Summer Hours Ideas

I think it would be cool if Cedar Point would change the hours to 12PM to 12AM for the regular summmer days. It would give the park more of a time time feel which I love, also for resort people and season pass people, gives them time to sleep in!

But it hurts day trippers (still a huge amount of their draw) who would have to turn around and drive back to Cleveland and Detroit. Halloween, its great, but it just doesn't make sense for them to do it in the regular season.

Not to mention the young kids, young kids are tired at 8-9 but will get up at 6 am.

^ Exactly. Young kids cannot stay at the park until midnight without significant naps in-between. I know I was miserable staying at Disney until their midnight closing, because the young kids were just too tired to be in the park, and yet parents were forcing them to stay in order to make the most of their money.

Plus, there are others who don't want to stay until midnight, and would prefer to be at the park in the morning. This also allows, as Touchdown said, for quick turnarounds to drive back home.

I would love to see this; Cedar Point's hours are from 10am - 11pm on Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays. This way they save on staffing on the weekdays, but let the park stay open to decent hours on the weekend.

hmm good points. I know might not limit quick turn arounds but what about 10 to midnight?

ChrisC. I love that idea. We are day trippers and getting there by 9am for JCC early entry just poops out the youngest more than if we could be there at 11am instead. I like the 12-12 idea and always thought it would be great. My kids do better staying up late than getting up early. One year my three year old and I rode until 12 am and finished the night on Calypso! It was a blast. He slept all the way home and well into the morning. Sleep is a good thing!

I say they open from 9:00 till 11:00 PM every day instead of 10 till 10.
Open an hour early for guests.
9 to 12 on weekends.

I say its sweet if they open early because you don't have to go to the park when it opens, or you could wake up early and go back and take a nap during the day time.

If people spend an average of 8 hours in the park and then leave...if you have X amount of guests start as early as 8 A.M it would be nice because mid-day people will be leaving.

12 hours of park operation is a must, and the more time people have to go the park the more time people can get bored with it and look at the water parks nearby. Hopefully people leaving midday will enjoy a night at Castaway Bay.

I suppose it comes down to employment. Employees work 50-80 hour work weeks in the summertime, and to ask them to work those kinds of hours would get ridiculous.

I think the longer the park is open the better so people do decide to leave or do something more relaxing.

Red Bull gives you wings anyways..... *** Edited 10/8/2007 3:40:41 AM UTC by factory81***

Sure, extended hours are great things for the guests, but it REALLY takes a toll on your employees. That is one factor that almost no one even bothers to think about on here or any other site when asking for extended hours of the park. We already work 6 days a week averaging anywhere from 55-70 hours with a very physical job (don't try to tell me it isn't if you haven't done it!), and after two O-Cs a row on 10 closings you're already ready to kill someone, the weekends are even worse. They have to find a happy medium between having employees that can actually do their duties on a consistent basis and staying open long enough to maximize profit from guests. In my opinion, they are basically as far as they can go in terms of maxing out the employees, and even a lot of the guests leave by 8 or 9 on weekdays anyway.

Once again, if even one person says that what we do isn't hard, physical work (and is actually being serious), you most likely have not worked there and experienced it, so you have no room to tell those of us that have what our job is like.

Bottom line is this: while longer hours MIGHT, and that is a big MIGHT, generate enough to justify it on that alone, they also have to take into consideration the employees and how much it is costing them in labor to remain open those extra hours.

Two O-C's in a row is nothing...

*** Edited 10/8/2007 2:44:51 PM UTC by DBCP***

If the MF crew has say 8 people running it at any given time then the crews total size should be maybe 12-14 people with alternates.

All this excess time we wish we had could only be offset by an increase in employees.

Yeah, employees work ridiculous hours already. Especially those working the bigger rides (ie: MF, TTD, Raptor, Maverick). On those rides, the crew not only has to be there at 7:30am in order to get the ride up and running by 9 for resort guest, but the ride doesn't end up closing until 11:30-11:45pm on 11pm closings. The crew then has to clean and transfer off and now they're getting to bed after 1am, sometimes longer if they eat something. And the best thing is that some do this everyday.

The amount of people in the park greatly decreases after 9pm. By 10pm there are very few guest on the midway. Those remaining are waiting in line for the big rides and then they head out.

DBCP said:
Two O-C's in a row is nothing...

Quite true. The weekend Maverick opened I pulled four O-C's in a row. Two O-C's is perfectly normal.

Some of the greatest times I had, however, were when we finally got home around 1AM and then had to be awake to start heading to work at 4AM... ah, Media Days.

Well, six O-C's in a row was nothing for me. But mine were 8:00am - 10/11pm, so I had it easy. I wouldn't mind working the changed hours :)

You guys both know I was giving a lite example. I was definitely thankful that I wasn't on an early entry ride.

^There are many things that you just don't understand until you actually worked at the park for a season.

And lets not forget that when you close CP at 12, there are still people getting in line for a 2 hour wait at closing...so some of your employees are working well beyond midnight.

That said, I do wish there were more weekends besides Halloweekends where a guest can get more "park in the dark" hours.

My favorite time in any park is when it is dark and all the lights are on, and aside from October, you really dont get a big chunk of time to see the park in the dark during the season.

The truth is that they know precisely how many people are in the park at any given time and shape the hours around that.

Sometimes it doesn't entirely make sense. They had an 11 closing on Friday Halloweekends one year because the crowd usually thinned out by then, but one less hour I suspect caused a perception of lesser value. They changed it back, though frankly that could also have been due to higher attendance overall.

I too love being in the park after dark but in midsummer, that doesn't leave lot of time. To be there for JC early entry and stay to experience dark rides and then drive home winds up for an exhausting day, extending the hours by just one hour into the night would be sufficient. For most of the summer it doesn't get really dark until late. Of course the one day that I stayed for the whole day this year was June 21st, the longest day of the year, so....

I don't think staying open until midnight would be a good idea though. Looking at it from a financial view, would the park really take in enough money from the remaining guests to be able to pay their employess for the extra hours and then still make a profit?