Cedar Point Operations

Agreed. Say what you want about Kinzel's intentions with Geauga Lake, but I know for sure Bill Spehn (and Colleen) did not want that place to close.

On a related note, I just got back from Carowinds for Coaster Con. The ride ops on the coasters were busting their asses, giving everyone three seconds to rush through the gates and sit their asses down on the trains before they flew through checking the bars.

Only problem: there were about 2,000 people in the park and they were sending out half empty trains.

I appreciate efficiency but is it that hard to use some discretion when to be “on”?

I’ve seen the poor operations at Cedar Point myself, and there’s a clear difference between dispatch times there and at Kings Island. For Iron Dragon and Raptor, it seems like ops intentionally stack trains. So the question is why? Is Cedar Point the only park where iROC is being implemented, or do we just notice it more there because their operations were so good in the past? Unless each park is insured individually, and/or Cedar Point passes some insurance threshold that requires iROC, I don’t see why Cedar Fair would implement these practices at their crown jewel.

The entire Cedar Fair chain uses IROC. If you watch the ops at Kings Island or Carowinds you'll see they have to do all of the extra things. Some parks (Kings Island, certain rides at Carowinds) still hustle and have great efficiency. Other parks (Cedar Point, other rides at Carowinds) have really slowed down and then you have some parks (Kings Dominion) that make Busch Tampa look like they have quick dispatches and it has nothing to do with IROC, it's just crappy operations.

With IROC you'll never have the Cedar Point of the 90s. But it's not the only reason are as slow as they are today.

And the current Cedar Point weather policies can't be blamed on IROC either. Other Cedar Fair parks will run their rides in moderate rain. Cedar Point has been terrible with being rational about keeping things open in light to moderate rain ever since Magnum bumped trains more than 16 years ago. That was long before IROC. But closing rides when there's a breeze in Toledo is newer.

Jeff:

Spehn was a bit rough to people from what I had heard, but his intent seemed right.

Bill was a college football coach who happened to work at an amusement park. He ran his department that way and it worked pretty well but if you didn't have any experience with a coach, he would for sure come off as rough. He cared deeply about the park and how it was presented to guests and would hold you accountable if it wasn't to his standards. I don't think you'll ever meet a bigger nerd about operations than Bill. I met him my first day at Cedar Point and worked for him up through when he left for GL and then again when he came back to CP. Bill treated me like I was a member of his family and would teach you anything you wanted to know about how to run a park if you were interested. He was still held back though and I wonder sometimes what the park would have been like had Kinzel retired when Bill became a VP. Plus the guy could inhale a bucket of wings like it was his job. I was always impressed by that.

Ohh god.. the wing eating contest at GL.. *shudders*

99er:

He was still held back though

If Geauga Lake had worked out and/or if Kinzel had given him more resources and support, I think he could have easily been one of the best park GMs of the era. I actually thought when he went back to Cedar Point after GL closed he was being prepped to take over for John Hildebrandt.

Bill was tough/strict and ran a tight ship, especially when Kinzel was around. His yelling at team members at times was inappropriate. That said, give me his toughness and operation standards any day over what we see at Six Flags and other parks that are subpar to the point people just don’t go there any longer. I enjoy rides at Magic Mountain, Great America/Adventure, etc. but the misery of how Six Flags operates has kept me away since the Burke/Story days.

I have to chuckle about Cedar Point when I recall how rides operated with yellow safety lines about 3 feet from constantly moving coaster trains. Just look at Corkscrew now, it has air gates AND I swear is about 15 feet from trains now, crazy.

It's funny my wife and I also have very different opinions on Bill Spehn - mine mostly positive and hers totally negative. I liked that he was always visible around the park, always interested in your numbers, how they compared to last year, other rides, etc and just seemed like sort of that rah rah football coach kind of guy. My wife had one or two bad interactions with him where he basically berated her for getting a guest wet (while they were waiting for a water slide mind you) and it completely soured her on him. So he's definitely a polarizing figure.

