Continued: Cedar Fair announces Geauga Lake will be water park only

I don't think it's so hard to believe there were several scenarios that could have played out.

Such as:

If "1" happens then we do "A"
If "2" happens then we do "B"
If "3" happens then we do "C"

One of those choices very well could have been:

If "X" happens then we close the doors.

In that sense a decision wasn't actually made until "X" happened, but they were indeed prepared to possibly close the park before they made the final decision to do so.

Whoa whoa whoa... are you implying CF had a business plan???

One thing is fairly certain, and that is there's NO way that the idea of closing the place down had never been MENTIONED as a distinct possibility. The Boardroom may indeed have decided to keep that prospect under their hats until the last possible moment, but they did NOT suddenly come to this decision wihtout SOME prior consideration.

My guess is that this eventuality came up either immediately after the GL purchase, or during the deliberations about the PP acquisition. May have taken a long time to come to fruition, and I'm pretty sure the "ultimate closure" wasn't their favored course of action, but by no means was it a last-second off-the-cuff decision.

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I'm pretty sure the "ultimate closure" wasn't their favored course of action, but by no means was it a last-second off-the-cuff decision.

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Agreed. And on the same note, I don't think it was an absolute 'done deal' for very long before the announcement came.

I'm not sure about you guys, but I've been in a fair number of board meetings myself (no, not Cedar Fair board meetings). But, they're mostly formalities. I won't say there are never surprises, but there rarely are - especially with decisions such as these. I'm fairly certain everyone knew what the "vote" was going to be far in advance of the actual meeting. We're not talking Big Brother or Survivor here.

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Jeff said:
This reminds me of the time when everyone said they "knew" Maverick needed a retrofit months in advance.

Why does everything have to be a conspiracy?

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Because it gives then something to talk about. If people are willing to belive that CF has outright lied to us, then there is not much we can do to argue with them. That's the beauty of a conspirecy. It doesn't need to be logical.

Like I said, I do think Kinzel had a substantial hold on the Cedar Fair board prior to 2006. I'm not so sure that hold is as substantial as it once was. It is just a guess at this point, but I think a pretty reasonable guess for much the same reason Eisner started losing favor with his "controlled" Board towards the end.

If the reports are true that certain folks were seen crying on the Big Dipper the last operating day it makes me think that managers at the park level were not prepared for this decision.

I've been in lots of different types of executive level meetings. And, the number of times I've been suprised by a decision is higher than I would care to remember...even when I thought all the parties were on the same page.

Knowing the kind of ego Kinzel has, I think he might have been one of the last people to be persuaded to close Geauga Lake.

There's not much we can do to reason with those that just blindly accept what they're told either - no matter how much personal experience one may have with similar situations.

What you call "blindly accept" to me means "accept that which is in front of you."

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Ensign Smith said:
...not to mention the fact that the original waterpark was left to rot, without even spending the minimum dollars necessary to demolish or move it.

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You mean the same dollars that would have to be spent anyway in the event they wanted to sell the land? An expense that would be more as time goes on? On land that is taxed for its value, including structures on it?

But if they were making decisions based upon future intent to sell the land, doesn't that mean this outcome was planned long ago?

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kRaXLeRidAh said:
Not sure if this has been mentioned in this thread or on the forums here yet, but a lot of the smallers rides like the bumper cars have been packed up and are ready to be loaded for shipment.

Thunderhawk's first drop has been completely removed.

Dominator's cobra-roll has been removed as is the turn after the first loop.

And that's from what could be photographed above the treeline.

I'm sure a lot of the other stuff has been packed up and is ready for the big move.

Big Dipper and Raging Wolf Bobs? Hopefully in splinters by now. *crosses fingers*

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From what I heard they should begin shipping out the first track sections of Dominator & Thunderhawk sometime during the week.

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A "lesser of two evils" vote seems to be more and more common these days.

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I saw an awesome bumper sticker today. This isn't my picture, but it is the same sticker:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandrino/218744419/

I'm really drawn to believe the park was expecting this early on. If rides were going to be relocated elsewhere, or demo'd, wouldn't it make sense to cut the operating season as short as they did to have proper time to disassemble, ship, and reconstruct the rides in an off-season's time?

Let's see how long it takes them to demo the old waterpark now.

When I saw the pics of Dom/Batman being taken apart, it saddened me.

These jokers had this up their sleeves from day 1! Why do you think they immediately began moving the waterpark to the other side of the lake upon buying the place?

Anyone notice that the wave pool water was SALT WATER? I suspect they used shoukas water so they wouldn't have to buy any more! we were floating in shouka poo!

I'd almost guarantee that within 5 years we see all the slides placed where the last of the campground used to be next to soak city at CP.

And Geauga Lake sold to the highest bidder....

Remember, literally everything that CF has added to GL is easily removable.

Perhaps they were moving the water park since there was no room to expand it, and it was crowded on the GL side. Have you ever even been there?

I suspect not since you're suggesting the wave pool has salt water.

Aside from waterpark attractions, Cedar Fair added nothing to Geauga Lake aside from that cornhole thing that was loaded with Yankees towels as prizes and nothing at all featuring the Indians.

I haven't heard of many salt water pools/wave pools, especially in this day and age. The only one I know of was the one at Palisades Park and that's been gone for 36 years.

At my alma mater, our pool had some sort of chlorine alternative that was very salt water-like, but was completely harmless to your skin, eyes, etc. Perhaps he's confusing the two?

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Jeff said:Perhaps they were moving the water park since there was no room to expand it, and it was crowded on the GL side.

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Well they got rid of Steel Venom and X-Flight. Rip out Skyscraper and what's left of the old monorail station. Relocate or remove Head Spin, Thunder Alley Speedway, and Starfish and there's plenty of land in which they could have expanded into to make a complete water park.

Sure it would have been up against the road but at least one side would have been all water park and the other half of the rides side would have been amusements. Would have worked and kept the park's footprint smaller since they weren't adding anything to the rides side anyway.

Then sell off Sea World.

X Factor *** Edited 10/2/2007 5:28:26 PM UTC by X Factor***

The "Sea World" side is FAR superior to the GL side for the waterpark. Add to that the fact that Bainbridge was continually blocking any attempt to build bigger rides on the Sea World side and it makes sense that they did what they did.

Had GL numbers bounced back sooner...or the Paramount purchase not gone through...then you have a quality water park and lots of room for expansion on the GL side.

I think the old water park area would have made a great place for a lake side hotel. I don't have any reason to think that is what would have happened, but I think it would have been plausible. The Skyscraper and the Monorail were crap. They had to go whether the ride side was staying open or not.