What's going wrong at Cedar Point?

I think that RGB's point was that if in multiple press releases, that their potential guests read, SF speaks openly that they have their guests by the balls, than it insinuates that SF doesn't have a real desire to treat their guests well.

Then again, didn't Dick K. recently make a comment that people will pay whatever Cedar Fair charges for food because their weren't any other convenient options? (Sorry RGB.)

i.e. "Glee" - It is kind of creepy, Gonch, that you'll argue in any business's favor anytime they do something that benefits them, no matter how severely it negatively affects their customers. "A business's first goal is to make money", you may say, but how far is too far for you? Some things that are just wrong, aren't necessarily illegal.

The only thing about SF that compels me to talk about them is that the parks have a great lineup of rides and attractions, and show a huge potential. I choose not to visit because it doesn't seem to me that they value the guest experience as much as they value a quick buck, and their are plenty of other parks to visit besides SF.

The day may come that I change my mind about them, but I am still, still holding a grudge for every visit to SFGAdv being very inconvenient, very expensive, and a very poor experience. Every visit made me feel like I just wasted my time and money.

Question: Is it possible that SF may have figured out how to make it a trip worth taking?

Answer: Q-Bot really tells me that they still don't really care at all about the guest experience, so no, imo.

LostKause said:
i.e. "Glee" - It is kind of creepy, Gonch, that you'll argue in any business's favor anytime they do something that benefits them, no matter how severely it negatively affects their customers.

I don't think I argue in any business' favor. I like to think I argue against the idea that any time these businesses do something to benefit themselves that it is bad (for you, for me, for 'the customers', whoever) and/or affects us/them negatively.

I'm not saying they're right as much as I'm saying you're wrong.
('you' meaning whoever is wonking against the evil business decision)

"A business's first goal is to make money", you may say, but how far is too far for you? Some things that are just wrong, aren't necessarily illegal.

I'll let you know if someone gets remotely close. So will their customers. That's the beauty of it all - it's self correcting.

It's not a morality issue where we need to judge right and wrong. It's selling a service and a product. Don't pretend it's more important than it is.

Question: Is it possible that SF may have figured out how to make it a trip worth taking?

Answer: Q-Bot really tells me that they still don't really care at all about the guest experience, so no, imo.

Q-bot is one of the services that makes me most feel like they do care about my experience at the park.

The day may come that I change my mind about them, but I am still, still holding a grudge for every visit to SFGAdv being very inconvenient, very expensive, and a very poor experience. Every visit made me feel like I just wasted my time and money.

SFGAdv really did suck from my first visit on 2002 right up until about 2006. By our visit in 2008, it was downright fun. Pretty much every SF park we've visited in the past 3 or four years has been a purely positive experience. Definitely a stark contrast to the first half of the decade with crapholes like SFWOA and the aforementioned SFGAdv.

I can definitely see how someone who hasn't visited in a while would remember the parks like that.

Not sure how this pertains to what's going wrong at CP...I'd say I've had a better time at the last few SF parks I've visited than the last few CF parks. Mostly because the CF parks are starting to feel a lot like the SF parks used to...like no one cares.

That pretty much sums up all of my thoughts on the subject around business. That the market is (generally) able to force companies to react is exactly the reason that it (generally) works.

Imagine the different conversation we'd have if we were talking about Holiday World. They boosted admission price to give away "free" soda. And that even boosted their per cap on food. It's not viewed as a scam because it's Holiday World more than anything, but it's not a charity either. Heck, this site isn't a charity, and look at how often people bitch and moan about the ads or that they "have to" join the club?

I grow tired of the din in this country where people like LK declare business as an evil institution.

That was a great reply, Gonch. Seriously.

I think that the Cedar Point part got lost in the derailment. Here it is again...

I know that he said something like that, maybe in a conference call or something. So it's not just SF who tells the public that they know that they have us by the balls, it's CF too.

mlnem4s said:

After reading 8 pages of comments I have to wonder, why do any of you go to Cedar Point or a Cedar Fair park if you are this unhappy with the way things operate? Isn't that rewarding poor performance and ENABLING the problem? Talking about it does nothing, action speaks louder than words.

It might be because things aren't really as dire as some have described them to be here. Or, despite the worry to the contrary, the $8 hamburger is not really a deterrent for park attendance after all.

The thought of continuing to embolding Kinzel & Co. financially with my money literally makes me want to vomit.

Oh my. Well then, I'm glad you didn't attend, too. You likely would have caused ride closures for "minor technical difficulties." ;)

With everything I know, Kinzel & Co. are as bad as all the crooks in the financial markets that sent America into this economic disastor we are in. Dick is an arrogant and bad leader, plain and simple.

So based on everything you know, I should stop attending Cedar Fair parks? Hmmmmm...let me think about that one.