Peggy was someone I think everyone liked. I remember her bringing out a collection of things that had been found in peoples shoes during a training session.

Someone was asking about what IROC procedures do that kill efficiency. Basically it's a death by 1000 cuts kind of situation. All of these might seem minor, but when added up, they either 1) make things slower or 2) make people have to work a lot harder to get the same throughput. A few examples I'm aware of...

1.) After checking seats, a ride op must go back to a certain spot (on a dot, behind a line, etc) and stand there before putting up a clear where operators were previously able to "clear" as they were walking back to position. These deginated spots are often behind barriers or extremely far from the train, making it less likely for the oeprator to effectively watch the train as it goes out. There also seems to be some policy that everyone has to wait until everyone else is done checking before anyone can be giving a thumbs up. When I worked at the park, there was an order that it had to go in, but if you were done and so was anyone else before you in the order, you could be clearing even if you were walking back to your "home" position.

2.) No "meet in the middle" type operations where one operator can help out another with their seats if one of them is deal with a slower guest. You have to check your seats in the order they prescribe and then usually visually check them a second time. Sometimes, the order makes sense, other times - like on Magnum for example, the guy at front unload checks front to back, runs back to the front to double check, then runs to over by the elevator to clear. It's a lot of wasted steps that add up to a lot of missed intervals over the course of the day. If the second unload person is dealing with a special access guest or a parent swap, the remaining op isn't allowed to check their seats for them. They just stand there and wait. It's maddening.

3.) No skipping a slow guest and coming back to them when you're finished with the rest of your seat. You have to stand there and let the seconds tick.

4.) "Scan." If you see people looking around like morons before giving a clear or dispatching a train, this is also an IROC thing. Why wouldn't you always be aware of what is going on around you rather than this theater of pretending to look around just at the last minute?

5.) I am not sure if this is IROC or just the park, but they have certain rules about staffing vs. number of trains. For example, Magnum doesn't seem to ever run three trains early in the season - even on a Saturday - because I think it's not allowed unless they have a third person on the load side.

6.) Someone mentioned that it's a good thing to rush people through the gates and close them ASAP. That's because IROC says you can't lock the lapbars and start checking restraints until their closed. When I worked at CP, we'd intentionally try to keep them open a bit longer to call for single riders to fill empty seats. We'd still hit every interval, but we knew when we had to close them and get moving in order to hit that interval.

There are other things around Cedar Point that drive me crazy that probably have nothing to do with IROC too. For example, Steel Vengeance had the ability to do "multi-move" so that the waiting train would get into the station much faster rather than waiting for the leaving tain to be completely out of the station before the waiting one starts to move, but supposedly Cedar Fair or the park asked Irvine Ondrey to disable it (not sure if it was a result of the opening day bump in 2018 or not, but that had nothing to do with the control system - it was heavier trains and substandard braking hardware from what I understand). Is that so it's perceived to be safer? To sell more Fastlanes? So the staff has to work a lot harder to make up for the 15 seconds lost on every cycle? Millennium Force has been sort of neutered since they cheaped out on getting the same lift motor and the train now goes at its slower speed the entire way up the lift rather than speeding up when the block is clear. This costs a few seconds on every cycle assuming the crew is fast enough (which they often are not anyway). I'm not sure if it's a rule that you have to stack trains at Gemini, but they sure do manage to do it consistently. Maddening when they used to be able to run six trains with little to no stacking.

The idea that ride operators need to physically touch restraints at all is now the most ridiculous thing I can think of. The idea that the guest can't be trusted to push up on their lap bar as a confirmation is pretty dumb. And I'm not the only one who thinks so, because the people who think about such things at Walt Disney World agree. (They also don't have seatbelts on top of redundant hydraulic restraints either.) If you're a consultant, and can't explain why Disney is wrong, you're a ****ty consultant.

