Cedar Fair revenue and attendance down slightly through July 8

I never thought I would say this, but could it be that the draw of some of these seasonal, "summer time" amusement parks has shifted to the Fall/Halloween season? There was a time where you never would have been able to convince me that crappy weather weekends in October would be a bigger draw at Cedar Point than June. But now I believe that could be a possibility.

In my experience, the past few years at least, CP really didn't get busy until late July/August. It doesn't surprise me. I think a shift towards Fall/Halloween is definitely plausible, given the popularity of such events. It's also been very toasty, in the 90's often. That could be keeping people at home waiting for cooler days.

Even 20 years ago, CP wasn't really "busy" until after 7/4. But the question isn't really that, it's why is it down compared to last year? The go-to reason is weather, but they aren't saying that here. I imagine that variations of 1-3% year to year don't matter unless it's a slide over several years in a row.

Seems strange they don't have more of a handle on the reason. When Merlin announce their revenues are down on a call they spend hours explaining why they think that is.

Quite honestly, I have to believe that part of CP's in-park attendance being less than usual is the accessibility of the beach. I have NEVER seen it so busy. We've done a few beach only days this year, and it is incredible the amount of people, umbrellas, chairs, tents etc.. spread out across the beach, all along the boardwalk and not just up by the hotel.

I really think people are spending their time in the water this summer, and the halloween season will continue to bring in the crowds. I miss the days where the halloween events were cold, rainy and dead, but life goes on.

Yeah, we were there for six days last month, and with the heat spent only about 2 hours of the first 2 days in the park. The rest was spent at the beach and Breakers pools, with tons of other guests.

As far as CF providing a reason for the attendance slip, is there any pseudo-legal obligation that any reason given must be justified by some evidence? They've pointed out weather as a factor in previous reports, so the lack of providing a reason this quarter leads me to believe that either weather was not a factor (or they lack adequate evidence to demonstrate as much), or that they know what the factor is, but don't want to mention it because it demonstrates poor strategy or decision-making (i.e. consistently-poor staffing has come back to bite them in the ass).

part of CP's in-park attendance being less than usual

Where do you see individual park estimates? I don't see that; only chain-wide numbers.

Cedar Fair has an earnings call for the second quarter on August 1, 2018.

http://ir.cedarfair.com/newsroom/press-releases/news-release-detail...fault.aspx

I expect they will go in more detail then.

In last year's press release through July 4th, attendance was noted at 10.5 million (up about 3%). This year through July 8, attendance was 11.1 million (which was down 314,000). This year included 4 more days (at least on the back end -- not sure what the open dates were for the CF parks). But that would show about 900,000 in attendance for those 4 days last year. Seems high to me but maybe not. Also not clear if they are stating "same-park" attendance numbers (last year they said they were but I didn't see that this year).

Maybe people are finally starting to realize not to go early in the season because the parks are under staffed. I know someone who has gone on opening day 4 or 5 times and still cant figure it out....

I think a lot of it has to do with schools getting out later in the summer prior to other years. Where I live schools didn't get out until June 15th because they had to make up a lot of snow days this year. The economy is doing good which equals having to work a lot more overtime and delaying vacations until later for some people (myself).

Ohio schools where I used to live actually get out early now. When I was in school we always went until the first or second week of June. Now they get out before Memorial Day but go back in mid August.

Because they do not release per park attendance, we don't know if Cedar Point attendance is higher or lower than last year (or essentially the same). So we don't even know which factors to point to as to a reason for the change (if any has even occurred).

Weather could be a factor. June was hot. Many CF parks are misery in the heat. Especially Cedar Point with lack of shade in many queues and unshaded pathways.

I was wondering why Kings Island closed full time operations the 2nd week of August. That seemed pretty early to me for a seasonal park but now that makes sense. Hopefully when I go on that Wednesday the park will be a ghost town. Thank you for that information Brett V.

We went to Kings Island a couple years ago the week after the area schools went back to school (was sometime in August cannot remember the exact week) and the park was totally dead. Just about everything was a walk-on all day long. Longest we waited for anything was under 15 minutes. Talked to people in line who were there the entire week and they said it had been the same the prior two days and were expecting it to be the same the remainder of the week. My kids' school started the following week so it worked out well for us.

Cedar Point still can pull in Michigan kids at the end of August because their schools cannot start until after Labor Day.

We are headed to CP late August because I’ve heard the Park is a ghost town that time of year. Fingers crossed. Of course we went last year for Labor Day weekend after hearing it was also a good time to go... And it was the busiest non-HalloWeekends visit I’ve ever had.

ShaneDenmark said:

We are headed to CP late August because I’ve heard the Park is a ghost town that time of year. Fingers crossed. Of course we went last year for Labor Day weekend after hearing it was also a good time to go... And it was the busiest non-HalloWeekends visit I’ve ever had.

I went last year at that time (last week of full time operations). Everything was still about a half hour wait, I guess for Cedar Point you could call that a ghost town.

Dale K said:
The economy is doing good which equals having to work a lot more overtime and delaying vacations until later for some people (myself).

I’m not an expert be that seems to be a super corner case. I would bet that a good economy means more people have disposable income and are willing to spend it on a trip to CP. I can’t imagine economy has an inverse relationship with overall attendance at any point on the curve.

Remember during the recession that they did say they felt they were getting something of a bump from people who might otherwise spend on big destination trips. It's feasible the reverse could be true, but it wouldn't align with this release that indicates more out-of-park (hotel) spending.

Right now I'm at the stage of realizing it's almost the middle of July and I've only been the Cedar Point 4 times and this is far less than most years. The weather has contributed but I have to say I have spent a lot of money in the park so far this year compared to what I normally do.