California's Great America Winterfest 2016

[Creed Bratton]

It seems as if Cedar Fair is jumping on the wagon with a winter time event, starting with California's Great America

 

 

 

Weekends Beginning November 25, Daily December 19-23 and 26-30 

For 2016, Great America will introduce a spectacular larger than life holiday event, WinterFest. The park will be magically transformed into a winter wonderland during WinterFest where guests can skate in front of the iconic Carousel Columbia, admire magnificent displays of lights and décor, view spectacular live holiday shows, experience 18 rides and attractions, see Santa’s workshop and Mrs. Claus’ kitchen, and enjoy scrumptious holiday foods at numerous locations.

The winter scene will be dominated by one of the Bay Area’s tallest Christmas trees adorned with hundreds of twinkling lights accompanied by giant toy soldiers greeting guests.

The five-week WinterFest celebration begins November 25 for weekend operation. Daily operations run December 19-23 and 26-30.

The holiday season will be evident with 100 decorated trees, 7 uniquely lighted sections of the park, a main midway light show, a reindeer petting station, Charlie Brown’s Tree Lot and much more.

Live entertainment will include a nightly tree lighting ceremony, carolers performing on a holiday trolley, a Merry Christmas Snoopy ice show, Santa’s Elves stage show and face painting.

In addition to everyone’s favorite Peanuts characters, Great America guests will delight in seeing Frosty, Jack Frost, Jingle Bell, the Gingerbread Man, Sugar Plum Fairy and Santa’s Elves, Holly, Lolly and Jolly. Even Scrooge will have his spirits raised at WinterFest.

Among Great America’s 18 WinterFest rides are Gold Striker, Star Tower, Rue Le Dodge, Celebration Swings, Carousel Columbia, Delirium and many of your Planet Snoopy favorites.

Admission to WinterFest will be free for 2016 Gold and Platinum pass holders.

Event Page Here

 

 

What are your thoughts?

[Oldschool75]

Bring it back to Kings Island!! But hopefully this goes well. I'm a little skeptical about restarting it in a warm climate though, if this is their test market.

Sent from a signal coming out of the Vega system.

[The Interpreter]

Should be a great holiday in the park.

oopsie

[Creed Bratton]

I have heard rumors of the park being up for sale soon, I'm wondering if those rumors are true. If they are true, this could be part of the marketing to sell the park. 

I may be wrong on this, but I've heard that Winterfest in 2005 at Kings Island was a marketing point for the sale from Paramount to Cedar Fair.....could be another situation.

[The Interpreter]

The LAND is for sale by the city.

A. The sale would be subject to the terms of CGA's lease.

B. Cedar Fair has a right of first refusal.

[westcoaster]

Winterfest KI would rock, cheap free for all pass holders, and great food, and shows. Ice Skating, lights, more lights and fun. 

Its time. 

Good For Great America

[The Interpreter]

Not all passholders. All 2016 gold and platinum passholders...

[Italian Job 2005]

so one of two things I is happening: Either this is their test park for a Cedar Fair Winter event, or a marketing tactic, as others had mentioned above.

I hope it's the former.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MDMC01]

I feel like the success of the #SB50 Fan Fair had a little something to do with this.... according to Twitter, Celebration Swings, Gold Striker and more were open as the Super Bowl Fan Fair.

[CoastersRZ]

The big difference between this event and the reincarnation of the event that KI had back in 2005, is that this even is FREE for Gold and Platinum pass holders.  Back in 2005, KI pass holders had to pay around $20 a person to enter, and by the way, they also had to pay for parking.  Which is partly why the KI event (and the Carowinds version), was more like an empty wonderland. 

 

This was mentioned on one of the last conference calls Cedar Fair had as a way to extend the season and generate additional revenue outside the typical park operating season.  Hopefully this "test" goes well, and we see this rolled out to other parks in the chain.  Obviously, some parks, KI included, would struggle with weather issues once you get into October.

 

Personally, I would love to see KI`s Winterfest return for a third version.  I have my fingers crossed, but it may never happen again.  Only time will tell.

[Gordon Bombay]

I may be wrong on this, but I've heard that Winterfest in 2005 at Kings Island was a marketing point for the sale from Paramount to Cedar Fair.....could be another situation.

 

 

Winterfest 05 was a truly heartfelt effort. Remember, it was rolled out at two parks underneath the Viacom umbrella. While Viacom made some interesting decisions and had different ideas from the original incarnation of Paramount Parks, they weren't stingy entirely. They invested in a lot of infrastructure improvements and entertainment options for KI's Winterfest. 

