Kennywood and Leap The Dips in the same day?

DaveStroem said:
I can see people going with the intent of riding LTD and not buying an all day pass. In that case the park will be losing money.

We were there for 2 hours last year bought the all day wristband, rode all the flats, Skyliner a half dozen times and LTD once before heading to Knoebels.

The way it is now, I would have gone in and rode LTD and bought tickets for the other 2 and left with out spending as much $$$. I also would not have batted an eye at paying an extra $2.50 for the wristband.

I was thinking the same thing. The park may end up shooting themselfs in the foot with this one. Or do you have to buy a wrist band to even get in the gate?

When we went there, we were only interested in riding the coasters. The only reason we did any flat rides was because it was included in the p.o.p.

I think the reason they are charging extra is because I hear the ride has very long lines, and a very low thruput. They are trying to shrink the line down. This is only a guess, but makes sense I guess.

Is the coaster still only running with one single car? Making the line shorter is easily fixed then, except that the park probably doesn't have the money to build a second car. I don't know how expensive it was to build (or maybe refurbish?) the car, but I remember it being a lot.

Plus they would have to install some kind of block safety system. $$$

I really don't know how Lakemont Park stays in business the way it operates now.

Knoebels doesn't include the Haunted House or Skyride with its POP, and I've never heard too much grumbling about it. Dorney charges for the Screaming Swing. More parks than not have upcharge attractions that aren't covered in the regular admission price. So why is this suddenly a big deal?

The cost of a day pass at Lakemont is nine-freaking-ninety-five. That's right, nine-freaking-ninety-five. Individual rides will cost $1,00- $3.00 using tickets. And the cost to ride the Dips is $2.50. $12.50 is one trip through a concession stand at a Cedar Fair or Six Flags park. For the time and expense it would take me to fill the tank up and drive there, I'm not going to dicker around to figure out I would spend 75 cents less if I only bought tickets for 3 rides instead of a day pass and a ticket for Leap the Dips.

+∞

If your stuck to that schedule and parks I say go for it.
However, Kennywood, Conneaut and Waldameer can easily be done in a day. Id check to see which park opened first and closed last and start that way.
Chuck

Besides, wasn't LTD an up-charge attraction (I think it was $1.50 per ride) in recent years, and not included in the POP? I seem to remember that being the case back in '02 when I was there.

The way it is now, I would have gone in and rode LTD and bought tickets for the other 2 and left with out spending as much $$$. I also would not have batted an eye at paying an extra $2.50 for the wristband.

But see, that's the enthusiast in you. Most people aren't going just to ride the coasters. Most people are going to go and get the wrist band, and if they feel like riding LTD, they'll pay the extra.

They're not doing this to make more money. They're doing it to control how many people ride it. Seems like they're hoping for a more limited amount of people to pay the extra money so that there will be less riders on the coaster overall. Most people are still going to buy the POP and ride everything else multiple times, but the locals (the park's core demo) will be less inclined to pay $2.50 every time they go, which results in less riders for that coaster, which is what the park seems to want.

If that's the goal, I'd say they're not shooting themselves in the foot at all. They simply want less people on LTD, so charging an extra $2.50 on the wrist band isn't going to solve that at all.

The ride has SEVERAL cars parked in the station, but they only run one for safety because of the manual blocking.

Like Clint said, they seem to want to cut down on maintenance for the ride, as that appears to be more achievable than getting enough profit to pay for the current maintenance costs. It's a shame as it's the best ride in the park, but it's not that big of a deal. I would be happy to pay $5 a ride a couple of times next time I make it to Altoona.

Honestly in some cases I think they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. Lakemont is a free admission park and I know its not a huge amount of people but some enthusiast would dash in, pay 2.50 and another ticket for skyliner and leave. Thus making only 5.00 when they could have made the 9.95

I'd assume that the amount of enthusiasts that do that will be very small, versus the costs they're trying to avoid by cutting down riders, there by being better for the park's budget.

Look at it this way. They apparently need $2.50 per rider on Leap The Dips to cover the cost of that ride alone. Even if they added that $2.50 to the POP, they must think they will get more riders on LTD than the total amount of people who purchase a POP for the day. Even if only 100 people visit the park that day and buy a POP, and all of them ride LTD once, but then one of them rides it a second time, the park has blown their maintenance budget for Leap The Dips. This is obviously assuming they've been able to accurately calculate the LTD maintenance costs on a per/rider basis and know for fact the average ratio of POP purchases to LTD rides per day.

I am totaly for the extra cost, but I don't understand how the startup cost's for this ride are 10x more than the skyliner coaster.

The ride is much smaller than skyliner, much less wood to have to replace every year. The rolling stock is much simpler than a ptc train.

Again, I am not bitching about the extra cost's, but just curious how it take so much money to get the ride open for the spring.

I am curious as well; perhaps Barry will enlighten us.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I think I am going to try and get them both done that Friday.

Anyone know of any KW discounts? Last time I checked their homepage they were still working on discounts.

If you have any freinds who live in PA, they can go to their local parks and rec office and get extremely discounted tickets to almost any park in the State, as well as a few outside of the State. It's only for PA residents.

You'd think that Kennywood would sell an evening pass or something.

http://visitkennywood.com/

$24 tickets!

Kennywood does sell an evening pass... for about 3 years now.

Cool! I haven't been in about 4 years now.

While looking at the page linked above, I saw this one http://www.visitkennywood.com/pricing.php

Kennywood is comparing themselves to CP. Really?

Kennywood is family friendly!

See how our promotional pricing stacks up against regular admission rates to popular “corporate” theme parks.

Price for Individual Regular Admission Tickets/Passes

KENNYWOOD $24.00 - free parking available
Cedar Point $45.99 + parking

The money you save on admission and parking goes a long way toward having even MORE fun at Kennywood!

* Source www.cedarpoint.com for regular gate admission pricing for 2010.

Price comparisons as of 02/03/10

I also thought that Kennywood was now owned by Parques Reunidos which appears to be slightly larger then Cedar Fair. What a load of PR crap.

I think it's weird that they would put a link to a competitor on the web site. I am sure there are a bunch of people that have not been to cedar point, and now they may go check out the competition.