But, I'd be careful if I were you. Being an arrogant jerk doesn't make you a crook. (Imagine how many crooks we'd have on CBuzz if it did. ;)) I don't think anyone has been describing illegal activity in this thread. Make sure you don't cross any lines as you join the subjective ranting.

Lastly, as much talk as there is about the corporate management, there still are many issues in the middle management ranks, particularly at Cedar Point. I personally witnessed a conference call where the marketing team at Cedar Point, who are 100% reponsible for marketing Wildwater Kingdom, didn't even know what attractions the park had. Frankly, it's disgraceful and my jaw about hit the floor and I wanted to scream at them! Sadly, this is how things operate in the world of Cedar Fair.

Now that's an interesting angle. You think I should protest and stop attending a park I've been enjoying (due to the attractions I enjoy so much) because the marketing team can't tell me what attractions I apparently already enjoy? Ok....

Lets face it folks, we are now in the beginning stages of the downfall of Cedar Fair and it will only excellerate unless new coporate management is brought in quickly.

Is this the kind of downfall that I should run out and buy extra toilet paper, bottled water, and bread to prepare for? Just wondering.

I for one am hopeful that CF can excellerate... it will certainly help turn things around! ;)

Carrie M. said: Being an arrogant jerk doesn't make you a crook. (Imagine how many crooks we'd have on CBuzz if it did.

Ah...that explains why my ears were burning! You rang? ;)

^You'll need milk and eggs to go with that bread...or you can't make French Toast. ;)

I figured I should at least get some ground meat to make hamburgers, 'cause with CF out of the way, I could make a killing! ;)

"captive audience" doesn't mean "they can't leave". It means "it would be inconvenient for them to get <whatever> somewhere else, so some of them will pay more for <whatever> here."

Several amusement companies work hard to *create* captive audiences. For example, in Orlando, Disney will bus you---for FREE---from the airport to your Disney hotel. Why? Not because they are nice guys. Because guests without rental cars have a much harder time making their way off Disney property, so they are instead likely to spend all of their vacation time (and money) in Disney-owned/-affiliated venues.

The dark side of capitalism shine's through again! That's the problem with
Cedar Point. Not enough people in it are there because they love it.

And hugs, there need to be more hugs. I say that light-heartedly, but I think there actually is something to that. Walking into Holiday World and getting a hug from Pat Koch (who is wearing pretty much the same clothes as the rest of the employees, hint hint), something very special about that (and no, she didn't know me).

Dick did say in a conference call something to the effect of, "People have to eat." What bothers me about that is not the truth in that statement, but rather it indicates that he's not sensitive to it. It's representative of a bigger problem in his leadership, that he doesn't get how to operate in the markets in which he operates.

A lot of this conversation keeps circling back to the appearance of real problems or just enthusiast bitching. If the company needs to be sold to survive, then that strikes me as a pretty strong indicator that something is broken, guest-facing or not. But then, Pete made a recent post (here or on PB, I don't remember) that kind of summed up the bigger picture by pointing out a great many smaller things that add up. It goes back to the death by a thousand cuts issue I was talking about. There isn't one massive failure in play at Cedar Point specifically (there are plenty looking at the company from a macro view), but it just isn't what it used to be. I don't think it's an issue of outgrowing the place either.

Jeff said:
If the company needs to be sold to survive, then that strikes me as a pretty strong indicator that something is broken...

Financially, of course.

There could be absolutely nothing wrong in the parks as far as the guest experience goes and that could still be a scenario that plays out.

The fact that the company needs to be sold to survive indicates something is broken financially. I think the debate here is what caused something to be financially broken. Is that really necessarily that people stopped going? I mean, did things drops so much that suddenly the company was less than healthy financially? Or was it something like taking on too much debt.

Honest question. It seems like this thread is focusing on why people might not visit the park, but I was under the impression that that wasn't the problem - in terms of the financial breakage, at least.

Actually, in looking over the preliminary SEC proxy statement (which is big enough and heavy enough that I have still not made it through the whole thing), it looks like indeed, the company is strong enough that it is not a "sell or die" scenario. It's just that a sale was interpreted by the Board of Directors to be in the best *immediate* interest of the unitholders. The company has been forced by economic conditions to eliminate its distribution, which means a loss of income to unit holders. But because of the structure of the company, its corporate profits are still reflected somehow in the taxable income of the unitholders, who now do not receive real income to offset that liability (I never understood how that was supposed to work...). Meanwhile, because the partnership units are less valuable, the company decided it should not raise capital by issuing more units, although it has a plan in place to do so.

