New Cedar Point manager worked at defunct Geauga Lake

What a poorly written article.

Is that assessment based on your long and prestigious career in journalism? If not, well, that's what the author has.

Given her background at Geauga Lake, how do we know this isn't part of some revenge plot where she was brought to Cedar Point to shut it down?

Jeff:

Is that assessment based on your long and prestigious career in journalism? If not, well, that's what the author has.

It's based on my understanding of the English language.

Murphy-Brady started at Geauga Lake in 1995, and held several positions there, including general manager. She also worked as general manager at Wildwater Kingdom, the water park on the grounds of the former Sea World Ohio. Wildwater Kingdom closed in 2016.

In a full-circle moment, Murphy-Brady was operations manager for Six Flags Worlds of Adventure in the early 2000s, which was the name of Geauga Lake for several years before Cedar Fair purchased the park. In 2004, Cedar Fair returned the park to its previous and historic name of Geauga Lake.

Normally, bios go in chronological order. It states she was GM at the park when it closed. Then, in the next paragraph, it says "In a full circle moment, [she] was operations manager." How is that a full circle moment? She worked at the park the entire time, it just changed names. It's also kind of confusing, because she was operations manager before she was GM, and I'm not sure that people unfamiliar with the industry would understand that operations manager is a lesser role.

This isn't a biography, it's an article. You write in what's called the inverted pyramid style, giving facts in the order of importance. The practice dates back to physical newspapers, when you might have to cut for space. With all due respect, I don't think this is your area of expertise.

I'm just glad nobody here is talking about her hairstyle.

I don't know Colleen but that she survived and apparently thrived the Geauga Lake/Wildwater Kingdom/Six Flags rollercoaster...and CF executives saw enough promise in her to usher her along to this GM position...it is promising.

I am more than a little concerned that she is being tasked to retain her responsibilities as VP of Operations AND be General Manager. I can tell you that it would be very difficult to do my job, if not be impossible, if I had to continue being the Director of a Department while simultaneously being the City Manager.

My two cents on the article:

As a native NE Ohioian, I've read Susan Glaser's work for ages. She's great, well liked, respected and is a major champion of Northeast Ohio and also a champion of Cedar Point specifically.

But this piece reads as if AI was asked to write an article based on Colleen's LinkedIn profile.

A lot of roles at the park and across the company that used to be done by two or more people are slowly being consolidated to one person. With no extra pay. Just more of their “cost synergies” strategy. Will result in overworked and unhappier employees and a lower quality product.

(To placate Jeff, I am also not a writer, but hand wrote many a paper in high school decades ago.)

This is a poorly written article. It is bland factual sentence followed by bland factual sentence with no segues or "color" to make it remotely interesting. Then it ends abruptly. Maybe this writer has a long and illustrious career, but I would give this paper a red "SEE ME" if I were a teacher. (Which, again, I'm not.)

But hey, I now know who What's-her-face, the new Cedar Point manager is, and (no sarcasm at all here) am actually glad it's someone with Ohio amusement park history. I hope she does a great job.

While I have never directly worked with Colleen, she has been a close industry colleague of mine since the early 2000's (maybe even earlier).

She's the real deal, has the horsepower and is a perfect fit for what is essentially the "GM" role at CP. She's well respected in industry circles, particularly in the ops and water park space.

I wish her the best of luck...I have no doubt that she will shine in this role.

Tommytheduck:

...to make it remotely interesting.

This is precisely the problem with "media" in the general sense. News isn't supposed to entertain. It's there to inform. Ever since cable news realized it had to fill 24 hours everyday, and introduced talking heads to occupy most of that time, people confuse entertainment with journalism.

In fairness, "interesting" is not the same as "entertaining."

She's not going to win a pulitzer for this one and that's ok.

I do love the way it ends though.

An Aurora native, Murphy-Brady attended Hiram College, according to her LinkedIn page.

Sucks.

14 responses in this thread. 9 of them address the quality of the cleveland.com article and/or how journalism is or shouldn't be. Can't tell if LG's is in response to the quality of the article or the hire. If its the former, make it 10 of 14 responses. I find that interesting. And somewhat entertaining as well.

It’s my understanding Colleen has extensive experience in park operations overall, but especially water park ops and is always recognized/awarded by Ellis for outstanding safety. That’s great to know given the very high standards Ellis has so a very good sign for CP.

This has to be a difficult time for any park GM given all of the changes and job reductions taking place across SIX. I can’t imagine the pressure they all must feel but especially at the flagship park so let’s hope Colleen gets the support she needs from Charlotte. Even better would be for SIX to free the parks from iROC and rebuild their own internal ride operations practices with leaders like Colleen, Jeff down in TX, and others. If not, at least tell iROC things need to change to get back to better ride operation management which we know is key to the “Great Reset” and growth. What we’ve all witnessed over the past couple years is just bizarre and bordering on ridiculous when it was legacy CF that had the best safety record in the industry.

GoBucks89:

Can't tell if LG's is in response to the quality of the article or the hire.

I rolled a 9 for damage:

I'd like to apply 8 of that to the article and 1 to the hire.

The overall intent of iROC and Ellis is good. And perhaps there is a place for third party standardized training.

But good golly…talk about taking simple jobs and making them the most complicated and rigid over-engineered programs, processes and standards. Especially iROC…which was developed based on the Ellis model, except for hard rides.

Nothing against iROC and Ellis, but they are for profit organizations. I’m familiar with both programs and they just make the roles of ride operators and lifeguards way too complicated.

Is Ellis responsible for that thing where lifeguards are monitoring empty pools with the same urgency as a first responder at a crisis?