Cedar Point new security checkpoint

Employees at mall department stores have had to have clear bags since the late 80s as loss prevention, it's actually pretty commonplace.

I know very little about retail employment but that is just insulting. I personally wouldn't work for a company​ that has such distrust of me that I have to have a clear bag for my stuff.

Then don't. And don't go to NFL stadiums. Or Parks with stupid security checkpoints. Complaining when people protect their property and clientele when they require security protocols they deem appropriate is just ridiculous.

Do you get upset when you get carded at CP when ordering a drink, it is their policy to card everyone no matter their age. I have dozens of people a year that refuse to show an id at my club, some even call the cops cause they think it's their right to get in of age. We Gladly turn away customers like that.

I would be more inclined to accept these devices if those that implement them were honest about it; they exist for insurance and liability reasons, nothing more. Instead they pander to pea-wits who live by such tropes as "better safe than sorry".

People such as these would have everyone believe that an individual who brings a weapon to a crowded public place-a person who, by such actions, obviously intends to harm as many people as possible-aborts their attack after seeing a metal detector then ignores the perfectly placed, nearly stationary line of people waiting to go through it.

The question should not be "well, its not really that big of a deal so why not accept it", it should be why we are willingly allowing ourselves to be pandered into accepting completely ineffective measures of security because some bean counter says we should? Allowing negative things to happen just because they do so in small degrees is what leads to loss of freedoms, obesity, messy houses, alcoholics, badly behaved children and the Star Wars prequels.

XS NightClub said:
Complaining when people protect their property and clientele when they require security protocols they deem appropriate is just ridiculous.

Do you get upset when you get carded at CP when ordering a drink, it is their policy to card everyone no matter their age.

Security protocols that are insulting are right up there with Walmart locking their overnight workers in the store. I think they finally stopped that after some medical emergencies where people couldn't get out to get help. There is a difference between good security and unimaginative aholes that let greed overcome their sense of treating people with dignity.

I don't get upset when I get carded at CP, that is perfectly reasonable and once the bartenders know me they stop carding.

MichaelB said:
1) The "throwing away founding principles" thing is total hogwash. This nation was also founded on separation of state and privately own business. Nobody is forcing you to patronize their park. Your rights are not being infringed upon in any way, shape, or form. Share your opinion with your dollars if you're that adamant about this rights infringement nonsense.

It's not total hogwash. I was even careful to point out that a private establishment can make the rules it sees fit, and as you point out, we customers can vote with our feet (and our dollars). It's not even a rights infringement issue; as a customer I am a guest on private property and the fact that I paid for that privilege does not change the fact that I have to conduct myself in accordance with the reasonable demands of the host.

The point is that this gets to who we purport to be as a society. What kind of a society do we really want to live in? That's the issue. It's not about legality or personal rights; it's about how we want to live.

2) This isn't a victory lap for terrorists. Security checkpoints at various venues, events, and locations have been a thing way longer than the modern threat of terrorism it would seem is being alluded to in this thread.

The hell it isn't. Why do you think they are called "terrorists" It's because the objective is to terrorize people: to scare them, to make us afraid of being in public, to make us afraid of each other. And it sure looks like the terrorists are doing a damn good job of it. Our only recourse is to be absolutely determined not to be scared. Unfortunately, humans in general, and apparently Americans in particular, are lousy at judging risk and even worse at responding appropriately to it. On the one hand, this is critical to a lot of what the amusement industry does: to scare the living fuvg out of people while keeping them extremely safe. On the other hand, it makes people all too accepting of fear-driven theatrical nonsense while blinding them to all-too-real threats to their safety.

3) Next to no security operation is fool proof, but that doesn't mean it isn't effective. People still get killed in car accidents; are airbags and seat belts just a safety theaters, should we just get rid of safety features and stop developing safety technology on cars cause they're not 100% effective?

Ah, but you are failing at risk assessment. Safety belts and airbags in automobiles are effective safety measures, and I can tell you that from personal experience. These are safety systems which are developed as an engineered response to a specific hazard. The same can be said for checkpoint screenings. What works for keeping an airplane...a metal tube with three openings that holds a couple hundred people and containers of luggage...'sterile' is going to necessarily be far less effective if you try to expand that sterile environment to a 200+ acre amusement park with a dozen entrances (most of them uncontrolled), unmonitored fence lines, and thousands of people entering and leaving at all hours of the day and night.

