DispatchMaster

Thanks for your input... Why did you post in this thread? You seem to have an issue with anyone disagreeing with those whose opinions they do not agree with.

And if the wheel assemblies are having issues keeping the trains centered on the track, that could result in the trains making contact with the stators.

I don't think it's so much that the stators are costly to replace as it is that the last time a train was making contact with a part of the track structure, it did not end well, to say the least.

Agreed that Q1/Q2 can be difficult, but per caps going down seems to have been a relatively constant trend in both quarterly and annual reports, at least based on my admittedly-sporadic reading of them. And yes, it does seem that there's somewhat of a lull in post-pandemic travel, and that does indeed provide an opportunity to regional parks. But it arguably would have provided an even bigger boost had CF continued on the more premium product trend under Ouimet. Imagine the per caps they could have extracted in Mason/Sandusky/Charlotte/etc. from guests who had become accustomed to Orlando vacations!

The most glaring issue is that revenue is up while per caps are down. This may indicate that the parks are attracting low-spend guests/pass holders at the expense of driving away a more lucrative customer. But by the time that problem becomes impossible to ignore, those C suite folks will deploy their golden parachutes and move on to their next failure.

Maybe, but it's not as if it was some malevolent directive from the CEO. Most likely some low level employee was tasked with the job, searched for art online, and this is the unfortunate result. Unless there's some "smoking gun" showing intent, calling this "another new low for Cedar Fair" is nothing more than desperate clickbait.

I would be surprised if the park settled a frivolous lawsuit brought by an ambulance-chasing personal injury lawyer. Not only is the park fully covered by the T&C of the pass purchase agreement, the plaintiff likely would have to prove that Kennywood KNEW at the time of his purchase that the ride could not and would not be operational for 2024, AND that Kennywood expressly suppressed this information, AND, most importantly, that their advertising was specifically designed to suggest that this particular attraction would be operating for 2024. That's an immense legal hill to climb, even if the two litigants had access to equally-competent legal teams, which they clearly do not.

I merely pointed out the existence of variable costs, one of the most basic business/finance principles around, because you seemed - and seem intent on continuing to be - ignorant of the concept. Which, again, is strikingly odd for a successful businessman. I did not suggest, imply, nor state that customers are "liabilities", so you can go ahead and set fire to that half-assed straw man. I pointed out that every customer, even those who apparently have urostomy and/or colostomy bags, carry a cost to the business, however small and incremental. I point this out to flesh out the argument against the self-entitled attitude of your basic pass holder. You know, the kind that might expect a "thank you" and a parade for spending over an entire year what other guests spend in a weekend...

This! It is flatly inexcusable that they failed to anticipate this.

You clearly have not seen the many "articles" in the Register leveling damaging accusations at the park alleging conspiratorial coverups and so on. With that sort of adversarial relationship, it's astonishing that the park didn't cut ties with them until now. As far as it being thousands of dollars of free advertising, how do you figure? Do residents of Sandusky not know that Cedar Point exists?

My mistake, I should have realized you're an insufferable troll to a lot of people around here, my mistake for not abiding by my initial impulse to ignore your "contributions" to the discussion. I'll do better in the future.

Yes, this. The ability to ban people is likely just to lay the groundwork to prevent abuse. It'll likely only be used in extreme cases, but when they need to use it, the park will be on solid ground to enforce it. You really oughta be charging me rent for living in your head. Lotta lost revenue there. Sad!

The way I look it is to calculate what my time is worth to me, and my personal time should be worth at least as much as my time is valued by my employer, and really should be at least 50% more than that. But for the purposes of this example I'll just use hourly wage. For easy math let's say you can save about 60 minutes of queue time per ride, and we'll assume a FLP price of $150. On the lower end of the scale making, say, $15/hr, you would need to ride 10 rides to make the FLP "worth it". Hitting 10 rides in a day is doable, but might be a lot for some. At $30/hr, you need to hit 5 rides, and at $50/hr, only 3 rides to make it "worth it". And of course as the FLP price goes up the number of rides needed will increase, but higher FLP prices generally coincide with more people in the park, and thus potentially more time saved per ride, but you get the idea. Obviously YMMV, but this is the standard I use when considering leisure/entertainment purchases.

