GateKeeper close to 1 million riders

That's awesome how it's only July and it's already close to the 1 million mark. This thing is definitely a people eater!

http://coaster-net.com/news/2159-milestone-at-the-gate/

It certainly helps ridership that it hasn't had any significant downtime and has a good capacity. It would be an interesting study if we had good ridership 1st year numbers for all the coasters that Cedar Point has opened since Magnum in '89.

Plus with an early open/media day, front of park placement, new ride, ect. it's ganna be popular and get this many riders. Plus it eats people like no other lol

The purple people eater begs to differ.

DSShives said:
It would be an interesting study if we had good ridership 1st year numbers for all the coasters that Cedar Point has opened since Magnum in '89.

This is the best I can do. These numbers were from the CP website when they used to publish them.
http://rollercoasterfreak.com/Cedar_Point/Ridership.bmp

Any idea when the magic number will hit this weekend next week?

Great chart Jason. Interesting the close relationship that Gemini and the CP&LE have. 1998 was an interesting year. Most rides had a significant bump in ridership that year with the opening of Power Tower. Rides didn't get that kind of bump in 2000 when Millennium Force opened up which you would assume would drive attendance more.

I could spend all day looking at and analyzing numbers.

I feel like GK was the perfect addition for the park this year. We were in need of another low maintenance people eater, and GK has filled this spot. I love the ride which make it a win-win situation IMO, but even if you don't like it all that much, you should at least appreciate how many people this thing chugs through.

It certainly helps ridership that it hasn't had any significant downtime and has a good capacity.

Another way of saying this is...

It certainly helps ridership that it's a B & M.

Ridership has almost nothing to do with what the new ride is for the year and almost everything to do with how efficient the ride is and how good the crew is. 2001 Magnum was a low attendance year (only about 3.1 million) and no new ride and it was the third or fourth highest year ever for Magnum at 2.13 million. We had a very good crew. Same thing in 2004 even though we had almost no riders first thing in the morning and later at night (2.08 million). The highest year was not 1989. I believe it was 1993 and was something like 2.21 million. The majority of the first two decades are very close and all right around 2 million. I'd be surprised if they come close to that again though with the loose article bins and standing on dots, etc.

I agree GK is a great addition and I'm happy to see another ride capable of giving 2 million rides a year and moving the line along. MF, WT, Dragster, and Maverick are all less than stellar in the capacity department, although still better than what you see at a lot of other parks.

Agreed. Whether the line is five minutes for five hours, the ride (and crew) can only physically move so many people per hour. The only real variable is how long the line is at closing time, but the material effect on ridership in a 12-hour+ operating day is negligible.

I might also point out that a ride's mechanical status factors in, which could be related to the ride's age. It's no surprise that maintenance costs increase over time for most rides. There have been years for both Maxair and Mean Streak when they have closed early for the season to do maintenance. For much of this, the maintenance crew can plan ahead and avoid downtime by doing proper preventative maintenance. And then you have Dragster which had a bad first couple of years due to poor engineering.