Cedar Fair reports early season trends

They don't really say what "soft" means to them. Does that just mean not up from last year at this time?

They said it's flat overall, with the "soft" offset by the hard or something.

OK, I guess so much for the vacation close to home theory?

I don't have the material before me right now, but I believe this kind of follows with previous trends. CP and KI are probably taking, respectivly, a bit more of a beating with OH and MI's economies being way down. (After all, these two states are leading in foreclosures right now.) In these states, even the vacation close to hoime theory may be unafordable for a family. Other areas, i.e. Dorney, KD, Carolwinds, etc. are maybe getting a bit of a boost off of the "local" traveler.

I've noticed in my visits to CP this year. Crowds have been fairly light. On Sunday around 8, they had the handicapped gate on MF open to allow for people to exit, and walk back into the station. Maverick was only about a 15-20 minute wait, and most everything else was a walk on.

It was pretty awesome for us, but probably not good for the park. However, when we went to Soak City around noon, the whole entire back lot was jammed, and SS had pretty decent sized crowds, compared to CP.

Josh

Well it might have something to do with all those enthusiasts boycotting the Geauga Lake closing. ;)

^ Funny you should mention that. I actually overheard a couple of people (I'm assuming they were enthusiasts by the terminology they were using) talking about how much they hated Cedar Fair for closing GL and how they weren't going to spend a dime, etc.. Yet, here they were, riding one of CP's roller coasters.

Jerks, I tell ya. :)

I don't know what the weather is doing up there, but here in the Baltimore area, it just won't stop raining (usually heavily), or it's too hot. Then you have a situation like today where we had the extrememe heat and then in the last half-hour (6 p.m.) a really bad storm went through with hail. It has got to be keeping people home.

In Cincinnati, the precipitation so far has already reached annual amount. It has been extremely rainy here. On good weather days, the park was rather busy. Past weekend was the first one that it was warm enough for Boomerang Bay. It has been quite cool spring here. Also, keep in mind that KI opened later than previous years.

I was just at Carowinds today. After Burn (Top Gun) was a walk on along with everything else except for Nighthawk (Borg). The park did not look very busy at all even though the schools are out in Charlotte. I am not sure if this was due to heat wave here, but I have seen this park much busier.

karma

Karma? There is no karma going on here.

karma |ˈkärmə|
noun
(in Hinduism and Buddhism) the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences.
• informal destiny or fate, following as effect from cause.

First of all, I don't believe that there's any Hindu or Buddhist running Cedar Fair. Yes, I know it's more informally used, but if you read the definition from the onboard dictionary built into OS X, it would've have meant that Cedar Fair did a lot of horrible things over the course of time to deserve this, and I don't believe that's true.

^But they killed teh Geauga Laykes!!111!@12!

This is not karma. This is insane gas prices and inflation joined with recession and increasing unemployment. It makes sense to me.