Future for Castaway Bay

I got to thinking how it would be nice to venture to an indoor water park this winter, and this sort of led me to general thoughts on Castaway Bay.

I have never been there, mainly because the place looks smaller than such competitors as Splash Lagoon and Kalahari. With Kalahari's recent expansion, Castaway Bay will have more competition than ever, and correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think Castaway Bay's results have been stellar thus far.

What can Castaway do to stay ahead in the future? I thought when CF originally announced the project they said they would treat it as they do all their other properties and add things every two or three years. With the park exactly three years old, and nothing new slated for 2008, it seems they aren't too eager to meet the recent expansions of Great Wolf Lodge, Kalahari, and even Splash Lagoon.

I was thinking it may be interesting to hear some people's thoughts as to what may end up happening in the future in order for the park to stay ahead of big rival Kalahari (and others). Plus, I was wondering if anyone who has visited Castaway Bay would be kind enough to post some thoughts of the place.

I think the biggest problem when it comes to expansion is that there really isn't too much, if any, existing room to expand on. The thing that really blocks expansion are the very nice condos and apartments sitting right behind the hotel complex. As far as I can see from looking at Live Local, there is one small area that would be available for expansion at the moment right behind the current waterpark building. The problem with that is zoning. If I remember right, there would have to be some rezoning done if an expansion were to take place.

I think Castaway Bay is only working right now as a CP resort that offers a indoor waterpark, outdoor waterpark (Soak City, and outdoor amusement park in one package. None of the others can offer that.

I went there last year, I thought it was a great place. It wasn't very busy, midweek winter time.

The waterpark looks like it could get pretty packed on weekends. Nothing to bad though.

We're going to try kalahari in a bit. The kids are getting bigger now and ready for some good thrills.

I stayed at Castaway Bay and I think it is a lot nicer then Hotel Breakers. The rooms are nicer, the bathrooms are nicer, the screened in porches rule.

They should add a flowrider like Kalahari did. Plus doesn't Kalahari have animals in the summer months at the hotel?

With the new CP platinum pass I think many regulars who stayed in hotels will now stay in a different hotel because they have the early entry perk already.

Castaway Bay is very nice and we were able to get a room on short notice for just over $100. I think we got a great value compared to staying at Breakers Express.

It was very dead when I went CB. The parking lot was pretty full, and it was a Saturday night during Halloweekends, but we stayed at the park till it closed, went out to check in to our hotel, and get food. The hotel was absolutely dead. Hotel Breakers usually has people up and about still in to the late night. But everyone was pretty quiet. The amount of themeing they put in to CB is nice and you can tell they really invested some $ in to the place.

Kalahari...never been there. But I want to stay there :)

When push comes to shove and your looking for CP resorts in the low $100 range and Bon-Air's are sold out, Breakers Express is full, then I stay in CB. But if I was a family I would probably take my children to CB because they do have a plethora of activities for children. *** Edited 11/11/2007 4:42:40 PM UTC by factory81***

I've never been to Castaway or Kalahari, but I've been to Great Wolf Lodge. It's actually a really nice place and has great theme. I do plan on going to Kalahari, but I heard the rooms are not as nice.

About Castaway, when we pass it, it looks like there would be no room for any expanding to happen. Who knows, though.

One rainy June afternoon this past season three of my friends and I left the park and went to Castaway Bay as a relief from the rain. We were all season pass holders so admission was only $15 IIRC. We had a really good time, it was a nice place. I'm thinking of getting together some people to check out Kalahari this off season.

As a CP resort during the season, I think they need to keep the costs down below Kalihari and Great Wolf...have package deals that encourage occupancy. As for the off-season, I think they need three things in an expansion. I would offer an attraction that no indoor park has, like a racing proslide or family raft adventure (after all, we are marketing to families). Second, I thought the slides were too aggressive and fast for families, plus they were a tad rough on the bare back. They need some innertube slides that are just fun, not thrilling. Third, I would put in a much bigger game area, offering some unique items.

I do not think they can expand as Kalihari did, so what they do add needs to be special.

I've been to Great Wolf and Kalahari and both are great! I've actually never been to Castaway Bay, but I've been inside and it seems nice.

Great Wolf had an expansion? Castaway Bay, at least during the summer will do great because of it being right next to the point and the hour early thing. Now during the winter it is going to struggle. Cedar Fair should never of bought this hotel in my eyes. You can't expand.

And Cedar Point is running out of room for new rides.

Vince, have you bothered to look at the land around Castaway Bay? There is very little, if any room to expand. There is a very nice condo/multi-level apartment complex area with parking directly behind the hotel, the access road would have to be completely rerouted, with whatever buildings are on the other side of it bought and the land would likely need to be rezoned. There is, in fact, very little available for any kind of expansion.

You can always expand into the parking lot and build a multi-level parking structure or provide parking across the street in what is now the Friday's overflow lot.
*** Edited 11/12/2007 3:54:30 AM UTC by Pete***

I'm looking now and you're right. But if anyone can/would do it, it's Cedar Point.

What is that huge parking area and building across the street? Is that a hotel?

How much land around there does CF own anyways? I tried searching Erie County's website, but it sucks. I couldn't even find a map that you could click on.

I have a fairly recent zoning map in PDF format, but I can't remember where I went to get it. I don't think that CF owns much more than land where there is already development, except for the open lot right next to Breakers Express.

Well, I finally found the Erie County tax maps online. It looks like Cedar Fair LP and/or Magnum Management Corp owns most of the land on both sides of Cedar Point Drive, from Cleveland Road all the way to the park (minus that hotel right on the corner). I'm assuming Magnum Management Corp is also related to Cedar Fair in some way since Breakers Express resides on land owned by them. Not to mention its named after one of their coasters. LOL!!

As far as the land around Castaway Bay goes, they own the smallish lot diagonally across Cleveland Road (the one without a building on it). They also own the entire marina (including the water in front of the condos to the North) and the huge crescent shaped parking lot between Castaway Bay and the condos. They bought the parking lot in 2003 for $1.5 million which appears to have been purchased with two other parcels as a "package".

Hmmm...well, that is something I didn't know...

That makes things a bit more plausible for an expansion of Castaway Bay. I am curious about why they have the random plot of land across the road from CB though...

Tim, you didn't happen to see how far off to the side of the causeway CP/CF property extends, did you? I decided to do some size comparisons between Universal's City Walk and the land between First and Fifth Street, and a similar sized development could conceivably fit in that area of land, extending about 3 or 4 blocks deep. *** Edited 11/12/2007 8:16:37 AM UTC by BlueStreak64***

All of the employee paychecks were from 'Magnum Management' when I worked there.

Why do they need to expand Castaway Bay? I thought it was pretty neat as-is. Why does everyone think you should just throw money at problems that don't exist?

Well, they own the land Bayside apartments are on, The Commons, the parking lot across the street from The Commons, the pizza place across from McDonald's, Breakers Express, the huge field to the south of Breakers Express and the East side of Cedar Point drive south of McDonald's. Obviously, they own the causeway north of Bayside apartments too.

I'm guessing when they did the expansion of Castaway Bay, they needed additional parking (since they ate a lot of that up for the expansion), so they use that lot across the street. Whenever you build a commercial building, you have to have a specific number of parking spaces based on the SF of your building and its use. For a hotel the size of Castaway Bay, they need all that parking.

Ben, I'm pretty sure people are just commenting on the fact that the local competition keeps expanding. So, they were contemplating on whether or not CB would expand to keep up. They're not saying, "OMG Castaway Bay is going out of business, throw money at the place." They're just looking ahead and hypothesizing.