CF Cleans house at GL

Brett: My last visit to Sea World was on comp tickets I got from the radio station I was working at in 1994. Prior to that I went with my dad once for the NCB picnic there in 1988. That tells you how much interest I had in the park.

In this day and age, I consider getting laid-off just part of what goes on. It happened to me twice in two years (almost three if you count the time I made a pre-emptive job change). It can be difficult to deal with, sure, but it's just something you deal with. The days of working one job for 30+ years and retiring are long, long gone.

I think Shaggy's comments about additional people leaving are probably right on. If anyone passed the test and got past the filter today, they might have been part of that minimalist culture Six Flags apparently fostered. Who wants to do more when you were used to doing less?

The numbers of people working there for a park that size were pretty insane as well. I heard their marketing department had something like 25 people in it. Cedar Point, twice the park in terms of visitors plus hotels and camping, has only 18. I think Dorney has around 12 total, which is probably a little more like Geauga Lake in scope now. I wouldn't be surprised if the marketing department was cut in half today.

Brett- Thats probably the most logical post I've seen yet about people griping that the animal park is gone. I agree, if you love seeing the animals that much, then where were you when SeaWorld was getting out of Ohio? Why didn't you go to the park? I'll tell you why. MONEY. It was a "free" attraction at SFWoA, so people enjoyed it. But I'll tell you what, if CF said they were going to keep the animals but run it as a seperate gate, you'd get the same reactions. Gimme gimme gimme. I don't wanna pay! And to whoever said all SF cares about is making money, yeah, you're right. Thats what a business does. Do they always make the right choices in doing so? No. But thats what those parks are for, to make money on amusing you. How much you wanna be that's all that CF cares about too?

Jeff has long stated that giving the Wild Life side away as part of admission was a killer blow that did not help matters.

I can understand if people are disappointed about the loss of the animals but even when the parks were combined, they still felt like separate entities. The separation of the two through corollary distance even while having connecting paths did not help that feeling. When I was on the Wild Life side, I did not get that sense that I was in one giant contiguous park but was instead in an entity by its own accord. That entity was in slight disrepair and had only been giving a customary once over to add some sense that you were no longer in Sea World Ohio.

It may no longer be a unique park in the amusement park industry but there are times when extending yourself towards new attempts can thwart what can be your primary business concern. Focus at the core and work your way out from there instead of expanding the circle and then trying to solidfy the center.

Let me get this straight, CF lied? Nawww....couldn't be... More importantly, did anyone sniff the potential CF vs. SF battle brewing in the first three posts? The attempt was thrawted by extremely intellegent responses about economic changes and natural staff 'reconstruction' that large park chains create when a purchase of this size happens.

Two quick examples: 1) I'm a tenured teacher. I agree with why tenure is in effect, but don't agree that we should have our place cemented after four years because "we done good." I have seen the demise of education in some schools because teachers know they can show a movie every other week while looking up stock options on the net and not get fired. This goes back to the administration, of course, who evaluates the teachers. Which leads to my second example, which I'm a big believer of...

2) Bo Schembechler became the Athletic Director at Michigan after he retired from coaching. He began a harsh, but fair evaluation process of his coaches in all sports. One year contracts. If you aren't abiding by your job description, your contract is not renewed by the University.

Before CF acquired GL, my wife and I chose not to renew our passes because of our two trips to WoA this past summer. She is not an enthusiast, but was simply mortified by how lazy and boring the ride ops were at two of the three SF parks that we attended. Simply put: Cedar Fair didn't lie, they improved their company.

I visited GL during an AIMS conference a number of years ago, right after Premier had bought it. A number of key people in maintenance had already quit,not happy with the new edicts coming from Oklahoma City. Some of the ones that were left that I talked to were about to leave as well.This did not bode well for the property, as future visits proved.The good people have been long gone.

Not only was Premier tight with operating budgets, but so was Funtime. It's been ages since that park was allowed to operate as effectivly as it could.

ShaneDenmark...I would have willingly paid for the animal side as a separate admission...that side was always clean and everyone was more courteous...That side alone was run fantasticly, and the food was the best on that side also. I enjoyed the atmosphere and ambiance of the animal side, as well as all it had to offer...the only thing I didn't like on the animal side was the selling of memorabilia before a show, which I consider poor taste. Only 4 eateries on the Ride Side give worthy marks...Mandarin Cafe near Villian, Alfonso's Cafe near Boomtown, Subway & Arthur Treachers...the rest of the places on the 'Ride' Side were pure trash, and that so-called pizza should have been illegal to sell! LOL

I would never have dreamed of working at SFWoA prior to the news of March 10th. Hopefully, if I decide to accept the ride-op offer, I will be able to help turn the park around, and become the great park it has potential for.

