Mt. Olympus buys up and improves hotels on Dells strip

A majority of people as in...say...99%? Seems fair, huh?

I'll give you that 99% of people visiting the park have no need for a hotel.

Luckily that other 1% is enough to fill our hypothetical 200 room hotel every night the park is open (using crude averages).

You're neglecting one other thing. The weekdays before Memorial Day and after Labor Day. Families with kids (you know the ones who'd be staying at your hypothetical motel) have school.

pointperson said:
Look at Kings Dominion. The large population of DC, Norfolk, Richmond, and Baltimore all within your idea of a "day trip". Yet they have a hotel in their parking lot for years and they have just opened two or three others over the last few years. Obviously they're making money mostly as a seasonal business because I don't see anyone going to Doswell during January.

Kings Dominion is right on I95, one of the most heavily traveled roads in the country. Those hotels can probably stay afloat just from truckers and people driving to Florida and stuff.

That's not going to happen at GA. Great Adventure is located in such a manner that if you were driving East, you'd just keep going, and if you were heading west, you just started out and it's not really located near a major North South roadway.

Just because it hasn't been done yet doesn't mean that it can't or won't be done, and just looking at what little we know shows that it wouldn't even take many people to make the place average out and potentially be profitable

I'll grant you Warner LeRoy's original vision included a hotel......but it also included other amusement parks, a sports complex, a "beach" and boating area, and a shopping/entertainment district, along the lines of Disney..... you know, stuff that would represent a compelling reason to stay overnight in Jackson Township NJ.

billb7581 said:
In Sandusky Ohio there is nowhere near the competition for your entertainment dollar. If you're going there, you're likely going to Cedar Point.

There's TONS of things within a very short drive of Sandusky proper, Marblehead/Port Clinton, Kelleys Island and Put-In-Bay. There's even boating and activities in the area that I haven't pointed out. Of course you'll spin that into why the hotels are profitable somehow, but the point is, you're wrong.

I don't understand why you're so incredibly passionate about Great Adventure not needing a hotel. It's not really worth this much of a hardcore debate.

So you're saying there's a lake, basically.......

Let's see... we have 25 percent of the eastern seaboard for starters..... probably 6-8 amusement parks/piers, 2 sports markets, broadway, various indoor waterparks, outdoor waterparks, all the historical crap... and that's the tip of the iceberg. Even from my dopey town, I can get to 3 waterparks, in about 20 minutes.

You can't get anywhere from Wadsworth, and there's still 3 chain hotels. Here we go round and round.

I'm through with this, it's ridiculous.

Just looking at a map Wadsworth looks like it sits near a few Interstates to me.

Heh... read it and weep

It's a scan of a newspaper article so I can't cut paste.

http://www.greatadventurehistory.com/Forums/uploads/1255305392/gall...119437.jpg

"Great Adventure Plans to expand to year round resort"

"The Jackson Twp park will use an unspecified of its 1500 undeveloped acres to include attractions aimed at keeping visitors overnight"

The obvious implication here being that there wasn't enough there to keep visitors overnight.

Or the plans were cut after the company's cash flow hit zero.

Wow, you found one sentence that seems to affirm your strongly held beliefs, good for you!

This still can't explain how Cedar Point can have 4 on park owned resorts for a Park/WaterPark combo that essentially mirrors what GADV has.

The market is most surely there for at least one small hotel and whoever would build it would make a killing, you seem to be the only one who doesn't believe that.

How in the heck did we go from The Dells to Great Adventure anyway?

^Sorry, that was me - fourth post out of the gate, LOL! :)

billb7581 said:
You're neglecting one other thing. The weekdays before Memorial Day and after Labor Day. Families with kids (you know the ones who'd be staying at your hypothetical motel) have school.

Either that was an awesome attempt at deadpan humor or a dying breath.

I'm willing to let you slide by claiming it was meant in humor.

Raven-Phile said:
Here we go round and round.

I'm through with this...

Yeah, we've pretty much scraped the bottom of the barrel. I think this one is done.

---

Then again...you know, maybe if the hotel served free pancakes...

So are you affirming you like pancakes? Because if you are, I like Pancakes too.

MagnumsRevenge said:
And the Cedar Point Parking lot Has more Michigan plates in it then Ohio plates...

Actually, that's no longer true. I forget when it happened, but the balance shifted in the last few years, since it seems there's a mass-exodus from Detroit, and unemployment is insanely high there.

What a fantastic debate. Seven pages of whether or not Great Adventure needs, or could even sustain, a hotel. lol

If Biil is right (lol), and a SFGAdv hotel isn't sustainable, with a park people could spend multiple days visiting(like some do at Cedar Point, for example), the easiest solution for SF is to make the park even more of a vacation destination. Add a mini golf course and go carts outside the front gate, near a brand new hotel. Add a few sit-down restaurants outside the gate. Advertise it as a vacation destination, and offer packages and multi-day tickets. Talk about nearby attractions that are within an hours drive, like the beach and Phili.

I'd say that that would work right now, if the park just built a hotel, and added the other attractions and restaurants in yearly expansions. People who stay in Trenton to go to the park might stay in Jackson instead.

I think the multi-day aspect alone is enough of a reason to warrant having a hotel there. SFGAdv definitely has enough to do to warrant at least a 2 day stay. Are the people who say they don't need a hotel implying that anyone who lives an hour from the park would either never do a multi-day trip, or would rather drive home and back again?

Yes, that's what he's saying. It's not people, it's just one guy with an intense passion against Great Adventure having its own hotel.

I, for one, am pro-hotel.

LostKause said:
Add a mini golf course and go carts outside the front gate,

Sad thing is, they used to have an outdoor putt-putt course inside the park. I haven't noticed if the awful indoor course they installed a couple of seasons ago is still there.

I love me some mini-golf. And it goes well with my initials.

I'll be busy staring at the Black Diamond pictures in the other thread if you need me.