Why did everyone hate Dick Kinzel?

What was so bad about him. With out him we wouldn't have had MF, TTD, M-XL-200, and tons of other rides. He did great thing s for the park. Why does everyone hate him?

A lot of people on here think that he may have just overstayed his welcome a bit. His main focus was coasters which put the park ahead when it comes to thrills and coasters but put the park behind in family attractions and just the atmosphere of the park in general. I agree with you tho he did push for those rides, especially Magnum which spawned the coaster wars and truly put CP above and beyond other parks

Nobody is perfect. There's a lot to be thankful to him for and a bit to be sour about. I HIGHLY doubt it's a hatred for him since he was one of the nicest persons you could meet. The "sourness" seems to be more revolved around the business aspect of him and some of his past decisions.

Yeah, I definitely didn't hate him. Cedar Point would not be the great park it is today without him. I think he truly loved the park and just couldn't let everything out of his protective grip, which was definitely a downfall in the latter years of his career.

Also, the formulas and mentalities that worked so well for so many years (such as building new coasters) were not as successful the past decade. The park started to get behind on technology, landscaping, non-ride maintenance, food, live entertainment, advertising, drawing families, etc.

Basically, he should have retired 5 or so years ago and left on a higher note. It's unfortunate now that he's being remembered for some of the questionable decisions and statements toward the end of his career, because overall, he did an incredible job.

I didn't hate DK. Like everyone said, he achieved a lot during his tenure, and achieved a lot of new milestones in the industry in terms of rides. And that goes a long way.

But Ffej summed it up. Where advancements were made in rides, the rest of the park fell behind from parks like Busch Gardens, and the Orlando parks.

I must say, I'm more excited for this season than I've been for an opening day in a long time. I think there's a good future at CP.

Let's face it, most parks aren't building like they used to, so CP will have some of the top-of-the-line rides for years to come. And it sounds like next year we're getting a shiny new coaster anyway (speculation). But that leaves a lot of opening for Mr. Ouillmet to play catch-up in the other aspects of the business.

I hate him for many things but none more then Geauga Lake

Disagreeing with a CEO's decisions does not mean anyone "hates" him. Except Skippy?

And I will never, for the life of me, understand why people blame Kinzel for Geauga Lake's failure. It was dead in the water, and if anything he should be praised for keeping it open a few more years. Six Flags killed it, Kinzel kept it on life support, but it was already gone. Waste of money, but at least some of the rides got another life somewhere else.

It's all been said above.

I don't hate him... I just feel the way stated above. He over stayed his welcome.

Well said Kevinj. I also believe that Dick Kinzel put Geauga Lake on life support. Six Flags was literally destroying the park.

I feel that Dick Kinzel was amazing for Cedar Fair. Even though he overpaid for Paramount Parks, cheapened down marketing, and bought Geauga Lake, he still did a very good job expanding the parks.

Dead horse, you're about to be beaten mercilessly....

Cedar Fair directly led Geauga Lake's demise. They went from over 2 million visitors a year to about 700,000 when Cedar Fair took over, not due to the name change or loss of licensed characters but due to all the bad decisions they made. They did absolutely NOTHING to bring people in but they did seemingly everything possible to keep them out. Shutting down the animal side instead of selling it to someone who could handle it was their first mistake. SeaWorld and Geauga Lake always helped each other, it was a very successful partnership and Cedar Fair I assume chose to ignore that fact. Then take into account that the largest addition to the park in the 3 years they owned it was a water park that was smaller then the one they already had (conveniently built on the SeaWorld side where it could have it's own gate...). The only other thing they did over those 3 years was remove attractions. Go ahead and tell me that they tried. That they gave it their all and really wanted it to succeed.

If they actually cared they would've sold it to another amusement park chain. Instead, they bulldozed it into the graveyard you see now. It managed to survive 117 years but couldn't last 3 seasons under Cedar Fair management. I worked there and had to watch Cedar Fair slowly destroy that park from day one. I got tired of answering hundreds of times a day as to where the animals were. People traveled from out of state, where their news didn't cover what was happening and they were really upset to find out the animals were gone. Anyone who arrives at an amusement park where half the park just abandoned / off limits and overgrown (weeds, vines, algae, buildings falling apart, etc.) with construction walls up, and a couple of the major coasters missing (with the footprints just left out in the open) in addition to all of the animals that they loved being gone and you're not going to have good word of mouth. There were even people who told me that they drove by and saw the abandoned water park that runs along the street and that they assumed the park was closed. The park might have become cleaner (too many trash cans), employees friendlier but the atmosphere was just unbearable.

