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Some of mine... 1. Maintain the attractive pay in 2022, even though they will likely be able to staff up more with Internationals. 2. Raise the Gold Pass Price to at least $130, if not $150 3. Focus on improving food and beverage. Look for an opportunity to consolidate into a large new eatery like Harmony Hall. 4. Spend CapEx on restroom renovation 5. Operate with a 2019 and prior calendar. The park is so popular, it needs the early and late season availability to spread out a lot of the destination and passholder guests.

We timed a few waits today once or for really busy. Racer full queue - 40 min Adventure Express full queue- 35 min Rides ops were doing a great job.

Looks like they brought back the ribbon boards, currently being used by Hifi Honey, but likely intended for Center Stage Live and Grand Carnivale.

Great time to bring back the Ivy Tunnel!!! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The public much more interested in the rides and history of the park, shame management killed it.

The early line closings is quite baffling. They are already opening an hour later. I can "sort of" forgive that, but to not let you get in line until park close is upsetting to guests who are there spending their money. I understand we are coming off a pandemic, but it is obvious in 3 weekends if they are open they will come. I have been all 3 Saturdays so far and people are spending money in the park. I am hoping they are looking at extending hours once they can get a workforce.

I like your answers a lot, but this one especially. I'm really worried they're going to keep the shrunken calendar. I mean especially since they're business is so much about passes and things like the meal plan, it seems they might actually have more of an incentive to operate less.

It was awesome today. they limited the flp and reservations. In the future they need to get back to basics like what made if fun in the 90's and 2000's. It was a way better experience before they bought the paramount parks.

Don't give away the gate!

Demand is SO HIGH. If these CF parks could staff and have a better operating calendar I think they'd see record attendance.

I do not believe that is the case. I believe it is more as Bodda mentioned - more of a deterrent to maybe keep some folks from showing up later as not many are having a Best Day experience right now.

We were able to enter the park 15 minutes ago.

As far as pass cost, of gold went to $150 and Platinum $275 with 20-25% increases in all season food/drink I'd be fine with it assuming 2022 sees a return to the 2019 and prior operating calendar.

I think they stand to lose a lot more when people stop showing up because they have to wait over an hour for a $14 slice of pizza.

There are plenty of bodies for seasonal work in Cincinnati. Not so many in Sandusky. I’m psyched for the old people that will undoubtably come to this thread and complain that it’s “too much” for a teenager. I hope this improves the quality of the product. I’m excited for the associates to make better wages!

The bigger question will be do they raise admission and season pass rates next year to pay for the increased hourly rate...because there is no putting this genie back in the bottle. Higher pay is here to stay or they get nobody to work next year... Or do they follow the slash the prices even more and give away the gate like never seen before and try to make it up on volume? One would hope they learned that lesson from CP at the end of 2019, last year and the start of this year... Or do they truncate the season to keep it within the same budget? Or something else we don't see coming? It will be interesting to see come August. But they have to recoup this increased hourly rate somewhere AND put away enough nickels to pay that note off so they don't lose their parks...

Standing at the front gate now. It appears that they are letting people in, so this may be more of a deterrent.

All lines were closed by 9:20 (not sure of the exact time)... even if they allowed you to re-enter, you probably wouldn’t have been able to get in line for anything. After there were fights etc., I’m sure they just wanted to get everyone out of the park, so I’m not surprised they stopped allowing re-entry.

Tonight might have been an exception for the reentry due to the security issues the park was dealing with.

I generally agree... I think tonight they had more guests in the park than they could handle with their level of staffing. Which is an issue in itself. I don’t know what they do about that in the short term, besides keep raising the amount that they are willing to pay workers.

I don't know if this will be an every night sort of a thing. It could also just be due to the already insane crowds, as even if they shut the lines at 9:20, they'll still be operating well past 10. If the park hit capacity, I'm sure the staff is already exhausted as well. I will say, great job to the ride ops. Almost every ride was running about as smooth as one can this early in the season on this hectic of a day.

