New "Ultimate" Lighthouse Point Sites

PyroKinesis09 said:

Would all those slides happen to be sitting unused at a former park nearby?

Nope...they've been removed and moved to other parks (through an auction) except one tower complex that was demolished.

The biggest mistake that was made while redesigning CPS was the placement of the Family Restroom/Changing room right after the entrance. Everyone goes to change there, and causes a major line to form, despite most people leaving that area to go somewhere where another changing area is more easily accessible.

Additionally, as I am sure many with kids know, not having a bathroom within the brand new kidde pool area was another mistake. Kids need to go to the bathroom NOW, and need those restrooms to be closer.

On the point of CPS, I know it's probably been mentioned before, but I really hate that there is no longer a restroom between the Magnum gate and the CPS gate. If going to CPS from the park and needing to use the restroom, I shouldn't have to go through security/admissions to use the restroom.

djDaemon said:

Also, we can reasonably infer that leaving that land open was not an accident or oversight. And we can also reasonably infer that there's a market for a resort more upscale than Breakers.

All I'm saying is that there have been no rumblings from management about a new ground-up resort coming to Cedar Point. There have been rumblings on new resorts built at Carowinds and Canada's Wonderland, one of which was announced earlier this week. SS rumors of demise and Lighthouse Point expansion on the site has been rumored for two years now.

I encourage you all to ask this question at Winter Chill Out.... is the park actively planning or considering building an additional ground up hotel? My assumption is no. Every interview I've ever heard from Cedar Point management refers to Breakers as their "crown jewel" and as the "best" option. If Cedar Fair management refers to Breakers as the top level accommodation, I don't know where this rumor of a new "luxury" resort is coming from.

Finally, the new RV expansion has taken up more than half of the former space occupied by Sandcastle. A 150 room hotel will need a parking lot at least close to the size of the former hotel, but that space is now gone. Where will people park?

And some of you really believe they are investing in these new luxury RV sites complete with built in grills, fire pits, and furniture, only to scrap it in a few years and build a hotel? C'mon...

The park can't get people to run a hot dog stand, do you think they will be able to spread human resources even more thin by staffing an additional hotel? The staff required for a hotel is far greater than a camp ground. Housekeeping, supervisors, management, 24/7 check in, maintenance, lifeguards, etc. I really feel one of the reasons that SS went away was to streamline some of those resort operations.

At this point, everything is speculation, but a bigger Lighthouse Point Expansion, a Cedar Point Shores Expansion, all seem more likely than a new ground up hotel.

Why would the park give any comment on future hotel or other competition sensitive plans to a group of coaster geeks? Or for that matter, why comment on a possible future hotel when its not part of this seasons options? Of Course they refer to their current 'Best" hotel as their 'Best' hotel, why would you refer to it as 'soon to be the better' option when you still have a season to fill that hotel?

You’re greatly overestimating the space taken up by the length of two RV parking spots, the national parks system maximum length for an RV is 41'. As stated before in this thread, The rendering shows this as mainly in the old Breakwater Cafe bulidng and the separate Breakwater Cafe parking lot area. Do you think it’s a coincidence the rendering they provided doesn’t show the area towards Magnum?

The revenue from a hotel operations has far greater potential than rv sites, the cabin also have much greater revenue stream with similar staffing to the rv sites.

XS NightClub said:

Why would the park give any comment on future hotel or other competition sensitive plans to a group of coaster geeks?

They've talked about the new hotels coming to Carowinds and Canada's Wonderland on the conference calls for the last few years... so you tell me?

^Be careful, we're lowly enthusiasts who don't deserve to hear anything!!!!!! /s

(That said, the conference calls are for the shareholders, but the information does happen to coaster geeks and other people. It's just the non-primary audience, of course.)

They didn't say anything about the new Breakers section until just about the point construction started. If a new hotel is coming to the Sandcastle Suites site, they will most likely make an announcement during the annual capital improvement announcement for the next season. If a new hotel is coming for 2019, you will hear about it this fall.

