It's just amazing.

I also have tons of reasons to be upset, going there as a child, first waterpark, etc.

But quite frankly, if they would just bring Soak City up to todays waterpark standards, I wouldnt even go to Aurora anymore....

Six Flags ruined it for me, and even though we have visited 10+ times in the past two years, I have ridden the coasters once or twice max.

I will miss the memories, but not the park (ride side) as it stands today. I was more upset when Busch sold off Sea World.

Let me ask this for all you CP fanboys out there. What if it was decided that it would be better to close down CP and create the most elite high end housing complex in Ohio? After all it seems that the park has hit the attendance cap for this property. Ya they can still make a little money, but, if they sell out now to developers they can retire rich and fat and make a boat load for their shareholders. Sounds like a solid business decision. After all we've done all we can with the property and noone else could do more. Why bother?

How would you, fan boys who love to talk about how many rides on this and that, feel about that?

That's how I, and many others feel about the closing of our dumpy little park in Geauga County that's given our families great memories for several generations.

Damn right I'm pissed. And i'll tell you what, I may not be able to impose a CF ban on myself. After all CP and the Magnum hold places for me that aren't to far from that of GLP. But I will say that I will not buy a season pass for many year to come. And I have been a CP season pass holder since i retired from GLP after 2001 (except for the summer my wife was pregnant).

And one more thing before you all jump on me about my little hypethetical question, that exact thing almost happened to CP about fifty years ago. A run down little dumpy park was about to be bulldozed to make way for the res developer. But, if i'm not mistaken some form of government stepped in after an outcry from the general public. This may be a privately owned property, but there are some places that belong to everyone.

I had to put that other post up after i read like three posts. Here are the specific responses to some of the insensitive and sometimes ignorant posts by those who seem to not care that others might actually be upset at loosing yet another park in our region.

Zeek, if SFI was the reason the park tanked, why is it that when the company that was Six Flags bought the park in 96 it had five fantastic years expanding the park and taking it to new heights in attendance and profit?

Jamie the Crazy, there were three owners of the park since 95. Funtime that sold a very valuable, profitable park to Premier Parks (who changed their name to SFI) who then bought sea world and dumped off the park at a financial loss to CF in 2003 (i think 03 right?) This park didn't have any financial problems from the formation of Funtime all the way to the sea world purchase. Sounds like a dog to me...(yes that last was sarcastic)

Finally I must rebutt Jugga again when he claims that SWO was the lifeline of the park. Look at the numbers. In the years leading to the flagging of the park (90-99) the attendance breakdown was usually a third coming for a picnic and a third or more in some years holding a season pass. If the average attendance is around 1.3 to 1.5 that translates to 800 to 1 mil annual attendance of people not caring about sea world at all when they dicided to goto the park. Sea world was great for GLP, obviously the existance of GLP was far less impactful for sea world, but don't overstate the case.

Sea world just wasn't that important to the survival of GLP. It's a red herring used by people who don't want to admit that they weren't able to actually manage a park.

^Throwing in a crap ton of new rides will make people flock to the park, but giving them the worst customer experience ever will prevent them from ever returning, regardless of who is running the park.

When I visited the park two years before it was rebranded with the Flags, I thought the park looked in a rather sad condition. When I went back the year it opened as SF Ohio, I thought it looked much improved, but looking back I realize that the park was almost in as sad a condition as before, things just looked a little better with the mask that new paint and a few new rides made. Yes, the area just lost some of its history, and families lost some memories, but these things happen all of the time, its just that some don't experience it as often as others. As for what many would think if CP were to just close down...c'mon, you've got to see that is like comparing an elephant to a crab, and was likely due to your emotions. Geauga Lake wasn't a national and international destination like Cedar Point, and the park was actually hurting the chain. Yes, attendance hasn't been what it used to be, but if you haven't noticed, management has been throwing in rides on a consistent basis here as well. So why haven't the crowds been coming?

