I was just wondering why Kennywood closes on Labor Day, almost two months earlier than most other seasonal parks.
It's right there in your post: Labor day. The majority of Kennywood's help are college students. There is a severe lack of employees that time of year. Believe me, if they could stay open and make a few more bucks, they would.
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Could you describe the ruckus?
Yeah, but why don't other parks have this problem. SF parks and CP are mainly college based employees, and they are open through October
Kennywood is a old fashioned amusement park. They don't want to be like CP and all of the other SF modern parks. They want it to be like the old days, so they close on labor day.
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The Pens will win the Stanley Cup in 2002!
It is not only that, but Kennywood also employs a lot of high school students. Once they go back to school, their work eligibility changes due to the child labor laws.
The entire week before labor day, the park doesn't open until the afternoon because many of the employees are in school. And they are so short staffed that week, they ask Idlewild employees (who have that week off) to go down and help out where they can.
That is true, the week before labor day, Idlewild and Sandcastle are closed so they can pool all of the employees in to Kennywood. This still only facilitates a 3-5pm opening time, though.
No idea what 6F and CF do, but there really isn't enough help that time of year in Kennywood's market.
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Could you describe the ruckus?
This is a quote from the owners. "We do not want our mechanics tearing down rides in October and November." Sounds good to me. I wish we closed on Labor Day. You have no idea what strain it is to operate without your core staff, food products going bad, hurricane warnings, etc.
At least that when they close, it's still warm out. I don't like the temps at SFGAm during Fright Fest.
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Let the bears pay the Bear Tax, I pay the Homer Tax.
Believe me it's really rough pulling a ride down when you don't have any feeling in your fingers. I've dismantled carousels in mid November in West Virginia. It was the last stand of the season and it was snowing to beat the band.Lifting the pieces of a ground mount MGR plus it's organ into a high deck trailer with your feet sliding all over the place was not fun.