Cedar Point Dethroned: Golden Ticket Awards 2014!

Mystical Matthew said:

MDOmnis said:
Too bad. I bet Europa decided to up their Advertising budget with Amusement Today to the point where it was more than CP's spend.

You know what? I'll buy that idea. You're absolutely right. As a small business owner I know firsthand how that game works.

My previous post wasn't entirely fair to the current CEO. He's only been in charge for a few years and has made some very positive changes. The shows are dramatically better. As someone who loves performance art I appreciate that.

Kinzel did give us Mean Streak, Mantis, and Disaster Transport. Gatekeeper is far superior to all of those.

I hope that something big is coming. I really do. But I do see the "someone else is buying more advertising" possibility as very, very real... That whole game is massively dirty.

I'm obviously not in the amusement industry, but I imagine it's similar to what I've encoutnered

Also, they had to take some years to fix other things before they can go back to 'tallest, fastest, etc'. To keep building more tall and fast rides without fixing the overall experience would have hurt them more in the long run, and long term success is crucial. More important than 1 year of an award. I think they are on the right path. The right path isnt always a straight shot, and sometimes there are bumps in the road.

DA20Pilot said:
1) Rides/amenities becoming more disposable like at Disney. CP used to keep rides essentially forever in most cases.

This is pretty simple: Stuff gets old and expensive to maintain, and you can't keep the same maintenance budget by adding rides without taking some out. Do you want to pay more for a bunch of stuff to satisfy your nostalgia? No thanks.

2) Less pushing of the envelope/Less of being known for the biggest/best of everything.

And how did that work out over the years? Mean Streak was always crap. Mantis was not testicle or breast friendly. Dragster has been a lemon from the start. Furthermore, no one outside of the core market cares what some park on the coast is doing, because they either will never go there or never heard of it.

3) The replacement of unique food and drink establishments with national franchises.

And while this is unfortunate, we've also had amazing private dining events in haunts, better catering for the group sales events, improvements at some of the core establishments (the fry places, pizza, Coasters) and we got a flippin' wine bar! I think you see what you want to see.

4) I'm concerned about losing the historical aspects of the park. This has been going on for a while, but I fear it is accelerating.

The park looks more the way it did in 1990 than it did from 1990 to 1970.

5) Deforestation.

Where are all the trees?

6) Ugliness/Tackiness replacing the natural beauty of the park. The biggest offender I can think of is the painting of the slides at soak city those godawful tacky colors.

Because the faded dirty beige was better? This is a theme park, not a national park.

Deforestation, haha. I didn't know Cedar Point was built in the Amazon.

Deforestation? I believe it was the former genius CEO that took out as many tress as possible and replaced them with concrete. But as you can see from the picture, CP still has lots of trees left.

Get over it folks, Cedar Point is run by a new CEO that's in the business to make money, not satisfy his own ego. As for rides, when a CEO wont ride a certain ride - that's when you know its time to get rid of it or change it.

There are too many trees in that picture. I can't see anything. :)

That's the problem, so many on here have a RCT mentality with no clue how a business is run in the real world.

Not necessarily, CoasterJay -- Dolly Parton doesn't ride the rides at Dollywood. She'll often joke she doesn't ride them for "obvious reasons" but she's apparently prone to motion sickness.

TTD 120mph said:
^^ I don't mean this to sound rude but I don't think you'll find a whole bunch of people who share or agree on those points (except for perhaps 3).

1)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6Z8D0EBGv4&t=1m31s

I agree with the video 2010 and 2011 were amazing years for Cedar Point arguably the best Cedar Point years in my opinion I just haven't felt the amazing excitement of going there since 2011. If you didn't go to Cedar Point those years than you missed out the park was amazing those years.

noggin said:
Not necessarily, CoasterJay -- Dolly Parton doesn't ride the rides at Dollywood. She'll often joke she doesn't ride them for "obvious reasons" but she's apparently prone to motion sickness.

I don't think Matt has any of those "obvious reasons". Plus judging from his ice bucket challenge I don't think hes prone to motion sickness either. :)

Jeff said:
Mantis was not testicle or breast friendly.

You must have old man sack syndrome - I have testicles and I have not had that problem with Mantis:)

No you just need to untape yours and pull them forward from their tucked position, and trust me you'll experience it ;P

Had to

One legitimate beef I have with CF is the conversion to low-quality crappy mass-produced food. THis conversion from memorable food places to chains and GFS-low-quality type food takes the atmosphere backwards, at least in my opinion. I understand that this move has particularly attributed to revenues in recent years, but as a season passholder, I don't even look forward to eating at the park.

I was impressed that Kings Dominion has been able to hold onto some of the unique food offering that left Cedar Point years ago.

cedardorney said:
One legitimate beef I have with CF is the conversion to low-quality crappy mass-produced food. THis conversion from memorable food places to chains and GFS-low-quality type food takes the atmosphere backwards, at least in my opinion.

Maybe I missed it, or wasn't there that year, but (other than the overpriced food chains) when did CP have "memorable food places"?

Last time we were at CP we had Panda Express. I love me some orange chicken. Mmmmmm.

The transition has been occurring for years, but wasn't the Pizza Parlor in the current Chick-fil-a, and a great fried chicken place in the current Chickie's and Pete's?

Berardi's and the Anchor Room spring to mind. Actually, I'd also add the Coffee Shop. While the food wasn't outstanding, staying at the Breakers and having breakfast in the Coffee Shop before heading into the park for the day are part of some fond memories I have of the park.

I've only been going to Cedar Point since the early early 90s so I don't have much as a historical perspective as some, but even then the only "memorable food places" that I remember ever at Cedar Point (in the sense of word of mouth) were Happy Friar/Mr. Potato/Hot Potato.

Granted that could also be because my family was never one to buy a lot of in-park food, but let's not pretend that CP was full of unique slices of Americana cuisine.

What amusement park ever was full of unique slices of Americana? By and large, the food is not why people go to amusement parks.

I honestly don't get why everyone on this site always complains about the food. Nobody ever says anything positive. My "home parks" that I visit the most (Kennywood and Knoebels) that are known for their food, and CPs food is just as good IMO. It's not like I get annoyed or anything by the complaints or anything; it's just that I honestly don't see what's so bad about CPs food.

What about elephant ears, Johnny Roskets, fresh cut fries, the big snow cones, the food truck, and all the other restaurants?

I'd also like to add that a bottle of water is $3 at a lot of parks.

Before Chick-Fil-A, the building near Maverick was the Frontier Inn and served pizza. It was also very empty a lot of the time because there was not a lot to do nearby.

Game Day Grille was in the Chickie & Pete's building for many years. You are probably thinking of the Chuck Wagon Inn which serves rotisserie chicken. It served pizza for a year or two, then switched back to chicken.

There are plenty of sit-down restaurants, what needs the most improvement is the options at the walk up places.