I’ve yet to see a single RMC (outside of the Raptors) with multi-move so I’m a little suspicious of the claim that they disabled it on Steel Vengeance. They clearly trust it considering how many other rides implement it.

Thanks for all the info, MDOmnis.

One follow up you may or may not know - any idea why Cedar Point specifically is so strict when it comes to unnecessary rain/wind closures? Since it's a specific thing to that park, I feel like it's some weird internal policy rather than IROC

I don't think that specifically has anything to do with IROC. They've been pretty lame with rain closures ever since the Magnum trains bumped in 2007 on Maverick's opening day. They blamed it on the rain and it's been pretty laughable ever since. The sensible thing to do would be to reduce to two trains in the rain.

I was at Cedar Point Shores today. 90 degrees and sunny - the day following an 85 degree and sunny 4th of July holiday. The park should be rocking at this point staff-wise.

Today was the busiest I can ever recall seeing CP Shores - granted I haven't been to the waterpark much over the past 7-8 years but used to go much more regularly. To the extent they weren't letting anyone back to the back parking lots unless you were a Hotel Breakers or Lighthouse Point guest. They were re-directing all waterpark traffic to the "beach parking" - basically up at the front right ahead of the preferred parking in the main lot.

On what will likely be one of their busiest days of the year... 3 of the 6 slide structures on the east side of the park were closed. The lines for the remaining 3 slides were out on the midways. If they can't staff the waterpark, they need to limit the attendance. They aren't doing anyone any favors with this approach - pissing off their guests, overworking their staff, potential long-term brand damage due to quality of experience, etc.

On the last earnings call, Cedar Fair's CFO answered a question about staffing that they felt really comfortable on where staffing levels were this year compared to prior 3 years. Hopefully he was just talking in generalities and simply skipped over the waterpark at their largest, most profitable property .... because if this is Tim Fisher's idea of operations that deliver a quality guest experience .... the parks are in trouble.

Some of what IRT does is just silly. Ever see a lone operator on a flat ride throwing hand signals to the non-existent second operator? Or on the coasters at Indiana Beach, which have the old-style shared handlebars, where the two operators walk the length of the train and physically check both sides of the lap bar. Never mind that those lap bars only have a latch on one side... But on a rainy day at Cedar Point I saw one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen. Dodgem was one of the first rides expected to come up as the rain cleared, and when they got the OK to start their opening procedure, the operator had to run the ride through three cycles empty before he could let anybody on the ride. And by empty, I mean empty. Okay, so the lights change from white to red, the timer runs...what exactlly are we proving here, and why does it take three cycles to do it?

What I notice is that IRT seems mostly concerned with risks associated with passengers on the ride and people on the platform, to the exclusion of everything else. And many of the mitigations are rather suspect. For instance they like to make operators stand in designated locations when trains are moving, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, although it prevents the attendants from using that time to help prepare the oncoming riders, and it's really safer to make sure that people are not in dangerous places rather than assuming all is OK if certain people are in "safe" places. Anyway, this all kind of ignores the fact that a collision is a much more serious incident than letting a train go out without touching one of the lap bars...and is made far more likely by stacking trains because you spent so much time dancing around the platform and doing theatrical stuff rather than getting the trains out on time. And I do mean theatrical. Why does the Load 2 operator on Magnum have to run to the front of the train, tag the station wall, then run back to the post before indicating clear? It assures nothing, it accomplishes nothing but to make that operator run ten more steps on each dispatch.

Finally, something someone noted earlier is about the seat belts on the Cedar Creek Mine Ride. It does make sense to convert those to individual belts, and to have them set up with the adjustable end in the middle. That keeps the belt ends short enough that they can't fall out of the train and jam up on the platform. You would be surprised; a single Beams #800 lift-latch buckle can wedge between the train and the platform in such a way as to bring a 5,000-pound coaster train to a grinding halt.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

MDOmnis:

Peggy was someone I think everyone liked. I remember her bringing out a collection of things that had been found in peoples shoes during a training session.

