News: Cedar Point unveils plans for fun-filled summer

Cedar Point's 2021 season will be filled with signature events, a nighttime parade and party, a new family river adventure ride, along with chances to win the unprecedented Ticket of a Lifetime.

https://pointbuzz.com/News/Story/3329

Looks like 11am openings for the season instead of 10. Love that they are back to 10pm closings.

Personally, I'd be okay with Noon openings if it meant 11pm or Midnight closings. Even in future non-pandemic summers. Will be interesting to see if any permanent schedule changes are an outcome from this summer.

Also, of note. No hours are scheduled past Labor Day on the current calendar. I guess we are going with wait and see approach for September and October hours and dates.

Also glad to see CoasterMania back on the lineup.

Curious about the water park as that place has been jammed full of people every summer. Wonder if there will be capacity limits there?

Overall looks like the park is charging full steam ahead with a regular season which, on one hand is great, but on the other, I’m not sure how you do this with covid protocols in place. Specifically the nighttime parade and show, that’s usually wall to wall people because that whole stage area is poorly designed. Perhaps we will know more on Saturday?

Halloweekends will be another interesting event to watch, that’s six months away so who know where we will be with covid by then.

I know we skipped last season but are planning on going this year since our passes were extended anyways so I’m tepidly looking forward to seeing the park again in all it’s anniversary glory.

WolfBobs said:

Personally, I'd be okay with Noon openings...

This would mean a hard pass for a lot of families, which is probably something the park wants to avoid?

Am I seeing things? I just went back to the calendar and now I'm seeing 10am park open? Anyone else seeing that?

Nope. Looks like you're right. It's been changed to 10am openings.

Apparently families like the 10:00 starting time.

Or somebody fat fingered the keyboard.

Or the state of Ohio said they will open at 10:00.

The bigger question is when did they re-do their website? I have not looked at it for awhile.

^Very recently, I think. I'm thinking within the last 48-72 hours. Also glad to see a lot of things getting back to some semblance of normal operation. It'll be interesting to see how the staffing works out with the longer work day, CP Shores, and many interactive things planned for this summer.

It looks like they tweaked the May calender, only open weekends during the month of May now. Earlier it showed them open during the weeks in May 11am to 8pm.

Website update was within the past week. I've been doing research for work and noticed. The new interface is awesome.

I assume weekends only before Memorial Day is due to schools probably not having their usual end-of-year field trips this year. I also wonder if weekends only starting in mid-August might be a permanent change going forward since more colleges seem to be starting earlier every year.

The weekend only May and August schedules don't really bother me that much this season as I'll only be able to visit on Sundays, but there's nothing better than a dead Tuesday in May. With the huge loss Cedar Fair took last season, I'm sure that also played a part in the schedule change. Not enough revenue on those May weekdays.

The weekend only May and August schedules likely has to do with staffing. Since there's not likely to be many internationals this year, the park will have to rely more on local and US staff and most of them are in school during May and go back around Mid-August. Kings Island went to weekend only around Mid-August years ago.

mgou58 said:
Curious about the water park as that place has been jammed full of people every summer. Wonder if there will be capacity limits there?

Overall looks like the park is charging full steam ahead with a regular season which, on one hand is great, but on the other, I’m not sure how you do this with covid protocols in place. Specifically the nighttime parade and show, that’s usually wall to wall people because that whole stage area is poorly designed. (...)

You're making some assumptions that don't necessarily match the conditions "on the ground".

The *start* of the season is still almost 3 months away.
The big celebration stuff comes another month and a half after that.

Meanwhile in the State of Ohio, as of today...
11.72% of the population has been vaccinated (at least one dose)
Up to 28.71% of the population has been infected
Your odds of meeting a contagious Ohioan today are, at worst, 1:209 (0.4780%)
The 7-day new case average has been falling for the last 30 days and yesterday stood at 1,502 cases/day.

To put that into perspective, at the beginning of December...
0.00% of the population had been vaccinated
Up to 14.87% of the population had been infected
Your odds of meeting a contagious Ohioan were, at worst, 1:40 (2.5115%)
The 7-day new case average had just peaked at 10,218 cases/day.

The point is, in two months' time (the real decline didn't start until the first week of January), the major metrics have declined dramatically in Ohio, and the decline has been almost linear, meaning we're not seeing an acceleration due to vaccination just yet. Even without the expected ramp-up in vaccination rates, we're looking at 25% of the population before the park opens, probably more. The disappearance of new cases suggests that the virus may be more 'selective' than we might think; that the decline we are seeing now may be at least in part because the most vulnerable population has been either infected or vaccinated already...it can't spread where it isn't. If recent trends persist, and knowing that protocols are dictated by actual conditions, not theoretical ones, I think we can be cautiously optimistic that COVID protocols will be much less of an issue by mid summer than they are even now. It won't be a normal season by any means, but it should be a whole lot better than 2020.

Caveat: In August, 2020 we were on a case decline that would have zeroed out in mid-November. So it's reasonable to take my optimism with an entire plow-truck of salt.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

^^most definitely another big factor. Hopefully by 2022 or maybe even late 2021 we can get things at CP back to a somewhat normal schedule. Vaccinations are key.

With KI having gone weekend-only in Mid-August for quite some time, their main audience is SW OH, SE Indiana and Northern KY. A good chunk of CP's market is from Michigan and I think they don't start school until after Labor Day, at least that's how I think it used to be. I'm not from Michigan and don't really know anyone there personally so I can't say for sure, I'm sure a Michigan person on here will verify that. I'm just going by what I think I have read on here. I know the park used to have Michigan resident deals at the end of August. I don't how much the park may lose out with having the Michigan market still available to attend the park, but it looks like it boils down to staffing. Most colleges have been starting earlier in August. Being open is no good if you have to have a good chunk of your food and drink and gift shops closed which would be big revenue generators. I used to go at the end of August and it wasn't too bad crowdwise then.

Dave,

We will see what happens. We’ve been down this road before where we thought we knew better. Until we didn’t.

In recent years, the last two weeks of August REALLY were busy. As Thabto said, schools in the area are mostly going back just before or after Labor Day. Some of it of course were the new passholder renewal and "buy now, get the rest of this year included" - but they are leaving a lot of attendance on the table by not staying open daily through Labor Day. I hope it's just International staff related, because it would suck to lose so many operating days permanently. It's already such a short season due to weather.