The Geauga Lake story has made a Chicago paper.

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Rob Ascough said:
^ It seems it's okay to consider message boards as representative of the greater population some of the time, but not all the time.

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I was thinking the same thing. :)

They do release individual park numbers. They get published every year along with those for Disney, Six Flags and Busch properties... and many independently-owned parks as well.

I don't know why this story has to drag on like it's been. Everyone on here knows what's happening, and already voiced their opinion. Why can't we find other coaster related stuff to talk about? Hey there is track and supports on site for Fahrenheit! ;)

There is other stuff to talk about. This isn't the only thread.

It's just the only good one. ;)

It's where all the cool kids hang.

If you mean the numbers from Amusement Today, or where ever it is they're being published now, half of those aren't even close to the real numbers.

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Rob Ascough said:
The original news item contained something like 400 posts, and the subsequent thread went on for almost 20 pages. There were plenty of answers in there. Do I really need to list all the suggestions that we came up with?

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They were all summarily dismissed as unrealistic or without a business case, too.

To "try hard" suggests that there's an emotional component to it. There's not. You either succeed or fail to make the business work. They failed, and it wasn't from a lack of trying. They put their best operations guy in charge, reduced the pricing by 40%, invested heavily in the park, tried to reduce the operational expense footprint... that hardly sounds like they weren't "trying" hard enough.

Invested heavily in the park meaning what? Poured a bunch of money into a brand new water park isolated on the other side of the lake? Ok sure. Where's the "heavy investment" in the part of the park that closed?

They tried reducing the "operational expense footprint" one season ago by taking out X-Flight and Steel Venom. Do you really think they're going to see a change in a couple months?

Rip out the expensive coasters - fine. Replace them with pretty landscaping or a fountain. Why did you reject that idea as unrealistic? Because you thought the park was beautiful already? I didn't go to Geauga Lake this year, but I saw plenty of photos and talked to enough people that went to know it looked bad.

Why would you close a perfectly good water park and leave it fill up with green nasty water and leaves? Does that show interest in a park? Nope. Why would you leave huge voids in the park where coasters once stood? Does that show interest in reviving a park? Nope.

Trying hard is an emotional thing? Hmmm. Ok. Maybe that's why they failed since you say they had no emotion in it. Maybe had they put some emotion into their work, it would have been successful.

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Jeff said:
They were all summarily dismissed as unrealistic or without a business case, too.

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By who? You?

I didn't know every suggestion had to be one that you'd agree with. There were plenty of good ideas presented, even if you yourself couldn't get behind them.

*** Edited 10/25/2007 8:42:07 PM UTC by Rob Ascough***

It is absolutely a valid claim that they bought it to close it.

Not a related industry, but the most successfull dirt track in the nation sites in the middle of bleak, farmland Ohio near Greenville. The owner there is a multi-millionare because of the attendance of this race track.

How did he initially get this track to be so popular? He bought every competing race track in the immediate area and CLOSED all but one of them.

Its just like any other corporate consolidation, feuled by pure greed. Running one park costs much less than running 2. So what portion of the market was attending Geauga Lake will most likely go to Cedar Point as the nearest competing option has been eliminated.

The theory that they bought it to close it is entirely plausible as they bought it at less than it was worth. The rides carry their value as new rides at their other parks. It is lakeside property, which carries a premium with developers. If the nearest competition is on the market, and you can buy it for less that it is worth and most likely get most of your buying price back with the value of the rides and land, then why not eliminate the competition for good?

Absolutely 0 effort was made to promote Geauga Lake as a ride park since Cedar Fair bought it. Piece by piece it was dismantled. Any investment was made in the water park. *** Edited 10/25/2007 8:46:25 PM UTC by super7****

They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting the park. That's a whole lot more than "0" by my math. That's a funny way to run a business, throwing away money.

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halltd said:
Where's the "heavy investment" in the part of the park that closed?

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You mean besides the $50 million in new rides Six Flags put in there? How'd that work out for them?

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They tried reducing the "operational expense footprint" one season ago by taking out X-Flight and Steel Venom. Do you really think they're going to see a change in a couple months?

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Would they continue to incur those expenses when they're no longer in the park? And why would you landscape areas that aren't even "in" the park anymore?

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Maybe had they put some emotion into their work, it would have been successful.

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Maybe if the people being emotional now would've brought their families and friends to the park, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

What Gonch said is mainly true. But in my view in a much bigger aspect than just Geauga. Even CP is gonna feel the pinch in the near future running high operating cost rides and nearing their customer spending limits.

Only the best run corporate parks will survive or maintain enough PROFIT to keep it's corperation happy. We've already seen CBS and Viacom step out because IT WASN'T ENOUGH GROWTH for them to deal with.

The small parks are on the upswing but will eventually max out unless they are smart also.

Chuck, saying there has to be other sources of income for these mega parks to grow. Resorts and such are where the real money is. 200 a night for a room. COMMON PEOPLE!

