What's going wrong at Cedar Point?

The Mole said:
People notice the wide open areas because their eye is pulled down the midways, not broken up into more digestible chunks.

I never thought about it until you worded it like that, but that's exactly one of the things that I love so much about CP - it feels so big and expansive. Those big midways with lights and sound and rides as far as the eye can see beckoning you further in. It's over the top like a big park should be. That feel is the amusement park experience to me.

Much more exciting than some rides plopped in the woods any day.

And I can't believe the word 'charm' is being used with a straight face in this discussion.

I still have my Obamaland season pass, but I only used it once - he ruined Charmland if you ask me.

Added -

Yes, Dorney has grown in quite nicely.

I think it's like the SF thing - it was true at one time and people just keep repeating the same things over and over.

Jeff said:

The main midway at the water fountains was entirely replaced, and is mostly pavers now. The area in front of the Coliseum building is all pavers.

The area between the Front Gate and the ticket booths is nothing but pavers now too. It might be outside the park but it's still pavers:)

What's wrong with Cedar Point?

They've got their business model all wrong, and it is starting to bite them in the ass.

Their mission is to make great metric assloads of money. They do this by showing their customers a great time and convincing their customers to willingly hand over great bucketloads of money. Cedar Point has traditionally done this by showing their customers a great time, by getting them on rides quickly, by delivering great rides, and by offering a great value in entertainment, food, drink and accommodations.

The problem is that the park no longer offers the same kind of value proposition to the customer. Some of the rides are not as reliable. Some of the operations are not as efficient. The food is not as good. The accommodations are inadequate. And the overall value is not what it once was. By slashing costs and increasing prices the operation has remained profitable, but all that is having an undesirable effect on the customers: the customers are voting with their feet, staying elsewhere, spending less time in the park, spending less money in the park.

For any business, there is a magical point at which the demand curve and the supply curve intersect. Cedar Fair has been pushing the price higher in an effort to increase profits, and it hasn't worked because what they are really doing is depressing demand. The sooner they realize that, the easier it will be for them to dig themselves out of the hole they have created. The problem is that these are sytemic problems that cannot be dealt with on a quarterly basis. The system works more slowly than that, in that decisions made for the 2008 season almost certainly had an effect on the results of the 2009 season, and will carry over into the 2010 season. Even worse, if they somehow manage to fix all the problems they have created for themselves for 2010, it could be several years before the situation fixes itself. An exciting new ride that everybody absolutely has to ride will hurry that process along. But the first thing they have to do is to fix the value problem.

I'm with Gonch in that I think their gate price and pass price are probably lower than they could be. But at the same time, they have to do something about the value equation elsewhere in the operation. If they are going to offer $60 hotel rooms, they need to rent them for $60. Or if they want to rent their rooms for $200, then those rooms need to be up to the standards that people expect for a $200 hotel room. The same goes for food: an $8 hamburger isn't unreasonable if it's a decent hamburger. But you can't sell a $1 burger for $8 and get away with it forever (and at that price point it is outrageous to charge extra for basic toppings!). The problem is not price, although most people will identify it as such. The real problem is value, and as long as the park does not offer a good value, people will stay away in droves. After all, for most people, the decision to visit an amusement park is entirely discretionary.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

For the first time in a long time, we don't plan on buying CP passes. Partly, that's because we've been going for many years now, so it's not new and exciting. Partly, that's because our kids are getting to an age where summers are busy with baseball, swim team, etc. etc. And partly, it's because we usually have 2-3 trips planned in any given summer.

But, last year, we used our CF Platinum passes exactly three times. That plus the fact that you can't convince me that $580 for a summer's worth of fun is worth it for my family ought to be troublesome to the Powers That Be.

I don't know that I can put my finger on any one reason why we didn't go much last summer, and we don't care to go next summer. But, we didn't, and we don't.

I think those are the real issues for sure, in terms of food and sliding operations. Operationally, I think they've started to turn around in terms of the people angle. Losing Geauga Lake at least meant that Cedar Point got Bill Spehn back to run the place, and it's better for it. It's not 100% there, but I think it takes a few years to groom blue tags and supervisors with the right culture and attitude. I'm confident it will get there.

