Sandcastle really that bad?

I think it just comes down to what people are used to and what they expect. If people have stayed on the point before, they know they are not going to get a Disney style resort. I don't think CF built SCS or Breakers to be such resorts. They are there for convenience and that is what you pay for. You are not paying to stay in a luxury hotel, you are paying for the fact that you are a 5-10 minute walk to the park. I honestly believe that most of the people who write these negative reviews are people who are used to staying at very nice hotels/resorts and think that for $150-250 a night they will get luxury accomodations.

My wife and I, along with another couple stayed in a suite at SCS two Saturdays ago. After I made the reservation I read the reviews on-line. I had serious doubts about the place and almost changed the reservation to a more expensive room at the Breakers. For whatever reason, I never did it and am glad I had the chance to stay at SCS. It's nice. Not the best hotel I have ever stayed in, but definately not the worst. My wife and I like to stay at the Embassy Suites when we are traveling. The rooms at SCS are about half the size of ES rooms but they are fine for what you need them for. And they are clean. At least our room was. Some of the complaints that I've read about are just insane. One review complains that the balcony is screened in. They probably would have complained even more if they had a swarm of muffleheads flying around their room. Others mention that the stairways are dirty and full of bugs as well. The problem, if you want to call it that, is that the stairways are not enclosed so once again there are a lot of bugs on the point. They do get in the stairwells. I don't think it would matter how often you cleaned them, they would always have bugs in them. That being said, we stayed there the second weekend it was open. That may be a reason why the room was clean. In September, that same room may be a pigsty. I can only speak of my experience.

Accomodations of the Point are what they are. Don't go in expecting a Hilton or Embassy Suites.

We could debate the fact as to why CP doesn't make a more pleasuarable experience for their guests at their "resorts" but as long as people keep spending money to stay there, there really is no reason for them to do so. Why would they to make their hotels so nice that people actually want to stay in their rooms? Make them as small and plain as possible and make people want to get out and spend money in Challenge Park or into CP itself.

Oh, and lets face it, while there has been a recent boom in hotels w/ water parks in Sandusky, there really aren't that many "nice" hotels in the town. If you do a search for reviews of hotels in Sandusky, you will be hard pressed to find even a handful that would be considered average.

Would I stay at SCS again? Probably not. It's not because I didn't like the hotel. I actually did. I just really like the proximity and the atmosphere of The Breakers. Just a presonal preference.
*** Edited 5/29/2007 5:49:42 PM UTC by Jay Crawley***

Good points about the stairwells. I'm not sure why that wasn't thought of when the room balconies were done. There may be some safety related reasons that the stairwells couldn't be screened in...but I'm not sure.

Jay, you make a lot of good points. In fact, in no place does Cedar Fair call their properties "luxury" that I am aware of. These days you need better bedding/linens, etc in order to be considered luxury.

I don't consider Holiday Inn Express to be luxury and it's way nicer than any hotel on CP's property.

You can power wash stairwells at night. You don't even have to do it nightly.

Everyone seems to be making excuses for Cedar Point when they really shouldn't have any for the cleanliness of their properties. If anything, a seasonal resort should be cleaner than a year-round property.

Someone in line for Xcelerator at Knott's said something that really made sense. The people working at Knott's are full-time staff that work there because it's a job. The seasonal employees work at Cedar Point because they WANT to be there. Granted it's a housekeeping job, but still.

If the clientèle at Disney is different than Cedar Point (which I don't think it is) then I bet their guests are even more pissed off when they shell out hundreds of dollars per night for a room and get something worse than a Holiday Inn Express.

I'm not making excuses. There is a difference between an excuse and an explanation, at least according the my dictionary.

Very few people in housekeeping WANT to be there. Most want to be in the park and took the job either because they couldn't find much else or it was a way to at least get to the park. Most of the housekeeping staff at Cedar Point is high school students are other local Sandusky residents.

Oh, and you can't powerwash stairwells at night. You will piss off the guests in the adjacent rooms. They could do it during the day but during mufflehead season it is a never ending battle.

They/we should have screened in the stairwells. And it isn't an opinion...it is fact: The clientele is different. Now, Disney value resorts get their share of non-seasoned travellers too...but it is more pronounced at Cedar Point.

If Breakers was off the Point, I would still stay there rather than at the HIE. HIE is a cookie cutter hotel with no personality. Breakers has great atmosphere. While I enjoy CP, it is no longer my favorite park and won't make excuses for them.

Even if you powerwash the walls (do we know they don't?), it's not going to keep the bugs away. We used to wash down the Giant Wheel every morning. Didn't seem to stop the bugs from being back in full force the following morning. There will always be bugs in the stairwells at SCS. And really....is that such a big deal? They aren't in your room. They aren't in your food. Why is this even a complaint?