Peggy was awesome, especially working MF entrance with us. She was straight to the point and didn't take any crap from the guests. You can tell she had the attitude I've been here 30-plus years, they aren't going to fire me. There was this one time when a guest we asked to try the test seat insisted that he had ridden the ride last year. Peggy, in her candid way, said, "A lot has changed between then and now."

On another occasion, we faced some heated discussions with guests(think Detroit, inner city, wonderful temperated ladies lol) unable to fit the test seat. Peggy, being herself, gently pointed out, "Maybe spending less time at the Midway Buffet could make a difference."

MDOmnis:
I don't think that specifically has anything to do with IROC. They've been pretty lame with rain closures ever since the Magnum trains bumped in 2007 on Maverick's opening day. They blamed it on the rain and it's been pretty laughable ever since. The sensible thing to do would be to reduce to two trains in the rain.

I can recall, prior to the one train sliding through and saying hello to the other train, the trains were stopping in the safeties with half of them hanging past the designated area. Then came that first heavy rain and it slid right through. Many of the regulars, including Randy, Jerry, myself, and a few others had let the crew know. However, there's only so much we could do. It's crazy they blame it on the rain, I remember riding Magnum in torrential downpours with Katrina's leftovers that came north.

I actually found the picture from that day(9/25/2005). It's hard to tell in the photo, but I looked like I just climbed out of jumping in a pool. https://photos.app.goo.gl/2...veCdiGNBF6

PhantomTails:

I’ve yet to see a single RMC (outside of the Raptors) with multi-move so I’m a little suspicious of the claim that they disabled it on Steel Vengeance.

Multi-move may not be the right term for what I mean although I am pretty sure it's what B&M calls it. I am not talking about the train continuously moving as people get in like on the Six Flags Raptors or Wild Mouse. I'm all for efficiency, but I would not think that would be a good setup with RMC trains. :) What I mean is that the waiting train starts its movement into the station when the previous one is halfway or so out rather than having to be all the way out. Twisted Timbers has it and that is built the same year by the same company for the same corporation and also has a control system done by Irvine Ondrey Engineering. Many B&M's like Gatekeeper have it, but older ones like Raptor and Rougarou do not. It looks like Wildcat's Revenge has it as well. Top Thrill Dragster was supposed to have it, but they never got it working correctly as the story goes.

It's funny Chris R - I've heard that story about Peggy with the Buffet comment at the MF entrance from more than one person! :) Just a different era back then I guess. She'd probably get fired today for that. :(

Not Cedar Point (or Cedar Fair), but from the Twitter...

On a mine train? I wouldn't have mentioned it until the end of the ride...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
(who once rode most of the Cedar Creek Mine Ride with the lap bar open)

I boarded Mine Ride several years ago and the bar was lowered with one leg on each side of the t-bar. Long legs mean I need to purposefully board those trains. Ride op wasn't concerned. Made it even less likely I could fall out. As train left the station, the ride op at the controls was more concerned about the restraint. Looking back as we turned to enter the tunnel, I could see them talking about what I assumed was the restraint. Train stopped on the lift hill. Ride op walked all the way around on the track and opened the restraints for our car and made me move my legs to the same side of the t-bar.

Was at Cedar Point on Saturday. Was raining most of the morning. Ranged from misting to a drizzle to a steady rain. Wasn't a down pour though. No lightning. A number of rides continued running throughout. We were mostly in the boardwalk area so do not know how other parts of the park were. Wild Mouse, Raptor and Gatekeeper kept running (with riders). Troika, MaxAir and Scrambler kept running. Rides with sloped ride platforms (Calypsso) or entrances/exits (Matterhorn) were closed. Valravn was running but with empty trains. We left about 2:30pm. Rain had stopped at that point. Parking lot further out than row 38 was pretty much empty. Should have been a good rest of the day in terms of wait times.