OMG 10/12/2013

My mom works in Sandusky. My mom heard that CEDAR POINT wouldn't let the family's go in, on last SAT., because there was no place to park on SAT. I live a 1/2 hr and never go on SAT. I would like to know many people were there with the PARKING LOT and in the POINT!!

The crowd just exceeded expectations. CP can't look into a crystal ball and be able to predict crowds and be able to accommodate them. People just need to get over it. I really don't think this story was newsworthy. There are more important things like the government shutdown.

noggin said:
"Add another causeway..." Sure. Heck, why not add helicopters to fly cars to the mainland? Really. This is a ridiculous suggestion.

"Improve the way traffic is handled..." Saturday was an anomaly. The park employees did the best they could. When you try to stuff ten pounds of sausage into a five pound casing, you have problems. When you try to funnel thousands of cars onto a causeway that wasn't designed to handle that many cars, you have problems.

"I wouldn't staff the day like it was a Tuesday in May..." Do you really, honestly, believe that Cedar Point does not have years of data to analyze when developing staffing levels? Is it not possible that a) the park mis-judged and b) attendance exceeded expectations?

"It took that long for people on Saturday night to travel just over 2 miles...." For which they bear some responsibility. The park is not entirely to blame for them going to the park on an extremely popular day.

"...stories that you hear on Facebook and other media outlets..." Stories that you "hear" on social media are from people who may or may not be embellishing their experience.

"I don't care how crowded a park is if someone has a concern it should be addressed or at least acknowledged and not blown off." If a park is crowded, the park staff are likely responding as best as they can. If a park expects 10,000 guests and 13,000 guests turn up, the park staff has to do the best they can. Nobody's perfect, not even the people who try to determine the optimum staffing levels. And, people who are on social media saying they were "blown off" are people with an agenda. They may be exaggerating.

Sorry my bad you are right and I am wrong. The park did its best it could and is at no fault for what happened this past saturday. Those people were just dummies for going to a park on a three day weekend. They deserved everything and more for being too stupid to realize that the park would be crowded. They have no right to complain because they asked for it going to the park on a day like that.

I did hear on the local news today about this problem and they said cedarpoint is going to look at this problem and make some changes so we will see

Hopefully the changes involve doubling the parking and admission prices and making some extra money for the shareholders. Obviously things are priced too low on Columbus Day weekend if this is the result.

Just for curiosity, how much did the causeway cost to build?

Thabto said:
I think CP should lock out season passes on Saturday of Columbus Day weekend. IIRC, Disney does that on days when high attendance is expected. I know some season passholders would get upset about that, but I think it could reduce crowds that day and those who bought regular admission would be able to enjoy the park better.

I don't think season pass holders were the reason for the crowd being so large. Season pass holders were probably only a small portion of the guests there. I don't have any information to back that up, it's just my assumption.

As a season pass holder myself, I have no desire to even go to the park when I expect it to be crowded.

TheEternalQuestioner said:
Just for curiosity, how much did the causeway cost to build?

http://www.thepointol.com/cponle/history/index6.html

According to that page, it cost $600,000 to build in 1957. With inflation, it probably cost at least 20 times that amount today.

http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

Or ~6.5 times.

JuggaLotus said:
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

Or ~6.5 times.

Thank you. I don't know much about economics, but with the cost of everything going up, I just assumed it was 20x higher. It would be $4,993,814.95 today. I just Googled "cost to build cedar point causeway" and came up with that page. How accurate it is, I don't know.

BTW, do we know that CP underestimated the crowd? Do we know they didn't bring in extra staff? For all we know they had as many people as they needed on duty, there is simply a physical limit to how quickly you can drain that many cars off the point.

When you look at perimeter road, it is a single lane from the resorts / soak city all the way to the causeway end of the main parking lot. It's not until you get past Cedar Point Road (the cross street just past the toll booth) that they can increase it to two lanes out. There's an exit from the main lot near the park end, and near the middle that both go onto perimeter road. On a really busy day, you have all the people from the main lot getting out there first and out of the park. I think if they widened perimeter road from the park end of the main lot to the exit, it would allow the park to have an open lane from the back to the exit while still letting people out of the main lot.

