Cedar Fair interested in AstroWorld?

Cedar Fair is the parent company of Cedar Point, Dorney Park, Knotts Berry Farm, ValleyFair, Geuga Lake, Worlds of Adventure and Michigan Adventures. There may be others as well.

well i don't care who own's astroworld as long as its still standing and open for business :).

If something can't be done to ensure the availability of parking, then the park just isn't viable.

There are lots of viable options. Just because Six Flags would not consider them does not make them bad ideas.

if cedar fair buys astroworld after october 30 the last day is it going to have a 2006 season??? (if cedar fair gives in)

Umm, how would we know?

It depends on their plans.

If they're planning on reselling it and keeping the rides... not likely. Further, if this were the case it's not likely that CF would buy it before Oct. 30.

If they're planning on turning the park around, then that's obvious. However, they're still in the process of turning GL&WWK around.. would they really want to tackle another park with far more problems?

has somebody heard new news about this topic?

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Coaster Cynic said:

Also, the parking situation can be resolved simply by flipping the front gate and aquiring land behind the park. There is a lot of unused land there that nobody seems to want. It would take trams to get the people to the park i believe, but Astroworld would no longer have to be dependent on the county for parking.

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Or how about this: flip the front gate to the side and turn WaterWorld into the new parking lot. Schlitterbahn is about to open and Splashtown's probably going to get a little more attention paid to it soon, so why compete? The gate entrance is also then on the light rail stop, which currently it's not. This also frees up quite a bit of room for a large coaster near what used to be the main entrance should they ever want to build one...

Okay, that just pushed off the fence post on to the anti-Dan Snyder side. Why would SF want to sell Astroworld to a competitor in the same market. SF owns, currently 3 out of the 4 big amusement parks down there and I wouldn't call Sea World a competitor.

Example: Big A groceries opens a new store and closes a current store in the same market. Big A continues to pay the rent on the current store and opens the new one, thus eliminating comptetion moving into the store. This is a game done by retail companies all of the time. Wal-Mart is notorious for controlling who goes into there old stores.

i agree with fierce pancake idea

Is a parking garage really *completely unfeasible*?

This parking situation has come up every time with the discussion of AstroWorld...*TPFKASFAW*. I just have a hard time believing that there's NO place to build a big parking garage nearby. I know they're expensive, yadda yadda, but even when the partk is closed they'd still offer excellent alternatiove parking for the area...maybe offer a shuttle service if you need to, but at the going rate for parking spaces ($10 is really not that much to ask anymore, what with the perception of the price of gas and all)....

Just thinking out loud again.....hate to lose the park...rallying for Dan Snyder certainly seems wrong in so many ways (Dan's the guy who stole my head ball coach, LOL)....

AstroWorld under new management sounds like someplace that COULD make enough money to stay viable for at least 3-5 more years, if not longer...the city HAS grown quite a bit, even if not for the best of reasons...

A parking garage would be extremely expensive. Someone showed me the numbers and it was unreasonable.

BUT there is planty of open land in the area. Lots of it undesirable because of old, inactive oil donkeys and a heavily used train track.

At first i thought it was just the county playing hardball, but the more i learn, I am not that sure Six Flags really tried that hard. They obvioulsy had a contingency plan in place to sell, so instead of trying to solve the problem, they decided to cash out.

Yeah. For some reason, a lot of people have it in their heads that parking structures are relatively affordable. They are EXTREMELY expensive, and considering you are suggesting one for a regional theme park the size of AstroWorld, Six Flags would rather sell off the entire park than drop more than $30 million* on a parking structure setup.

My local community college, Pasadena City College, recently built two new 2-story parking structures - each relatively average sized, and the cost was a little bit over $20,000,000! I can't imagine how much a parking structure large enough to accomodate a single day's worth of theme park visitors would cost!

It may cost a lot, but the returns would be fairly quick... especially if the park offered their parking garage as an alternative for parking in the park's offseason. All of a sudden the chain now has more income in the offseason. Yes, it may cost a lot, but it's not as prohibitive as you may imagine. Of course, there is the issue of where the original funding is going to come from. What's more important to SFI - Parking Garage: The Ride or El Toro and a shiny new hotel? :)

The area right behind AW is almost farm land. It is industrial developed for about a quarter of a mile, the nothing but tress and open land for sale.

It is very feasible that it could be a big paved lot with shuttle services. I discount the parking as a reason now. There are easy alternatives!

About 10 years ago the cost of constructing a parking garage was in the neighborhood of $10,000 per parking spot. I don't know where it is today. But, assuming you might want only want 5,000 parking spaces you are looking at $50,000,000.

Not exactly a bargain.

I am sure six flags did some surveys and bought in engineers.

do you know for a fact that land is for sale and is not owned by one of the developers who wants to buy the park ?

Also remember some of the rides will most likely be relocated . Liscences too .

They will probably make more by selling the land and moving the rides and liscences.

just because land has nothing on it does not mean its for sale.

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majortom1981 said:
I am sure six flags did some surveys and bought in engineers. Do you know for a fact that land is for sale and is not owned by one of the developers who wants to buy the park ?

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I think you missed my point!

I am talking about a parking lot.

There is a ton of land behind the park, that is for sale! At least the signs say so.

You can get some idea here.

Look behind the park, there are a few streets with industrial development, then open fields.

http://community.webshots.com/photo/453735085/453757373UoidIS

Again I don think SF's inc. even had an interest in keeping the park open. They want a quick buck, nothing more. *** Edited 9/29/2005 2:36:36 PM UTC by Markieb***

Delete post *** Edited 9/29/2005 2:34:55 PM UTC by Markieb***