Attendance and Ridership: A Theory

Pretty sure the only thing that impacts attendance is ride mix (or the variety of capital as it were). Nothing else matters. isn't that what we learned in this thread?

Ok. I'm sorry for posting. I'll stay in my lane...

I am sorry. I should have been more clear. Its what we were told not what we learned. Again, sorry.

Here is a real-life Cedar Fair example: "Amusement Dark".

Granted, this was under Ouimet's watch, so there may be more to it, but not so long ago it was announced that every Cedar Fair park would be getting a new state-of-the-art dark ride experience to round out the lineup.

Reading between the lines, that means they were investing in family attractions in order to draw more on that demographic.

I was stoked. Well, I was excited until we found out the dark rides were the interactive video games (a la Toy Story at Disney). I get it...they are popular. It's just personal preference, but I have zero interest in those types of rides.

That said, it was still great the chain was embracing dark rides once again. Canada's Wonderland was first, then Knott's....surely Cedar Point is right around the corner, right?

(insert sound of crickets here)

To my knowledge, there has been zero discussion publicly about what happened to this idea, but there certainly doesn't seem to be momentum to continue their installation (Iron Reef at Knott's was installed back in 2015).

The only logical conclusion? They didn't have the impact they were hoping.

But there is hope...

Adventure Island signals that the park/chain hasn't abandoned the idea of family-oriented attractions, just that the interactive-video-game experience isn't the game-changer they wanted it to be.

With regards to the two CF dark rides (Wonder Mountain and Iron Reef):

Wonder Mountain's Guardian was a decent screen based shooter dark ride with a little bit of coaster mixed in. Jack of some trades, master of none. The ending scene is really good though.

Iron Reef just sucked. Random, rushed, and not engaging story. Short ride time and not interesting at all. Triotech seemed to have really dropped the ball on this one.

If CF does a dark ride at CP, I would like to see something closer to what Six Flags did for Justice League. Sally apparently made some really nice physical sets, had a story that worked, plus the screens/shooting aspect. Having a more well known IP helps, but Sally has made their own themes for other places too.

You know, if they're keeping the game going for the long term, a Battle for Cedar Point themed dark ride could be fun. They already have an interesting story and cool character designs- it'd be nice to see them used for something that doesn't require a phone. (If they wanted to go the 'interactive' route, each car could have the theming of one of the five (six?) factions and the riders in it could be fighting on that factions' behalf. )

What KevinJ wrote is true, but it's not the full story. Cedar Fair also installed Plants vs. Zombies at Carowinds in 2014 and Mass Effect at CGA in 2016, for whatever that's worth.

I thought of those, but I don't really consider those dark-rides. I mean, you sit in the dark...in a big room with 80 other people...while your chair moves...a little.

But, to be fair, they are efforts at offering something new and "dark".

I just don't get the obsession with the dark ride/attraction having to involve shooting something on a screen.

If you're interested, we had a decent discussion about a lot of this here about 5 years ago.

I did Justice League last year at Magic Mountain and having rode Iron Reef and Guardian Moubtain- it is the better approach.

The Battle for Cedar Point theme is a cool idea. I personally want them to just go throwback and give us a Sally ride called “Pirate Ride”