Fireworks at Great Adventure--a necessary thing with the low budget?

Somehow I totally blanked out of my mind the extremely long (for a themepark anyway) fireworks show that happened at Great Adventure two weeks ago. While we waited in the queue for KK, the fireworks show must have gone on for at least ten minutes or more with a Fourth of July-type finale. So now I'm thinking to myself with closed rides, and trains not being used, how can they justify a nightly fireworks show? It's got to cost an arm and a leg to put on a show of that type every night.

Shapiro said that he wanted to attract families to the park.

Fireworks I bet help attract families to the park.

*** Edited 10/15/2006 3:41:35 AM UTC by Hamster Boy***

^ Congratulations!!! You managed to misspell "attract" twice in one post.

Back on topic... I-Fan, I believe that they were originally gonna do fireworks every night of the year and they cancelled that, so a couple times in October won't kill them.

^ My Google Toolbar will think that every word is some how misspelled and auto correct it and mess it up.

If it's giving you that much trouble, y'know, you can disable it...

it's something that keeps people in the park longer, spending money (hopefully)

The fireworks were probably budgeted until the end of the year, and although the park could stop running the shows, it's not as easy as moving a budget into operations. Remember, at this time of the year, rides are closed because of short staff, maintenance problems (the park has a hard enough time keeping it's two latest rides up).

I was at the Great Adventure on Friday, and I noticed rides that were down, that are always down (seasonal water rides, Freefall, The Chiller, Flying Wave, and a few kiddie rides). Every coaster I saw was running two trains (except Blackbeard and Rolling Thunder), which is acceptable. The longest wait of the night was for Ka (which broke down, and ended up being 45 minutes), and the hayride (which was abysmal, because there were only twelve actors on the whole ride).

The park even listed the Skyway and Space Shuttle as being out of service, but both were operational once the park was even open. I would suspect the Chiller to be on the way out (I don't know what's up with the Flying Wave though). And for those who think the park's money-hungry, they even had the upcharge Go-Karts closed. The park really just needs some new flats to fill in the holes, and to improve reliability on Ka and Toro.

It may also be a case where the fireworks were contracted out to n outside vendor. Thus, they may be obligated to have at least a minimum number of shows or pay a breach of contract fee.