Six Flags WOA attendance
Maybe I should have qualified my post a little more. Reviews of rides have been great, with the one constant exception being one train operation causing lines when little to no line should exist. The wildlife side has had much better reviews in the past year, and seems to be where the largest improvement has been concentrated.
I've read many great reviews this year, which leads me to believe there has been improvement since 2000. But even in those reviews, another constant has been food, service and cleanliness issues. When even a positive review brings these issues up, that concerns me.
Not being a season pass holder, I was under the impression the Mandarin Buffet was off limits to me, and it has received the best reviews of any of the food services. I recall reviews where many of the food places didn't open until well after the park had opened, and closed down early before the park had closed.
Once again, I am not in a position to judge the park as I have yet to visit since it became SF. I'm just stating the concerns I've read many times, even in trip reports that are on the more positive side. I will make my own judgements when I get there.
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I'd rather die living than live like I'm dead
RollerCoasterGod said:
I am from the middle crowd, and believe me I don't go just for the rides. SFWoA has some of the BEST hand down non ride entertainment to partake in.
The rides are great but just not quite enough to over-come the problems I had experienced. The book is not closed yet and they will get another chance.
With regards to the foods I too will respectfully disagree. I do understand we are a captive audience and prices will be high, but I look at it like this.... Pizza Hutt $10-12 for a personal pan pizza that would be $4-6 outside. Not picking on Pizza Hutt or SF, but the franchise fees still have to be paid and that is part of the problem with Co-branding in amusement parks. At another park if I spent $10-12 for a pizaa I get at least $8-10 worth of pizza!! KFC, Taco Bell, Mr. Hero and Pizza Hutt..... all co-branded at SF and paying franchise fees that could be saved and passed on to we consumers by dropping the name. A typical family style park will have their own food specialties. The Spaghetti Sauce place in PA comes to mind although the name escapes me now! Small park, great food with a reputation. CP has their Berrardi Fries and (choke) cheese on a stick, Coney Island and their Coney's, pick a park the examples are out there, why pollute SF with franchises?
The potential at SFWofA is staggering, and I realize it will take awhile for them to reach that potential, so I keep the book open hoping for the best. It will be a long time till they have the capacity to be a destination park though!
Dutchman said:
Too many companies look at employees like their just another piece of machinery.Wear them out and then replace them. It does not make for a smooth ,efficient operation, especially when it is so dependent on your employees interacting with the public. If they're not happy, it shows. Believe me, the public does notice.
Dutchman,
SOOOOO well said! Even though I edited part of it out, you did a perfect job summing up the problem. They need an incentive program that works, and they need the management to reward the people who make the park right for it's guests. I get the impression far too much decision making is taken away from local management and reserved for out of town management in this case. The truisms are out there like "it takes months to find a customer but minutes to loose one", "or if we don't take care of our customer someone else will". I truly don't think they are competition for CP, but I think they could be!!
Peabody said:
High on CP: Excellent post!
THANKS Peabody!!
It's really a shame. I wish nothing but good things for the place, but I just don't feel like spending my time and money at a place like that.
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I have to agree and would say I am actually DESPERATE for good things to happen at the place. To drive by it all the time knowing I could be there in minutes but not wanting to pay the price (dollars has nothing to do with it!!) is a shame!!HEH? Any of the locals remember Chippewa??
Although I'm not really a local, I do remember Chippewa. My father grew up in Canton and used to go to Meyer's lake and Idora. When I was old enough and we were in OH he took me to Idora, but it was closed (we went there on a weekday that they did not open on). We walked around and looked at the coasters, and said we would go next year. Little did we know that was the last season for the park :(
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- Peabody
Peabody said:
Although I'm not really a local, I do remember Chippewa. My father grew up in Canton and used to go to Meyer's lake and Idora. When I was old enough and we were in OH he took me to Idora, but it was closed (we went there on a weekday that they did not open on). We walked around and looked at the coasters, and said we would go next year. Little did we know that was the last season for the park
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- Peabody
Another VERY sad local loss along with Euclid Beach, and Chippewa. When we were little Chippewa had nickle days where any ride was a nickle. I worked there the last 3 years it was open. Idora had some AWESOME coasters, and I remember the day the last one caught fire very vividly. I always held out hope that it would re-open and it was dashed once and for all that day! ;-(
High on CP said:
Dutchman said:
Too many companies look at employees like their just another piece of machinery.Wear them out and then replace them. It does not make for a smooth ,efficient operation, especially when it is so dependent on your employees interacting with the public. If they're not happy, it shows. Believe me, the public does notice.
