Beverage pricing: They're still not listening

JuggaLotus said:
Kyle - I don't think anyone here is condoning or even suggesting that people hassle the seasonals until prices come down. We know they have nothing to do with pricing and yelling at them/blaming them/making their job harder does nothing to fix the situation.

Seriously. Thanks for this. I had a lady yell at me on the ride the other day because I wouldn't let her take her soda on the ride. And I don't even work a flat.

djDaemon said:

Well, it's easier to marginalize the counter-argument, as opposed to, you know, having to defend your own. :)

Tell me about it, you give people concrete proof and they just say things like "Nope park is doing bad" over and over, with no real clue what they're talking about.

Cedar Fair EBITDA - 33.6%
Disney EBITDA - 20.3%

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other major markets in the US which are worse for growing a business than Detroit/Cleveland.

Clinging to one (reasonably & widely disputed) metric as "concrete proof" of something is hilarious.

Saying some of this site's most intelligent, well-informed members are clueless is even funnier.

djDaemon said:
Clinging to one (reasonably & widely disputed) metric as "concrete proof" of something is hilarious.

Saying some of this site's most intelligent, well-informed members are clueless is even funnier.

DJ, please explain to me the details you think EBITDA is leaving out, and I will gladly listen. Until then, I have no real choice but to take it's opinion over yours, regardless of how slow you thought the nacho stand was last year.

Those details have been explained here, here, here, here and here.

But I doubt you'll respond to any of the many valid, insightful points made among those posts, since you've been ignoring every counter argument thus far. It's become quite clear that you're simply trolling in this thread.

Enjoy it while it lasts! :)

It's funny that you think someone explained how EBITDA has errors, operationally.

Can you, please, just tell me what details ebitda is excluding when examining cedar fair, operationally, in 2009? Are you capable of doing so? You claim you are very "intelligent" and "informed".

I've never claimed that **I** was intelligent and informed.

But I'm not feeding this troll anymore...

lol, what a bum, grow some balls and defend one of you lame points for once. ebitda takes everything into consideration, attendance, income, expense, revenue, pop sales, salaries, everything.

Funny, please read the thread over again next time, you'll see more people than you think defend ebitda.

Captain Hawkeye said:
There is no objective financial evidence to support a claim that "we've been watching the slow 'deterioration' of the park for almost a decade, even when the economic and weather conditions were fine, or at least weren't horrible."

I have to disagree, because...

Chief Wahoo said:
Things have been heading in this direction for years and I'm sure Jeff and I could count the number of years in a row that we have been saying CFs crutch of "attendance down...but per cap up" was a false hope that was going to be haunting.

You totally read my mind.

Kyle2154 said:
This is such a waste of time at this point. People are just too damn cheap to accept that whats best for their wallet may not be best for the park. They'll ignore all signs of operational success in the process.

Hahahahaha. Seriously? Do you know that what you describe is the free market economy at work? I'm going to give you the same warning: Stop with the ad hominem crap or you're done.

I like Dave's use of "deterioration" with quotes. As Wahoo said, most of the decade or so we've been doing this we've watched the "attendance slightly down, per cap slightly up" headlines, and we've all called it out as not sustainable. The really weird thing is that I think they've been too liberal with the gate pricing, though to their credit they don't do a ton of discounting.

At the end of the day, a park can be skillful in the way it gets your money, and that comes in how you package it. Holiday World gets a fair amount of cash from me every year, and I feel OK about it, despite it being a small park that takes a lifetime to get to. Shifting "free" soda and sunscreen into the gate frankly works, and Will Koch has repeatedly said that doing so drove up per cap spending dramatically. It's an example of how thinking a little differently and trying something new can have a huge pay off, unless you're Dick Kinzel.

Incidentally, the one area that the company (stupid ride names not withstanding), and especially Cedar Point, has improved is the use of theme in a true amusement park sense. The parks are more colorful with clean designs, attractive signage and a more obvious investment in a true amusement park "theme." Look at the difference of Millennium Force's tool shed of a station compared to Maverick or Shoot The Rapids. Look at the haunts. I don't know how Rob Decker has managed to convince Dick to spend the money, but it has really changed the face of the parks in a positive way.

