Coaster Rider Statistics 2005

MDOmnis said:
1,000 per hour means launching 55.5 full trains...

But how do you fill that last half-train?

guess you will just have to have 1,006 riders..

The park has updated its web site to include rider stats for the last 10 years for all rides (except Kiddy Kingdom and Gemini Children's Area). The stats are on the individual ride pages.

There may well have been some operational changes that are going to limit cycle time. For example, I *thought* that TTD used to use rolling blocks in the station, but they don't seem to be doing that now. I also vaguely recall that the catch car reset time has been lengthened, too. If these things really have changed, neither is going to help.

Walt, if you had anything to do with that update, thanks! There's a lot of information to digest.

My initial reaction is that I'm surprised at how much the ridership has been dropping since the late 1990's. Neither weather nor overall attendance nor "popularity" can really explain an "across-the-board" decrease of almost 30%...

I suspect a good portion of the drop was self-induced (safety and/or operational changes.) What else has changed over the last 8 years?

Attendance and capacity. Capacity has increased: in 8 years, they've added Camp Snoopy, MF, WT, TTD, and maXair. So, ridership on individual rides should be dropping in that time if attendance is flat.

(Some things have been removed, too, but net capacity in the park should have increased, if individual ride capacities don't change. Of course, individiual ride capacities have changed, especially on Gemini, Corkscrew, and maybe Blue Streak.)

Over the past three years, attendance dropped. But, this is not enough to explain away decreased *total* ridership. In 2003, ~3.3M guests took ~17M rides, or 5.15 rides/guest (!) In 2004, ~3.2M guests took ~15.8M rides, or about 4.93. In 2005, ~3.1M guests took ~15M rides, or about 4.83.

This drop is still non-trivial, but it could be due to only a handful of things: MF's belts might account for an extra 15 minutes of waiting time per guest all by itself.

What's really the most interesting is that the *average* guest only rides five things per admission!
*** Edited 6/1/2006 6:06:50 PM UTC by Brian Noble***

Maggie at number 1? Wow i expected MF to be 1 on the list.
*** Edited 6/1/2006 6:11:24 PM UTC by magnum_shawn***

TTD is sinking too! said:
Walt, if you had anything to do with that update, thanks!

Nope, I had nothing to do with it. Just passing along the update.

Brian, since CP had the data in nice tables, it was easy to paste everything into a spreadsheet.

The OVERALL ridership (summing everything together) is down from 37.6 million rides (1998) to 30.8 million (2005.) That's an 18% drop.

When you look at individual coasters, it's often 20-30%, due to the reasons you mentioned. Still the 18% drop is interesting, as I don't think attendance has dropped that much (maybe it has?)

BTW, I grabbed all of the ridership data, not just the coaster data. Maybe that's why our numbers are different? Adding all of the ridership numbers together for 2005 gives 30,825,132 rides, not 15 million. Where did your number come from?

At 3.1 million admissions, the average person rides closer to 10 things per visit, at least according to the ridership data Cedar Point published. That seems more realistic to me.

Brian Noble said:
Attendance and capacity. Capacity has increased: in 8 years, they've added Camp Snoopy, MF, WT, TTD, and maXair. So, ridership on individual rides should be dropping in that time if attendance is flat.

I don't know if that's true unless the total capacity exceeds the number of guests in the park at any given time. On slow days, sure, but not during the rest of the year. Not only that, but the season is weeks longer, and those weekends continue to set records year after year.

Dumb question maybe, but where on CP's site is this information?

*** Edited 6/1/2006 6:48:56 PM UTC by Gomez***

On each individual rides page.

Sorry, my numbers were taken from earlier in the thread, and they are not total for the park---just summed across those rides listed. 10 things on average does sound about right (and maybe even a bit high) to me.

I don't know if that's true unless the total capacity exceeds the number of guests in the park at any given time.

I think it still helps over the course of the year, if only for mornings and evenings each day, where the park is not at capacity. But you are right: when guest demand outstrips capacity, increasing capacity only decreases queueing time at individual rides, it does not lower ridership counts.

Wow, Gemini is down a million from 10 years ago. That's a lot of rides.

TTD is sinking too! said:

The OVERALL ridership (summing everything together) is down from 37.6 million rides (1998) to 30.8 million (2005.) That's an 18% drop.

I haven't confirmed your math yet, but those numbers to me are STAGGERING - especially considering they've added several MAJOR attractions since then including MF, Wicked Twister, and Dragster, which count for an additional 3.5 million or so on their own. Maxair would count for sever hundred thousand more.

Before today, I've only been basing my agruments (of an efficiency decline) on what I've seen/felt at the park (admittedly I'm going to notice more than the GP) since 2001 and what I've quantified based on the numbers of the top 10 or so rides that have been put on the website every year.

But now we have the numbers in front of us. At least no one can tell me I was imagining it now. Now that it's out there in open air, it's hard for the park to ignore too. I hope it will cause some people to pull their heads out of the sand.

Sand? Are you sure it was sand?

MrScott

MDOmnis, to be fair, it does NOT include popular attractions like White Water Landing, which have since been removed but no longer appear on their website. In fact, there are a number of rides which are not included in the data (I think only 40 or so had ridership numbers.)

Still, all the major ones are there, and I suspect there's been a substantial (real) drop in ridership. Having been a "regular" at the park during the last decade, it just "feels" like the cycle times have slowed way down, and they don't move people through like they used to.

"Safety" changes (although many of us agree these generally don't make the rides safer) have played a role, as have staff reductions (am I imagining this, or do they hire fewer seasonals now?), operational changes, etc.

I remember the way Gemini "used" to operate, and the "pre-seatbelt-fiasco" Millennium Force cycle times, and "pre-seat-belt" Corkscrew intervals. To see the park in operation now is frustrating. Don't get me wrong, it's still a great park, but not like it used to be. I'm concerned that the Paramount purchase will divert even more focus away from Cedar Point (and probably result in even more "cost savings" efforts...)