2008 Attendance

Would you say it is up or down from what you've seen while at the Point?

Some report said it was down 12%, which isn't surprising given how cold it was in the early season and how rainy its been lately.

“Our early-season results have been somewhat mixed across our properties,” said Dick Kinzel, chairman, president and chief executive officer. “In the northern region, attendance and revenues have been soft with the exception of Canada’s Wonderland near Toronto where Behemoth, a record-breaking rollercoaster, has been well received by its guests. This softness was offset by improved performances at our southern and western region parks, including Great America, which continues to attract guests with its new ride, new shows and new hours.

Source

^I'm not sure how a press release that's meant to put lipstick on the pig and makes no mention of CP answers the question.

I'm not sure how discussing the matter on a fan forum without any hard data - in early July, no less - answers the question.

I realize that there is no hard proof anywhere to fall back on, but I was most intersted in what you've seen with your own eyes and also comparing wait times from a year ago.

^I really think it'd be way to difficult to eyeball an estimate. There are just too many variables from day to day...Weather, rides open, large groups.

The press release is about the best your going to do for now considering they don't release individual park numbers. As far as I know, they never have. Any actual number you've seen is likely just an estimate/guess. Based on what, I have no idea. For that matter, how do they know how many people will be driving on any perticular holiday? Just a fabricated number based on how many people are getting trip tics from AAA?

Opening day from what people have said has been busier than normal. But weekends following the lines were very short.

I understand the park is slower in the early season so I hoped for short lines. Not everything was a walk but I did have trips where I got more than 5 rides in on Maverick or TTD.

Unbelievable ride time...

I'm going to say down...

I bet it'll be down, and as much as I hate to admit it, weather is going to be the biggest issue. I was there the weekend before last with a forecast for doom, and it was only a moderate crowd. And surprisingly, the rain was brief and somehow mostly avoided the park.

Maybe this will help attendance, I got bored on the beach ;) (Muskegon)

Waaaay Down....I go there at least once a week, usually to soak city, and I cannot believe the lack of cars in the parking lot.

While the Dragster cam was working the parking lot did not appear to be too full. Somehow I would have to believe that they don't want people to have a bird's eye view of their parking lot.

I think down, too. It might be entirely my fault, though. I'm not making nearly the visits that I usually do!

Just from occasional observation of the webcam (daily) I see light to moderate crowds. The weekend days of the 4th, however, seemed very busy. Johnsonville seemed to be running a steady line. (At 5 bucks for a meal, they should!)

But it's hard to know how the season will wind up. It seems of late that CP's busiest times are in the fall for Halloweekends. The weather is usually good, there's added value, and it's slammin busy. It might come along to save them in the end.

I run a concession at the Ohio State Fair every year. It's easy for us to judge our current performance against last years. We can simply say "this is the second Saturday and last year on this day we did 7 thousand dollars. How did we do today?" If it's up or down we factor in variables like weather, promotions, scheduled entertainment and the like to try and justify it one way or the other. Unless we have those kind of figures and keep track of variables for CP ( and I'm sure someone at the park does) it would be hard for us to compare one Tuesday to the next, or one June to another.

If it is slow, we should all try to take advantage of it, I suppose- provided we can afford the gas!

Ricko77 said:
While the Dragster cam was working the parking lot did not appear to be too full. Somehow I would have to believe that they don't want people to have a bird's eye view of their parking lot.

I don't think they would be overly concerned with most people seeing the parking lot half full. Besides, other than a few people here, I doubt there would be anyone to be constantly monitoring the webcam enough to form a negative opinion of the park based on the parking being somewhat empty. In fact for most of the general public, if they checked the cam and saw a half-empty parking lot, it would probably be viewed as a good thing because most people like less crowds.

Now if the parking lot had less than 100 cars in it every day...that would be a different story.

The dragster camera is pretty important to us. We're about 50 min away, and a fairly empty parking lot makes the 100+ mile round trip much easier to justify. I hope they get it fixed soon, as we're reluctant to go without being able to see what the crowd is like. We have to use the Iron Dragon midway cam now, but it's much easier to judge attendance by how full the parking lot is.

BTW, we're pretty frequent visitors and I'd say attendance will be down (my guess 10-15%.) There are some days (with decent weather) where attendance was very poor, something I don't recall seeing at all last summer.

I watch the crowds coming in every morning, and compared to last year and 2006, it is definitely down. Before it started raining, with the nice weather, TTD was a half hour wait or less. I'm sure the forecast helped with today's attendance, but it has seemed a lot less busy this season. I've heard talk that the only areas the park is seeing profit in is foods and games. but I'm not sure if that's just normal, or indicates a negative trend for attendance.

The weather this year has been rather rainy for the most part, though, and that has definitely affected it. As much as weather shouldn't be the reason for a bad season, it could be a valid reason this year. Although somehow my ride's numbers are skyrocketing compared to last year (specifics at the end of the season, when the coasters come out, but believe me, even with seatbelts on Matterhorn, we are killing last year's numbers).

Dragster cam's back up:

http://www.cedarpoint.com/public/fun/webcams/index.cfm

Parking lot looks semi crowded, but I'm sure that rain cleared a lot of people out.