The bottom line is, the forecast for 2010 is that the distribution is not likely to return and the share value is not likely to improve (except that it did improve beyond the Apollo offer, but the Board could not have predicted that). So for investors looking to cut their losses and cash out, the sale is the quickest way to do that. Whether that is truly in the investors' best interest is entirely a matter of why those investors chose to invest in FUN in the first place, because a turnaround in credit markets and in the broader economy could turn out to be better for unitholders in the long run than the short-sale. But for unitholders, the results of the sale are guaranteed...the results of not selling are not.

As for the best interests of the company, that's another matter entirely. But this whole ownership thing isn't about the company, it's about the unitholders.

--Dave Althoff, Jr., who thinks he's starting to understand this financial stuff...

Lord Gonchar said:
[The fact that the company needs to be sold to survive indicates something is broken financially. I think the debate here is what caused something to be financially broken. Is that really necessarily that people stopped going? I mean, did things drops so much that suddenly the company was less than healthy financially? Or was it something like taking on too much debt.

My point is that all of these things are inter-related. If they cut the band from the Red Garter show out of budget concerns, and budgets were cute because of the debt, there's a real chain reaction there. Would most guest know or care that the show wasn't as good without a band? I'm inclined to say no, but I give guests more credit than that, especially given the park's yearly place in the hearts and minds of generations of Clevelanders and Detroiters. That even gets me to thinking about the long-term slide to the atmosphere of the park. My mom would ask what happened to the Hobo and Beach Bands, for example. There's a pattern of anti-attraction and quality in the Kinzel regime.

That's not to say that there aren't wins. The Halloweekends phenomenon is a prime example, but I also strongly believe that it never would have happened were it not for the acquisition of Knott's.

I agree that Halloweekends would not have happened without Falfas having gone out to Knotts.

Enthusiasts bitching or not...I still say that is one of the most significant indicators of a problem. Back in the early days of Jeff's website you would rarely...if ever..see a negative word about the Point. And, if you did, the person making the comment would have been at the mercy of a group of angry defenders.

Now, outside of a new (and sure fire, hit new ride) there is a good chance the negative comments outnumber the positive...or it is at least closer to 50/50.

I guess I'm having trouble remembering the last time Kinzel/Cedar Point did something outside the box. I guess you could put the lights in Frontier Trail in that category...but what else? I think a lot of success is driven by innovation and I can't put my finger on a lot of innovation at the Point over the past decade. Maybe this cold weather is clouding my memory.

I would love to see what would happen at Cedar Point if the very capable people who are there were given some autonomy...or at the very least were operating under new leadership.

I guess I'm having trouble remembering the last time Kinzel/Cedar Point did something outside the box. I guess you could put the lights in Frontier Trail in that category...but what else?

Well, if we go back to the start of the decade, Millenium Force? Dragster? MAYBE Maverick with the LIM lift hill? But thats about it.

I think a lot of success is But by innovation and I can't put my finger on a lot of innovation at the Point over the past decade.

True. Kinzel and crew have been decidedly anti-inovation and when they've treid to innovate they're failed. (CP's Fastlane. Need I say more? Epic Fail. :( )

Maybe this cold weather is clouding my memory.

What you considar cold in South Florida is what we call t-shirt weather up here in New England. ;)

I think CPs fastlane failed as much for lack of innovation than anything. I mean, a handstamp to come back later? That had Kinzel's imprint all over it.

I would call Magnum innovative but I'm not sure I would put MF or Dragster in that category. Those rides were just variations on Magnum which shows how "in the box" Kinzel really is. That isn't to take away from those rides...but it does show his reluctance to change.

Maverick was supposed to be the answer to a "family" attraction after ripping out the water ride and, while I like the ride, it didn't hit on family. And, if it turns out the height limit on the new water ride is high then he will have missed there as well. And, unless there are some real surprises left to be revealed then I'm not sure that new ride can in any way be considered innovative.

But, it isn't just innovation in rides. Far from it.

Cedar Point does one thing very well. They build great thrill rides. In just about every other category of the business they are, at best, average.

wahoo skipper said:
...if it turns out the height limit on the new water ride is high then he will have missed there as well.

I still contend that not having the height limit figured out before deciding to build the damn thing is a complete and total failure, if the capital improvement plan was to add a "family ride". Sure, it may end up having a low height limit, but that they don't already know indicates that they don't really care.

Well, admittedly, I don't know much about physics or ride design. But, the only thing worse than not knowing now might be to think they know...release that information and get kids excited....then find out during initial testing that they were wrong and have to go back and raise the height limit.

The question I would ask is...do they really think that folks would not enjoy a ride if it didn't have big drops? Or, are they afraid they aren't going to be able to market something that doesn't have descriptors like, "biggest, tallest, fastest"?

What you mean like they did with Maverick?

I think they had to raise the limit from the announced one, I could be wrong though.