The Geauga Lake story has made a Chicago paper.

I could do without the personal jabs... from both of you.

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Rob Ascough said:
After a couple thousand posts, I'm the only one beating the "How Cedar Fair could've done more" drum? I didn't realize I was talking to myself all this time. Now I'll ask you, if this conversation is getting stale, why the hell do you bother reading it and posting? You're just as bad as those people that complain about the subject matter on Howard Stern's show when they can easily change the channel and ignore it.

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You misread my post. I said your whole spiel about "how Cedar Fair could have done more" was getting stale and tired. Not the conversation or the topic itself. That in itself can get interesting at times.

Well, I know back in 2005 and 2006, Geauga Lake ran radio spots in all of Central Ohio. This year it ran nothing. The funny thing is, at least at the station I worked for, everything was on trade.

OK then Ensign, exactly what product(s) would these people be buying then?

Your quote

"Loss leaders, as most people know, are cases where a business decides to sell one product below cost -- the "loss" -- in order to get customers to buy other, more profitable products sold by the business. For example, many gas stations will sell gas at zero or even negative profit, if it gets customers into the attached convenience stores where they might be enticed to buy the dramatically marked up goods therein. "

I don't buy the whole gas station scenario either. *** Edited 11/2/2007 4:25:34 PM UTC by Coasterbuzzer***

The gas station scenario is one I've heard mentioned many times before, though not necessarily that gas was being sold at or below cost, but rather with a very small margin.

I'd imagine that would be going away in the coming years, as it seems more and more people (myself included) pay at the pump.

^^ Peruse the Sunday circular for your local grocer and you'll see tons of loss leaders. That 12-pack of Pepsi selling 2/$3.00? The $.79 dozen of eggs? Those are deals that actually costs the store money. They're willing to lose fifty cents on those sales if it means you coming into the store and spending a bunch of money on stuff that is highly profitable like baked goods and deli counter items where the profit margins are upwards of 35%. Why do you think most grocery stores have dozens of individual departments surrounding the perimeters of the buildings? There is hardly any profit on actual grocery items but tons of money to be made on the other stuff like meats, seafood and produce.

I haven't really given much thought to how a loss leader would benefit an amusement park operator but Ensign is 100% right that those things do exist. Call it taking one for the team, to great benefit of the team.

This may be stretching it, but wouldn't a loss leader for a park be like giving free pop/soda or .25cent cotton candy?

Pretty much, but I think Ensign was thinking on a larger scale. But yeah, "free" anything means it's not really free, it's just a loss leader.

^ Unless it's parking at Knoebels or Pepsi at Holiday World. :) Rob, you're starting to sound like Gonchar now.

What would make you say that? I thought you were my friend? ;)

But it's kind of true... things like parking and drinks aren't really free, they're just kind of built into the cost, if you're a consumer that is. If you're the park owner/operator, you're basically denying yourself the ability to charge for those things (and therefore make a profit on them) and in turn giving people a reason to come to the park and spend money on other profitable things.

Except that I think you guys are blurring the line in definitions.

A loss leader is something the seller truly takes a loss on in hopes that it draws attention and makes other more profitable sells. It can include freebies. The point is that a loss is taken in hopes of making even more elsewhere.

The free drinks and parking examples are not loss leaders - they're accounting sleight of hand. :)

The closest thing to a loss leader I can think of in the industry is SF's season passes. (and it's still a flawed example)

They take a loss on the gate in hopes that you'll return several times and buy the high-margin food, drinks, souvenirs, games and such inside each time thus making them more in the long run than if they charged a more market-realistic price for entry and the guest returned less times.

Yeah, I was thinking on a larger scale, merely using the gas station as a convenient example.

My speculation was that, even if the ride side was losing money, CF would keep it open long enough for people to come to appreciate the waterpark. As has been pointed out many times on this site, the vaunted "GP" don't pay that much attention to year to year changes at their local amusement park, right? So keep the ride side open for a limited term. People come for the rides, discover the slides, and eventually they're converted. A successful transition. And when the water slide is sufficiently outdrawing the rides, pull the plug on the dry attractions.

I'm not particularly convinced of this idea. Just throwing it out there. You know, 'cause we don't have enough discussion on the topic. ;)

Just wait for the discussion next season when we'll get to argue which CF park is going to get the tornado slide. :)

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Lord Gonchar said:
The closest thing to a loss leader I can think of in the industry is SF's season passes (and it's still a flawed example).

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The biggest *flaw* in that example, IMO, is that SF doesn't manage to sell enough of the other goodies to actually TURN the "profit corner"...LOL! ;)

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halltd said:
Just wait for the discussion next season when we'll get to argue which CF park is going to get the tornado slide.

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That sure would be great for Soak City.:)

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Rob Ascough said:
If you're the park owner/operator, you're basically denying yourself the ability to charge for those things (and therefore make a profit on them)

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Actually, as the park owner/operator, you're charging every single person through the gate for those items whether they use them or not. The park owner/operator isn't denying themselves anything.

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....He stopped quickly, looked around and said: "Who said that??" I said: "Me!" and I opened up my coat exposing my RIP Geauga Lake shirt....

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"Dear Penthouse:

I never thought this would happen to me...."

:-D

-Josh

^^ It depends if the park operator is actually building the cost of those things into the price of admission. I could be wrong but I don't think there was anything more than a normal increase when Holiday World and Lake Compounce started serving free drinks.

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RatherGoodBear said:
Wow, does somebody have issues.

So you're saying that a waterpark in Allentown is enough of a draw to maintain 9 (soon to be 10) coasters plus several dozen flat rides that nobody ever rides. But the waterpark in Aurora is only enough of a draw to maintain itself and not one other single attraction. .

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A park that draws a million-plus a year can. A park that draws 700K a year can't. Where's the 'contradiction' there?

If you wanna quote me, you can quote every time I've blamed Cedar Fair's fumblings for the half-million annual attendee drop. I've done that very consistently over the past four years. CF came in high and haughty, closed the aquatic park, lifted a leg on the DARE schoolkids, the parents with union jobs next and expected everyone to cheer about it. Yeah RIGHT.

The fanboys kept blaming SF and claiming attendance had somehow rebounded from all their own missteps. Was I right? We'll never really know.

If you wanna quote me, quote my first response to the GL closing that my insistence CF would right-size the park was obviously wrong. Or my call to kraxleridah(sp?) for a little sensitivity. Quote it all. Quote everything.

At least I can respect Rob Ascough for saying, "Ya know what? I'm here to complain. This is a coaster forum, we talk about coasters here, I'm complaining and I'm gonna be complaining for a good long time." I've had parks close around me, too. Never was fun.

But the whole conspiracy theory nonsense gets sillier and sillier and sillier by the minute. If it were up to CF, they'd still be operating two parks in the same town, much less a day's drive away. For crying out loud, Disney builds theme parks right next door to themselves and it's never a scheme to shut down the Magic Kingdom.

And no one here, much less CoasterBuzz manages to become an 'issue' to me. I can leave this site for days and often do. Just like I can stay out of a theme park a half-hour away for weeks at a time. Sure, it's fun when I'm there. But I got other things to do, too.

-CO

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Rob Ascough said:
I could be wrong but I don't think there was anything more than a normal increase when Holiday World and Lake Compounce started serving free drinks.

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Indeed you are wrong. Gonch knows the specific number, but Holiday World went up four or five bucks the year they went to "free" soda.