The other side of that coin is the physical reliability of rides, and some of them, most notably Dragster, have really hurt that aspect. I remember a few years ago hearing Monty Jasper (was running CP maintenance at the time) speak to an enthusiast group about how high his uptime rate was. It was something like 96% overall, and that included weather and protein spills. You know that rate was brought down dramatically by Dragster, and to a lesser degree by Skyhawk and Wicked Twister. I certainly blame them for making poor decisions on new rides, but in the long haul give them credit for figuring out how to make them work. They pretty much got to be live R&D for S&S, and I suspect Intamin was useless in getting Dragster more reliable (as implied by the fact that Six Flags can't keep their New Jersey ride up).

The food situation just got worse and worse every year, and that's a result of the same guy running it for years, for no other reason than the length of his tenure with the company. He has been replaced, and I've talked to the new guy enough to believe he'll truly have impact over time. He's gotta battle the Dick culture just as much as anyone else.

The other side of the food thing is of course the pricing, and that's been out of control for a very long time. We've seen that in action in the annual reports for years: Per capita spending slightly up, attendance slightly down. That curve you mention, Dave, is exactly the one they've blown. Combined with the way the food has sucked for so many years, along with the service, and you have people like me who stopped spending. So while you have someone new running it, they've gotta contend with dad's pricing. Everyone in the chain has had to deal with that.

I'm optimistic that the operational issues will get better, and the maintenance folks seem to have made some headway with the problem rides. Hopefully they're not adversely affected by the shorter off-season. The food stuff could go either way, because the food people don't seem to be in control of their own destiny in terms of pricing. If Dick sees something on the midway he doesn't like, a combo or a price that actually shows value, it has no chance. God forbid they make up for lower margins on quantity, and leave people feeling less raped.

The resort pricing was a real wake-up call this year too. When we decided to meet up with Tyler for a last minute closing weekend stay, I was shocked not only that there were rooms available, but that they resorted to not requiring a two-night stay. That's a far cry from a few years ago, where you had to book months in advance and stay Friday and Saturday nights. The story I heard was that you simply weren't allowed to price rooms lower than the year before, ever, because Dick said so. The result is empty beds. Compare that to Disney, which has consistently priced its rooms down to what the market would support, and maintain high occupancy rates throughout the recession.

What annoys me to no end when this subject comes up is that it isn't because there aren't good people working for Cedar Fair. They're just being micro-managed to death by someone who is no longer qualified to run the company.

What annoys me to no end when this subject comes up is that it isn't because there aren't good people working for Cedar Fair. They're just being micro-managed to death by someone who is no longer qualified to run the company.

Excellent point. If the management was less of a "I'm the boss so I'm always right," regime, but more of a "Okay, I may be in charge, but I'm willing to accept imput," attitude, it COULD help.

It sucks that those on the front lines of CS have had their voices go unheard for many years.

Jeff said:
God forbid they make up for lower margins on quantity, and leave people feeling less raped.

I still don't agree with that mentality. I think it makes more long-term sense to maintain price integrity and have the quality of the product upped to lessen the hurt.

The only reason Dave's curve is blown is because the quality of the product doesn't match the price. The price is fine, the product is not.

That is to say you can easily sell $8 hamburgers if they're even remotely worth it.

And even still I can't help but feel like the pricing is in line with all the other overpriced event-style food at other venues.

The result is empty beds. Compare that to Disney, which has consistently priced its rooms down to what the market would support, and maintain high occupancy rates throughout the recession.

Not justifying the "no lower rates" thing because that flies directly in the face of any hotel management logic, but occupancy alone does not revenue make...or something like that. The golden metric is RevPAR (revenue per available room).

The point is, it doesn't matter much if the hotel is full if you give away the rooms. Where it works for Disney (and could for CP too to a degree, I suppose) is that the hotel isn't the only business. You use these cheap rooms almost as loss leaders to get people spending money in other areas. If a $59 room gets people to buy a $250 ticket and a subsequent week's worth of on-property spending, then Disney ends up ahead by giving that room away.

Convince a family of 4 to come for 5 days with that low rate and you get over $1100 when they choose the 5-day parkhopper ticket - there is no 'cheap' disney vacations, just different ways to sell the same thing as a value to the customer.

CP could probably use that mentality to their advantage as well, but I'm not sure they have as much leeway. People don't tend to stay at CP for a week at a time and the inflated ticket price doesn't exist. Even if you could get someone to stay for 3 days a season pass is just $102.

