Understaffing at Cedar Point hits nightmarish levels...

Pete said:

I would hate to see any of those changes. It wouldn't accomplish anything except cause complaints...

That happens no matter what they do. Hell, people whine that CF's multi-million dollar investments not being what they wanted. So I think complaints are a terrible barometer.

I'm sure the park wants as many people in the park as possible, they probably made an incredible amount of money these last two weekends.

They would have made more had people spent less time waiting in line. It's not as simple as "more guests equals more money". If people have a suboptimal time due to massive crowds, they are less likely to return. And as has been said, falling attendance would be a trailing indicator of a problem.

Rugrats2001 said:
Remove halloweekends from the platinum pass and they lose my business.

Considering you are posting in a thread discussing the park's problems dealing with massive attendance, you won't be missed. In fact, the entire point of tiered access would be to limit attendance, so they would be counting on losing your business.

CP Maverick said:

If they advertise correctly, they can utilize staff from the kids areas at night as well. So long as customers know that the evening half does not cater to children.

If this were just a theme park near a major metro area I think this could work fine. The change over would be near dinner time, and would be getting close to getting kids to bed. But at a resort, which is what CP is and is working harder at becoming an even larger one, they would still need to have these open to cater to all the families that are staying at the resorts.

And they do cut back on the staffing there during the night. One night in Kiddie Kingdom they had one Ride Op working 3 rides, and the kids, my daughter included, followed him from ride to ride. My daughter loved that she got to ride those rides at night at the end of the season.

I don't think removing them from the available rides would be a good idea based on what CP is trying to do with families. Remember, a family will spend significantly more in 4 hours than an enthusiast/couple/teenager would spend in a full day.

djDaemon said:

Pete said:

I'm sure the park wants as many people in the park as possible, they probably made an incredible amount of money these last two weekends.

They would have made more had people spent less time waiting in line. It's not as simple as "more guests equals more money". If people have a suboptimal time due to massive crowds, they are less likely to return. And as has been said, falling attendance would be a trailing indicator of a problem.

But there is no indication that Halloweekends is having falling attendance and there is no reliable data that chopping up the day for an evening haunt or making passholders pay extra for Halloweekends would limit attendance, something that CP may not even want. Matter of fact, if the day is chopped up, the ride lines during the day may be longer as people there for rides will try to get all their rides in before being kicked out in the evening.

Part of the CP Halloweekends setup is that everyone can enjoy the park all day long. Kids have kid friendly Halloween activities during the day while others can ride all of the rides. After dark, the scare zones accessible to kids are not too scary and younger kids still have all of the rides available to them. The entire family can spend the entire day in the park without paying extra, something I think is very important to selling hotel rooms to families, which I bet is high on the list of CP priorities. This is very different from an urban park where the nighttime crowd mostly consists of people arriving in the evening for the haunts. Even day trippers, since the park is a significant drive for many people, benefit from way CP's Halloweekends are set up now as the entire family can enjoy the park all day.

The parks that charge extra for the haunt do so to make extra money and superficially to make a scarier atmosphere that may not be kid appropriate. Mostly for the money however, not for better service. From what I have seen last Saturday, staffing issues can be solved, changing the pricing structure to try and shut some people out due to cost is not good customer service. CP has some very good customer friendly policies, like opening a ride a short time before closing that was down, letting people enter a ride line right up to closing time and then running the ride to empty the line, etc. The way Halloweekends is structured is very customer friendly especially for hotel guests and is what most people expect of CP.

I'm not advocating gating HW separately during the evening. I'm suggesting that excluding Platinum Pass holders from HW wouldn't be as big a deal as you presume. So what if some people complain? Some people complain about every damn thing the park does.

I agree with others that the logical move would be a higher tier pass ("Diamond"?) that provides what Platinum does now. And Platinum & Season would no longer be valid for HW.

Of course they would probably be wise to change the naming to avoid confusion. But you get the idea - increasing admission cost to limit attendance.

And we're all just making assumptions that passholders were a huge part of the crowd. If there were only about 2,000 passholders in that entire crowd, then excluding some passholders would make very little impact. And those who were there would likely buy the higher tier pass anyway.

I'm not making any such assumption. The increased pass cost to access HW would be in addition to substantially increasing daily admission for HW. They're clearly leaving money on the table right now.

^ I agree, they should make better use of dynamic ticket pricing. While I think there is some of that now, not sure as we receive a marina pass, they could expand even more. Different pricing structure on weekdays v. weekends, regular season v. Halloweekends, walk up v. online. Does anyone know if they are already doing this?

They do dynamic pricing when purchasing online. Gate seems fixed except for HW Friday's. They also have discounts and promotions for select days during the year, which in a ways give you some dynamic pricing.

