DispatchMaster

On the season pass page, right below the listed benefits, reads "Season Pass benefits subject to change without notice." You don't even need to navigate to the legal page, nor read any fine print. It's right there, in bold text, no less. Buyers are made aware of this caveat before purchase, so calling it a "bait-and-switch" is nonsensical. "Bait-and-switch" is when a seller advertises one thing with the intention of delivering something else. Even the definition you posted includes the term "intention". There's zero evidence CF intentionally misled buyers in the way being suggested.

The way I look at it is, the only thing "promised" when purchasing a season pass is access to the park(s), period. So, that's all anyone who purchases a pass truly "deserves" or is guaranteed. Everything else is subject to change. The purchaser is either willing to accept those terms or not. The same is true for daily admission. A daily visitor might visit on a day when 3, 4, or 10 rides, attractions, or whatever else, are not operating for various reasons, from mechanical issues to staffing, which to me is no different than the park modifying the perks of a season pass, and both are covered in the terms of sale. The purchaser still got what was "promised" to them - access to the park. As such, I view the complaints about the so-called "bait-and-switch" the same way I'd view a daily visitor complaining about Ride X being down on the day they happened to show up. If the guest were basing the enjoyment of their entire visit on that one ride, then that's on them, not the park. If one ride, or even a handful of rides, being open were going to make or break a someone's visit, they should either make the purchase understanding the risk, or not make the purchase if they felt otherwise. Personally, we stopped purchasing Platinum Passes once the Gold Pass arrived and, with it, Platinum guests were to share morning Early Entry with the hordes of Gold Pass guests. We place a lot of value on Early Entry, so for us it was a simple equation, and the passes were no longer worth it for us. So, we shared our comments with the park, and opted to spend our money elsewhere. I'm not trolling, and my viewpoints can be changed by compelling arguments. But proclaiming that a willing purchaser "deserves" or is "promised" anything when they are explicitly NOT guaranteed those things per the terms of sale is not remotely close to a compelling argument.

On the contrary, it's hard to take seriously the complaints of anyone who would continue purchasing something they endlessly complain about. And I quite literally could not care less about how you or anyone else "weights" my opinion. Yeah, yeah, I get it, "we complain because we care about the park". The fact of the matter is there is no business case for investing heavily into a product that is wildly popular as-is, just as there's no business case for catering to finicky complaints from customers who will purchase what you're selling regardless. If people keep buying Prestige, why wouldn't the park continue to remove perks? Not only is doing so part of the terms of sale that both parties voluntarily agreed to, those same Prestige customers returning signals that the customer is fine with the practice. How is this different from any haunted attraction outside of amusement parks? At least around where I live, none of the very popular haunted houses provide floor plans or quantify how many scares there are or whatever. People buy tickets and partake in the experience. If they enjoy themselves, they tell their friends, come back next year, etc. If they don't like it they don't do those things. And no one is "promised" anything, and no one "deserves" anything beyond what's spelled out when agreeing to a transaction. Those words shouldn't even come up in a conversation about purchasing anything, least of all admission to an amusement park with dozens, if not hundreds of attractions.

Yes, definitely the reader's fault for not getting the convoluted point you're trying to make. I mentioned "blogs" in my response because you mentioned "blog" 18 times over two posts. Yes, definitely my mistake. Also, how can it be true that marketing is irrelevant and that the marketing for TT2 was "a dud"? Something being "a dud" means it was a failure, so how can the marketing for TT2 be a failure if "people will go to CP next year" regardless?

And that is terrifying. Cedar Fair outgrew Kinzel's abilities years before he finally retired.

Yes, and as a result no one has shown up to the park this fall! What an embarrassing blunder by the PR team! Wait, what's this? Hold on, I'm being handed a report that CP has had people parking on the grass on the Causeway more than once this fall. Man, I guess the PR folks got lucky that their failure to "blog" about HW didn't come back to bite them, but if this keeps up... Seriously though, what year is it that anyone would use blogging frequency as a measure of PR activity? Should CF parks be posting on MySpace too? Firing up ICQ? Spreading the word in AOL chat rooms? Sending telegrams? Hiring town criers? Obviously not. The PR teams should be going where the people are, and that's Twitter, FB, Instagram, etc. A quick glance at CP's Twitter shows they have posted there more than once a day on average over the last week. Same for KI. At FB the story is the same, more than once a day for each park. Over on "the Insta" each park is posting around once a day. By what measure or metrics was the TT2 announcement "a dud"? And what impact will that have on TT2's popularity?

