If I were GM

I agree with the awful food service stands. Not only do you wait an absurd amount of time, most of the cashiers are less than friendly, the ones that I have came across so far this year.

Sunday I was at CP. I don't remember which food stand I was at, but I ordered a refill for my Dragster cup. The cashier didn't say a word to me. In fact, she was so busy laughing and talking to an employee next to her, she spilled my drink. Then she was mad, but if she was paying attention to the guests, it never would have happened. She refilled it, again, gave me my cup still without looking at me, and I politly said "Thank You!" as I always do, I waited a few seconds, and I said "You're Welcome!" because she was still conversating with the other employee.

I went to Soak City the same day. I stopped at a kiosk to get my cup filled with ice water. I got it at top speed because I was the only one in line. I took a drink. Carbonated water. I told her "Hun, I think you pressed the wrong button, this is not ice water." She said: "That's all the water we have at this stand." I shrugged it off, she was forign, no problem. So I went to the food stand, which is the only place in SC that has ice water, so she told me. I waited 40 minutes for water. I approached with my cup, and before we exchanged words, she rang up the $2. She wasn't polite, but she had to call someone over to fix the problem, and he was exceptionally nice, and he confirmed that was the only place to get ice water.

Earlier that day, we entered at 9, TTD was down, so we decided to just take a stroll back to frontier land. We passed the CCMR, decided to enter the queue, and the girl at the line was really sweet, she was conversating with us, and told us that we were the first guests that day for the ride. So my daughter and I were the only ones on the train, we rode, got back to the station, there were three girls standing there, and I said "You ladies have a nice day!" They just looked at me like I wasn't supposed to be speaking to them, no response.

In my opinion, 2/3 of the employees there should not have applied to work at CP/SC. They are not customer oriented at all. The other 1/3 excell in customer service. I understand the weather is exteme sometimes, the pay is not good, but they shouldn't have applied.

We went to park in the AM in employee parking as we always do, but there was actually an employee directing traffic there, and we didn't notice him until we got out of the car. He told us to move, my hubby held up his indez finger, my younger daughter was sitting behind him, with her car seat already unbuckled, and we waited for her to get out before he was going to get back in the car and move it. The employee, probably 5 seconds after he told us to move, said: "Hello! Am I talking and you're not listining?" Of course he said that in the rudest possible way. It just blew my mind that he spoke to us like that, after we acknowleged that we in fact did hear him.

Ok, I am done ranting. had to get it out. Sorry! ;)

OK, let me share my bad food service story.

We were at the park during the early afternoon on July 5. While walking down the trail, my wife decided she wanted a cookie from C.J.'s Provisions. We went inside and walked up to the cookie counter. For those who have never been there, C.J.'s has three ordering areas: one for pretzels, one for fudge, cookies, and other baked goods, and one where you can buy apples with caramel.

Each time we've gone in, there's been a person at each location. This time, there were only two - initially. The kid at the pretzel location just stood and stared with a blank look. The person at the apple location was helping a few guests. Behind the counter where the fudge is, we could see three employees behind the door carrying on, laughing, and having a gold ol' time. I figured any second one of these fine employees will come out and help us.

Nope.

After a few minutes, the kid at the pretzel location came over to the area behind the counter that we were waiting at - but not to help us. Rather, he was doing something with the oven behind there. Didn't even acknowledge us. Then, one of the three employees in the back looked through the window of the swinging door and saw me waving at her. She came and out I asked if someone could help us. She told us that one of the other two locations could help us. Wow - way to take charge! Of course, the pretzel kid already showed he wasn't interested in helping us.

We just walked out dumbfounded. It really felt like Six Flags Ohio circa 2000.

If I were GM, I would include the price of Soak City as a part of general admission like PKI. I have never been to soak city and will never go as long as there is a separate charge to do so. I can travel two less hours to PKI and get a free entrance to Boomerang Bay. This has to be the best deal around. Also, with the food, I don't think there is much difference in service than PKI, at least what I have experienced. Both are slow.

