Wild Frontier Nights - June 3, 4, 10, & 11

It looks like Disney lets you eat inside.

Can't deny those pics look good. They do look very staged though. All the ingredients visible and perfectly layered with great lighting. What do you actually get on a busy day from tired employees? The menu there looks very familiar, burgers, chicken, pizza.

On the speed, I noticed the new farmhouse bottleneck didn't seem to be the servers yet. They were pushing out food as fast as people could ask for it, but the wait was still significant. Not sure online ordering would have helped unless they had more employees dedicated to just that. The less popular places (that were open) seemed to be doing better though. We'll see when everything's open and people are more spread out.

The lack of indoor seating has to be a conscious decision at this point right? Is it just the cost? What do they have against it?

I think it's a matter of finding the right location for a massive building. Carowinds' Harmony Hall takes up about 46,000 square feet including BOH stuff, which would consume the entirety of Antique Cars' infield aside from the pond. In other words, literally every last tree in the center of FT would have been removed.

Yeah, there are better sites for something Harmony Hall sized, and I'm glad the were able to save the trees they did. I'm not sure the size of the farmhouse, but Hugos has indoor seating and looks about 20k sqft. Do you think something like that could have fit and kept the pond/trees?

Back on the original topic, Just got an email that they're giving away a few free tickets to the event (and front of the line tour). Part of the passperks program. I'm not a fan of the random chance promotions. I wouldn't turn it down if I won though. I guess a few freebies are cheaper than discounts available to wider audiences.

There are many options they could have chosen, but my point is only that every choice is a tradeoff. I'd much rather have FT, with its natural shade, remain an open area even if it means we're stuck with outdoor seating. Save the massive air conditioned indoor eatery for somewhere that doesn't have the natural shade and ambiance of FT.

I always thought they should have put the Festhouse/Harmony Hall in the footprint of Valravn which is kind of a crossroads section of the park and then dropped the bulk of the layout for that ride across the road where Cedars was demolished. They could have probably consolidated several food offerings in there and even eliminated the "Dive Inn," Coasters, and maybe even SkyRide Refreshments. You do need a significant chunk of space for something like that though and there aren't too many spots in the park that fit the bill of enough room, high foot traffic, not already used, etc.

At this point, I'm just sort of thinking indoor food/entertainment is not on the list of things high on the priority list for CP planners.

You got me trying to think if any of the non ex-paramount parks have gotten anything along those lines, and unless I'm forgetting something, I'm... not sure any have.

I second what you're saying about the Valravn footprint especially after going back to Google Maps and playing around with it, and especially with still seemingly no development at the Cedars/Wildcat sites (again, unless I'm forgetting something).

Just from playing around with the map, viable locations seem like they could be Kiddy Kingdom or Peanuts Playground if they ever wanted to do a ground-up redo of the area (could presumably have an indoor kids' play area as well to compensate), the Point Plaza-Ocean Motion-Starbucks-Toft's plot (presumably could have the gift shop and food service included with a new building, Ocean Motion's been moved before and it could be moved again)... and yeah, there's really no good places I can think of for a building of that footprint from pretty much Corkscrew on back, that wouldn't involve like, detouring onto Millennium Island or something.

Hudson said:

Can't deny those pics look good. They do look very staged though. All the ingredients visible and perfectly layered with great lighting. What do you actually get on a busy day from tired employees? The menu there looks very familiar, burgers, chicken, pizza.

Like I said, you get what's in the pictures. The waffle and the Tso chicken salad look incredible. I've never seen counter service like that. Not surprising when the doughnuts look like this and kabobs look like this and desserts look like this.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that at this point, a "Harmony Hall" eatery is not in the works for Cedar Point, at least in the near future. They have had ample opportunities to make such a move.

I'm not so sure about that. Maybe there's a method to the madness?

They have Hugo's up front now, along with Melt. They added BBQ "out back," and now Farmhouse in FT. If they were to move Celebration Plaza out where WT and Oceana were, that would, to Matt's point, free up a huge plot of land where the bleachers are, right in the middle of the park for a big indoor eatery in one of the busiest places in the park.

Thanks Jeff, you had to go and post a picture of Nomad Lounge (my favorite reason to go to AK) and remind me that I won't be back until late August..

As for the topic at hand, I am happy that CP has definitely upped their food game over the past couple of years. Sure they're still nowhere near Disney level but the newer additions over the past couple of years are a huge step in a better direction. I'm excited to check out Farmhouse this weekend.

djDaemon said:

I'm not so sure about that. Maybe there's a method to the madness?

They have Hugo's up front now, along with Melt. They added BBQ "out back," and now Farmhouse in FT. If they were to move Celebration Plaza out where WT and Oceana were, that would, to Matt's point, free up a huge plot of land where the bleachers are, right in the middle of the park for a big indoor eatery in one of the busiest places in the park.

You've got a point there, Celebration Plaza, despite being there for as long as it has now, has always had a weirdly temporary feel to it as befitting its awkward placement at a midway chokepoint, like the only reason it's there is because all the technical equipment for the Summer Spectacular was already there and they just had to move the booths 90 degrees. If they were to build a proper stage setup at the Oceana site, move all that stuff over, and route Perimeter Road through the old Cedars parking lot, there's your footprint for a properly positioned, full-size centralized indoor eatery/entertainment venue.

I don't know how much convention/conference business CP gets nowadays, particularly since I feel like Kalahari poached a lot of that, but this could be another use for this hypothetical building. I'm blanking on what it's called now since I don't think it's the Coral Courtyard anymore, but IIRC that's their only real event space/large group catering space, and that's still not 100% indoors (as well as being on the windward side of the park). Other than that, you've got what, the picnic pavilions?

I don't think that piece of land is THAT big of plot, certainly not big enough to fit something of Harmony Hall's scale. Could Re-locate Frontier Fling for the 8th time and you'd have that big of a spot though...

^ I'm including the footprint of the old Cedars dorms in my hypothetical, since the last thing I can remember that space being used for was the monster truck thing they had pre-COVID, and I'm not sure if it's been used for much of anything aside from overflow marina parking since then.

That certainly would be the logical placement for such a building, and it's something I have always thought would benefit the park. Happy to be wrong on this one.

Where would they power wash the park dumpsters though

I always thought parks should have after hours events for a nominal upcharge because night riding is the best. However something like $25-35 for 4 hours and a majority of rides. I wonder if enough people would support it to work. It is a great way to get season passholders to pay admission again.

$100 for a couple of rides and 3 hours isn’t attractive enough to attend IMO.

The perfect place for a Harmony Hall/Festhaus would be where the coliseum building is. But it’s status keeps it as a pretty useless eyesore on the midway.

I have a strong feeling that whatever is going in the fenced in area is not a ride, but rather the future location of celebration plaza. It’s always been a terrible design choice where it is currently because of the bottleneck it creates every night, and Tony explicitly stated that whatever was going there would be something for everyone. Which kinda narrows down the list of attractions that could go there. A beachfront stage would be amazing (minus windy nights) and it would free up the plaza by Iron Dragon; which, if connected to the old dorms area would open up a sizable plot of land for future expansion.

coaster5 said:

$100 for a couple of rides and 3 hours isn’t attractive enough to attend IMO.

That's a feature, not a bug. The idea is to attract people who are willing to pay a premium price for a premium (which in this case means exclusive) experience.