There are unique factors that affect how any park is run, and right now there are things changing for CP, and GL was already past that stage after SF took over the old Sea World. Cedar Fair bought a park that had generally gained a reputation as a dirty park and thought that cleaning it up and refurbishing the rides would go a long ways. There was one thing they didn't realize until after it was too late, that the animals were the biggest draw for that park. You heard more news about CF taking out the animals than about anything else, and you also heard a lot of outcry. Strike one for Cedar Fair, they had already lost quite a bit of their consumer base because of this. So they hoped that putting in a brand new waterpark would help, and it did...kind of, but not enough to turn things around. As a result, they cut some things out of phase two of Wildwater. Strike two, the customers didn't get what they had promised a year before. There go a few more customers. Strike three was the removal of X-Flight and Steel Venom. They just took out the most popular coaster at the park as well as the two that greeted guests as they were driving past and parking. There went even more customers that probably already had a bitter taste in their mouth after the first two strikes.

Cedar Fair just couldn't find what it was going to take to make the park as a whole successful, and chances were very slim that anyone would want to pick up a park that they had just angered guests over the past four years, so that left not very much to consider. They could continue to take a hit on the blind hope that they would eventually find something and be able to somehow get the guests they had angered to return. Yeah, Vegas would have loved to have taken Cedar Fair's bet on that one. That left them with three choices; keep the ride side, keep the water side, or the last resort, close the entire park. What they did was the best decision for Cedar Fair and its stockholders, even if they did anger even more people. I don't like the thought of never visiting there again, but life happens. Somethings just aren't worth getting extremely upset over. Would I be upset if they did this with Cedar Point? Sure I would be pretty upset for a while, but its just an amusement park, even though I have been going there my entire life, and my family has since the 1880s, but hey, that's life.

I am not getting a season pass to Cedar Point in 08.
After the no class way that Cedar Fair closed GL I will be going to Kennywood or some other NON-CF park.
Announcing the closure after the season ends was worse than Art Modell moving the Browns to Baltimore. At least Modell told everyine that he was going to do it.
Many people would have gone back just for one last time.
Even Euclid Beach let it's customers know before it closed.
Cedar Point has great coasters but the "theme" in CP is just cheap carnival.

I too am a little upset that they closed. That was one of the parks I planned on visiting next year.

But I understand where they are coming from. IMO, the park and that area lost is nostolgia[sp?] factor over the years. Sea World was the reason we went to GL. But that was when we were smaller. When SF took over and had that nice little ride bomb go off, they brought it more local teenagers with the "thrills" but they only have so much money. I think if it hadnt blown up so quick and kept it more family oriented, they could have managed.

Recently, I've heard of the ride side being slow to dead while the water park was busy. So put money into something that isnt moving? Moving/selling the rides is beneficial to the company. Now they have "new" rides at some other parks or some income off of them. But half to 3/4 of a waterpark won't do it. To keep whats left open they will pretty much need a northern schlitterbahn. Granted its seasonal, but it will bring in the money to keep it running.

As for CP closing on such short notice... It won't happen. I know its hypetical but the only way I see that not opening in the spring is a freak storm wiping out a majority of the park. CP is something GL, and many other parks are not.

And like it was said before, Have fun at other parks. You are one less person in front of the rest of us. Yeah other parks have fun rides too, but they arent top 10 fun like some CP rides. And how many times have other companies discontinued stuff and not told their customers? im sure youve gone to your local grocer only to find out they wont be selling something you enjoy anymore.
*** Edited 9/24/2007 1:18:17 PM UTC by FluffyliketheForce***

BillT said:
Cedar Point has great coasters but the "theme" in CP is just cheap carnival.

Then I guess its a good thing that Cedar Point has never tried to be ,nor marketed itself as, a theme park. They've always been an amusement park.

There's a big difference.

I am somewhat surprised by strong emotions for GL. Despite growing up in the Cleveland area (and still living here) I went to GL less than 5 times in my life. So I never got attached to it. My wife went there a few times over the past couple of summers with our kids and a friend of hers and her kids. Each time they went there, they were shocked at how few people were there. One time, they thought the park was closed because they parked in the first row will pretty much no other cars there. You gotta know that can't continue long.