Other than the stairwells, where have you noticed there being a cleanliness issue? I have stayed at the Breakers probably 6-8 times and now at SCS and have never had a issue with a room not being clean.

Not sure I really follow your reasoning behind the housekeeping at Knott's v. CP. I would think that people who have a full time job at a park will actually work harder as it may be a job they plan to keep for a while. When I worked at CP, we never really WANTED to be there. What we wanted was a beer and we knew if we got our job done....we could go out and have one (or twelve). I'm not saying that we didn't have fun while actually working but to say we WANTED to be there would be a bit of an exageration. There were a lot fo other places we would rather be.

I've stayed at both Disney resorts and CP resorts. Obviously, the Disney resorts are on a different level than the CP properties, and I think that CP's are OK the way they are, they just need to charge accordingly.

I've never stayed at Breakers, because I can't justify the cost to stay at an overpriced HoJo.

I would LOVE to stay at Breakers just once for the location, and I probably will give in some day, but it just doesn't seem worth it because I can grab a cabin at Bayshore for the whole weekend for 1/3 the cost of a single night.

Another issue is that one night is a place of that location just doesn't do it for me. If I'm going to stay that close, I definitely want at least 3 days so I can spend some time relaxing.

-Josh

*** Edited 5/29/2007 6:39:33 PM UTC by e x i t english***

You go to Disney, I go to Disney. You go to Cedar Point, I go to Cedar Point. Seems like your fact isn't really fact after all.

You can generalize, but I'm sure a huge portion of the people that go to Cedar Point have also been to Disney. I also know there's a large portion of Disney's clientèle that save for YEARS before being able to afford a trip there. That doesn't sound like a family that travels the world on a daily basis. That sounds like a non-seasoned traveler to me.

People staying at a Disney resort are just as likely as a family staying at Cedar Point to be non-seasoned travelers. I believe there's a thread about this same subject over at Coasterbuzz.

I bet one could also argue the travelers at Cedar Point are MORE seasoned because of the sheer cost of the room. If you don't have much money and don't travel a lot, are you really going to shell out $150 a night to stay in a hotel? I doubt it. You're going to stay at an "affordable" hotel on the "mainland" which, ironically, will probably be cleaner than one on the Point.

Also, take a look at the motor homes at Camper Village next time you're there. Does that look like a non-seasoned traveler to you? It doesn't to me. I see the exact same motor homes at Fort Wilderness when we're there. They cost more than most people's houses.

I worked at Disney. I worked at Cedar Point. I dealt with guest both places. My fact is fact.

The motor home crowd has nothing to do with what we are talking about. They are a completely different animal. Actually, in a good way.

No, I saw things at Cedar Point that left me absolutely bewildered. They can shell out that kind of money because they are often jamming several families or generations into one room. When you have 8-10 people in a room that leaves one heck of a mess...even if they are "neat" people. If they don't care it is worse.

I could give you a MILLION examples...but I will just give you one. I get a call one day that a man is walking out into the parking lot with a television. I notify security and then go running out after the guy. When I get there he says it is his tv. He brought it with him b/c he didn't know if there would be one in the room. We held him while someone looked into it and, sure enough, the guy was tellign the truth.

I grew up in a very small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was a 13 hours drive to Cedar Point. Growing up, CP was basically our family's Disney. We did not have a lot of money. My Mother stayed at home and my step-father even now makes less than I do and I've only been a teacher for five years. He's been a draftsman in the same company for over 20. My point is this, we didn't travel a lot. We went to CP once every 3 or 4 years. We stayed at Breakers every time. Don't try to tell me that the majority of the people who stay at Breakers are seasoned travelers because I can tell you from my own experience, and from talking to others who stay there...many of them are not.

Also, Disneys resorts themselves are destination places. You will never see commercials or pamphlets JUST for Breakers like you do some of the Disney resorts. Why? Because Breakers is not the destination. Cedar Point is. People could easily stay at some of the Disney resorts and never actually set foot in one of the parks. You simply can't put The Breakers or SCS in the catagory as a Disney Resort or even any of the new Water park hotels that are oversaturating Sandusky at the moment. They are not the same thing. They aren't even advertised as the same thing.

As far as I know, Disney doesn't put our brochures for their resorts either. They market them as part of the entire resort - which includes the theme parks, water parks, etc...

The only place I've ever seen resorts called out separately was for their time share program - Disney Vacation Club. I could imagine them doing the same thing for conferences. But, those are both things CP doesn't even have.

I'm not saying Disney hotels aren't destinations, because they are. But, they're not marketed as such. I've never seen Disney say, "Come stay at our hotel, but skip the park."

