Halloweekends: How to fix the poor guest experience.

It is my guess that most people were not leaving the park because it would be ridiculous to get back in or find parking. I can say that the re-entry gates by Magnum and Windseeker had no line when I walked through. I cannot speak to the Main Gate though.

Pete nailed it. The single-operator operation on flat rides makes for huge delays in between cycles.

Yes it does; we first experienced this about 6 years ago in an attempt to ride Witch's Wheel. What was assumed to be a quick 5 minute break from coasters became close to 40 minute ordeal. Not exactly a "feel good" experience.

coolkid said:
I get where you are coming from with the basketballs. The park really should give them to people dis-inflated; then have a machine outside the park that would fill them up for 10 cents.

If Cedar Point installed auto-spiels, signs, and a couple of height checks throughout the queues, there wouldn't be a big need for the entrance position as there is now.

My Supervisor and I were talking about how other parks have the dis-inflated basketball prizes. It is so much better that way. It also keeps them from bouncing their basketball on the platform which used to drive me CRAZY!

However, I do not agree with your second statement. Auto-spiels throughout the queues or just at the entrance? Because Auto-spiels will just drive the guests crazy. Once they are in line, they will not want to exit the line when they find out that they can't have their over size Jamaican Banana on this ride. Signs...For example, when I worked on SkyRide, there are 5 signs on the way up to the station that say NO BASKETBALLS and NO LARGE STUFFED ANIMALS. Do you know how many people we couldn't allow to ride because they can't read simple signs? My Supervisor said it best. People don't come to Cedar Point with a brain and don't want to read signs. They come with the mindset as being a mini vacation and want to just enjoy their time without having to read a sign. Which, after working there for a full summer, is 100% true. As for height checks...There is a height stand at the entrance of every ride! I couldn't tell you how many times I have seen a parent measure their child on the height stand at entrance, the kid ends up being too short, they get in line anyways, and then argue with the person at crowd that their child just got off of MaXair and it has the same 52" height requirement.

Having somebody at entrance would be the best solution. If there is a problem at entrance, you have the choice of either contacting the person in controls with the red phone, or simply contacting a Supervisor to come to the ride with the white phone. You can make sure that the family does not waste their time in line when their child is too small to ride, in result, making the Parent Swap system easier for everybody. When the ride goes down for whatever reason, the ride host in controls can contact the host at entrance and tell he/she to close the line and let people know that we are down for mechanical or weather. This will also prevent people knocking over the "This Ride is Currently Closed" sign and pouring into the queues. Finally, having a person at entrance can help the ride hosts on the platform in the long run because of the Large Guests. The person at the entrance should be responsible to make sure all Large Guests try the test seat before coming into the line. It's a lot less embarrassing than being kicked off a ride in front of a loaded platform. Before I worked at Cedar Point, I thought more signs would do more justice. Oh my, I was wrong!

Agree with making Saturdays of H'wknds an upcharge for us passholders - lots of parks do that. I brought a nonpassholder with me, and neither of us would have been there if it cost extra (probably would have picked a Sunday instead.)

We tried every expert trick in the book to avoid the crowds on the 8th. Nothing really worked until late at night. Even Famous Dave's had a meltdown - an hour wait, another hour to get served. Top it off with 75 minutes to get out of the lot and off the peninsula at midnight - yikes, never again.

BayernKurve said:
The fiasco that happens every year on Columbus Day Weekend and other Saturdays when there is great weather is inexcusable from a management team that is equal to the talents of Disney or Universal.

Just got a chance to read this post and that statement made me literally laugh out loud. The management team is equal to the talents of Disney or Universal? Really??? Have you ever experienced Disney or Universal??

BTW -Passholders aren't the ones causing issues -it's people who know the park is going to be packed and choose to go there anyway and then spend incredibly too much time complaining about it. Passholders for the most part know to stay away from the park on an Oct. Sat. and if they do go they accept it for what it is. We sometimes go to Disney World in the summer when we know it's going to be crowded because that is the only time we have to go. We know the crowd levels and plan accordingly. It comes down to having fun and making memories with the people you go with. You choose whether to make the best out of any situation.

I finally took the time to read this thread through, and here is my take.

Sure the weather was perfect and other variables aligned for a massive attendance. But, I've said it for years that the management/marketing/promotions have been doing a less-than-stellar job of balancing attendance.

Why is it that many of us here picked up on the trend that the weekend after Labor Day is completely dead and that Columbus Day weekend is completely packed, yet CP seems to be caught off guard year after year?

I chose the weekend after Labor Day this year, and I was shocked in the completely opposite way of this thread. There wasn't even a full single row of cars in the parking lot. The rides were running empty trains. The games, restaurants, and stands were mostly staffed with no customers all night. I had never seen the park so over-staffed and under-attended. I felt bad for the park, but it was really their own fault.

