Windseeker Testing

Shawn Meyer said:
From their perspective though, they would probably say they don't feel like walking that far. (lazy) I agree with you though dude, just put your prizes in your car if you don't want to pay the $2.00 fee for a locker. :)

Not to mention at the front of the park you can actually rent a bin to keep your winnings in for $6.00 for an entire day!

It's just as frustrating for us as ride hosts let me tell you.

I will be visiting the park in late July, I assume Windseeker will be operational by then. I would hate not being able to ride it during my three day stay at CP.

One has to think that if they had started construction when the park closed last fall rather than wait until spring, WindPasser would have been ready on opening day.

I don't buy the fact that any of the recient additions to the park were planned years in advance. One, perhaps two delays might have popped up - but this seems to be a business as usual condition any more with every new attraction having endless delays. And if these were planned so far in advance, testing wouldn't be streatched into June if things were on schedule.

After a poor opening day performance (lots of stuff down or plain just not ready), another delayed new attraction, and a loss of the most coaster title to SF, CF is more ready than ever for new management in the front office. I hope the next regime gets the formula correct.

I agree that an early start would have helped big time. But these problems still would have been unforeseen seeing that these are still the only ones in the world right now. Sure they would have had more time to get testing done and to check for the problems but I think the most recent problem could have only been detected once it started letting on actual riders.

SteveH said:
I don't buy the fact that any of the recient additions to the park were planned years in advance.

You're working under the assumption that the plan all along - yes, even 3 years ago - wasn't to start construction on WS precisely when they started it. It's not unheard of for construction to cost more in the harsh winter months. As such, it's not unreasonable to think that the added cost may be less than whatever loss of revenue will result from the ride not opening on time (which I'm sure is nearly $0.00).

The vast majority of guests visit between Memorial and Labor Days. I don't think this delay is nearly as big a deal as some of you are making it out to be.

After a poor opening day performance (lots of stuff down or plain just not ready), another delayed new attraction, and a loss of the most coaster title to SF, CF is more ready than ever for new management in the front office. I hope the next regime gets the formula correct.

Again, you're assuming they don't already have a formula that works. Which, when you think about it, suggests you know more about their job than they do. I doubt that's the case.

One option to having a more successful opening day would be to simply open the park two weeks later. Yet another would be to remove 2 or 3 coasters and a half-dozen flats. Are these options you'd consider in an attempt to "get the formula correct"?

Opening day is always a crapshoot, and I would be surprised if CP execs could name even 5 of SFMM's coasters.

Opening a ride late is bad PR though. In today's world, if you announce a new ride for 2011, people expect it to be open whenever the park is. This might not be the case for parks that are open year round, but it certainly is in the midwest. It gives the general impression that the park does not have things together. Certainly they deserve some slack for bad weather in April/May, but over a month late? 2 years in a row?

Chuck Wagon said:
Certainly they deserve some slack for bad weather in April/May, but over a month late? 2 years in a row?

Well, like I said, maybe they calculate that their cost savings (assuming there are any to be had) from not having a ball-busting construction schedule in the off season. And maybe that cost savings is greater than whatever loss they incur from a ride not opening along with the park in mid-May.

Somewhere, either here or on CBuzz, someone mentioned that in the past, it was typical for new rides to not open until Memorial Day. The park survived doing that before, so is there really any reason to suspect anything has changed? Why should this suddenly be such a big deal?

I suspect that most people who will go to Cedar Point this year don't even know that Windseeker isn't open or at least don't care because they don't plan on visiting the park until the summer. They don't really even start to thinking about CP until school is out or until their annual visit or two are approaching. There are probably a fair number of folks who do not even know that the ride has been added. Not sure how much bad PR there could be for those folks.

Not to mention the fact that while, yes, it is disappointing that the ride isn't open, there's only a million other things you can do at the park, so it's not like you're paying $50 to get into WindSeeker Point and the only ride in the entire park is down.

I hardly think there will be too much bad PR (if any), outside of the cancelling of the Red Cross event. And even that didn't seem to make as big a deal. Besides, the signs and ads I've seen have all said "Opening in 2011" or something of that nature. Nothing mentioned a specific date or opening day.

CP, for the future, needs to stop giving dates and times out to the public, where people are hearing it all over about "when" a new ride will open.

it will be easier on us regulars and non regulars if they just announce it when it opens.....nuff said : )

See, when they give an approximate date and time, and the ride doesn't open on said date, then people's hopes are let down :(

thats just my 2 cents

But the whole point is they never gave a date of opening. :)

Well they did in the sense that they scheduled an event for it on the friday before opening day. :)

The thing that I wonder is none of the Windseekers are open and did Cedar Fair make a bad choice buying these instead of the Star Flyers that as of right now much more reliable.

I think it will be a fact of life from now on that rides may not be ready to go on opening day. As it has been mentioned before the park has a shorter offseason and they like to have everything running until the end.

Of course they're currently more reliable. This is a prototype. There are none running yet to give you an accurate comparison. They've discovered a few issues and are in the process of resolving them. Let's at least let them get to the point where the park is happy with the operation and then see how reliable they are.

In the past few days, it seems like both KI and CP's WindSeekers have been doing the same thing. A couple workers are doing things on top of the ride gondola and it gets moved up and down to various positions on the tower. It doesn't look like any work has been happening on the seats.

I'm curious that they have been doing something similar for a few days. I wonder what exactly they are modifying.

Tim McKinley said:
...did Cedar Fair make a bad choice buying these instead of the Star Flyers that as of right now much more reliable.

For perhaps the 50th time now (not directed at you specifically, but it seems a fair amount of people have selective memory), there's a reason CF went with WindSeekers. The Star Flyers would have been down almost all the time (aka "unreliable") due to the winds that exist at CP.

^^When I was there on sunday and monday, the majority of time spent was on the brakes. But then it seemed their attention for half the day monday was spent situating the prox sensors and checking the clearance of them in relation to the gondola frame. Though I didnt think they would still be having issues with them unless they didnt completely finish the bigger modification. Now it seems like we won't even see testing by coastermania. Bummer.........

The way it's going, I'd assume a Halloweekends premier, if it even opens this year at all. :p

I'd say that's a bit of an exaggeration. If they don't open it before the end of June I would be shocked. Unless they tell us otherwise, they are working out minor issues/modifications on the ride.

When my daughter was young, she would invariable ask during a car trip how much longer it was until we got there. If I gave her an estimate that was too short and we went over it, she would sigh and get cranky. So, I quickly learned to give her the answer "three hours" (unless the trip was longer than that) regardless of the true duration. When we would get there "early", she would be happy.

So, dear readers, the ride will be open in three months.