What "drives" the Park?
With the recent announcement of Dragster, and the continous media hoopla surrounding the ride, I'm interested in getting your thoughts as to what "drives" the park?
I mean, the park has won the Golden Ticket five years in a row for best park in the world. Every coaster they build is some sort of record-breaker, they have excellent guest relations, a very clean park, and blow the competition away.
I'm interested in what motivates them year after year. Is it solely a financinal issue? Is it excellent park management, or pressure from Cedar Fair? Far to often many businesses rest on the laurels and forget the "concepts" of good business practices...landing them in trouble.
Why is our park different, and is always finding ways to improve?
-Mikey
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Let your mind go...and your body will follow...
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- Dennis
NYC Subways, The next best thing to riding roller coasters.
The executives at Cedar Fair can put aside money for a new ride, hotel, restaurant, etc and get it built. But, it falls on the park management, particularly the middle management, to operate the thing.
Cedar Point has many proud full time employees, many of whom have been working there for their entire adult lives, who deserve most of the credit in my humble opinion.
The "silver tags" have to hire all of the staff, train and motivate them. Once the season starts they pretty much put their family lives on hold for the entire operating season. Just as the seasonals work 6 days a week, so too do the full timers. Most full time employees get to spend very little time with their familes from April to October.
When the staffing falls short, particularly in the shoulder seasons, it is the full timers who go run the ride, cook the food, make the beds and whatever else is required. I know of "silver tags" who will work 80-100 hours in a week during late August.
You might be saying, "wow...that is a lot of overtime." Think again. Most of the "silver tags" are salaried and do not earn any overtime.
Most "silver tags" could make more money if they were not working at Cedar Point. The Point, though, is in their blood and they can't think of doing anything else. Cedar Fair counts on that and probably takes it for granted.
I often read comments about how great people think it is to see Mr. Kinzel walking through the park and picking up garbage and talking with the guests. I agree he has done some good things for the company but the success of Cedar Point, and I am sure her sister parks, falls quietly on the middle management.
Walt Disney said, "You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world...but it requires people to make the dreams a reality."
I ask you, does the park have any real competition? Yes, in the Ohio market there are three amusement parks, but are all of those major players? I'm interested in knowing if the competition from PKI, (and yes, I guess you could say SFWOA) plays a part. I would say the Return on Investment plays heavy, but what about motivate from the other parks?
-Mikey
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Let your mind go...and your body will follow...
I think the employees have a great sense of history about the park and pride themselves on being a part of it.
Believe it or not, Geauga Lake had that too until Premier/Six Flags got into the picture. Before Premier, their ride selection wasn't great but I would argue the park experience for most guests was better than it is now.
That is also where Disney succeeds. By the time you get through Disney training you really do believe you can sprinkle pixie dust on a guest and make their vacation more enjoyable.
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Florida may have Disneyworld and Key West,
but Ohio has Cedar Point and Put-In-Bay.
It's great to live in Ohio!
Knowing operations as well, I do think that one of the main things that "drive" the park, along with everything that Chief Wahoo stated, is the joy, and I do mean joy that the manangement (upper, middle and lower) get when they see the crowds rushing on opening day, with huge smiles to their favorite ride or attraction.
I feel that, every decision made at Cedar Point or all the Cedar Fair parks is truly driven by the guest experience. Even the money issues with Cedar Point are guest driven. Competition with other parks, at least in my mind does not figure in the least bit with their main descisions, if they did, they you would see many more full-time employees looking at their competition. Vary rarely do I ever hear of a trip that a full-timer has made to another park, even on the upper management level.
Integrity was added five or six years ago.
It is nice to think that Cedar Fair makes every decision as a result of considering guest experience but that isn't entirely accurate.
I don't think the ticket price or hotel room prices are set with the guest experience in mind.
As for visiting other parks, that used to be standard years ago. Employees were encouraged to visit other parks (I believe on Cedar Fair/Point's dime) to get a feel for how the competition does things.
For economic reasons, of course, that program was disbanded. Upper Management (Kinzel and the VP's) travel to other parks more than you might think. Maggie was built after Kinzel had ridden a coaster over in Japan.
*** This post was edited by Chief Wahoo 1/14/2003 11:10:40 AM ***
"All of the capital we do has to show a good return on investment. We feel that you have to put in the capital dollars to keep people coming back year after year, but we have to justify it with either increased guest attendance or with increased per capita spending. A lot of people think we put the rides in because of ego, to say we’re the biggest and the best, but that’s not really the truth. The truth is they’re good business decisions to put those rides in, and the timing has to be right."
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Jeff
Webmaster/GTTP - Sillynonsense.com
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