Why Cedar Fair Might Be Struggling This Year

Believe it or not, between 1970-2000, the park saw 50k+ visitors in a DAY (all on Saturdays)....24 times*. The most during that three decade period being on May 31st, 1986 (Thunder Canyon's debut year) with a then record of 60,912 attendees. It has happened many times after 2001. The all time daily attendance record was broken last year, Saturday October 14, 2017 with over 71,000 patrons, my bad. I was there that weekend and it was God awful and I would never do it again.

Check out this link from last year (especially RCMAC's trip report summary). The park ran out of food at many locations. Enjoy!

https://pointbuzz.com/Forums/Topic/understaffing-at-cedar-point-hits-nightmarish-levels/4

*2001 Cedar Point Park Operations Manual w/ all time statistics.

You answer why it most likely will not happen again for a long time, you think you are the only person on that "80,000" that had a god awful time?

CPfan1976 said:I was there that weekend and it was God awful and I would never do it again.

https://pointbuzz.com/Forums/Topic/understaffing-at-cedar-point-hits-nightmarish-levels/4

You do understand that these are comparable quarter to last years quarter figures we are talking about, not total yearly.

In order to make up for the slow months in the regular season which is 7 days a week, Halloweekends, with 2.5 day operations, would have to smash records on top of already high numbers from last year... and have virtually perfect weather.

One thing they could do: If the weather really cooperates is have an extended weekend or two of operations after regular season closing day. But you would risk stocking food, supplies and staffing problems just to hope for good weather. Also, the spend on advertising to get word of additional weekends would be huge.

And if that many people show up, how many of them are going to leave the park very unhappy with the crowds? That would likely negatively impact their willingness to come back to the park next year.

Seems like the park is walking a fine line - how to boost this years attendance while still having people leave the park with a smile on their faces.

I’m still pretty sure the most at the park in 1 day has been no more than 50,000. But really, it’s not worth losing sleep over.

Yeah, where are you getting your figures from, CPfan?

When I had the radio, 25K was a pretty typical mid-summer weekday when weather was decent. You might have a rainy cold day in May with only 10K people. 40K-ish would be a good Saturday in August, and not that uncommon.

Checking the math, a typical season with 3.5 Million people and 140 operating days will average out to 25K a day, so that goes along with what I witnessed above. To balance out those 10K October and May days there will be some 40K+ Days.

As for 10/14/17 being 71K I certainly could believe it. 40K seems to fit everyone in the parking lot comfortably, but that day they ran out of parking. Once the grass lots were full (hint, if you are ever directed to park on the grass just turn around), people started double parking and making up spaces. There was one car I saw inches from the fence on the bay lot, and driver probably would have got wet if exiting on the driver side. The park itself was wall to wall people, you could not walk without having to dodge somebody. Made the 40K August days look sane by comparison. This was at 7PM when I left and there was still a line of cars waiting to get in.

Of course that begs the question, at what point do you put the moose out front (Or the moose on Twitter) and tell people you are at capacity? I'm sure there would be disappointment, but If I actually paid for a day 70-80K people were allowed into the park I might be more disappointed.

^^ CPVet, TwisterWicker77 .....Please see the * in my original post for source material.

Joe E said:

Of course that begs the question, at what point do you put the moose out front (Or the moose on Twitter) and tell people you are at capacity? I'm sure there would be disappointment, but If I actually paid for a day 70-80K people were allowed into the park I might be more disappointed.

I know Disney and Universal can have capacity closures over the December holidays and occasionally on Easter week. Of course people blow it out of proportion and say "OMG THE PARK CLOSED" when in reality they have several phases of closures and typically are able to begin allowing all admission a few hours later once "x" number of people have exited. Each WDW and Universal park has a set "in park" number that triggers the different phase closures. I wonder if CP has a number that it would have to hit to do something similar. Or, more importantly, after Saturday October 14, 2017, do they have one now? Based on your first hand experience, I would say 60-65K could/would be that number.

WDW parks also have parking redirects, which we did a few times when I worked at Epcot. The park continues to allow admission as normal, but the parking lot fills up. Epcot was the one park that literally *never* phase closed. It is so massive, we could get over 100K in there before it was an issue, and even on the most packed New Years Eve we would top out around 93-94K. But - we would have to do parking redirects. Typically we would actually be on the receiving end of parking redirects from Hollywood Studios or Magic Kingdom during the holiday weeks since our parking lot was the largest. However, during Food and Wine season or during runDisney events where portions of our parking lot were closed off for an event we would redirect. During a redirect, we did not charge the parking fee and sent them to another park for complimentary parking and we would have extra buses running. Not really an option at CP - more just sharing practices at a different park for comparison.