I also think that GL is a bad fit for CF in large part because they are too concentrated in slow growing/shrinking areas of the midwest. CP's two biggest markets (Cleveland and Detroit) are non-growing/shrinking areas. GL is just another park in the heart of Cleveland area. Spending money on it probably didn't make any sense. Being able to maintain attendance with little investment probably did but CF learned they couldn't do that. Seems to me that overall, CF should be looking to get outside of the midwest areas which was one of the reasons for the Paramount acquisition.

Taking out rides seemed very problematic to me. Kinzel said that GL had too many rides for its attendance. But they had to know that by taking out rides, attendance would slip further which could mean more rides would need to be removed. And that is a cycle that would just continue downward.

My high school had budget problems. So they raised tuition. That meant that fewer kids could afford it so the enrollment dropped. That created more budget problems which led to more tuition increases which led to fewer students. That spiral continued until the school was forced to close.

BillT said:
CP is just cheap carnival.

If a cheap carnival is voted best in the world 10 years in a row, and has world class roller coasters... id LOVE to see what an expensive, top notch carnival is like.

Zeek, if SFI was the reason the park tanked, why is it that when the company that was Six Flags bought the park in 96 it had five fantastic years expanding the park and taking it to new heights in attendance and profit?

Because they pissed away their money on coasters to try and get a Six Flags park in Ohio to compete with Cedar Point. They couldv'e cared less about anything else, they just wanted something to take away from Cedar Point. And they failed at that, failing the park. They had horrible service, and the park was a mess. And I really don't think any sort of public outcry is going to save GL. I live right between CP and GL and I've always picked going to CP over GL..because it's better. Just hold on to your waterpark, people come for that, not for the rejected Six Flags mistakes.

And to those that say they aren't going to a CF park because of this, grow up. You're all acting like pathetic children. Because each and everyone of you know that there is no other park around here that offers as good of rides as Cedar Point does. And if you say another park does, then you're lying just so you can keep up this CF hate. If you hate CF so much, then why post on here still? I mean isn't this site for Cedar Point? But yet you hate it..hmm....

If you would have at least read one out of the forty websites speculating about GL closing you wouldn't be crying right now because you would have visited GL that one last time.

If two ride removals and the speculation of two more aren't enough to clue you in, sorry 'bout your luck.

I would never stop going to CP because of what happened to GL.

But...but...but I thought they were going to put in a new Flyer and everything would be okay.

Seriously, just walk away from this, they'll get over it. Think about what you're whining over. Also, how many online petitions have ever done anything other than make people laugh.

I'm happy to see CF turn-around and try to get rid of the things that are digging a hole in the company.

GL was the most depressing park I've ever been to. It was literally sad. It had areas that were completely dead... the old, disgusting, unused water slides, the observation tower, the empty monorail stations, RWB just rotting away (which was a dead giveaway to us about the future of the park)... It was not a fun place to be, in contrast to the amazing two days before that we spent at CP.

Underneath everything else, this, the lack of guest satisfaction, is the reason that GL is gone.

I do believe that CF could have done something about these problems while the park may have had the chance to survive a little longer... but that's no guarantee. Boycotting CF for their part in GL's end is nothing short of silly. Now, if you also boycott Anheuser-Busch (for closing Sea World), SF parks (for bloating the park with unnecessary rides), and Kennywood (for competing for attendance) along with CF, then you're being realistic.

Or are you?

gener said:
Let me ask this for all you CP fanboys out there. What if it was decided that it would be better to close down CP and create the most elite high end housing complex in Ohio?

Sounds like Boblo Island.

Plus I don't think CF would mind if you didnt buy a season pass. I will just cost you more.

SF ran the park down and CF tried all they could to save it. Too much was invested buy SF without enough return. It is sad to see the park go but it was in the best interens of CF to close it.

Where were all of these people with strong feelings for the park? If they were actually visiting it, they sure are a very vocal minority.

^ Visiting on a season pass and spending no money, doesn't count either.

Guilty as charged!