Gold Pass - Justification

The next new coaster that Cedar Point needs to be a people eater and stellar.

Steel Vengeance is stellar, however it fails miserably at it's capacity. Touted as a ride that could accommodate 1,200 people per hour, has never come close to that number in its 2 first years of operations.

Gemini constructed in 1978 was stellar and could accommodate 4,000 guests per hour. I am sure it didn't hit that number that often, but I conjure up it hit up to 3,000 quests per hour regularly.

6 train ops rule.

^ 6 train ops with proper block placement rule. That’s what needs to be kept in mind when building a ride for a high capacity park.

This is something I wholeheartedly agree with. Whatever is built would be best to have a "dueling" or racing aspect. Especially if it's a high quality family type of ride. I could see the park installing some sort of spinner or mouse type of ride with double tracks. Capacity should already have been very important, especially since, as has been mentioned numerous times, the existing rides have had their capacity neutered by seatbelts, air gates, and procedures over the years.

I understand doing the conversion on Mean Streak because you get a fantastic bang for the buck. Gatekeeper is a people eater, the Rougarou conversion helps capacity on that ride (not that it really needed it much), and even Valravn does pretty well. Honestly, I'm surprised Valravn wasn't designed with a separate unload station, and I think that if at all possible, future installations should include that feature, with the ability to load and unload at the load station if there is a short staff situation. I just hope that future installations have capacity as a major focus, since it appears that is going to become ever more important moving forward.

Jeff said:

To be fair, when you worked there those rides were packed open to close every day, and there were at least six fewer big coasters with the same attendance.

Yea I believe I said something alluding to that. :) Let's forget about my obsession with the old Magnum vs. Raptor days though since they're not relevant today. Steel Vengeance is certainly packed from the moment it opens through closing every day though, but when they're doing 600 riders per hour because of their crazy pouches, handstamps, metal detectors, row assigning, double checking whacked out procedures, they literally are giving less rides than Mean Streak did in its final seasons. I can't imagine that's what the powers that be had in mind when they spent tens of millions on that thing. There was some shared blame the beginning of last year with RMC/Irvine Ondrey I'd say, but at this point, it seems like the the ride itself should be capable of doing much better and it's limited by the way they operate it.

It doesn't even seem like the metal detectors and row assigning have anything to do with the throughput. You're just standing around before and after the metal detectors and trains aren't going out with empty seats. It's all on the loose article pouches and restraint checking.

Steel Vengeance should adopt the Golden Ticket Award-winning loose article system found on Yukon Striker.

And what is an Irvine Ondrey?

Yukon Striker moving loose articles bins are amazing. Unless a jerk jams a drink in their and it spills. There’s a sink for a reason!!

Since the debut of SV, I've wondered what prevented them from making a dual station, using the transfer area also as the load station, and the other area for unload. Hopefully there are reasons beyond $ for that decision, since at this point even a small increase in throughput would be quite welcome.

Shane Denmark said:

And what is an Irvine Ondrey?

Ride control system contractor

^^ If any ride needs an unload station, it's SV. Seems to take at least 15-20 seconds for the lap bars to rise, people to get their stuff out of the pouches,and exit the train. The few times I've rode this year there the 3rd train would double stack on most occasions. That 20 seconds could be 200 PPH more easily.

In regards to the $99 gold pass, it seems strange that they didn't price the new pass closer to the cost of the platinum pass to persuade people into buying the more expensive pass. For me, the $99 price point has the opposite effect. I'm now more interested in saving money and purchasing gold passes for our family instead of repurchasing the platinum pass (a loss to the corporation of over $300). Although I understand the psychology of using $99, it seems that a heavily marketed gold pass at $135 or $145 could have allowed the park to market its platinum passes as considerable added value for a relatively small increase in cost. With that said, $99 seems like the "right" price as it's fairly typical to find tickets mid-season for $42.

We downgraded to gold from platinum, which we had since 2008. In anticipation of the heavy crowds next year we did add on All Season Fast Lane which was also discounted over last years price. Being from Wisconsin we always stay in the cottages or Breakers, so the only benefit we are losing is other CF parks, but we haven't hit any other CF parks since Banshee at KI.

If the $99 price point was the goal, they could have just made it a season pass for CP and CPS, and it still would have been a hell of a deal. Throwing in free parking and some ERT made it an unreasonably good deal that also had the effect of pushing Platinum Pass holders either to Gold or out of the park entirely. Which seems... unwise.

This might be a stretch but maybe the strategy here is to force sales for one of the FL options. If the standard becomes a 2.5hr standby and 45min FL+ wait for Maverick and they can still keep the standby guests rolling in with cheap admission well then they won and made a ton more money.

That people will still enter the causeway when it is backed up to the Thirsty Pony and beyond may prove them right. As far as the resort guests, FL+ may just become part of the standard package.

However to make this work they will need FL+ food and drink lines as well, IMO and that could be complex.