^Hotels seem to be announced further in advance. Carowinds' hotel just got announced for 2019, and the Breakers expansion was announced in late 2016 if I remember correctly. If that pattern holds, I'm guessing there's no new hotel for 2019. but stranger things have happened.

XS NightClub said:

Why would the park give any comment on future hotel or other competition sensitive plans to a group of coaster geeks? Or for that matter, why comment on a possible future hotel when its not part of this seasons options?

They don't have to, but I can guarantee it'll be asked a couple of times at Winter Chill Out.....they don't have to give an exact answer, nor do they have to give a half a**ed answer. But I bet when they get asked there'll be the PR line to the tune of "we're always looking at ways to expand our overnight stays for our guests, when we are able to make announcement when it makes sense to the business, we'll let you know."

When it comes to commenting on possible options for the future, we always hear something to the tune "we're making way for future attractions."

There is general interest out there so why wouldn't they make some kind of comment? It's more frustrating to consumers when a business has done something (publicly) and doesn't acknowledge that something has happened/is going to happen. I'd rather hear "we're making way for future ___" vs something to the tune "Sandcastle Suites?? What's that?" and then the conversation ends.

I'm not saying as a consumer I'm entitled to such information, but I believe hearing such information would help me as a consumer invest in the company more because they cared enough to let the consumers know what is going on within their company.

chugh43 said:

There is general interest out there so why wouldn't they make some kind of comment? It's more frustrating to consumers when a business has done something (publicly) and doesn't acknowledge that something has happened/is going to happen. I'd rather hear "we're making way for future ___" vs something to the tune "Sandcastle Suites?? What's that?" and then the conversation ends.

I'm not saying as a consumer I'm entitled to such information, but I believe hearing such information would help me as a consumer invest in the company more because they cared enough to let the consumers know what is going on within their company.

Several reasons to not make a comment or to use the standard PR lines:

-First and Foremost, why would they give a heads up to the competition what their future plans are?

-Plans may not be finalized and/or have the potential to vary greatly from initial plans.

-They could be waiting on government approval for plans, which could take unknown amount of time.

-They don't want to discourage guests from visiting this season, by announcing future seasons plans.

-Value Proposition, you don't want to give guests the sense that they aren't getting a good value with their current stay at the newly reimagined Breakers. They could choose a cheap in-town room over a Breakers stay for the planned future hotel.

-The plans may be for future years, not necessarily 2019.

-They just don't want to. Its their property and its how they choose to operate.

In regards to the other hotels announced for Carowinds and CW, these are properties that don't currently have CF accommodations, there is no value degradation to current stays. Also, plans for the constructions have likely been filed already and are public knowledge.

Tilt-a-Whirl said:
Finally, the new RV expansion has taken up more than half of the former space occupied by Sandcastle. A 150 room hotel will need a parking lot at least close to the size of the former hotel, but that space is now gone. Where will people park?

In my hilariously-crude image based off the park's rendering, there are 32 new sites (to account for these sites presumably being larger than those I copied-and-pasted). There's still a ton of leftover room. SS was not exactly space efficient as far as its footprint-to-rooms-ratio. You could build a ~150 room tower with plenty of parking in the remaining space. Heck, you could probably build two if you got creative. And no need to demolish these new LHP sites.

The park can't get people to run a hot dog stand, do you think they will be able to spread human resources even more thin by staffing an additional hotel?

Staffing a minimum-wage-level food stand is entirely different than staffing a luxury resort. Sure, the seasonality is a factor, but they could charge enough for the resort that they can just throw money at the problem. Heck, make the resort manager a full-time position and there would be more than enough revenue generated to compensate. It's not as if the company was in the red when SS was in operation.

At this point, everything is speculation, but a bigger Lighthouse Point Expansion, a Cedar Point Shores Expansion, all seem more likely than a new ground up hotel.

If they were going to expand LHP further, why not do it right now when they're doing this expansion? Sites/cabins cost peanuts, relatively speaking, to practically any other cap ex project we could name.

The same holds true for CPS. The lack of upkeep at SS indicates management had been planning for some time to remove or renovate it. Why wouldn't they have held off one more year on CPS' expansion if they were going to have all this land available, if that is indeed what they ultimately plan to use it for?