I'm not sure comparing CP and Disney on that front is a fair comparison.

With that said, you have to adjust to the market and the idea of "no rates lower than last year" is laughable.

Seems to go back to quality again. The CP resorts bank on location selling the rooms. They need to convince people that the location is worth it becuase the rooms themselves certainly aren't.

Then again (again!), I'm not sure the 'resort hotel' mentality works for the crowd who frequents a $45 per day amusement park. How do you sell a $300 per night room for a $45 per day experience?

Just thinking aloud...

Lord Gonchar said:
I still don't agree with that mentality. I think it makes more long-term sense to maintain price integrity and have the quality of the product upped to lessen the hurt.

The only reason Dave's curve is blown is because the quality of the product doesn't match the price. The price is fine, the product is not.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that, but there's a line between "price integrity" and "we're gonna stick it to you because where else are you gonna eat." That line was long ago crossed, crappy quality or not.

In a stand-alone hotel, sure about the RevPAR, but these hotels aren't stand-alone. These rooms are intertwined with an amusement park, so you're paying on the mortgage so to speak, and getting more buts through the gates. The metric has additional dimensions.

Its time to again trot out the Busch Gardens example. Their food is as much or even more then Cedar Point but the quality is infinitely better. My spending in park has certainly decreased every year I was in Ohio just because I had a hard time justifying paying that much for that food. I now bring my own lunch and have even started bringing a snack so I have to buy absolutely nothing on site. When I regularly visited Busch Gardens Williamsburg, I still brought my own lunch but I would buy a full dinner (at the Smokehouse or Oktoberfest) and a snack on my way out, which usually ended up totaling over $30. Now CF gets at most $20 out of me (and usually its less then $5,) and I have no preference up the quality or decrease the price either action would get me to spend more money.

Not always 100% practical for some people, but go on days that you know aren't going to be crowded. You will find that you will have very little if any to complain about.

All that talk about food prices and quality reminds me of an experience I had at another park. I visited a small amusement park in France and when you looked at food, they basically had it PERFECT. They're 2 hours away from Paris, get most, if not all of their visitors from the immediate area and the gate and food were priced perfect. No burgers were offered since no tourists from the UK or North America would visit that place. All the food was what locals would eat. Pizza was "french style", with ham, bacon and goat cheese. Sauteed veggies and meat at the "Canadian" restaurant and the restaurant I had dinner at. I paid 25$ US for my meal. What did I get for my 30$? A large steak, amazing fries, a seafood appetizer and a berry cup for dessert.

What I'm getting at is that yes, I dropped 30$ for my meal. Did I feel ripped off? No! It was amazing and a great experience. Plus, the park did something I haven't seen elsewhere. In a show of good faith, since their new for 2007 Wild Mouse coaster wasn't open yet, they offered a "5$ off anything purchased in the park" coupon. Would it be hard for a park to print such a coupon if say in the case of CP, a few major rides were down all day?

Yeah, tservo, because the price and quality of the food at Cedar Point somehow magically gets better when the park is less busy? The employees also get treated better during non-peak times also? And what about the hotel quality and price?

What are you smoking? ( :) )Of course enthusiasts will have a better time at any park when it is less busy, but that doesn't explain "what's wrong with Cedar point", nor how to solve such problems.

Let's hug it out :)

Nothing is wrong with anything. It's just that we all have different likes, etc., and have more fun at different places at different times.

Hell, I will never get over the Blue Streak issue. It's my thing. O well :) There are still other places I can ride coasters that are 'classic', etc. Cedar Point has it's strong points too.

Lord Gonchar said:
And even still I can't help but feel like the pricing is in line with all the other overpriced event-style food at other venues.

From what I've read and heard, a number of those other venues are seeing drops in revenue too. I don't know if it's just a temporary downturn because of the economy, or if the economy is causing people to seriously think from now on out about how/where they're spending their money.

Maybe places like Red Robin or the pub type restaurants can charge 8 bucks or more for a hamburger. But a lot of people are questioning why they should pay the same price for a frozen patty slapped on a doughy bun with a slice of room temperature processed cheese food product placed on top. In parks, sports arenas, or wherever.

I'm not sure the days of everybody's charging the same, or we're charging it because we can are still with us.