Given the long lines to get into KI for Haunt, it appears they are so far. No reason at this point to think that will change. I just can't wrap my mind around this mentality. These are businesses engaging in commerce with customers, no one "deserves" anything more than the agreed-to transaction. Neither party is being forced to engage here. Up at CP, they regularly have to stop letting people in the park on any Saturday without rain, and the park hasn't really added anything to HW in a while, so it stands to reason that the value proposition is skewed to the point that one of two things should happen: Substantially increase the price of admission Substantially reduce what is offered People will complain in either case. I personally think they're making the wrong choice. Daily admission for the Halloween season should be MUCH more than it is during the summer, and only the most premium of season passes should provide access this time of year.

Well, which is it? Is the CEO some marginalized figurehead who "doesn't carry a ton of weight" or a micromanager who tells parks what to cut from their projects? And there very much was a culture difference under Ouimet, which is what I was referring to. Ouimet stressed empowering folks at the park level. That obviously didn't mean there weren't budgets to adhere to, but he allowed parks room to operate. I don't recall a single project during Ouimet's tenure that had the sort of cheap feel of what they're doing at KI for 2024, or 2023 to a lesser degree, though perhaps there are some examples off my radar. His sudden departure also suggests his message may have started falling on increasingly-deafening ears.

Going with 8-wide means a train capacity increasing by more than 14%, which is not trivial. Let's say that, over the course of a season, 1 million guests ride Dive Coaster 1, which has the 7-wide trains. Dive Coaster 2, with its 8-wide trains, can accommodate an extra ~140,000 guests per season, which, over the course of 30 years, turns into ~4.2 million extra guests. As for any savings on the narrower track, you're talking about a one time cost, which is far less of a concern compared to operating cost, and I'd be surprised if the operating costs between a 7- and 8-wide train didn't round to zero, so you're basically getting a substantial reduction in cost/rider (the primary metric of attraction value) for free. And regardless, I don't think any park going with the 7-wide trains would be able to justify rolling any savings on track into additional elements. First of all, dive coasters are already popular enough despite their comparatively short length, and second, it's my understanding that dive coasters' trains lose a lot of energy to wind resistance, such that it may not even be possible to add many elements. And while it's true that a 7-wide train would have less wind resistance than an 8-wide, it's also true that a 7-wide would have less momentum as a result of less mass compared to an 8-wide. Just look at Valravn at Cedar Point, which is more than ~30% taller than GateKeeper, yet is ~18% shorter in track length, and they both come into the brake run at around the same speed.

I admittedly don't know the context, but I don't really put much weight in any "unique attractions" comments. Cedar Fair's MO has been that if an attraction fills a hole in a park's lineup they'll add it regardless of similarities to another park. The only concern I have with B&M dive coasters is capacity, so while I'd personally prefer to see a wing coaster (GK at CP has monstrous capacity), it just seems like a dive coaster is a better fit for that spot. Capacity is also the reason why I think it'd be a mistake to go with anything other than the 10 seat wide model at a park the size of KI.

If that's the board's position, CF is headed in the wrong direction long term.

A B&M dive coaster seems like a natural fit for The Vortex site, given the elevation change.

I mean, it's a strategy. Why invest heavily into something so absurdly popular? Makes more sense to put money into maintaining what they have. I'd prefer they drastically jack up prices to throttle crowd levels, given that I'm very much of the opinion that their gate integrity sucks chain wide.

Excellent point. There's been a disappointing trend at CF in recent years of a tendency to, in my opinion, err too far on the side of cost savings. I get that they'll save some money by repurposing the theater, and the shade it'll provide will no doubt be appreciated, but installing a coaster is a very rare event and should justify the investment of razing the entire area and starting from scratch. That would have allowed maintaining the seclusion of the flume and, as you say, provided a clean slate for the playground. I can't help but wonder if this would have played out differently under Ouimet. He seemed to defer to those below him to make these choices, and he understood the value of "place making". It feels like Zimmerman has given a top-down directive to pinch pennies.

This is probably an unpopular view, but it's a shame they couldn't have found a way to incorporate this ride without tearing out all those trees along the north side of the flume there. Those trees allowed for some suspension of the reality of being in an amusement park while riding, making it seem like a voyage through the woods. It's especially ironic given the transformation of the area into Camp Snoopy.

Regarding the meal plans, it's not only the existence of them, it's also how frictionless they've made it to add them on to daily visits, often sacrificing some gate pricing integrity via packages. Consider, if a mere 1 in 5 guests opts for a daily dining plan at $34 when they buy their ticket online, that's a cool ~$185 million in annual revenue generated before a guest has even walked in the gate. Yes, some of that will overlap with in park per cap that would have already existed, but not all of it. Couple that with CF's efforts to not only improve the quality of food, but especially their efforts to streamline food operations with modern, efficient facilities (e.g. Harmony Hall, Farmhouse, etc.), and it's clear why they have seen such gains in revenue. Plus, long lines during peak attendance days would have the effect of preventing a nonzero number of guests from getting in line. Folks with an already-paid-for dining plan will be more likely to queue up regardless of how long the line is.

