2019 Cedar Point Schedule

The 2019 calendar is live!!!

Yay !!!!!

No more 11pm weeknights in mid summer.

Meh, that was the aspect I liked best during Summer, I arrived at around 1 usually and stayed til after close.

I wonder why they did away with the 11:00pm closings?

Park attendance drives operating hours. They know how many people are in the Park at any given time.

Yea they've wavered back and forth on the 10 vs 11PM closings a few times in my memory and they seem to cut the late night closing back if they've had a soft attendance season and then if they have two or three years where it's up, they bring them back. Happy to see the midnight closing on Fridays at least.

Plus you have to think about the ride-ops that have to open rides after closing the night before. That 1 hour means a lot!

the only thing the extra hour means to cedar fair is more payroll hours. They had a crap year, in an industry that didn’t, they boasted cutting 350,000 payroll hours in the quarterly conference call in order to impress analysts. Given the aforementioned reaction, Expect more of these cost cutting actions from the new CEO.
Might as well save money by not turning the lights on since it won’t be dark at park closing.
#BringBackOuimet

Like was said above, if people weren’t staying late they aren’t gonna keep staying open late. I find that interesting as they did a lot with Live E to try to keep people in the park later. Guess that didn’t work so well? Of course Fire & Ice(?) didn’t open till, what, late July?

Cutting the popular Luminosity show and replacing it with that F&I Show with the quality of a grade school musical was doing ‘a lot with Live E to try to keep people in the park later’?

You need to watch the you tube videos and see how horrible that was.

Yea that Fire and Ice show seemed to miss the mark. Not really sure what they were going for, but it seemed like it was targeted toward an older crowd - perhaps marina or hotel guests. It wasn't awful, but it definitely wasn't good enough to pull the masses over to that dead area of the park.

I appreciate the efforts to get more small Live E events out on the midway throughout the day, but the park has really done a number to the bigger productions over the last few years. They used to have a couple shows it was worth making a point to see. Not so much now. The "new" All Wheels show kind of sucked compared to the old one if you ask me, even though it was some of the same people and the same company that produced it. I really liked the old one.

Cedar Fair has always been really tight with payroll hours and big on sending people home when it's slow. When you consider that they can never seem to hire enough people to properly staff Halloweekends and they had a weekend or two washed out by a hurricane at two of their parks, I'm not sure if cutting hours is something I'd be bragging about in a conference call, but they were a little short on material I guess.

I still think there are areas where they're completely missing the boat and their investments on the resort side would pay off even more if their park offerings complimented them. A ride like Firechaser that has a low height requirement and is fun for the whole family would be hugely popular. A large indoor space with food/beer and Live E where people can rest and recharge would be nice too. A working log flume would be great. Where's that dark ride everyone has been talking about for a decade? I love what CP has as far as coasters, but having a family, it's maybe not the most well balanced park compared to say a Dollywood.

I don't see Zimmerman as the kind of visionary leader that Ouimet was. That's not to see he's incompetent or incapable of running the ship, but I don't think we'll see sweeping upgrades or changes during his tenure like we've gotten used to for the past several years. I hope it doesn't become a cost cutting fest (again).

Zimmerman is the main reason Winterfest has returned across the company, I'd say that is pretty visionary. Give the guy at least two years before you start evaluating his performance.

That being said, the long term results on Winterfest still have to play out. In reality it’s not visionary by any means, it’s copy/paste other parks programs.
It will be interesting to see how CF manages these, If they grow stale and offer little more than last year or become a truly memorable worthy experience.

XS NightClub said:
They had a crap year, in an industry that didn’t,

Not exactly sure how you are getting to that conclusion. The parks that are the closest to the cedar fair model are six flags and from the information that is out there, their numbers aren't great. The only reason that attendance is up is because they added parks and added operating days to several of their parks. They have refused to tell investors how attendance from this year to last year compares without the inclusion of the newly added parks. That leads you to believe that attendence from year to year is down. If it was up without including the new parks they would state that as it would only help them. The investors keep asking for year to year comparison but are just told overall attendance is up.

I know none of us have the numbers they use to justify the changes but personally I'd rather hours shaved off the morning than the evening.. but their numbers obviously drive their decisions.

One thing I'm hoping to see is another season pass preview weekend/week days like they did this past season with Steel Vengeance. I loved that and it's the type of perk pass holders want. Three days with limited attractions to preview them along with free food and drink with limited access based off free tickets was awesome. Hoping to hear something about that around Chill Out.

Agreed about the points made about the Fire & Ice show, saw it once was bored about 5 mins in and walked away. Hoping that stage is temporary and that space will be better used in the coming seasons. maybe 2020 or 21.

Anyways, not to turn this into a wish list thread again, looking forward to 2019!

I saw one of the last Fire & Ice shows and I had a few thoughts about it...

First, the show itself was good quality. It was a very simple show, essentially just performers on a bandstand, but it was good, live music.

Second, the show was quite obviously cobbled together from bits and pieces recovered from elsewhere in the park: not sure about the stage itself, but the truss work all came from the old Luminosity setup, the flame throwers from the Summer Spectacular screen, the snow blowers from the Starlight thing from the Frontier Trail, and the sound system...well, that was apparently scavenged as well. It's unfortunate, because the PA they had for the show was no match for the space they were trying to fill, and they were overdriving it trying to get adequate sound out of it.

I thought the show as a general concept was great: a classic bandstand show. Cedar Point really doesn't have a great place for it, but I think the show, or something like it, is a great fit for the park. Something tells me, though, that by this time next year that spot isn't going to be available to house it.

As for hours, I'm with WolfBobs. Particularly if they are trying to drive resort stays, I'd like to see them experiment more with shifting the hours later: hold off opening until 10am but stay open until 11pm. Or shift it a half hour either way. I don't really understand why parks are always so quick to cut hours in the evening but not in the morning. It was my perennial gripe with Six Flags when the inevitably cut operating hours at Wyandot Lake every summer: they would keep the 9:00am open but slide closing back from 9pm to 7pm (or worse), meaning people like me who could consider coming after work couldn't anymore...and probably, ultimately reducing their total attendance those days.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

^I found your last paragraph interesting. I wonder what the attendance comparison is between the "early" arrivals & the "after work" arrivals. I myself enjoy the earlier 9:00am time as I am a 4:30am riser. We enjoy the perks of shorter lines at that time. Many at that time are season pass or resort guests, I suppose many after work arrivals may be season pass holders also as I couldn't see paying a daily admission for limited hours (I know they reduce it somewhat after a certain time). If I was a resort guest I would love both an early entry and a later closing. But, if the park is as sparse as some say last hour, I get it.

I guess they adjusted their calendar and hours after considering multiple factors, including staffing, but of course the main factor being profits. I know, obvious statement of the year.

Another thing my eyes tell me about early entry, nobody is spending any money on anything in the park such as food, games, & merchandise, of course none of that is open, the exception might be Starbucks.

During Halloweekends when I was leaving at 12:45am I saw significant crowds at a few front food stands purchasing food for the ride home. I suppose it is that way during operating season also.

RideMan said:

Something tells me, though, that by this time next year that spot isn't going to be available to house it.

This. From the start it was always my impression that this was a temporary installation, which is why they didn't go "all out".