Let me put it to you this way: Seat belts are effective at reducing injuries and fatalities in automobile crashes. But there is at least one documented case* where adding a safety belt to a roller coaster car actually caused serious injuries in a collision where the rider would have been uninjured or suffered less serious injury had she *not* been restrained at the time of the crash. The hazard is different, and therefore what is an appropriate form of mitigation for one hazard is actually inappropriate for another.

The argument isn't against taking precautions. It's about concentrating of efforts that are less invasive and yet far more effective at mitigating the actual hazards people face when visiting the park.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

*Starchaser, Kentucky Kingdom, July, 1994

noggin said:

RideMan said:
Metal detectors in an amusement park environment have a nearly 100% false positive rate unless they are set to such a low sensitivity as to be completely worthless. I don't care if this is a direction the industry is heading, I still don't like it, think it's a terrible idea, and should be scrapped in favor of useful security protocols inside the park.

This. Security screening at an amusement park entrance is a show, not an effective way to catch actual threats. Every dollar spent on searching the bags of every single person entering the park is a dollar not spent in the park tracking down actual threats...

...and how many people have been caught by these security theaters?

Last year on Columbus Day weekend my friend and I went to Haunt at Kings Island and a gentleman who got wanded before us had a pocket knife he had forgotten about and they took it from him.

Admittedly anecdotal ... A fellow I work with told me he'd recently been passed through a security checkpoint with not one, not two, but three pocket knives in various pockets. (He also wears a watch on each arm. He's a bit eccentric.)

RideMan said: Of course in most parks the thing that the bag checks find most frequently is smuggled food.

"Sir! Drop the sandwich!"

The Schlitterbahn rep at No Coaster this year said the number one found object by their security screenings were jars of pickles. I understand the danger of a glass jar in a place where most people are walking around barefoot ... but can't imagine they're caught more than a few times each season.

Jake10 said:
Last year on Columbus Day weekend my friend and I went to Haunt at Kings Island and a gentleman who got wanded before us had a pocket knife he had forgotten about and they took it from him.

And this made the park safer...how?

Many years ago, I visited a park in the Southeast US (might have been SFOG but I don't recall for certain) that was doing a security scan at the gate. I showed my pocketknife to the guard and asked if I needed to take it back to the car when the alarm went off, he proceeded to wave me through and wish me a good day.

Why did he do that? Because in his judgement, I was not a threat. Neither are 99.999999% of the other knife-weilding males visiting the park that day. Trying to insure safety by keeping a long (and, I should mention, unpublished) list of banned objects out of the park is a losing battle because the Bad Guys™ are more creative than the Good Guys™ give them credit for. Keeping "weapons" out of the park just results in different weapons being used (see: IX Center 2017). The focus needs to be on keeping the *violence* out of the park, and that's a lot harder. It's darn near impossible if all your security guards are busy confiscating pocket knives and pickle jars at the front gate.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

You know you're not a threat, but how does anyone else know? You can't know intent. If the guy in Jake10's account was the one in 10,000 who gets drunk, some other guy spills his beer, and he decides to solve the problem with that knife, do you want to be the guy next to him when that all goes down?

How about some measures of assault that cannot be traced by any of these searches? Like Jiu Jitsu or other forms of martial arts? You can kill, or at least cause major bodily harm, with some of those hand to hand tactics.

They also can't identify chemicals or thousands of other non-metallic dangerous objects.

And now this thread is getting even more ridiculous.

If anyone has a serious issue with CPs freedom-ending "security theater" and you want to do something more about it than post here:
1-buy some units of Cedar Fair
2-file a grievance against current management's waste of unit holders equity on "security theater"
3-attend unitholders meeting and demand removal of top executives for failure to follow their fiduciary responsibility to the unit holders to maximize return on investments by wasting money on ineffective policies and procedures.
4-hold your head in shame as you're laughed out of meeting.

Or, to save time and energy:

1-Stop going to the park.

If enough people stopped going to amusement parks / baseball stadiums / concert venues / etc, these security theaters would go away.