The weekend after Labor Day was terribly advertised as even being open, and the promotion / event they threw together with a couple days notice for customers could only benefit a handful of locals.

What frustrates me is that CP is making the same mistakes over and over. Why don't they try different things until they find a winning formula?

One idea could be to convert the weekend after Labor Day into an additional Halloweekend, adding a weekend of incredible weather to a killer season for the park.

Now let's think about something to try for Columbus Day weekend... How about the Friday opens at noon; the Sunday extends until midnight; Monday is also added from noon to 9PM. Discount tickets pushed for Friday & Monday. The whole super bonus Columbus Day weekend advertised well. As CP's best weekend all year, I think it could work, and they could really milk it.

Ffej said:
Now let's think about something to try for Columbus Day weekend... How about the Friday opens at noon; the Sunday extends until midnight; Monday is also added from noon to 9PM. Discount tickets pushed for Friday & Monday. The whole super bonus Columbus Day weekend advertised well. As CP's best weekend all year, I think it could work, and they could really milk it.

Try staffing an amusement park with the majority of your employees being a college student living between 30mins to 3 hours away from the park...Some living further. I mean, have you noticed that not every ride, game, food stand, and attraction is open on Fridays? Staffing! College students have class on Friday, and it's already hard enough to staff the rides that are open. Also, seeing that all surrounding local schools don't get out until about 3 o'clock and typical 9-5 jobs don't get off until, well, 5 o'clock...The 6pm opening on Friday is pretty fair IMO. As for staying open later on Sunday, then opening 12pm-9pm (a full Halloweekends Sunday shift) on Monday...Once again, it has to do with staffing. Everybody is back home or at school by this time!

Ffej said:
Why is it that many of us here picked up on the trend that the weekend after Labor Day is completely dead and that Columbus Day weekend is completely packed, yet CP seems to be caught off guard year after year?

Based on what I've read regarding the park's reaction to the crowds Columbus Day weekend, I don't gather that the park was caught off guard at all. In fact, they seemed quite well prepared for the enormous crowd, at least as much as is reasonably possible. It's sort of like the checkout lanes at a store during the holiday shopping season. Even with every checkout lane staffed, there are still going to be lines, and it's not reasonable to build 100 checkout lanes for capacity that is only seen 1 or 2 days a year.

Guests are going to show up when any number of factors align themselves to make such a trip worthwhile. Being a warm, sunny holiday weekend without any home football games (and in fact no football game at all on Sunday) in one of the park's largest markets, is, as Walt mentioned previously, the perfect storm of variables.

One idea could be to convert the weekend after Labor Day into an additional Halloweekend, adding a weekend of incredible weather to a killer season for the park.

The park seems to already be pushing themselves to the max when it comes to getting set up for Halloweekends, and with every new attraction, their "to do" list grows longer. And without extra resources, they're not going to be able to do more in a shorter amount of time, and the only way the park can afford more resources would presumably be to raise gate/pass/parking fees (which, as I've said, is a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned).

How about the Friday opens at noon; the Sunday extends until midnight; Monday is also added from noon to 9PM. Discount tickets pushed for Friday & Monday. The whole super bonus Columbus Day weekend advertised well. As CP's best weekend all year, I think it could work, and they could really milk it.

Again, who's going to run the park? They're relying on college students to a large extent, and Friday and Monday are probably commute days for many of them. It all comes back to resources. If you're willing to pay higher gate/pass/parking fees, then yeah, your solutions make sense. But it's not reasonable to expect the park to do even more with what they have.

Do all you can with what you have: people complain.

Raise prices so you have more to work with: people complain.

There's no way CP was caught "off guard"; that's absurd. If anyone was caught off-guard, it would have to be any guest who expected something different than what they got.

We're talking about one weekend out of the entire calendar year, people. One weekend. The rest of Halloweekends, while busy, doesn't reach these absurd levels.

Ffej said:
Sure the weather was perfect and other variables aligned for a massive attendance. But, I've said it for years that the management/marketing/promotions have been doing a less-than-stellar job of balancing attendance.

What should they do, tell people to stay home? "Hi everybody, it's going to be super nice this weekend, but we'd appreciate it if you just stayed home. We don't really want your money."

Think about that the next time you ride a $25 million roller coaster.

Exactly. Believe it or not, I know some individuals who actually enjoy being at the park on days like that. It becomes a sort of "were you there" type thinking. I have little faith in the notion that many of the people at the park that day actually expected to ride tons of rides, etc...but if it got them out of the house and entertained them, then it served its purpose.

If anything, the park probably wishes there were a few more perfect storms like that during the year. Think of how much was brought in that day.