It's not that subjective. The park draws basically all of its guests from the region in which it exists, unlike, say, Disney, which regularly draws folks from thousands of miles away. That there are hotels and a beach doesn't change that. The property is resort-heavy because that's what CP started out as - a resort. First a beach in 1870, followed over the years by bathhouses and picnicking areas, then the original Grand Pavilion in the late 19th century, followed by dance and concert halls, baseball diamonds, etc. The first rides on the property didn't open until 25+ years after it was an established regional resort. The park didn't truly pivot to an amusement park until it was purchased by Boeckling nearly 30 years after the beach was the main destination for the region. That the park leans on record-breaking rides doesn't mean they aren't a regional park. CP's tendency to break records with their coasters is a result of that being their "brand", which was established decades ago under Roose/Munger in the 70's and reinforced in the 90's and early 00's during the ridiculousness of "the coaster wars". So the park continues to lean into that branding because it's an established identity. None of those hotels, resorts, or record-breaking rides ever changed the fact that nearly all of their guests are from the region. All of this and much more is covered in Always Cedar Point and other books about the park.

And there is only so much CF can do to goose attendance numbers. But they can go after a different market segment that will spend more while in attendance, hence my point about it making sense to shift away from a teen-centric Haunt to a family-friendly event. I suppose this depends on what you mean by "out of town", but nearly all of CP's guests are from the Cleveland, Toledo, and Metro Detroit areas. In other words, the region in which CP exists. CP is the very definition of a "regional" amusement park. That a trivial number of guests come from outside the region doesn't change that fact. Seriously - go read John H's book, Always Cedar Point. There's a wealth of deep insider knowledge there from his decades at the park.

Cedar Point hasn't seen meaningful, sustained attendance gains (as a percentage of regional population) in almost 30 years, since the debut of Raptor. Even the addition of HW seems to have primarily shifted some visits from the summer to fall. I would imagine the same is true of KI, though perhaps on a more recent timeline given it's a somewhat less-mature park in terms of attraction lineup. These parks make capex additions to maintain attendance. Regional parks are not going to suddenly attract a meaningful number of guests from 10+ hours outside their region regardless of what they offer. They're not Disney. This is why CF has been looking to enhancements (dining deals, Fast Lane, etc.) to grow per-cap numbers, and acquisition and expansion (TX water parks, E Sports, etc.) to grow revenue and add revenue diversity.

B&M provides very high quality, albeit expensive, high capacity machines that are broadly popular. More parks would do well to spend the extra money to go with B&M.

Attendance can also only go up so much YOY because these are regional parks with a relatively fixed population. So yes, they should absolutely focus on maintaining attendance, but given attendance can only go up so much, they need to extract more revenue from those guests. Which, again, is why it's a smart move to lean toward the family demographic rather than the teenager demo during Haunt.

Correct, and I'm pointing out two things - one, that they're running their business shortsightedly if they're focusing on attendance over revenue (see SIX), and two, that attendance absent revenue growth will tank the stock faster than the inverse.

Which part? Do you not understand how revenue and profit works, and that they are not necessarily tied to attendance? Case in point - MA enjoy some of the highest operating margins among the CF chain, yet have relatively dismal attendance compared to the likes of CP and KI.

They should be motivated to drive revenue and profit, attendance be darned. Attendance is meaningless, after all, if the parks aren't profitable. If the parks could maintain current revenue with lower attendance, that would necessarily result in higher profit margin due to reduced variable costs, like food. Further, even simply maintaining revenue with lower attendance reduces the need for staffing, further increasing profit margins. Put another way, it would be preferable to sell one item for a million dollar profit than one million items for a profit of one dollar each. That's obviously an extreme, impossible scenario, but the point is it's always preferable to get more money from fewer people than the other way around. However, it's also true that CF has recently (post-Ouimet) pivoted to the short term, SIX-esque "strategy" of lowering admission with the goal of short term attendance gains to drive revenue. The better long term strategy would be to drive up the gate price to the point that they price out a segment of their guests in order to attract higher per-cap guests. The Disney-lite strategy. Regardless, my point was that it makes a lot of sense to pivot away from teen-focused haunts in favor of family-friendly events in any environment, but especially so given the chaperone policy.

One possible explanation would be that the park is trying to attract families, who by-and-large tend to be much higher per-cap guests compared to a bunch of teenagers. That's a natural pivot especially given the chaperone policy. More revenue from the same number, or better yet, fewer guests is a wise strategy. It sucks for anyone who just wants haunts, but there is no shortage of haunted entertainment outside of the park.