Park Capacity

I can do math, too: Cedar Point is 364 acres. One acre is 43,560 square feet. If you were to provide one square foot of land per person, Cedar Point could fit 15,855,840 people. Probably 20 mil if you don't want anyone to breathe.

There's your capacity. Bam.

Timber-Rider said:

Just another irritating math fact based on capacity. If a coaster has a 1 hour wait all day long, and the park is open from 10 until midnight. That one coaster has given 26,600 rides. That is more people than what I came up with for the daily park attendance for a year. For one coaster. 26,600 rides for one coaster in one day. With an average of 22,130 people per day in the whole park based on 131 days, at 3 million annual visitors. That's why I say their numbers are BS.

So no one rides a ride more than once?

A coaster that moves 1200 people per hour could maintain an hour-long line all day with just 1200 people in the park.

Hopefully, that better illustrates for you the way the crowds in the park work and why they seem so busy with just 20,000 or 30,000 people in them.

Timber-Rider said:
. Want to tell me I'm crazy again?

No. You're not crazy, just ignorant, bullheaded and an all around dumbass.

How can someone be so dense about things like this?

I can fit a good 50 people crammed in my office, but that's over the stated capacity that the fire marshall has set as too many.

But I can fit that many people in here!!!!!!1!!!

Since when did we resort to name-calling around here?

And Clint, you know I can still see your snarky comment about me calling you out even after it's deleted. As you've recently advised others to do, please think before you post.

Not trying to derail this delicious thread, but Carrie's right. Just let it go. If it absolutely HAS to come down to one or the other, she wins by default. There's no reason to go there.

I had a chance to speak with some higher ups at Kings Island last year and they told me that the Saturday of Columbus Day weekend was their busiest day in 2011 and pulled in over 50,000. I saw reports that Cedar Point's attendance was likely over 60,000 that same day.

I was touring Six Flags New England and Great Adventure that weekend and both parks were jammed on Saturday and Sunday. Bizarro at SFNE had a two hour wait an hour before closing Saturday night (I waited for it) and you could barely move through the midways due to the crowds.

When I came back to Great Adventure that Sunday evening around 5 there was a monstrous wait just to get into the parking lot. I turned around, ate, and came back to the park around 8. The main lot and overflow lots were all still full and the Hurricane Harbor lot was pretty close to full. I went in to play the two games I was there to play and took off around 9:30 to go to Dorney for an hour. Ironically, Dorney was dead that evening so that move paid off.

The moral of the story is that, all things being equal, Saturday and Sunday of Columbus Day weekend is by far the worst time to go to seasonal amusement park looking for light crowds.

Holiday weekend during the parks Halloween season? It's the perfect storm.

I don't care if people call me names. I am just putting numbers out there. It doesn't mean they are 100 percent accurate. And, I never said they were. My numbers are based on ride capacity, and waiting in line. I have been at Cedar Point where a majority of the popular coasters have a 1, 2 or 3 hour wait. If you base that on capacity alone it's going to be more then 40,000 people.I did some more research on RCDB. I took the capacity of each coaster, and added them together. Just for each one to reach an hour of capacity, they would have given 21,400 rides. That does not include Gatekeeper, Junior Gemini, or Woodstock express, or any other rides or attractions in the park. And, since some rides have an hour long wait all day long, that number is going to be a lot higher. also, if you have 10 rides, with an hour long wait each, at the same time, all day long, you can't tell me that they are just re-riders.

Timber-Rider said:

I did some more research on RCDB. I took the capacity of each coaster...

You mean the theoretical capacity. Which is in no way, shape or form the actual capacity over a given time period.

But hey, if the lady at the Comfort Inn told ya' so, who am I to argue?

Timber-Rider said:

It doesn't mean they are 100 percent accurate. And, I never said they were.

Then why are you arguing something you know is inaccurate?

My numbers are based on ride capacity, and waiting in line. I did some more research on RCDB. I took the capacity of each coaster, and added them together. Just for each one to reach an hour of capacity, they would have given 21,400 rides. That does not include Gatekeeper, Junior Gemini, or Woodstock express, or any other rides or attractions in the park.

So a busy day at the park (hour lines throughout) means 20,000 - 30,000 people...which is what everyone has been telling you.

If Bill Gates joined Coasterbuzz today, the average net worth of people on the site would instantly be in the billions. In reality, of course, I would still have a checking account with $1.21 in it.

Toting up the hourly capacity of assorted rides, making assorted assumptions, such as each rider riding only once, and comparing the totals to a park's gate admissions ends up with an interesting number. Just not a number that has much to do with the reality of the matter.

Edited to correct a typo

Typing in something logical AND having Spock next to it to verify/validate.....that merits a +1 to me. ;~P

I sit in Ohio Stadium on football Saturdays and look at a crowd of 105,000. It's an amazing amount of people in one place and I always try to imagine what Cedar Point would be like if everyone at the game poured into the park at once.
Timber-Rider, something you should know is that fairs and carnivals have traditionally been known to greatly exaggerate attendance figures, and have in recent years been made to come clean with their numbers. Ionia Free Fair ranks about 45th in the nation with around 409,000 for the run. Heavy hitters include the State Fair of Texas with over 2.6 million, and that's a 30 day run, then Houston Livestock with 2.1 million over 20 or so days, then Minnesota with 1.7 million, that's only 12 days.
Our Ohio State Fair, where I work and exhibit, used to erroneously report 3 million visitors in 17 days. Come to find out they were counting every visitor, every exhibitor, every vendor, and every leg on every animal every time they came and went from the grounds. Now we run only 12 days and we report a much more sensible 812,000 or so visitors, putting us at around 22nd or 23rd.
We have festivals here in Columbus, like Red, White, and Boom and Columbus Pride where they try to report 1,000,000 attendees. Nonsense. It's all exaggeration. I respectfully believe that would be the case for your fair, too. I've been to Grand Rapids and if you had 650,000 between a fair and fireworks in the course of an evening I'd like to know 1) where they all came from and 2) where they all stood without the streets collapsing!
My math isn't good but I think I've got it figured out that if your hot dog cart was open 15 hours and you sold 20,000 dogs that comes to 1,333 an hour, or 22 a minute. You're right, that was a very, very good day! That must be some cart and you must've had one hell of a dinner rush!

RCMAC, did Ohio State make the Final Four in basketball this year? WAIT A SECOND, did Michigan? Oh, well this is awkward.

What does that have to do with anything?

Now, Tyler, if you'd wanted to be really smart with your comment you would have reminded me that if I was sitting in The Big House on football Saturday I'd be looking at 107,501 people, not a mere 102,329.

I'm sorry, I cannot believe that Cedar Point could hold even 5,000, let alone 5 or 10 times that. Firstly, the park isn't even that well-known. I'm from central NY (200 miles away) and all of my local friends have never even heard of it. Secondly, if there were 50,000 people in the park, that would mean there were several hundred people in line for every ride in the park, which is ridiculous. Thirdly, I'm not even sure that many people could fit on that peninsula. Just not enough space lol.

22 hot dogs a minute? I have never seen a hot dog cart that busy. That's 2 or 3 hot dogs every second! How in the world would they be able to serve that many hot dogs?

And how in the world can one lady who works at a hotel desk know that their hotel has the last three rooms available in the entire city?

As for Cedar Point Capacity, I can recall daily attendance numbers thrown around when I worked there. 20, 30, and 40 thousand was some of the numbers that I remember hearing each day. I remember a busy Fourth of July weekend in which the number was "over 50,000."

If it could fit that many people, they'd already be there.