That's why it's all so frustrating... I feel like things would be remarkably different if we didn't have the guy at the top micromanaging pricing and everything else.

Jeff said:
Hahahahaha. Seriously? Do you know that what you describe is the free market economy at work? I'm going to give you the same warning: Stop with the ad hominem crap or you're done.

Yes, people not spending money on highly priced items is the free market economy at work. And? Does that mean the difference can't be recaptured through the increase in price? Is ebitda not as good a reference as the weird dissertations provided?

Are you really going to hand out multiple ban threats in a single thread just because a few people refuse to believe the sky is falling?

^^ EBITDA increased every year until 2009. CF expects it to increase in 2010. If they are right, how does one down year outweigh all of the up years? Wouldn't the one year be the "false hope?"

I do agree with "It's an example of how thinking a little differently and trying something new can have a huge pay off" but remember, not everything "new" works. To cite your example, HW found a combo that works, CF's price cutting in 06 did not.

Kyle2154 said:
Are you really going to hand out multiple ban threats in a single thread just because a few people refuse to believe the sky is falling?

You aren't debating the issue, you're making it about personalities, as evidenced by your reply. It's not a threat, it's a promise.

...says the man with the keys to the database, so there...

Let me back up a couple of messages...

Kyle sez--

Yes, people not spending money on highly priced items is the free market economy at work. And? Does that mean the difference can't be recaptured through the increase in price? Is ebitda not as good a reference as the weird dissertations provided?

Okay, so we agree on something--
a) people not spending money on highly priced items is the free market economy at work.

b) The difference can be recaptured through the increase in price

And that, my friend, is the reason that EBITDA is not as good a reference as you make it out to be. It isn't because of what it leaves out, it is because it captures *everything*. If you are a bean counter whose only interest is in the results for the next quarter, the EBITDA numbers look *damn good*. That kind of cash flow is the reason that even while the company was trying to sell itself to a low bidder, I was confident that the next chapter in the company's story was neither 11 nor 7.

Our point is that *because* high prices are being used as an attempt to recapture the income from people not buying at a lower price point, it is causing a weird positive feedback loop, where people don't buy, so the price goes up, causing more people not to buy, causing the price to go up, resulting in increasing EBITDA, but in what appears to be an unsustainable way. It's great "this quarter", but the canaries are dying. Something needs to be done to fix the longer term problems before the whole thing blows up.

The good news is that I see signs of it. Sick Flags did, in fact, serve as a warning to others, and Cedar Fair is doing a reasonably good job of not repeating their worst mistakes. They've learned a lot from the KECO parks (IMO, Paramount was more of a caretaker than an agenda-setter) and the parks are looking better than ever. There are still some operational issues (it should not take ten minutes to load a @#$! Troika, but it does when there is only one person running the thing) but in general, Cedar Fair still knows how to show people a good time. Ultimately, that's what is going to save the company from self-destruction. But if they ever want to get onto a Disney-esque level of performance, where they can maintain 3.2 million customers a season without adding 20 million dollars worth of roller coaster every year, they have got to get the value equation under control.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Another great example of cedar point prices.

http://coasterbuzz.com/Forums/Thread/57420.aspx?id=807953

Ugh. Totally repulsive.

ADDED:
Not only the price, but American cheese only?!? WTF?!?

^^ Oh, now that's hilarious.

So I can buy a 6" veggie delite for $5.99,

or two 6" veggie delites for $11.98 (total sandwich length of 12").

OR, I can get a footlong veggie delite for $12.49 (total sandwich lenght of 12").

EDIT: I agree about the cheese. Why does such a great country have to be affiliated with such a terrible, terrible cheese? :(

I'll say this for Cedar Point: They've done a good job of eliminating any residual guilt I might suffer from smuggling my own food and drink into the park...

I just did the VIP tour. However I did not buy any food while in the park. I brought cheese and crackers and almonds to munch on during our 1 hour break. I am willing to pay $375 for the VIP tour but no way would I pay the outrageous food prices. We were laughing about this while we ate!!!

^^I smuggle it in too.

VIP tours dont come with food? I thought they did.