Would it be possible to close the Causeway to incoming traffic as suggested before and have the two right lanes turn right and the two left lanes turn left? Enforced by Sandusky Police.

If you must go in to CP, you will have to take CP Road.

As other people mentioned, one lane of the causeway was closed for pedestrians, leaving only one for exiting traffic. This was the biggest problem because theoretically, the causeway only handled half the traffic it was designed for. That, on top of insane crowds was a recipe for disaster.

To fix this, exiting guests should be directed through one of the toll booth lanes. Tada, there are once again two lanes for traffic to exit. The result would be one entering traffic lane on the east of the causeway, a pedestrian lane on the west, and two exiting lanes in the middle.

The pedestrian lane didn't, but should have ran the entire length of the causeway. It ended at the grassy area in the middle of the causeway, forcing numerous pedestrians to walk on the edge of the road where cars flew by at 35 plus miles an hour. The pedestrian lane shouldn't have ended until the grass strip in between the causeway and Bayside apartment's lot (the grass across the causeway from the big CP sign.) That grass is probably a safe place to walk. After that point, the two exiting lanes can merge back to their normal position on the far west of the causeway in time for the 1st St. traffic light.

I hope that made sense.

Wouldn't it be simpler to move the pedestrian lane to the incoming side and keep outgoing traffic in the outgoing lanes?

Of course, people are saying the bottlenecks were on the point and that the causeway was virtually empty.

It would be easier, except pedestrians can't cross four lanes of traffic. That defeats the purpose of having a lane for them.

That's right, the bottleneck was the one lane of traffic entering the causeway which made it "empty". The problem has little to do with the traffic directors and a lot to do with there being only one lane.

Here is a thought to all of you that believe you have the right to complain about this situation.
1. If you were stuck in traffic, So were the workers. You didn't just work an Open to Close on a Saturday night to sit in traffic for 4 hours, knowing that you have to be back at the park by 7am that next morning to do the same stuff all over again.
2. Think about it this way. Cedar Point is closing its doors in just two weeks. did you really honestly think that it was not going to be THAT busy. Not only was it a gorgeous day, BUT a holiday weekend. Come on now use your heads people.
3. Again Complain about the long wait times. Last time i checked there are rules for a reason. YES rides do break down after being ran for many hours of the day, and YES that happens at any major park you go to. The people that fix the rides are a handful of people skilled enough, that Cedar Point trusts them enough to fix the properly THAT WAY YOU CAN RIDE THEM, not complain because they aren't fixing them fast enough
Lastly.
I have been going to Cedar Point for years. I grew up around the area. The first rule about living near the best park in the world, DO NOT GO ON A SATURDAY. Yes this Saturday was a bit different, and yes Cedar Point Staff is not perfect. But those people are average people just like you and me. Tell me, Do you honestly think you could have handled the situation better, by yourself? Even with a small group of people? The people that work at that park cant leave until you do, Now if you were there so long, lets take a moment to think about how long they were there cleaning up after you.

Lets be fair now. You can not tell me your NEVER going back to this park, just because you believe you had a bad experience. If you feel sick from something you love to eat, does that mean your never going to eat it again? Exactly

It's probably like having a bit too much to drink. One might wake up and say "I'm never drinking again", but sooner or later the cycle repeats.

I have no doubt 99% of the complainers will be back at the park next year.

I'm trying to understand how it took over an hour to inch along, bumper to bumper, to the parking ticket booths, then drove 45mph the rest of the way down the causeway as if we were leaving on a Friday night. I don't think additional roads are needed. There needs to be a more efficient way of getting cars out of the main lot. Not that I didn't appreciate the smooth riding once we busted through...but with how the parking lot looked, you'd think there would be heavy traffic all the way down to Cleveland Rd.

Im assuming cars parked further back in the lot were filtered out line by line. Not sure where u were parked Bigmal, but cars may have also been filtered into main drive plus cars sneaking in at different points made for bumper to bumper driving. Two lanes past toll booth loosens up traffic, Just a thought.