^^ I visited Geauga Lake 8 times myself this year. (I probably would have made another visit or two, if they had chosen to fix RWB, one of my two favorite coasters at the park.) Seven of those visits were with my daughter; two were with my mother and one was with my sister. My mom, sister, and daughter also visited the park together without me. So do I have the cred to participate in this conversation?

Jeff, have you ever considered that you may be too close to the situation to be truly objective? You are apparently devoted friends with a number of people working for Cedar Fair. You have, as far as I can tell, only offered token complaints about the chain. You seem to take every opportunity to quash dissenting opinions about Cedar Fair. Your posts seek to marginalize dissenters by calling them names, disparaging their arguments, and questioning their sanity.

With all due respect, maybe as the administrator you should consider recusing yourself from refereeing discussions about Cedar Fair. I don't even have to get past your screen name in a post to anticipate the direction and tenor of your responses.

Just a thought.

*** Edited 10/25/2007 11:01:32 PM UTC by Ensign Smith***

Whoever said Jeff was objective? LOL!

It's his site, He can do what he want. :)

I just don't have to agree with him all the time. :)
Chuck

So now I'm not entitled to my opinion on my own site?

I've said time and time again that they failed, and I think that sucks. I just don't think that their failure is part of some absurd conspiracy to fail on purpose.

The problem is that when you fail to make an argument, you make it about me. You've got the nuts to accuse me of "marginalizing" others opinions and then do the same thing of mine? Hey, that's what a debate is all about. Heat, kitchen, blah blah blah. It comes with the territory.

Disagree with me, that's awesome! I don't lose sleep over that, and contrary to what the biggest haters think, I don't boot people from here who disagree with me. I mean, Rob A. has nearly 7,000 posts, and I've agreed with two of them. ;)

But when you've run out of things to say, and resort to making it about me, that's annoying. No one wants to read that. I'm some guy on the Internet with opinions, and you know what they say about opinions. If you can't deal with that, the Internet is not for you, and neither is CoasterBuzz.

Let me say it again... making it personal and/or resorting to sarcasm makes not an interesting argument.

As for my relationship with Cedar Fair, yes, I have quite a few friends there. And in nearly eight years of running this site, I still manage to post every news item, good or bad about them. They're still good people, and I still disagree with a lot of things they do. I don't care much for the CEO. I suspect John Hildebrandt is tired of me complaining about the food pricing and quality every time I see him.

But all some of you want to see is me at an alter on the beach in front of Dick's house, and resort to calling me out on that instead of debating the issues, like, you know, there was no conspiracy to close down the place at great expense to the company for, well, no benefit at all.

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Jeff said:

The park did not have a "rundown" appearance. Did you even go there this year? My first thought on my first visit this year was about how pretty the grounds really are. Both entrance areas were beautiful, and pretty much everything in the water park looked great because of the new stuff and SeaWorld legacy.

The negative reactions to the removal of the first two rides was all over the news here, of course made by people shopping at the Wal-Mart across the street.

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Did you ever notice the rotting, abandoned water park sitting there? Or did it just disappear in your eyes because they put a wall in front of it? Don't you think first time visitors to the park notice things like that? Do you think the people at Wal-mart and the people driving by the park, notice the old water park through the green fabric that is falling off the fence along Aurora Road?

The old waterpark sitting there rotting has always had me scratching my head. And it's not like they totally covered it up from the public.

If you wanted to hit that sitdown restaurant in the old waterpark, you basically walked right over the algae infested lazy river and they even allowed you to walk by the old locker rooms with rusty and decaying waterslides in plain site.

And as others have said, driving down Rte 43, what you saw today was an abandoned waterpark, and the disappearance of Steel Venom and X-Flight. Not a good visual for the casual observer.

If I didn't pay much attention to parks, and drove down that road, I would have thought the park was closed or was ready to.

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Ensign Smith said:
Jeff, have you ever considered that you may be too close to the situation to be truly objective?

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To be fair, it's also been argued that devoted fans are too attached to be truly objective.

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Or did it just disappear in your eyes because they put a wall in front of it?

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Yeah, pretty much. There was no reason really to go to that end of the park. Or maybe it's just because I like shiny things, like that awesome water park across the lake or the new catering area.

As for the view from 43, there's what, a couple hundred feet of frontage there? You can see some slides and the boomerang over the fence. I drove up that way about once a week, and what I saw was El Dorado, the Ferris wheel turning, and trains zipping around Villain, Thunderhawk and Dominator. Looked pretty open to me.

^^That is a fair, and diplomatic statement. In my case, at least, there is probably more than a little truth to it. And I am self-honest enough to readily admit it.

Jeff, I don't believe I've ever tried to marginalize YOUR opinion. I concede (not for the first time) that there is a significant chance that you, and others that back your point of view, are correct on a great many points about this matter. That is far more than you have given anyone with countering perspectives about Geauga Lake's closing.

And just to be clear, I don't believe we've failed to make rational, adequate arguments. I merely observe your failure to allow this discussion to flow naturally without injecting vitriol and name calling into the process. *** Edited 10/26/2007 1:22:59 AM UTC by Ensign Smith***