Do you ride anything during the season? Purchase anything? Use the bathroom? Park your car on site? If the answer to any of those or similar questions is "yes", then the park you're visiting is incurring additional costs based on your use of those amenities. Rides need maintained, purchases in stores incur a cost to the park, bathrooms utilize consumable resources, etc. All of this is common knowledge to anyone who's worked in or around a customer-facing business, and should certainly be intimately familiar to anyone who has run a business. This pathetic "joke" was old before the first time you used it. If the best defense or contribution to the discussion you can muster is "har har, must be their lawyer LOLOLOSZZZ!!!!!111!!", that speaks volumes about you. Do better.

I have not to this point seen any indication that TT2 will have lockers accessible by both boarding and disembarking riders. And if that's the case, it's frankly inexcusable that the park is enforcing a no loose article policy during the entirety of the line. Very disappointing.

No, but a single visitor is at least as likely, if not moreso, to produce positive ROI per than a pass holder. So, while a non-pass holder visits less frequently, they tend to spend far more per visit, and because each visit by a guest incurs a cost to the park, the profit margins for a non-pass holder are higher. In other words, pass holders are not the most desirable customer, and certainly aren't as important as some assume they are. I mean, just look at it from a value perspective. The more of a value someone is getting out of a pass, the less positive ROI the park is realizing from that customer.

That... is quite obviously not true. How is it possible that someone who has "owned a handful of businesses in the past decade" is somehow unaware of variable costs? That's wild. This perfectly distills down the enthusiast/pass holder entitlement attitude. That anyone would think spending $500 for several months of something is more than trivial is deluding themselves. The annual visitor is almost always going to spend more than that on a single/few visit(s). Hell, we've spent more than that PER DAY on occasion, in addition to our passes. And I'm not bragging, as we are NOT wealthy, extravagant visitors. Just a middle class family that likes to splurge on vacations when possible. And the park is filled with people like us, visiting a few times per year while contributing vastly higher per caps than the pass holder who visits 4 times a week all summer.

Keep going? Like, infinitely, without a fixed budget? It's odd that someone who has allegedly "owned a handful of businesses in the past decade" would be unaware of cost constraints.

Agreed. Dude's (or dudette) ad hominem nonsense is insufferable. Best advice is to ignore and move on.

Well, I don't think they'd leave unused footers, but it's not unimaginable. What is unimaginable is that they would install a non-temporary sign without any footings, as that be dangerous and also wouldn't pass code.

I know you're being a snarky troll, but to be clear, no one fed me the line. Enthusiasts ARE predictable, in the worst ways.

The new sign does not look permanent. The posts are not set in concrete, and instead are just temporarily stuck in holes in the ground and backfilled. I would imagine a more permanent sign and/or structure will come at some point, using the existing footers, at which point they'll remove those posts and fill in the holes with the dirt they intentionally left there.

I'm not sure why this is relevant? That loan amounts to less than 0.2% of CF's annual revenue. It's barely a rounding error. A tiny fraction. And any earned interest is obviously a tiny fraction of that tiny fraction. Free money is always good, but it's relatively trivial. And it's not like that's free money, since pass holders tend to visit quite frequently per dollar spent, which costs the park money in terms of operating cost. So again, I'm not sure why this is at all relevant. No, I am not a stakeholder of any sort. I haven't even purchased a season pass in a few years. I just find pass holders, who are not the revenue-generating bread and butter they envisions themselves as, who constantly complain about the value they receive while continuing to hand over their money, exhausting. And beyond that, there is such a thing as constructive criticism, but calling every reduction in value or whatever a "bait and switch" is patently ridiculous. Furthermore, even if these were legitimate "bait and switch" actions the parks were doing, it's kind of difficult to take the complaints seriously from people who willingly engage in what appears to be an abusive relationship.

Since you insist on continuing to be an unoriginal troll, I have no interest in continuing to engage. Carry on with your baseless "bait and switch" histrionics.

I guess the fundamental difference is that I don't feel entitled to anything beyond what's spelled out in the purchase agreement, regardless of what I may have received in the context of previous purchases. And when purchasing a season pass, which explicitly states that it provides access to the park(s) during their public operating calendar, and there is no mention that these passes provide access to special events outside of the public operating calendar. Therefore, I expect to receive only what is spelled out and do not feel entitled to more. If I receive more, then great, but I don't enter into the purchase feeling entitled to more. You, and others, obviously feel quite entitled, as evidenced by the adorably-literal interpretation of what "benefits" means. I guess it's just a different life philosophy, but not going through life feeling and acting entitled has served me well so far. But, again, it's not the disappointment I take issue with. It's calling this stuff a "bait and switch" that I find so completely entitled to the point of utter delusion.