 

KI's WinterFest 2.0 suffered from several issues. Snowfall and bad weather were much more frequent. Required parking payment and admission outside of a season pass also didn't help. There were also more regional entertainment options that had cropped up or been improved in the years since Winterfest halted.  From the people I knew and the amount of investment, it seemed they planned to make another go at it the next year.

Later, Viacom and CBS split. Paramount Parks fell under CBS while Paramount Pictures fell under Viacom. From the onset of 2006, it was clear that CBS was hardly interested in continuing the Paramount Parks operation and would seek a buyer. Associates started that year without name tags. Instead they were issues one identification badge to wear clipped to their shorts (and would incur a payment deducted fee for replacement). The "QTV's" also constantly blared advertisements for CBS owned properties like College Sports Television (CSTV (Now CBS Sports Network). 

They also had this interesting little thing they did...

 

When you entered the park, immediately to your left were advertisements for Winterfest. They were already selling "advance tickets."

Now, there's two diverging viewpoints I've heard over the years:

1) The intentions were true and they planned to give Winterfest 2.0 another go. 

 

or 

 

2) CBS didn't actually intend to risk losing money on another winter event should a buyer not be found and wouldn't actually go through with it or...

 

...as what would happen: someone did buy not just Kings Island (but all the parks) and Cedar Fair had the pleasure of being the ones to announce Winterfest's cancellation (not that many people really knew or cared) as well as refund those advance tickets (did anyone really buy any?). 

There you go. 

[rhyano]

I wonder if some rides will be open

[The Interpreter]

...read the first post. Yes, some rides will be open. At least 18.

And Gordon, CBS had the parks in 2005. The final, formal breakup was in January 2006, but it was announced to the public in June 2005, and the Paramount Parks left for CBS earlier than that. It was pretty clear in 2005 that CBS wasn't interested in the parks, and many, like Jeff Seibert, got out before the parks were even put on the auction block, the sell off being announced January 26, 2006.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/viacom-makes-split-official/

See also, for many interesting reasons, Cedar Fair's SEC filing to support the debt sale to buy Paramount Parks:

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/811532/000119312506130576/dex99.htm

Cedar Fair is a very different company today, and a better one, than it was in 2005/2006.

Different people.

Different environment.

Different future.

And lots and lots of debt (which most seem to have forgotten about. For now.)

See also Six Flags.

[jcgoble3]

See also, for many interesting reasons, Cedar Fair's SEC filing to support the debt sale to buy Paramount Parks:

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/811532/000119312506130576/dex99.htm

On the third-to-last slide, with the calendar of significant dates, I notice that it lists a projected closing date of July 10. Although this contradicts an earlier slide which listed June 30 as projected closing, I wonder what would have happened if the parties had indeed waited until July 10, given that the Son of Beast accident occurred on July 9.

 

Could that accident, sending over two dozen riders to the hospital, have caused Cedar Fair to back out completely over liability concerns, or resulted in the purchase price being renegotiated significantly downward? If the latter, how would Cedar Fair be different today with less debt? If the former, who would have stepped in to buy Kings Island? And if no one, would Kings Island even exist today?

 

Some interesting things to think about there....

[CoastersRZ]

Cedar Fair had their quarterly conference call yesterday.  They stated that they plan to roll out Winterfest events at other parks in 2017.  They wouldn`t name which parks they were thinking about, but did mention looking at them geographically and what makes sense from a weather stand point.  They also mentioned taking what works at Great America, and applying it to the other parks.  They also mentioned that it may take a couple of seasons for this event to get a following and really start maximizing revenues.

 

I would have to think that Worlds of Fun, Carowinds, Kings Dominion and Kings Island geographically would make sense.  Dorney, Michigan`s Adventure, Cedar Point, ValleyFair, and Canada`s Wonderland are farther north and could pose more issue with winter weather.  

 

I would love for Kings Island to bring back Winterfest.  The original incarnation of Winterfest seemed to make money and be successful.  Granted there are more options for winter entertainment now in the Cincinnati area.  Additionally, back then, the park didn`t have a Halloween event, so the season ended earlier allowing them more time to prepare for the event.  I made several visits to Winterfest 2005.  It was a very fun event.  It would have been nice had they opened a ride like the Scrambler or the adult bumper cars.  The train ride was a fun ride, and had lots of entertainment (it reminded me of some of the entertainment quality seen at Dollywood).  Only time will tell what happens and what parks they expand it to.