Geauga Lake letter on Website

Rihard 2000 said:
"I underestimated the power of the animals that Sea World and (Six Flags) had".
Cedar Fair CEO Dick Kinzel - August 2, 2005

"I underestimated the power of the rides and shows that Geauga Lake had".
Former Cedar Fair CEO Dick Kinzel - August 3, 2008

Fire Kinzel!!!11!1!!

Jason Hammond said:

CPboy77 said:
Why not add more waterpark to te ride side?

Because there is more than enough land that they havn't even used still left from what was once Sea World.

I think you all are missing something here. We are talking about Cedar Fair here. They have something up their sleeves here.

They said that the waterpark part is popular and making money. Thus this lead me to think they are going to expand the waterpark to make it the biggest and best waterpark.

Why not make it a year long business for them by adding an indoor waterpark such as Castaway Bay resort to the ride side? This makes so much sense! The indoor waterparks are a booming business! I can see them doing this in a heart beat!

This will bring the people back to that area again...

flip_my_chips said:
The closure of Geauga Lake's amusement side opens the floor for alot of questions about the future of this park, as well as Cedar Point.

Pertaining to GL, I am curious to see if/how the park gets rebranded. Since it is now just the waterpark, I suppose Cedar Fair will find a way to drop the "&" from "Geauga Lake & Wildwater Kingdom." My guess is GL will become something along the lines of "GL's Wildwater Kingdom" or "Wildwater Kingdom at GL".

I am also curious as to where the rides and attractions will be moved to, what the land will be used for in the future (expansion, subdivision, open space, etc?), and what will be done for longterm employees of the park who intended on working there for future seasons if the park had not closed (priority in regards to employment at other CF parks?).

As for Cedar Point, I am wondering how attendance will be affected and if any GL rides will be added in order to keep some of the attractions in northern Ohio.

Another point (I know it's alot of questions) I'd like to raise concerns the future of Soak City. Wildwater Kingdom is newer and closer to Cleveland, and if expanded further, may reduce admissions to SC. Also, with all the improvements to Wildwater Kingdom I'd have to wonder how long it will be until SC is due for a facelift.

Edited for spelling.
*** Edited 9/21/2007 11:00:56 PM UTC by flip_my_chips***

Yeah I agree with you about SC. I don't see them keeping SC much longer esp if they are expanding the Wildwater Kingdom as I think they are going to do. They can put another ride in that area where SC is located at.

Ok, can we have reason enter the conversation here? Please?

Soak City was built PRIMARILY to encourage hotel/campground guests to stay an extra night making it a true multi-day resort experience. Nothing that happened yesterday changed that.

The only way Soak City goes is if they tear down the hotels and Lighthouse Point. THAT ain't gonna happen.

Soak City will be there for a long, long time.

Chief Wahoo said:
Ok, can we have reason enter the conversation here? Please?

Soak City was built PRIMARILY to encourage hotel/campground guests to stay an extra night making it a true multi-day resort experience. Nothing that happened yesterday changed that.

The only way Soak City goes is if they tear down the hotels and Lighthouse Point. THAT ain't gonna happen.

Soak City will be there for a long, long time.

You think that... With all of those indoor waterparks popping up plus with Castaway Bay. Why there need Soak City? Plus if they expand WildWater they don't SC to compete with them... Just my thoughts!

Sorry that my reply is a little late in this post, i have been very busy.

Today, when I saw that GL (ride-side) was closing for good, my heart just totally dropped. I didn't know how to react. I moved to philadelphia 6 years ago. I kept putting off a trip back to cleveland due to work .My plan was to hit GL and CP with my best friend, a tradition for 20 years with us. If I had known about this, i would have gotten there this year. I would have MADE the time.

I just can't believe that I will never ride a coaster there ever again. I do not want to sound wimpy, but the more I think about it, the more I feel like crying. I have TOO many memories, good and bad, at GL.

GregSS....I'm going to try another approach.

There are 187 rooms at Sandcastle, over 600 at Breakers plus the campground and the Lighthouse Point cabins. Now, Cedar Point can close Soak City and watch those thousands of guests drive off property each day to spend their money at someone else's water park (b/c they cannot be accommodated at Castaway Bay). Better yet, they can drive an hour and a half plus to go to Wildwater Kingdom.

-OR-

They can leave Soak City open so that the resort guests can continue to pay for two night packages that include Soak City, pay full price during the bulk of the summer, etc.