As noted elsewhere, I put up with queuing up at security checkpoints to get to what I want: roller coasters*.

That doesn't mean I agree with the purpose of such checkpoints; they're theater. In most instances, the people staffing these checkpoints have no authority to detain anyone carrying contraband items. They have to contact, and then wait for, actual security personnel or police officers to arrive, allowing plenty of time for the people carrying a pocket knife to enter the park or to leave.

* I know. I'm part of the problem with checkpoints....

We get it, a lot of people posting here agree it's "security theater", whether they agree upon or understand what the term means. But it seems that at some point most agree it entails some or all of the following:
-annnoys/angers customers to point of losing future business, costing Cedar Fair lost revenue.
-it is a waste of time delaying entry to the parks, costing Cedar Fair lost revenue.
-it's waste of payroll because it's ineffective, costing Cedar Fair lost revenue.
-it's a waste of resources that could be used elsewhere in parks, costing Cedar Fair lost revenue.
-employees aren't properly authorized/trained and can't stop someone anyway, costing Cedar Fair lost revenue.
-there will always be a way around the metal detectors if someone wants to do harm, costing Cedar Fair lost revenue.
-it's just a pocket knife and the parks don't sell pocket knives anyway, costing Cedar Fair lost revenue on potential windfall from huge demand for pocket knives inside amusement and water parks.

I Think i covered most of the arguments against the metal detectors. Each of these or any combination is costing Cedar Fair lost revenue and/or is wasting unit holder in your eyes with zero-little return on investment and could be more effectively implemented without detectors. In your arguments these would be legitimate grievances that could be leveled against management from unit holders.
However, the management has been running the parks quite well and likely knows more about the implementation of security and actual real theater at the parks they run then everyone that's ever posted on here combined. They are also well aware of their duties as officers of CF to not wantingly waste the money of the unit holders.

CF current unit price is $68 today now is your chance to make your voice heard - that's only the cost of 4 lousy hamburgers in park, 1 daily ticket, 1/5 a night at a lighthouse point cabin, 2 meals at TGIF, 3 premium parking spots or 1 sweatshirt in breakers gift shop.

Or, if we scream loud enough on the forums, Cedar Fair might hear us and change their ways. I mean, look what we did to Mantis. ;)

Side note: I honestly don't care about the metal detectors. It's the parks property and they can do what they please. If they find a justifiable enough reason to not need them, then yay. If not, then get use to having them around.

Why on earth does someone having a different view than you require him/her to buy shares in the company we are talking about? Oh and if for some reason they did according to you they would get "Laughed out of the room"?

Or because someone disagrees with the policy they should just not go to a place that they love and adore. Fantastic logic. It's a damn forum, it's meant for discussion and debate. The only reason anyone is posting here is because we all love the place.

Overall I don't know where I stand on this issue, reading the comments has me swaying both ways. Call me bi-security ;) But telling folks to just stay home if they don't like it is absurd. This isn't you're local McDonald's where there are 5 in town.

-It was a suggestion: If anyone has a serious issue with CPs freedom-ending "security theater" and you want to do something more about it than post here.
And I stated after that management knows their responsibilities and justifications for their protocols.

I never said someone shouldn't post their opinions on here or stay home. I pointed out an option to make change.

My points are the CF knows what threats they face and how best they can deal with them in the most efficient manner. They have no inherent interest in inconveniencing their guests.

No, I think a lot of guests think they are safer with the " security" protocols in place. We are not arguing about the average guest that comes​ once or twice a year. I just care about guests like myself that enter multiple times a day three or four times a week.

Anyway, I think some people here are employed in the security theater, if so, it is understandable that you argue the things that you do.

In the grand scheme of things, the magnetometers are much better than the wanders, so that is a plus. I'll just drink a toast to how things used to be and shake my head at the stupid, fearsome ideology of present day.

XS NightClub said:
... CPs freedom-ending "security theater" ...

...CF knows what threats they face and how best they can deal with them in the most efficient manner. They have no inherent interest in inconveniencing their guests.

I am, clearly, no fan of security theater, but I wouldn't describe them as "freedom-ending". They're annoying, unecessary distractions to entering an entertainment venue.

What threats does Cedar Fair face? I would argue none that couldn't be better tracked by active, in-park security.