I looked at the virtual tour of Sandcastles, the rooms and furniture look really cheap, kind of like what you would see in one of the Choice Hotels. Because of the price & the condition of the rooms, this is probably a place I would never stay unless it was updated.

I'll be at Breakers Express this Saturday (6-2-2007) and I'm somewhat worried about that. The last time I stayed in a CP resort was in 2003 at Hotel Breakers and paid around $275 for the room (If you are facing the rotunda from the beach, I was in the wing on the right) It wasn't a good experience at all. My friend and I still talk about it to this day whenever we make plans to goto CP. The room smelled really bad and the carpet needed replaced. There was no excuse for the condition in my opinion. I learned that complaining about the hotel was kinda like complaining about not getting your order right at McDonalds. The staff just didn't seem to care.

Because of all of this, I am somewhat nervous about my booking at the Breakers Express, but how bad can it be right? It's still kinda new so surely the rooms won't be that bad.

Breakers Express is going to be like a Hampton Inn. The wing of Breakers you stayed in was built in 1905/1906. No amount of renovation short of tearing down walls and starting over is going to get rid of 100 years of moisture/odor/etc. Were you in a room at the end of the hall by chance? Just curious.

I would try the Tower or East wing before you completely write off the hotel. I think the far left wing (Bon Air) will disappear eventually to make room for another updated addition. That would then leave the rooms off the Rotunda to the front (Twin Section) and to the back (the Main section). I would really like to see them gut those rooms off the Rotunda and make some unique suites out of them. The rooms above the long front hall (Main) should probably just become executive use...and not hotel rooms, if they haven't already.

They still have the issue of the fire escape on the rotunda which would make the actual Rotunda rooms on the 4th and 5th floor somewhat unusable but the rooms on 1-3 have potential, in my opinion.

Aren't some of the Rotunda rooms used for Housekeeping Employees currently? I believe they were in the years I was working at the park. After reading all of this, I have to say that for myself as a coaster enthusiast who has been to CP countless times, I just want a place to stay when I go to CP, and for me the resorts work. However, for a family making a special trip to CP, I feel really sorry for them if they are expecting the "true resort" experience.

I stayed in the Bon Air section over opening weekend, and as a place to sleep and relax, it was fine. But it certainly did not strike me as a "vacation/resort" type room in the least. Quite the opposite actually...

I can certainly believe that some of the guests are, to put it nicely, non-seasoned travelers. I've seen some strange things too Chief, as a guest.

But, maybe some things are changing since you've worked there. I've talked to enough people in the bar to TGIF's at the Breakers to realize that many people that go there do travel a lot and have an above average amount of money. One guy I talked to stayed on the concierge floor for 1 1/2 weeks in a Horizon Suite. And his wife was covered in huge diamonds. That's dropping some major money at CP.

Another point, if the guests at the Breakers are primarily more (nicely again) unsophisticated, with trash bags for luggage, why would CP put a Tommy Bahama store in the lobby? Those types of people, I suspect, buy clothes at WalMart. They wouldn't spend money on Tommy Bahama clothing, or see the value in it.

CP can make big improvements just by replacing the bedding with some luxury bedding. Something that is a must at the price point they charge. That along with some other improvements such as a REAL room service menu, new TVs (flat screen), better towels and some amenities like pool side wait staff service for food and drinks, would go a long way to add some value to the room.

What they have now is good and fun, but the possibilities of what it could be are almost endless. It is frustrating that they don't take that extra step and make the hotels destinations in themselves, not just the park.

Chief, I also like your idea of the Downtown Disney style party zone. But, don't build it by Sandcastle. Build it along the Causeway west of the TGIFriday's on Route 6. That would let them build boat docks for the different establishments, and they would have an easier time getting locals. Boaters are a huge market in Sandusky Bay. That arrangement would work fine for resort guests if they offer some efficient free transportation back and forth.

Chief Wahoo said:
The wing of Breakers you stayed in was built in 1905/1906. No amount of renovation short of tearing down walls and starting over is going to get rid of 100 years of moisture/odor/etc.

That's interesting. Hotel Del Coronado was built in 1887 and is a stunning piece of architecture - truly a five star resort. A room there is $310 a night. Hotel Breakers is $250-$315 or more a night for the same days. There's not even a comparison between what you're getting for the price. Besides, San Diego costs WAY more than Sandusky, Ohio, so that price seems REALLY cheap for what you're getting. If anyone has been there, they would agree, it is a magnificent structure.

You can't say because a hotel is old it's going to be a nightmare. Again, that's not an excuse for poor maintenance or management.