Ok, DJ- I'm out. I honestly don't care what they do in the space. You think they'll build a new hotel in the space, I don't. We'll just come back to this in a few years... ok?

Hey... we're both 1/2.... (Mantis Conversion, Steel Vengeance 2017 :-) )

We'll discuss our next debate over a beer at Surf Lounge.

PyroKinesis09 said:

Would all those slides happen to be sitting unused at a former park nearby?

Most, if not all, have since been demolished including the large tower.

XS Nightclub: How do you get from one side of Shores to the other? You go through an opening in Magnum. You could do the same thing to the right of the wave pool, then walk along a beach pathway that takes you to an expanded Shores past the Magnum turnaround. I don't see how this would be a big deal. And just because they didn't add a toilet bowl or water coaster last year, doesn't mean they won't in the future. How can you say management does not want them? That would be like saying a couple years ago that since Mean Streak has not been converted to RMC, that they must be against it. You have no idea what the future brings. Neither do I, but I would not rule out a Shores expansion past Magnum. There is really no place else to do it unless they tear out parts of the parking lot, and I'm not sure they want to lose spaces. But, who knows?

Since the park is open May-October, and CPS is only open June-August. Would it make more sense to expand the waterpark or a hotel that can create revenue for twice as many months?

I am not going to even suggest they will expand the waterpark anytime soon after the investment made last year, just playing along with the what if.

I already feel like it is too disjointed with Magnum going thru the middle of CPS. Making people walk down another path under Magnum to the back 40 just doesn't sound like a reasonable plan. If they were to expand it, what would make more sense is to relocate the camping sites closest to CPS into the former SS area. Then, they could use that area adjacent to the wave pool for expansion and parking lot reconfiguration in a cohesive effort.

The whole disjointed thing annoys me anytime I head over there. It feels like two different parks slapped together haphazardly. That tunnel feels as ugly and poorly placed inside a park as the tunnel CP removed for the Magnum/resort entrance. I had really hoped they would have found a way to change Magnum's structure a bit to open up those paths and make it feel a bit more visually appealing with all the other investment they made.

The "disjointed" feel is the least of the issues with CPS. The park needs more bathrooms and changing areas. What even is in the old large changing areas in the main bathrooms (or at least the men's room?) It's just locked off, and I presume it's just a giant storage room now?

The issue shouldn't be privacy. KI renovated their waterpark and kept sections of open changing areas, and Kalahari has an open changing area. CP's old changing rooms had enough stalls with curtains that it probably accounted for the majority of the changing space in the park, along with benches in the middle to be used as an open changing room if need be (although I never saw it used as such thanks to the large amount of curtained stalls.) That changing room was seldom crowded, but you'd think they wouldn't take away most of the changing stalls in the year that they market their new and improved waterpark!

So besides the blog entry they also now have a rendering on the Lighthouse Point landing page. The rending here is a bit more of a wide angle, and shows more of the leftover space that they are not using. There is more than enough space to add a hotel, as has been previously stated. Also the rest of the parking lot from Sandcastle Suites is partially visible. I would imagine this would be used as CPS overflow, especially considering all the parking issues they had last year. That is another very temporary thing that could be done with the space, creating additional parking for the area.

I would imagine that within the next few seasons they will announce what the plans are for that space. Likely either another LHP expansion or a hotel announcement.

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer dated Sunday, February 18, 2018 when discussing if anything else would replace Sandcastle Suites, Brian Witherow CFO said " There may be more opportunities to add additional rooms in that market"

I believe the Breakers space is now full without demolition of a wing for an additional tower and very creative additional parking. Castaway bay has no more space to expand at this point. Express would have to expand its foot print and does not draw as high of room rates. That would lead me to believe it would be a new build on point to maximize revenue, there are few viable options for that to happen. I would say part of the main parking lot near Gatekeeper, which takes needed parking so highly unlikely. The cedars site which separates from CPS which seems to be an amenity they are using as well as the beach, unlikely. The final option as I see it would be the empty space remaining from Sandcastle, most likely.