DispatchMaster

Indeed, as this is especially true as a parent to youngish kids. We do our best to make the table a little bit less of a disaster. It's not hard. Right, but there is a dangerously-limited supply, given that Kroger, as you allude to, is abusing their near-monopoly position to make food less affordable. Furthermore, that Kroger is abusing their anti-competitive position in the marketplace does not mean that added labor costs doesn't also drive up prices. Thankfully, the FTC is doing their part to push back on this, though I'd argue it's too little, too late. The US has, for so long, neglected to enforce antitrust laws that Kroger can simply point to Amazon and Walmart, et al., and ask why Kroger is being singled out. And if that doesn't work, I'm sure SCOTUS' will strike down any FTC victory, probably based on the fact that the Constitution doesn't literally say "Kroger should not be allowed to merge with Albertson's".

It may be true, but it is also, more importantly, myopic and self-defeating. That so-called "job creation" increases labor costs for the business, which ultimately makes their goods more expensive. And I'd be willing to bet a healthy majority of the cart-abandoner are the first to whine about things costing more. The reality is that people who don't clean up after themselves, be it in theaters, store parking lots, tables at an amusement park, etc., are not exercising benevolent philanthropy. They're just a combination of lazy and entitled.

Agreed, but given that we live in a society where folks do this in movie theaters and store parking lots (with carts), and justify it with the colossally-stupid idea that they're "creating jobs", it is the unfortunate reality. I hate to be all "get off my lawn", but it seems the golden rule isn't taught nearly as much these days as it was when I was raised.

Not remotely surprising that they would be more generous with a plate that costs them a few pennies than they would with a condiment that probably costs at least an order of magnitude more.

Again, a "sub-par product" is something that is below a certain level of quality. Delivering raw meat in a bun is not what I would call "sub-par". It's flatly unacceptable, at $25, $5, or $0. The price is not relevant, other than a mechanism to get clicks on clickbaity articles. Ignoring for a moment that you seem to be unable to engage in discussion without resorting to ad hominem comments, which is a telltale sign of an impotent argument, did you miss the part where I said that serving raw meat is unacceptable? Weird that my "handler" or whatever would feed me a line like that. I never suggested it wasn't "a bad thing". I took issue with your qualification/quasi-quantification of this story as being "VERY damaging to the park". If you're going to make a claim as strong as that, shouldn't you have evidence that supports the claim? That a fringe, clickbait story made the rounds on coaster/park nerd forums doesn't mean there will be a measurable impact on the bottom line for the park. And a measurable impact on the bottom line is the bare minimum threshold for being "VERY damaging", no?

If someone is going to charge $1 for a burger, it shouldn't be dangerously undercooked. Hell, if someone hands me a free burger, it should be cooked, and anything less is unacceptable. Again, I don't understand the focus on the cost, since that suggests there is some price point where it's expected that one would be served food that is liable to give them food poisoning. It should go without saying that there is no price point where that is acceptable. I mean, we're not talking about the quality of the lettuce, or the staleness of the bun, or some other detail like that. Citation needed. And random Internet quotes don't qualify as citation.

Exactly this. They don't want their issue addressed or problem solved, they just want need attention.

Yeah, food poisoning is way more tolerable with lower interest rates. Also, anyone who posts a picture of their raw burger online rather than simply requesting a refund or replacement deserves a little explosive diarrhea.

Swinging gates wouldn't remove the floor from the rider envelope.

The drop floor, as far as I can tell, is necessary to keep the floor/railings out of the rider envelope, and, if so, has nothing to do with the intensity of the ride.

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.