The financial success of Gold pass is tenuous. CP is letting people get the rest of 2019 free and free parking. They are only actually getting any revenue in 2019 if people buy food or merchandise. Also, they are surely canabilizing haunt sales as there are many people that only go once a year for haunt, Haunt ticket are $45 and you have to pay parking. for $99 you get haunt in 2019 and 2020 with parking if you're a haunt only person. Cedar Fair totally under priced the CP Gold Pass..The flagship park has a cheaper gold pass than KI $110, KD $102, Carowinds $107, Dorney $117, WOF $105, Knotts $120 On top of the low price in previous years new pass holders didn't get the rest of 2019, they got 1 free entry & then a discount price beyond that. Knotts, CP, MIA were the parks that ran that way. Now only Knotts doesn't give new passes the rest of the remaining season free. CP is going to lower their per caps and they are pissing off loyal customers by turning the park into the overcrowded zoo like Six Flags is like in the fall when they give new pass holders the rest of the season free and also activate the dining pass and flash lane season products for the rest of the remaining season. Worst of all potentially is the $99 people are only buying for the bargain, if CP goes back to an appropriate price most aren't staying, but CP has meanwhile still ticked off many long term pass holders with the gimmick anniversary pricing. Worst yet could be if CP pulled the same under pricing in 2021 passes, there will be an exodus of platinum people. Thus, trading $99 bargain people for $200 platinum people who are also the people that buy dining pass, drink pass, etc...at a good rate. A person price sensitive that only bought b/c $99 isn;t going to spend as much on season dining as their pass cost. They should have kept CP like Knotts while adding the Gold Pass for the 1st time. CP actually prices normally at or more than Knotts historically. CP seems just wanted to put up a big attendance number for 2020 anniversary, they may do it but they also may piss off their most loyal customers for transient customers.

I am not a M&A finance guy, but could it also be a short term strategy to boost profits/unit price in order to fend off SIX? I know the SIX offer became public after the Gold announcement but surely management knew what was going down long before that. Deal with the fallout later.

Cargo Shorts said:

I am not a M&A finance guy, but could it also be a short term strategy to boost profits/unit price in order to fend off SIX? I know the SIX offer became public after the Gold announcement but surely management knew what was going down long before that. Deal with the fallout later.

SF never head the money to buy CF. The offer which they seem to claim wasn't really an offer from their comments on the earnings conf call, was a low ball. $70 SF has their own problems, the stock is down 30% YTD and they have been getting hammered by analyst on lack of organic growth for almost 2 years. Analyst aren't buying what Reid Anderson is selling. They missed earnings 2 quarters in a row and 3 of the last 5. The membership transition isn't going as great as they hoped or up to wall street expectations. They increased attendance by 400K last quarter and increased revenue by just 1M. SF can put out a press release headline it's a record revenue but 1M increase is paltry and Net Income actually was down 5M. The stock went down 12% yesterday and another 2 % today. CF doesn't have to fend off anything from SF, they have their house in disorder at the moment. Cedar Fair is much more highly regarded by Wall Street right now, CF not only is producing organic growth from legacy parks, but has new assets coming on line with hotels at 2 parks coming, Sawmill creek revamp, the new sports complex opening and Schlitterbahn is an immediate profit producer that can be amplified.

Cargo Shorts said:

That people will still enter the causeway when it is backed up to the Thirsty Pony and beyond may prove them right. As far as the resort guests, FL+ may just become part of the standard package.

Some people entering the Causeway when it's backed up that far likely would not have committed to doing so had they known, when planning their trip, how busy it would be. Many of those people planned that trip in advance, and had traveled a couple hours to the park before seeing how busy it was. And hell, they probably were in some amount of denial even then.

• At Thirsty Pony: "No way this can be the line to get into the parking lot, must be an accident ahead or something."
• At 5th Street: "Wow, the accident up ahead must be pretty bad, since cars are backed up on that road to our left."
• At 1st Street: "Man, I can't believe how bad this traffic is! You guys think this could just be the line to get into the park? Nah, there has to be an accident or something."

And so on.

At a certain point the supply-demand curve will do it's thing and crowd levels will normalize. So, to me, the increased crowd levels normally wouldn't be a big deal, except for the fact that they've hurt gate integrity in the process, perhaps bringing in folks who spend less freely while driving away more free-spending guests looking for a more premium experience. Or as I like to call it using a phrase I totally came up with on my own - people looking for a Best Day Experience.

I don't see any of this being a problem tomorrow (Saturday) as Sandusky has 100% chance of rain and they are calling for an inch and a half of it. If not for the draconian cancellation policy I would be canceling my cabin reservations. I say that tongue in cheek, but it does suck.

So perhaps the problem is not too many gold passes or not enough toll booths and parking, but just that there's not been enough rain!

I know you stated that was a tongue in cheek comment but if you were considering cancelling and didn't want to forfeit any deposit you could reschedule your reservation to next year without penalty.