Did Announcement Theory (holding off) work?

This is aimed more towards Jeff, and others who have been following the park longer than most of us. I began following the park and GTTP in the summer of 2000, I believe, so I'm not entirely sure how to answer this...anyway...

We began talking about the announcement in August, saying the pros/ cons of having the park wait for the announcement, and dealing with Sept 11, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.

Well, the park obviously waited, and from what I have heard, and read, the park's reasoning was to generate more interest and suspense for the ride.

The question I have is... do you think it worked? I mean, was there more "buzz", threads, newspaper articles, rumors, gossip, etc, than for previous rides. Also, would it have been your strategy to hold off, if you ran the park?

I think PKI gained tremendous "talk" when the little details on Tomb Raider were announced, and was wondering what everyone else thought about CP's decision to wait.

-Mikey

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Let your mind go...and your body will follow...

Well we're posting here 5 months after the track appeared, that should answer everyones questions..

In some ways yes, in some ways no. Holding off on the announcement definitely sparked a lot of conversation, speculation, and coverage. The "buzz" was certainly exciting... well, until we started getting a bunch of stupid posts around here ;) . But in another sense, you can't deny the fact that at least some of the shock of the announcement has been taken away by the delay. I know that is the case for all of us here, and while many may argue that the GP doesn't know anything about it and will be as shocked as they would have been several months ago, you have to look at the fact that it got more than enough news coverage to give a lot of people who normally wouldn't know a thing about it a good idea on the magnitude of the ride. The coolest thing about MF's announcement is that it was so shocking... this may not reach up to that level.

Nonetheless, people will still be shocked, and it was an interesting decision to delay the announcement... the question is will they do it again next time? ;)

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L-TH-TW-B... "Meh"
*** This post was edited by Majin Heero 1/8/2003 5:45:10 PM ***

It certainly made the off-season seem a lot shorter as compared to the dreaded "Millennium Force Off-Season From Hell."

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2003 - Ride Operations

Shorter? Theres still 5 months left spanky!

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http://www.msu.edu/~armbrus9/cp.html
I Met Brittney! Shes SOOOOOO Cool!

4 months, Jeffrey. It's shorter than you thought by a month already!

Well, c'mon... Millennium Force was announced much earlier. We had the facts, and all we had to do was wait.

At least this time around there was speculation and a record number of trolls "in the know" to keep us occupied for the majority of the winter.

And that's Mr. Spanky to you. ;)

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2003 - Ride Operations

I think the delayed announcement has something to do with the LTB design. No one that has been following this closely is going to complain about the design very much tomorrow because the band aid has been pulled off slowly.

I was at the park one of the last weekends of August and it was packed. The amount of buzz generated if they had announced it then would have been huge. Not only would the media coverage have been huge, but word of mouth would have spread like wild fire ensuring everyone knew about it. They could have even started selling season passes the day of the announcement to get the maximum effect of the announcement. I think there might have been quite a few impulse buyers.

Besides coaster enthusiasts and the people who get the local papers, who knows about the ride? Even in the Detroit area, 99% of the people do not know about it. Although i have done my part in letting the secret out.

I know the ride will still be huge and people will know about it by tomorrow night, but i think to maximize the ROI, return on investment, which Cedar Fair loves to talk about, a summer 2002 announcement would have been better. Thats just my two cents though, maybe I am wrong.

I think it was a good idea to the point that people were driven to obsess over it and really devote so much time going crazy over every little thing....

but I think waiting THIS long kinda killed a lot of people too (not literally =P ) but I, for one, just really dont care about it much anymore =/

My feeling is that marketing is a lot like investing. You can't make up for lost time to increase your return on investment. These are four months that they were not building brand recognition.

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Jeff
Webmaster/GTTP - Sillynonsense.com
DELETED!

I say that it did becasue on Fox news toledo the PR Manager stated that they have been getting tons of calls, voice mail, and emails from all over the world wanting to know what this ride is.

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Someone help me i'm in denial about Project 2003.