Saturday is only $54 when purchasing online. That seems like a steal given the amount of attractions.

It is a steal given a single haunted house admission can be between $20-40

XS NightClub said:

It is a steal given a single haunted house admission can be between $20-40

To be fair, Cedar Point's haunts are smaller and noticeably less frightening than most haunted houses elsewhere.

But yes, 12 haunted attractions and all the rides for the current price is a steal.

A lot of good conversation here... I have owned a season's pass for the past 5+ years and love going to CP in the fall. With that said, we avoid Saturday's due to the crowds and prefer Sunday afternoons as we don't partake in any of the haunts. Been to the park on two Friday's this halloweekend season and was very disappointed by the amount of food stands closed, and lines for drinks. It was very difficult to find a stand to pop in for a souvenier refill or free water. (NOT on one of the uber crowded days).

Personally this really doesn't affect me as we pack a cooler, but CP was giving off the vibe of the old Geauga Lake before the writing was on the wall. While I was at the park, I thought of people visiting from out of state, or guests who visit once a year and it would be such a bad impression that the park is giving off.

Every where I look, you can see or hear advertising for Halloweekends.. would be nice if some of those very expensive advertising dollars figure out a solution to the end of season employment issue. I know their hours are tough, but there has to be some good hs kids out there with a good work ethic, it's a great way to make some cash.

I don't have any solutions but definitely think this is tarnishing CP's reputation. People are much more likely to take the time to complain on social media, and it will just spread like wildfire.

I think the idea for Halloweekends, even with crowds that far exceed the norm, has always been that since there are technically more attractions (all the haunts, extra things to do), that the lines should be impacted in a positive way for guests; the general line of thinking being that 1) Cedar Point with 50,000 visitors is going to mean long waits, no matter what, but 2) Halloweekends adds all the rides plus all the haunts, thinning lines in a general sense park-wide.

There seems to be two related but different ideas floating around, with one being that a more robust staff could balance things out, even with the high numbers. The other seems to be that there is a saturation point, where the crowd numbers can become so excessive the park simply can't keep up.

I think the concept of diminishing returns is apparent when the park approaches capacity. "You can only do so much." As you approach full capacity, your efficiency has already been maximized, but this won't be very noticeable from the guest perspective. If the lines are already an hour long, 20% more people in the park won't increase those lines much, perceptually.

The biggest notice will be food service, as those will have less "down-time" with larger crowds. (Down-time, in this case, would be the moments in the day where the line is the shortest.)

I was there on Sunday too and for the most part, everything was well-oiled and working well. It was a busy day, but it was 77 and Sunny. You don't get that weather every day in June, folks.

I think the problem is that people who visit perhaps on a July weekday expect the same CP experience on a Saturday in October. Most people who post here know that isn't going to happen, but I suspect there's a substantial chunk of the general public who have no clue about the workings of a major amusement park.

I also think you can't judge customer satisfaction in general based on some Facebook posts.

I'm all for dynamic pricing to spread try to spread the crowd out to different days, not sure if that would work. But, leave the Platinum passes alone. To make more people want to go on Sundays I think they need to leave the park open until 10pm and run the outdoor scare zones. Otherwise even higher prices on Saturdays may not convince people to go on Sunday since they would be missing the outdoor scare zones.

Possibly, but as my anecdotal experience provides me with the fact that after 8pm on Sunday, a huge percentage of the population is not spending money on entertainment. This is why Sunday night is usually a big night for television viewers and internet activity. People are winding down from the weekend.

Another problem with keeping the park open until 10PM on Sunday is staffing. Most are college students and have class the next day. Some likely come from over an hour away.

I remember when Sun was 12-9. Better for me than the current times, but I do see the better feasibility for most others.

Wonder how the weather will factor here closing weekend. Friday clear and mildest day. Saturday getting colder plus rain, worst weather day. Sunday cold but looks clear for now. If weather stays clear Sunday, I'll go and use my fast lane for renewing for that day instead of Friday. I'll have the clearer picture by Friday on what to do I'm sure.

CP Maverick said:

I think the concept of diminishing returns is apparent when the park approaches capacity. "You can only do so much." As you approach full capacity, your efficiency has already been maximized, but this won't be very noticeable from the guest perspective. If the lines are already an hour long, 20% more people in the park won't increase those lines much, perceptually.

The biggest notice will be food service, as those will have less "down-time" with larger crowds. (Down-time, in this case, would be the moments in the day where the line is the shortest.)

The problem is efficiency hasn't been maximized, especially in food service. For example, at the burrito joint lines half the size of a long line at Chipotle take the same amount of time. They're missing the mark by 50%, that's huge. As I've said before, I think it would be a no brainer to increase pay by a couple bucks an hour (roughly a 15% increase) to double their efficiency.