by labor day weekend.

As far as early entry goes, I'm perplexed why Maverick was taken off. Maverick is always one of the longest in the park, if not the longest. It had been a part of early entry for years, and years, then suddenly it was taken off.

It's hard enough to get Maverick ready and open for a 10am opening. Much like Steel Vengeance, popularity wasn't the issue. Maintenance and reliability to actually be able to have it open at 9am for EE just wasn't happening.

I'm perplexed why maverick was ever on early entry.

Then again I'm also perplexed why after so many years of service it's still such a reliability nightmare.

And then I remember who made the ride.

I learned to stop trying to rope drop Steal Vengeance and Maverick.

Don't get me started with the way Gemini is operated these days.

I know the control system was updated at some point, but with a crew of 4, and a new computer and etc, it should be able to be regularly racing with less staff, and probably on 2 trains, should eat all the people it needs.

Matt Ouimet threaded the needle about as well as one can by introducing decision-making via data, insights, research and technology to an organization that was largely run like a mom-and-pop shop pre-2010... while also empowering local leaders and team members to operate their divisions and parks as they see fit.

Since Ouimet's departure, the local autonomy and General Manager empowerment has been totally eliminated. Virtually all decision making goes through Tim Fisher/Charlotte and their business intelligence team. The headcount in corporate has exploded since Fisher joined FUN and Fisher is squeezing the park-level staffing to barebones levels while the corporate office in Charlotte is busting at the seams. I say this half-jokingly but I am not sure why FUN even has VP/GM's anymore given all decision making is coming from Fisher/Charlotte. Ironic this is how Kinzel used to operate - difference is he didn't have real-time visibility into the parks outside of Cedar Point unless he was physically there so he was out of sight out of mind a little bit everywhere other than CP.