Hotel Breakers makes me very sad as an architect. They took a Historic Landmark and butchered it to pieces because they wanted more rooms cheaply. That place could have been so much more than it is now, but they were too cheap to be bothered with it. Anyone can build a cheap hotel, but it takes someone special to care for a gem like Hotel Breakers used to be. It's obvious to me Cedar Point didn't deserve to have a hotel like that. Pretty soon, they won't have it anymore because it will be gone.

I'm not saying there aren't guests who go to CP who are well travelled. On the contrary, I think the Horizon Suites certainly appeal to that group as do the rooms/suites in the Tower and East and those rooms are much better than, say, a room on the 1-3 floor of the Rotunda/Main section. (The Presidential Suite on the top floor of the tower was going for $1,000 a night.) You do have a mixture of clientele. Some that will eat out of coolers their entire stay and others who will eat at Bay Harbor every night. But, those who don't travel more often can be abusive of their rooms which complicates the efforts of housekeeping and it is a downward spiral from there.

All of your points about amenties are right on. But, they need one guy to give approval to buy the luxury bedding, flat screen tvs, etc. And, it seems that he hasn't done that.

I think Mr Kinzel looks at the resort side of the business as a way to get folks to stay longer at Cedar Point and thus spend more money in the park. Oh, and getting them on the room charges is great too. But, if he is going to step it up to the next level then they do need to spring for better amenities, offer some after park hours options (and I don't mean after an 11:00pm close. A guest staying a few nights doesn't necessarily want to stay in the park until close each night).

How many days a year is Hotel Del Coronado open Tim? How much snow/cold does that facility get? Do you realize when the resorts are closed much of the Breakers and Sandcastle aren't heated? I recall walking through the old hallways and there being snow INSIDE because it blew under the doors.

If Breakers were open year 'round and was making the kind of money that Hotel Del Coronado was making then the upkeep and maintenance of the Breakers would be much improved.

If the Del Corondo were only open 130 plus nights a year I suspect that the $310 nightly room rate would be significantly higher. In fact, I visted a hotel on a peninsula in northern Italy a couple of months ago and their room rates were in the neighborhood of $600 (dollars, not Euros) in the shoulder seasons and it was a seasonal operation. (It was a 5 Star property.)

If the maintenance of Breakers would have been better from day one then I think your argument might have some validity. But, when I got there in '94 there were rooms being rented that should have been closed. And, they were charging outrageous prices then. Guess what? People were paying and staying anyway. The damage to the original Breakers was done long before Kinzel and gang got there.

Cedar Fair makes no claim that their hotels are 5 Star. They aren't. The prices you pay are a result of location and demand. If it was all that bad then I suppose you could call up right now and have your pick of any room on any night from now until August. But, I would bet that isn't the case.

This started as a dirty room thread. If your room is dirty then you have a legitimate complaint and you should demand it being taken care of.

Man you're turning into Ivy Rose with all your double posting recently. :)

Sure Hotel Del is open year round. But, that also means they have year round staff, utilities, and maintenance to pay as well. Even if a resort is closed over the winter, it doesn't make my comparison invalid. CP's operating costs for Hotel Breakers is very low in the winter - especially if they don't heat it.

I also didn't claim Hotel Breakers was supposedly a 5-star resort. I was simply stating that a 5-star resort in California had the same room rates as a hotel in Ohio that couldn't even come close to being three stars.

Knott's is open year round. Do they pull in more money than Cedar Point? Nope. Hmmmm. You mean something that is only open during a "season" can pull in more money than something open year round? No, say it aint so. :rolleyes:

Well gee...Knott's is competing against a couple of little parks like Disneyland, Universal Studios, Magic Mountain (to an extent) just to name a few. Not too mention the plethora of activities available in Southern California.

The number of stars is irrelevant from hotel to hotel vs what they chage. It makes no difference. If Breakers or Sandcastle were overpriced then people wouldn't stay there. Apparently they are charging what people are willing to spend. Do I think they should improve their amenities? Yes. Does it make sense that they haven't? Yes.

I think one of the biggest problems, at least at Breakers, is they are trying to be everything to everybody. It is hard to take a single property and try to market it to everyone.

As a yearly guest to CP I was shocked to read this. I travel 550 miles from Long Island, NY and eventhough I've never stayed at Sand Castle, I've stayed at the suites in Breakers and assumed the quality would be on a par level.

Not to make any excuses, but I also happen to stay in May when alot of the staff is new and like all jobs there is sort of a learning curve so I can understand when things are not perfect.

Another thing you have to take into consideration is the fact that people's opinions vary and what might seem horrible to some might be fine to another.

With the exception of the Buffer flies, or May flies or whatever you call them I find Breakers to be clean so I'd assume Sandcastle should be fine.
*** Edited 5/29/2007 8:59:40 PM UTC by cedarpointdude021170***