I take this whole thing very personally. I just ended my one man strike this February, to which I haven't stepped foot in a Cedar Fair park since the closing of Geauga Lake (it honestly doesn't look like I missed out at all). I just spent most of my time at BGW, IOA, and WDW. I'm happy to give Matt Ouimet and the whole company a chance now that Dicks gone. Whether it was record breaking or buying up the competition, that man just had an ego. Hell, to get the job we had to take a test where one of the questions was if we recognized the man in the picture they showed us. Can you guess who that was? Dick. To hear straight from park management that everything happening to Geauga Lake was direct from that man in the picture just upsets me. I don't care if he was nice in person. He obviously doesn't respect me or the millions of others who enjoyed Geauga Lake, so why should I respect him? I can't imagine anyone capable of doing a better job at destroying a popular historic park who just a couple years earlier was breaking records.

I really don't expect anyone here to sympathize with me though. If anything, I expect to be attacked for my ignorance and then the blame to be shifted to Six Flags. Kinzel seems to be untouchable when it comes to Geauga Lake for some unexplainable reason.

"Hate" is an awfully strong word. In 2005, when I last interviewed him, and he was intending to retire, I very much respected his accomplishments. Shortly thereafter, they acquired Paramount Parks, and things took a lot of turns for the worse.

First of all, he applied a "works at Cedar Point" mentality to all of the new parks, and that was a disaster. Imposing a ticket/pass mix at Kings Island, on the edge of an urban market, was particular wrong. Bad press and attendance difficulty came with that.

The acquisition also led to a massive talent bleed. There were a lot of great people in those parks, and they lost their autonomy, one day a week during the summer, and in many cases were even asked to take pay cuts. Today, a great many of those folks work for Six Flags. Kinzel frankly didn't pay anything more than lip service to the value of his people.

The biggest mistake on Geauga Lake was buying it in the first place.

Trying to sell the company to Apollo was probably the worst of his mistakes, especially with units trading around $30 today. It was a panic reaction to a situation that required someone to be creative and let it ride.

What bothered me the most, and wasn't entirely obvious to the outside world, is that he was a total micromanager. Even with good people in the company, they weren't able to actually make decisions or do anything meaningful without approval from "dad." Apparently this was always the case, but it was especially troublesome as the company nearly doubled in size. That style of leadership is awful in a small company, but it absolutely doesn't scale to a billion dollar company.

All that said, there aren't many people who build a company to billion dollar status. For that, I think you can certainly respect him to a degree. What ultimately would have saved his reputation and legacy is if he would have stepped aside and retired as planned in 2006.

Right on point, as always

Skippy said:
It managed to survive 117 years but couldn't last 3 seasons under Cedar Fair management.

Well then it didn't survive under Six Flags management either otherwise why would they want to get rid of it? If it was working fine, they would have kept it.

People traveled from out of state, where their news didn't cover what was happening and they were really upset to find out the animals were gone..

Sorry but this is why the internet exists. If you are traveling hundreds of miles specifically to visit an amusement park, even if you had already visited 100 times, wouldn't you check their website?

I agree that Geauga Lake was in an unprofitable state before Cedar Fair took over, and that wasn't Dick's or Cedar Fair's fault.

However, I do think the park could have been saved in some form, and that it was abandoned too quickly. The park should have been scaled back even more than it was, by 30-50% with a steep drop in admission. Leave the Dipper and a small collection of rides operating, and then focus on differentiating the park from Cedar Point in the future.

I think that was the key. Geauga Lake was being run under Six Flags as a direct competitor to Cedar Point, and it just came off as a watered-down version in comparison. Cedar Fair took over and started to scale it back, but they continued operating it with the same logic, procedures, and attractions as CP and their other parks.

They could have focused on it being a classic park, saving top-notch classic rides from around the country. They could have focused on rich landscaping. Those generic steel coasters removed? Replace them with a fun house or classic dark ride...something Cedar Point doesn't have. Find attractions included in admission that require little staffing, but could draw tournament gatherings, like sand volley ball courts, horse shoes, etc.

I really feel like Geauga could have succeeded if it focused on being a quality, low-cost, classic family park for all the locals / enthusiasts, while keeping Cedar Point the destination for high thrills and cutting-edge modern rides.