Manual speiling(sp), enthusiastic employees,, late hours, fast ops, the whole atmosphere was more of a party style where everyone was having fun and no Fast Lane. It's bs that when you purchase a premium product like fastlane you have these ridiculous merge points where you still have a 20-40 minute wait like millenium, Magnum, wicked twister, rougarou, and steel vengeance.

Ok, this makes sense! Also, good to know!

Agreed, but they will only put up with so many bad experiences before looking elsewhere to have a best day ever.

Good point, people wanted to go somewhere.

I think this might be normal capacity, it was more packed than I can remember seeing it in recent memory. Nothing (including food stands) had a wait shorter than 15 minutes. Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

Wow! I did not realize that the park still had (COVID) capacity limits.

Price increases that were current experiencing in large part seem to be due to strains on the supply chain throughout the world in addition with increased demand. Other countries, Such as Canada are also experiencing increased inflation. Once the supply chain meets demand consumer hopefully will go down or stabilize. Increased wages are not a bad thing for the economy, when people have more money they spend money which increases companies revenue.

I keep trying to take the nihilistic approach of, everyone has access to the vaccine, it’s really on them at this point. Or as my husband more succinctly says “f ‘em, our people are good” but it’s hard. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

For those of you who are at the park today, how are wait times? But more importantly, is the park staffed well? Are most food locations open?

Having more full time positions should hopefully help with a little more consistency in food and beverage. The park (and chain) does need to find more ways to make things more efficient. Every one of the big parks should have a Harmony Hall type location. Festhaus could pretty easily be redesigned with those efficiencies in mind.

True. I've heard that they are pulling alot of internationals from other parks to CP to make sure they are as fully staffed as possible. Seems like management got the message from last weekend and seems to have adjusted. I will say our experience so far this weekend is on par with what we expect. The Hotel Breakers staff is fantastic as always and every employee has been a pleasure to interact with. The one disappointment is Famous Dave's isn't open till next weekend, So maybe Tomo's two nights in a row

One thing that will be very interesting to watch is what happens to wages when CP is allowed to bring the international workers back.

Unless today turns out a complete disaster, folks at CP on Friday reported a much better experience due to them dialing back the number of reservations. Now granted it was a Friday in May and the number of reservations for Saturday may be a lot higher, but if they capped it to the same number as Friday, the experience will be better. But depending on where you live, I totally understand the not wanting to drive all that way for a potential miserable experience.

It is possible to fill a train if they take on the operations of Mystic. Orion does a fairly good job as well. Row requests are not guaranteed and on busy days they should do a little more enforcement of that so that 27% of the train doesn't go out empty.

Here is the YouTube video! I was searching for it too, when I found your post! https://youtu.be/N-ZEVUVqPM0

You just praised one of its design aspects and then say it was not well designed. Back in the late 80's to very early 90's, Vortex got praises of how smooth and modern it was. The ride lasted over 30 years. It is very hard to compare transitions that were made by hand vs computer designed and pre-manufactured like we have today.

Right, but relying on the honor system is an absolute joke. The point I’m trying to make is in an ideal world the parks would have a system in place where the park can verify wether or not someone has the vaccine.

A good time to post this which was made by our own @Thrill_Biscuit.

So Gene Staples is looking into buying Fantasy Island. This would make Gene Staples a theme park chain owner. It was said that he has plans to further his growth into the amusement park industry and it definitely looks like he’s doing that. Here is the vid for more info:

Guys...I know KI has a reputation of adding a coaster every 3 years, but what if this is the coaster to replace Vortex?

No thanks, we already are dealing with a plague and it has not been pleasant at all.

Extra Banshee scream theming for the 2021 season?

Zoombezi Bay has an adults only lazy river and drinks are allowed on the tubes. If you want to increase per caps that is a sure fire way.

I am vaccinated, which means I, mathematically speaking, am at zero risk to contract or spread the virus. If you or anyone else is not vaccinated, why should I care if we are near each other in line for an hour? You are taking the one taking the risk. That is why I don’t care about vaccine passports and honor systems.