I'll throw a wrench into the bashfest and suggest that maybe it's not the park that's changed.

As we get older, our expectations change and we see things through different eyes. A teen may pass an overflowing trash can or a paper-littered bathroom and not even realize it the way that same teen will a decade later.

To be fair, I'm not a Cedar Point regular. I've gone once every other year for a dozen years. When I go, I go all in -- stay in the peninsula, milk all I can out of 2-3 non-stop days -- but I will never have the seasoned perspective of a passholder.

However, just as someone outgrows fast food -- and then the casual dining chains -- maybe some of you have just outgrown the park's food quality. I don't know who provides their foodservice, but does anyone in the know have even anecdotal proof that they're ordering lower quality grub? Price can also be a factor. My one and only trip to Knoebel's had me looking forward to the amazing food. It was good, but certainly not mindblowing. However, I think it was the dirt cheap prices on pierogies, tri-taters, snowcones, and pizza slices that added to the perceived quality of the food since I didn't feel I was being gouged multiplex-style.

I've never heard Cedar Fair discuss exit surveys the way that Shapiro has at Six Flags, but is there any kind of tangible proof that the park experience is deteriorating for guests? Simply going by attendance and per capita spending isn't enough given the economic bumps along the way.

Paris said:
I've never heard Cedar Fair discuss exit surveys the way that Shapiro has at Six Flags, but is there any kind of tangible proof that the park experience is deteriorating for guests?

That the former foods guy is no longer there, in a status quo and tenure culture, speaks volumes to me.

RatherGoodBear said:
From what I've read and heard, a number of those other venues are seeing drops in revenue too.

Same here. But...

LuvRaptor said:
Im telling you it was quite hard to believe we are in a recession looking at the crowds there.

I went to Sea World today and it too was packed!! So people are still heading to places apparently.

That's my experience too. Not just going places, but still spending there. I've found myself thinking, "What recession?" more times than I can count the past year.

But still, you keep reading things like RGB alluded to where supposedly things are slower. I dunno.

RatherGoodBear said:
Maybe places like Red Robin or the pub type restaurants can charge 8 bucks or more for a hamburger.

Dude, in my neck of the woods $8 is a BK value meal. Red Robin is $10 give or take...plus drink price.

But that sorta ties right in to the value discussion. Who the hell is going to BK when RR offers so much more quality for just a few bucks more? I dunno, but BK always has a line in the drive-thru. Then again the wait at our RR during dinner time is usually an hour.

The last "whoa" moment I had was at the movie theatre when four medium drinks and a large popcorn came to $27 (Regal, for the record) - and in that context the $40 we pay for burgers and drinks at somewhere like KI doesn't seem too far our of line.

I guess it's all which curve you grade it on. In and of itself, the park food feels like a gyp. Compared to other venues, fast food and such, it's doesn't seem too far out of line.

Rick had lots of good points in his post, but this applies to where I'm talking right now:

Paris said:
Simply going by attendance and per capita spending isn't enough given the economic bumps along the way.

Exactly.

I personally think people are spending less at the parks because they're supposedly spending less overall, not because the $8 burger has caught up with the parks.

I know we try to draw conclusions based on our anecdotal observations, but CP has a lot tougher of a job demonstrating value. That more than half of their market used to be Detroit, and it's now less than half, says something about just how awful Detroit is. I mean, it always sucked, but now it really sucks. You've gotta be sensitive to that. Few places in the country have been effected by the recession the way Detroit has.

I've always though by now there would have been at least 1 park that's outsourced it's food business out to franchises and third party owners for these reasons...
There are a few chain locations now, but none with value or a real good following.
I'm curious does Universal also operate the City Walk? I know that the AMC theater there has prices like MJR in Detroit! I think this non-privatized approach adds to the value of the overall experience.

Do they still feature the Johnsonville grill during the summer? That's another company, and the food is pretty good. There are also some name brand sandwiches sold under Dragster's viewing area, which are really good, but I can't remember the brand name.

..And then there's all of the other food chains within the park. Also Midway market isn't bad, especially when you consider the value of an all you can eat buffet.

So the problem is in the price and value for those places, and not quality, imo. Cedar Point's "junk food" is what I am mostly complaining about, such as pizza, hot dogs, burgers, pretzels (which are especially gross), and crap like that.

And the service issue...