Too bad that people had to be let go, but this was excpected. The people staying should consider themselves lucky, as they were deemed worthy. Now I just hope I can work well with these 16 year olds in rides.

Oh, and about the comment cards, when I was giving them compliments last year, all they had were complaint cards. So it was interesting trying to praise the park on a form for complaints. Not that I had that much to compliment, but at least I did see some improvement last year. Unfortunately, not enough to make my season pass investment worthwhile.

-Sam

EDIT: Typo *** Edited 4/3/2004 5:52:32 PM UTC by Avalanche Sam***

I think many people would be very surprised Jes if they knew how many people actually did read these boards and several others.

We have had season passes since 2001 and I for one am glad that cedar fair cleaned house. There was a lot of garbage that needed taken out. Last year at sfwoa I saw 2 things that infuriated me. First while waiting 35 minutes to ride the double loop on a "not so" crowded day, we wondered what was taking the line so long to move. When my family reached the station (after 20 minutes) we saw a male ride operator sitting at the controlers chair with his feet up against the wall. In his lap there was a female park employee who seemed to be grinding back and forth. Not something I feel my 8 year old children need to see or for that matter not something that should be seen at an amusement park period. when the ride pulled into the station the other male operator would unlock the train (not moving anywhere fast enough to be considered an arrow dance) and then go up to the female employee and start squeezing her thighs and then when he felt like it lock in the new passangers who boarded. When I went to customer service to complain, the response I got was that teenagers will be teenagers.

The other disturbing thing was the operation of the bumper cars. My son loved this ride and every time he would ask to ride it I would tighten up inside because the wait was soooooooo long. The one operator would start the ride and then wait until the ride was over and cleared out before moving the alotted number of people into the waiting area. I asked him "why don't you move the people who are going to ride next into the waiting area while the ride is in operation?" His response was to ask me if I worked there? When i said no I don't he said then untill you do, don't tell me how to do my job, Besides we're not allowed to do that. Well when he went on break I watched the next operator do exactly what I had suggested to him. In fact every other operator who ran the bumper cars ran it that way. It seems to me that the young man running that ride wanted to do as very little work as possible. One time my wife and I were able to ride BKF twice and our son still hadn't made it on the bumper cars for the first time. I can't wait to see what kind of an improvement cedar fair can make to Geauga Lake

Just to let you know the ops you described in your first paragraph were fired for that incident within a week i believe of that happening, it was taken care of. Word of that got around pretty quickly after it happened, to bad we had to do the mandatory 3 day suspension for an "investigation" before anyone could get fired or they would have been fired the next day.

That is absolutely abysmal! Well I no longer have sympathy. Good Job Cedar Fair!

Thanks for letting me know about the firing. It's good to see other peoples complaints got noticed. Maybe it was the 6 people in line behind me at the customer service window that complained about the same thing that got them fired. I'm a manager in a large retail store and if my employees did something like that i would have fired them on the spot. Now if they could only do something to make the bumper cars run a lil faster than the ice age. Hey does anyone know how to go about applying there for a full time management position?

I'd call and find out for sure details from the source, they would know better then anyone.

Hey X-Flight are you working there this year and also can you tell me did six flags tell their employees just to ignore line jumpers. My family would go twice a week and nothing made me madder than people who jumped line in front of ride operators and nothing was done about them.

No we are not told to ignore line jumpers, it just depends onthe op I guess. My crews tried their hardest to watch for line jumpers and boot them but when you're forced to run at minimum staff some things have to get sacrificed for the safe operation of the ride. For example at Batman there are safety mats that if stepped off of will shut down the ride, making it hard to yell, or get to the people if needed. Hopefully with CF at the helm we run fully staffed at all times and can actually have people in the line watch for line jumpers, smokers, etc.... Just to clear any confussion up it wasnt the park management making it hard on us, it was the guys in corporate saying this is how much cash you have deal with it.

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to bad we had to do the mandatory 3 day suspension for an "investigation" before anyone could get fired

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Well you won't have to worry about that now that CF owns the park. I've seen peopel fired within minutes of an incident.

It is nice to know, based on CP and other CF owned properties, that the two best rides in the park will be fully operational and to full capacity. 5-10 minute waits on B:KF and Villian on 'regular' days will be a joy....for once.

To comment on the "grinding action" at Double Loop, I read somewhere that the young lady was immediately picked up by DeJa Vu....and that company is not owned by Vekoma.

I know, I know Mods...it's a family website, but I couldn't resist.

Just wondering if anyone knows whats going on with the purchase? It's April 6 and still no info. Hopefully we'll find out something new. I am especially hoping to find out new info so that I can know what number to call to find out if my rides orientation is still on.

Call the same number, phone numbers wont change. Also no one knows anything, well....some might know a little more then others ;) but no one really knows more then HR can tell you, just call.