Which move do you think would be best?

SC isn't going anywhere. Chief hit the reasons why.

An indoor waterpark, while nice in the winter (especially in Northern Ohio) doesn't compete with the outdoors during July and August. There's nothing like being out in the sun and NOT having that stale chlorine air hanging around.

Removing Soak City would be a death knell for the resorts and possibly Cedar Point. Soak City draws quite a few guests in its own right.

Article from front page of today's edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

*** Edited 9/22/2007 11:13:16 PM UTC by Jason Hammond***

I wonder how many people are in Christina's boat. Loved the park, hate seeing it go, but haven't gone to the park over the last few years. People don't want it to go, but didn't go before so what's the difference.

I'd be curious to find out when this decision was finalized.

Many people are upset and think CF should have announced this at the beginning of the year but it hardly seems reasonable the decision to close was made that early.

It's hard to believe they would purposely let what would have probably been a short-term cash windfall pass.

GregSS, the Detroit area is a big drawing area for Soak City. Not everyone would be willing to travel even farther for WWK.

gener, several times you mentioned that the park could be profitable if they just returned it to the old days. This assumes that all other things have remained a constant and we know that's not true; Gas prices, family structures, family events, corporate changes, family income, just to name a few.

It's not to say this move was the only way to return the park to profitability, but spending more money to find out when you are pretty certain of a safer alternative isn't smart business.

This announcement hit me quite hard, and it really took a bit of time before I could post something the least bit coherent.

What a loss. What a loss for the Cleveland market, what a loss for the families who visited be for, and what a loss for the amusement park loving community.

While others threw the idea of Geauga Lake only being a water park around in the past, I never dreamed it would be the case. I had faith in Cedar Fair. Minor improvements such as paint jobs on this coaster and that, rehabilitation on numerous rides, and the apparent interest of Cedar Fair in the park led me to believe it was here to stay.

The removals started with Mr. Hyde's Nasty Fall, then X-Flight and Steel Venom, then Belaire Express. That, combined with the remains of Hurricane Harbor for numerous years, convinces me that Cedar Fair never had any interest in this park except for closing it.

The park had decent attendance, and was doing much better this year. It had more attendance than Michigan's Adventure, significantly so, and yet somehow that park is still in the chain. The lack of interest in Geauga Lake, combined with its sudden closure, really proves that all CF wanted to do was make people like the park enough so that a slow and painful shut down could be done without losing too much money.

This makes me question CF. It shows that they are completely unconcerned with the happiness of their guests, untrustworthy when it comes to public communication, and yes, nothing more than a business.

The thing that bothers me the most is that they lied to us every step of the way with their constant "We have no intention of closing.... We have no intention of removing... At this point in time X-Flight has no plans for revoal". Come on Cedar Fair, stop lying. That is so Six Flags... The public deserved to know the future, or lack there of, of Geauga Lake before the park closed for the season.

Its extremely, extremely disappointing, and still this feels like a dream.
_________________

Also, I don't know how successful it will be just as a water park. I think they really should have had a compromise. Maybe toss out Raging Wolf Bobs and Head Spin and some flats and Grizzly Run, but I think a small amusement park with a water park would have had more success.

In any event, if you feel like Cedar Fair handled Geauga Lake wrong, please check out my petition. Please be aware this is more to raise awareness with CF that numerous actions they took weren't at the level you would hope from CF.

www.ipetitions.com/petition/geaugalake

Will Cedar Point be staying the same way now with the Park, Soak City, and the Resorts; which has been the "TOP #10th BEST Park in the WORLD!!"?

Will Cedar Point stay together as it is, because it has been the TOP 10th BEST PARK in the WORLD

What I tried to post was the Zoning and building Director for Aurora, OH. Post your concerns with him at wehrenbergr@auroraoh.com . Anything that goes must get local approval. I recall recently that there was a park that was acquired by a city recently to protect it from greedy developers/owners, but can't remember where/which park.

I don't know that they can deny approval for that just because they want them to stay.... Since the park is closing wouldn't they have to get approval to remove things?

The problem with the Aurora thing is that most of the park is in Bainbridge in Geauga County. Just about anything left worth saving (including more than half of the Big Dipper) isn't in Aurora. ANd i can tell you this, Bainbridge wasn't too friendly with the park for years. I can't imagine that they are shedding any tears over the anouncement.