^^ given your examples out of the operations manual and the more updated information, it appears that the analysts concerns of extended seasons cannibalizing the early and regular season may be legitimate. This was expressed in an earlier report after CF quarterly disappointment.

And with that, do they pull a Disney and try to offer incentives to get folks into the park during the slower times (which now seems include June and July)? In the not so distantpast, January, February, September and early December were ghost towns in Orlando parks. Now the parks have special events and better deals for these portions of the year and it is darn near impossible to find a true "slow season" in the Orlando parks now. However, nightmarish crowds in the summer have definitely become more manageable and other than the annual cluster during the week between Christmas and New Years and to a lesser degree the Easter season, things seem much more spread out. And with dynamic pricing, if you still want to visit during the peak season (as many people clearly do) you are going to pay for it.

Does Cedar Fair/CP try to do that? Create incentives in terms of pricing and/or lodging discounts for visiting in June and July and jack up the prices for Halloweekends? Having Brew & BBQ in June certainly helps - as the pre-July 4th crowds have always been lighter than post-July 4th at Cedar Point. I would leave May weekdays alone - you already have the school groups/Physics Days and let's be real, at least at Cedar Point they can benefit from some slow days to work out the kinks that always pop up. Or - if the numbers even out at the end of the fiscal year - do you just accept that the new normal includes slower than normal days in June and July and outrageous days in October.

But if it’s the same numbers over a longer operating season that’s a losing scenario, That’s what the analysts were getting at.

Another thing that stood out in the CF report, they seem to be bean counting their payrolls and justifying how they’re managing them to keep margins up.
Seems a bit outdated of a business model, especially in today’s economy. In the end crappy customer service and experience is likely what leads to your lower attendance.

I guess I am looking strictly at Cedar Point, which has had the same operating season minus a few days here and there for close to two decades. I can't remember when Halloweekends expanded from running through the second or third weekend in October clear through Halloween weekend. 2001/2002 seems to ring a bell.

But for parks adding more hours in the spring and/or almost two months with WinterFest and are seeing stagnant numbers, then yes, that is an entirely different issue that needs to be addressed.

Easy way for Cedar Point (not gonna work at other Cedar Fair parks, not yet anyway) is to have the resorts be open on Sunday nights during HalloWeekends. I would LOVE to stay on property (assuming I could get a campsite) but we go home on Monday so it’s not worth it to relocate on Sunday. Maybe start with limited resorts on Sunday nights (Lighthouse Point & Breakers, perhaps) to see how it goes then expand to Express & Castaway Bay if it is worthwhile?

That sounds like a good idea, maybe even extend the park hours to 10pm on Sundays to open the outdoor fright zones to give people an incentive to stay late and stay overnight.

As far as Winterfest, that is a different enough experience from the regular season that it should have zero effect of cannibalizing from the regular season.

The main problem with doing a 10 o’clock closing on Sundays during Halloweekends is the college students who work at the park. I worked with a lot of employees who had a 7:45 or 8 o’clock class on Mondays at colleges that were about 2 hours away (ie: Kent or YSU). That makes for a very long and tiring day with minimal rest. I do agree that having the accommodation option on Sunday would be a good idea. I just don’t know how they go about making it work.

Cedar Point's big draws are still from Detroit and Cleveland areas to my knowledge. Ohio and Michigan are states with little to no population growth. Also true of other parts of the Midwest. Prime draw areas for the park. Tough to grow attendance year after year without population growth.

You do realize they have parks in other states right?

Had I said Cedar Fair rather than Cedar Point you would have a point. But I didn't so you don't.

Sorry, thought you read the title of the thread.

Yet when others posted about Cedar Point's attendance in this thread, you didn't see reason to ask them if they realized Cedar Fair had parks in other states or if they had read the title of this thread. Makes sense, right?

Yeah I read the title of the thread. As happens here often, threads tend to drift somewhat (sometimes a lot) from the original title (particularly towards matters Cedar Point--probably makes sense given the name of this site which maybe you have read as well?). Indeed some of the most recent posts in this thread were about Cedar Point attendance. Which is why I posted what I did about Cedar Point attendance.

FWIW, I always viewed a primary driver of the Paramount acquisition as getting Cedar Fair into markets with growing populations. Many criticize Cedar Fair for overpaying for those parks. But there weren't a lot of other options for acquiring multiple parks in regions with growing populations. So if growing population regions were the goal, there wasn't a lot of choice.