Jeff said:

What should they do, tell people to stay home? "Hi everybody, it's going to be super nice this weekend, but we'd appreciate it if you just stayed home. We don't really want your money."

Just be sure to put the moose out front! All will be well!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEbz6kvnQDA#t=2m17s

Dodgem Diva said:

BTW -Passholders aren't the ones causing issues -it's people who know the park is going to be packed and choose to go there anyway

I always wonder if that is the case. Are there really that many people who have experienced this crowd level and still choose to go back to it every year? Sure there are some who like to people watch and what not, but I can't understand how so many people just keep going back year after year when they know what their day is going to be like.

Remember - our attitude toward a park visit (which for many is essentially "ride! ride! ride!!!") doesn't necessarily translate to the greater public. In other words, maybe most people don't care that the park is that busy, and actually enjoy the day regardless of the crowd.

Jeff said:

What should they do, tell people to stay home? "Hi everybody, it's going to be super nice this weekend, but we'd appreciate it if you just stayed home. We don't really want your money."

Think about that the next time you ride a $25 million roller coaster.

Jeff, while you occasionally make some good points, I've become convinced over the years that many of your posts aren't created to add to the discussion.

Where did I ever infer that CP should tell guests to stay home? I stated that the park is not doing a good enough job at balancing attendance, and I was not referring to Columbus Day weekend exclusively.

There are many proven formulas for balancing attendance, which I have all discussed. Those include increasing/decreasing prices (which I have discussed tirelessly in the past), advertising, adding or decreasing hours, etc.

Staffing issues aside, I gave 2 ideas that could definitely improve the situation.

By your comment, your thought is to just let the same unbalanced situations ride out, year after year, without trying to adjust. The weekend after Labor Day and Columbus Day weekend being an excellent example of consistent extremes... This is how you leave plenty of money on the table and drive a business into the ground over time.

I think you're being a tad melodramatic, Ffej.

Cedar Fair is in pretty good shape, all things considered. Attendance was up a whopping 7.8% in 2010, and is up another 2% so far in 2011. In fact, aside from a dip in 2009, attendance and revenue have increased every year since 2006. In no way is Cedar Fair "driving the business into the ground."

As for your ideas to optimize their operations, again, I don't think you're being realistic. It's easy to say "CP should be open later on busy days", and quite another thing to enact such changes.

Of course, this is assuming Columbus Day weekend's attendance is some sort of big issue. It's not. It's nothing more than a busy weekend.

There isn't much to change though.

Halloweekends isn't going to start any earlier. They need those 2 weeks to get everything set up as it is. This means there is likely to always be a bonus weekend between Labor Day and the start of halloweekends. Ticket prices are already low enough that weekend. Short of pulling a six flags and doing a buy 1, get 4 free admission that weekend, there isn't much to do to draw additional guests (most of whom are waiting for Halloweekends to start before returning).

As for the actual Halloweekends, I think everyone agrees that prices are likely to go up once Ouimet gets full control and pulls his hands back to allow GMs to do what they're supposed to do. But ticket prices aren't going to put much of a dent into what happened that weekend.

The only thing left would be to petition the NFL to make sure Cleveland and Detroit both play on Saturday of Columbus Day weekend.

The park handled it as well as can be expected, and the only people complaining about it were either going to complain no matter what, or could have saved themselves the trouble by doing a basic amount of research prior to going.

Kevinj said:
There's no way CP was caught "off guard"; that's absurd.

Kevin, were you at CP the weekend after Labor Day this year? The weather was just perfect...sunny, 73.

I wish I had taken more, but I took several pictures of just how dead the park was. In the main lot, the entire Disaster Transport-area parking lot was closed off for the Triathlon. Then, there was not even a full row of cars in the main lot. In comparison to the 60,000-70,000 estimates thrown out for Columbus Day weekend, there were I'd guess a few hundred people in the entire park -- mostly employees staffing games, rides, and concessions for no reason whatsoever.

It was definitely not absurd to say that CP was caught off guard. The park had to be operating at a substantial loss that weekend. If they planned that, then I don't know what to say.

To me, a few hundred people to 60,000+ a few weekends later with equally-beautiful weather is an epic failure in balancing attendance.

Obviously Halloween stuff is a major draw, so extending Halloweekends to the weakest weekend of the year only seems logical to me. As I said in the past, it could be a Halloweekend preview event, with only select attractions open. If they can figure out staffing for the following weekends, then they can figure out staffing for this weekend too. ...and they already had PLENTY of employees doing next to nothing the weekend I was there to start.

How do you propose they get ready for HW a weekend sooner? Are you footing the bill for the staff required to accomplish that? I honestly don't think you have any concept of the enormity of the work that goes into HW preparations. CP makes a ton of cash during HW, so there's absolutely no reason to think that they're not extending HW to Labor Day weekend simply because they're too lazy or something.