I'm not saying that they need to go back to 1999 prices. I'm saying that they don't need to pull a 15 food cost on all food items in the park. Really, should a dog cost nearly three dollars? Or a subway type sandwich (veggie) with a small bag of chips cost NINE dollars???? Really, do you think that a family of four who went to the park and waiting in a long line with slow food service (because that's one of the things they didn't fix from the SF years) and dropped fifty bucks so that everyone could have a dog and fies and a drink (all the while the portions aren't very big) and then want to go back to the park again?

Yes foods are probabably the single largest revenue stream outside the gate. But it's also a big factor in how people rate their visit. Use it to enhance their visit, not squeeze every dime because they can. And i feel the same way about CP, although they CAN'T physically handle the volume needed if they lower prices too far (hence the reason they didn't renew the cotton candy quater deal, I would bet a lot that they just couldn't supply the demand). But i digress, you want people to come, you make the gate prices reasonable; you want to make people come back and/or tell others that they should go too? You make the food, games and souvineers reasonable. And they didn't even try.

"ener, several times you mentioned that the park could be profitable if they just returned it to the old days. This assumes that all other things have remained a constant and we know that's not true; Gas prices, family structures, family events, corporate changes, family income, just to name a few."

If i said the old days i misspoke, they need to go back to the old model of operating the park. 1)company picnics, 2)season passes 3)affordable alternative to CP/the Jake/or other summer venues.

But let's look at this list. Gas prices increasing helps local parks and their attendance. Generally they draw from their home market better because people don't want to travel (see financial success for the park in the early '90s recession). Income in the region is doing generally the same as it was ten years ago. While the city of Cleveland gets all the fun press about being now the fourth poorest city in the country you should notice that the county isn't anywhere on the pooerst county list. While I would never try to blow the smoke up your posterior and say that the region is strong economically, it isn't all gloom and doom either. There is still strong spending power in one of the fifteen largest markets in the country. Family structure is something to consider since that a full three quarters of households do not have children, but not all guests bring children. And without looking at the actual stats i would wager that there are at least 400,000 families within GLP's market.

The thing is that the Cleveland/NEO market (from GLPs point of view) has been rather static when compared to others over the past ten years.

But after all that I am more convinced than ever that this was their plan from day one. It goes back to this, if they were certain that they couldn't drive attendance back up by providing a good product (which this year they did not) they needed to make the park the appropriate size to operate for a 700k park. Since they made no move to make any serious investment in GLP (it was more like a disinvestment in GLP) they were setting the stage for this from the begining. It's sad that they would rather take away a long standing successful park and run it the final feet into the ground.

I hope that someone someway can put together something to get it out of the hands of the benedict arnolds in Sandusky.

What I find totally funny in all of this situation, is that 8 years ago, when the park was still little ol' Geauga Lake, when "The Wave" was still there, and the waterpark was in its proper place, no one gave 2 ****s about the place.

You know, back in the days of the company picnics, and the "bring a carload of people for $X with this coupon" specials, and the flyers, and the 3 "piddly" roller coasters they had, no one talked about it.

As soon as it became Six Flags Ohio, and started going through all these changes, enthusiasts started taking more interest. Now, it's like everyone cared all along, but, truth be told, if Six Flags had never built that place to hell caused the chaos they did, there wouldn't be nearly as much of an uproar. Mind you, I'm not talking about locals and people from the area, but now you've got people from the west coast screaming about how they have CF, and they wouldn't have paid a visit, had it not been for the addition of 4 million coasters in 2000.

-Josh

Well, RIP GL.
Now, (ahem) moving ahead....I believe this means a log flume may soon be looking for a new home....
Does anyone know a midwestern "thrill ride" park that could use a log flume for some non-drenching, old fashioned family entertainment?

If CP management really reads this board, I hereby promise to take back every single negative thing I've ever said about the Big Dick, his cat Magnum AND his wife the train, to stop writing weekly letters to St. John Lassiter and Bob Iger begging for Walt Disney Enterprises to buy out Cedar Fair, to remove permanently all of my "illegally filmed" youtube videos, to stop giving impromptu presentations on the saga of Vertigo to gullible Michigan tourists in the park and to buy my 2008 maxx plus pass RIGHT D-MN NOW if he promises to plunk that log ride down someplace on the peninsula.

Do we have a deal???