Jeff said:
The biggest mistake on Geauga Lake was buying it in the first place.

I agree. CF jumped onto an already sinking ship, there was no intention to buy the place just to close it. You could see the writing on the wall as the property quickly overdeveloped and Sea World was sold to Six Flags.

Ffej said:
They could have...

The outcome wouldn't have been any different. There comes a point where they have a responsibility to unit holders to stop throwing money at something that will never get a return on investment. Let's be honest... the day SeaWorld sold it was the day that the Geauga Lake's future was done.

Kinzel's biggest problem was that he didn't have a long term goal. And if he did, he never told anyone about it, or articulate it very well to the public. Disney always said that his parks were never finished, and even renamed his enginees "imagineers" to stress the point that short term projects are only consdered "quick fixes" and you can always make it better or different. Couple this with the slow decay of rides like Disaster Transport and you really can see the trend of advertise the new and milk the old for as much as you can.

Purchasing the GL & Paramount properties and then not following through on phases of improvements (i.e. GL Phase II), really put a lot of people on the hate side of the fence because their beloved childhood memories were simply wiped out. Plus it put a big drain on the financials just as a recession was about to hit - which made the stock holders uncomfortable with his management.

Then the entire Apollo merger and management issues concerning others within the top level defined the situation even further because there were clearly different views as to what the future was for CF, and many just wanted to sell out and call it quits.

In the end, DK was the exact opposite of Walt Disney. Rather than demanding perfection, value, and precise execution - he was more of a Bob Isner. Bottom line financials, short term projects, and banking the farm on the new attraction of the year to bring in the customers. If you look at Animal Kingdom in Florida today - it's still a half day park at best mainly because it's going to take something like Avatar to make it really interesting.

What DK did do well was to get into the day to day operations (you could regularly seem him walking the park daily). But his micromanagement fell short when the new attractions he was banking on, were down more than they were up. TTD, Maverick, and Shoot the Rapids had difficult openings and in the end, no one seemed to take the blame. I am pretty sure that at my (and your) place of employment, heads roll when product launches continue to fault out on a regular basis.

Hopefully, Matt Q. can restore the magic. It will take a few years to find out for sure - but I like what I see thus far.

One thing that I am seeing from Ouimet is that his vision is very much like the vision of the people who ran Cedar Point back in the day when I was a kid, namely George Roose and Emil LeGross. Focus on quality, keep the park fresh with a variety of attractions that the whole family can enjoy and make guests feel management wants a day at the park to be the best day of the summer. The food was good, details like having all lights on the rides working were taken care of daily and more imagination was used in designing the park. I think Ouimet will bring back the magic.

As for Kinzel, he did a lot of good things, but as SteveH said, he was only focused on the next big thing while he let other things slide. And, he lacked imagination. While it is true the CP has built lots of very impressive coasters during Kinzel's reign, coasters alone do not make an amusement park. Once Kinzel saw how Magnum increased attendance, it seems like he went to the easy fix. Build another coaster and they will come. Not a lot of imagination was shown to build a variety of attractions, he just stuck to the same old formula. And it really hasn't been paying off lately. I think the general public almost looks at another coaster at CP as routine, it doesn't have the WOW factor like it did when Magnum opened. I think lack of imagination and lack of attention to details is Kinzel's downfall. After awhile, those things were really noticeable.

I really think Ouimet's vision will turn CP into a modern version of what CP was in the 60's and 70's. A park with lots to do for the entire family, quality that guests perceive as a high value product rather than a ripoff and I think more attention to make the resorts more of a fun place, rather than just a place to rest your head.

Pete said:
...what CP was in the 60's and 70's.

Oooh! Does that mean they'll reopen the lookout atop Fort Sandusky? :) ;)

Pete said:
I think the general public almost looks at another coaster at CP as routine, it doesn't have the WOW factor like it did when Magnum opened. I think lack of imagination and lack of attention to details is Kinzel's downfall. After awhile, those things were really noticeable.

Exactly. The coaster boom of the 1990s ended a long time ago. When I talk to the average person about CP, he or she views the park as nothing but coasters and not a whole lot of things to do for the entire family. After MF in 2000, things really seemed to dry up. Kinzel did some great things, but went to the well too many times with building new thrill machines. The land occupied by TTD could've been put to better use, and I actually miss the way the area looked before that coaster was built.