Dutchman,
SOOOOO well said! Even though I edited part of it out, you did a perfect job summing up the problem. They need an incentive program that works, and they need the management to reward the people who make the park right for it's guests. I get the impression far too much decision making is taken away from local management and reserved for out of town management in this case. The truisms are out there like "it takes months to find a customer but minutes to loose one", "or if we don't take care of our customer someone else will". I truly don't think they are competition for CP, but I think they could be!!
...not often would I keep both an original post AND a response in a post, and here *I* am "posting me too like some brain-dead AOLer"....;). But if THIS doesn't sum up the problems at SFI...I don't know what DOES. There are some REALLY good peeps working at SF...(shout-out to *GP* and a few others here)...it's just a real SHAME that the chain doesn't do more to make an *example* of their best employees....by REWARDING them....
Bingo! And you know where I saw the best employee treatment: Holiday World. The girl who took our tickets at the gate gave us a big happy smile and told us to have a great day. Pat Koch was nearby, and I saw her walk up to the girl with a big smile, give her a pat on the back, and tell her what a great job she was doing. If that's not a class act, I don't know what is.
Another key thing is how to deal with grumpy employees. The best I've seen that was at CP. I was walking with a friend (a higher up "full timer") and this person spotted a grumpy employee, went to her, and give her a friendly cheering up and told her how important it was that she smile to the guests.
More parks need to figure this out.
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- Peabody
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www.geocities.com/thrillworldonline
Now Reopened With A New Layout!!!
I don't really see a generalization of Six Flags parks as a whole though, because Great America and SFOG are two of my favorite parks with none of the problems I've seen at SFKK or SFNE (neither of which are bad parks). Each one is different and I've seen Cedar Fair and other parks have worse days than any SF park I've been to, so it depends of more factors than one.
Food, cleanliness, entertainment, and friendly staff (very informative!) overall at SFWOA last visit were above average. Of course, I've only visited the park three times, so maybe I need to go more in order to get more of a feel for everything. I was extremely impressed with the Wildlife side as well. As far as the franchise restaurants are concerned, I don't mind at all as long as you can still find nice specialty places to eat (Disney is the ultimate at this!). I'm hoping the park will get their act together with ride operations though, because I don't want to see any park fail with making guests happy.
Danny, who's also never had problems with Vekoma, so maybe he's just the odd one out ;)
I too long for the old days at GLP. It was a nice local park offering many different attractions for families and thrill-seakers. It is clear to me that the park would have continued on as it was for years to come because while Funtime was not looking to make the park a big player in the industry, it did invest enough to keep the local market interested. Most people in the Cleveland area wouldn't choose one park to visit a summer, but would most often visit all three.
The rise and fall of the parks reputation can be clearly laid at the feet of Premier. Without the lavish investment in the parks ride selection as well as the branding in 2000, GLP would never have recieved the notice it has today. On the other hand the stinginess when it comes to operational spending on staff and maintenance has come around to bite it in the butt now that nearly all of the quality staff that ran the successful if modest GLP have left. There is no effective leadership at this time and it shows. Staring with the parent company and sifting down through it, there is a contradiction between a professed comitment to excellent service and product to the actuality of a determined effort to reduce operational spending to zero.
While it has been diminishing, the quality of the food at the park has always been decent. Much of the problems stem from the need to reduce labor. As such more processed food has been introduced as well as a limiting of menu. Also factor in the tremendous increase in price and it just doesn't add up. Back with GLP the park was competitive with any entertainment venue. Now it is much more expensive than all but places like Jacobs Field and Blossom. But to set the record straight Personal Pan Pizzas at the formerly Pizza Hut were running in the neighborhood of 5-6 dollars when the plug was pulled late in the 2001 season. ;) As for branded concepts in an amusement park... i hate them. Oh and why doesn't PKI take any flack for haveing so many?? It's nearly worse there. But anyway, i'm looking for something different when i go to a park, not overpriced versions of what's out in the real world.
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Never Has Gravity Been So Uplifting.
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