But PKI doesn't have thousands of resort guests. It's a different game at Cedar Point. You might not go to Soak City, but more than enough people do. Why offer something for free when plenty of people are more than willing to pay for it?

Never gonna happen dude. Why would you piss away tens of thousands of dollars of admission every day, not to mention the extra cash from thousands of combo passes?

If some of you were GM I suspect the park would go belly up in a matter of years (or in some cases weeks) and it would become the housing development of yesteryear.

I've come to enjoy the lousy counter service as part of the entertainment value of Cedar Point. More than once the comment has been "this is like being in the middle of a Saturday Night Live sketch'.

So, the logic is...if you can charge people more, why not? If PKI can live without the income, so can CP. I'm not sure about your explanation (Walt) about PKI not being a resort. What does that have to do with anything? I'm not trying to be a smart@**, I just need more explanation. *** Edited 7/13/2004 6:56:19 PM UTC by DragsterRaptor***

Cedar Point has made itself a multi-day destination. There are almost 950 on-site rooms, nearly 600 off-site rooms, over 300 campsites, and one of the largest marinas on the Great Lakes. People go there for a resort vacation. That includes Cedar Point, Soak City, Challenge Park, and the Cedar Point beach. It is much more than amusement park with a water park on the side. These days, families are spending two days at Cedar Point and a day at Soak City.

PKI's audience is different. I'm sure PKI has determined that they are better off with a combined gate. Trust me, if they thought they could make more money by charging separate admissions, they'd do it in a second. They're not doing it to be nice and they're not "living without the income."

It's just like Disney charging for admission to their water parks. Disney is a resort. You don't get into Blizzard Beach for free with a paid ticket to the Magic Kingdom.

Thanks for the explanation Walt. I really was confused.

Thought of one more:

* Replace the blacktop on the Gemini midway with light-colored paving of some sort. That stuff gets hot without any shade!

Agreed. Seeing that midway black when the rest of the park is white really was weird. It's also a cheap solution to repaving. It gets freaking hot, too.

CP should institute a length of stay pass like disney does. It is an all inclusive admission to everything that you could want to do until mindight of the day you check out.For example we stayed on site at CP this year from July 6-9 four days of park time we had combo passes but would have liked to go back into the park or soak city on friday after we checked out. our passes were used up and we did not want to buy new ones because we didnot know how long we were going to hang around. However if we had had admission tied to our length of stay we would have went back into the park. We probable would have hung out until 5-6p.m. had lunch or dinner, rode some rides maybe bought some souveniers and definately spent more money. As it was we packed up and went home. So CP really needs to consider multi types of admission tickets to meet everyone's needs. I spent well over $1,000.00 and I live close enough to do CP in a day trip. We just like the relaxed nature of a multi day stay but just the ride and slide combo doesn't cut it So actually what we did on Friday on the way home was hope on over to port clinton and caught the jet express to put -in-bay for the day and they got the extra money that CP coulda had ...oh well better luck next time CP....

You should look into Season passes. If you buy them early enough in the season (like October/November) you'll get a massive discount on them. And since you say you're close enough to do day trips it should be well worth it. I'm not sure on the price but I'm sure someone else could fill you in. Then you can also do trips to other Cedar Fair parks (like Michigan Adventure) and not have to worry about admission (not to mention there are some beautiful campgrounds up here)

You should look into that for next season. It might make your stay more enjoyable.

Im pretty sure that season passes are like 90 bux.

Actually regular season passes are 100. I'm wondering what the combo pass price is (I guess I didn't say that...stupid me) Since they like going to both CP and SC it would probably be best for them to get combo-passes.

I got mine for 90 at Michigan Adventure though, definitely well worth it, since I head out there about once a week.

I think the combo pass at CP price is $149. I'm not much into waterslides, so I buy my season pass at MiAdv for $90.

MrScott

We got ours last November. Not sure how much indivdually, but for 3 regular combo, 1 junior combo, 3 JC memberships, and a parking pass was under $500. Not bad at all.

Michigans Adventure must have been where I seen the season passes for $90.