Originally posted by dcs221
Yeah but I don't see those millions of people putting money up to keep the park running. Yeah they went and gutted the park, but the main objective of most businesses is to make money. You say they have no respect, they say they're losing money, who's right? I say either side has a good argument, but it's the company's decision in the end.
Yeah but I don't see those millions of people putting money up to keep the park running. Yeah they went and gutted the park, but the main objective of most businesses is to make money. You say they have no respect, they say they're losing money, who's right? I say either side has a good argument, but it's the company's decision in the end.
Geauga Lake was never the "millions of visitors" type park. Yes, it had its years when neighboring SeaWorld helped push attendance over the one-million mark, but it was never the superpark Six Flags tried to create. They soon realized this when 4 coasters brought in over 2 million people, but adding the animal park and X-Flight could not sustain that number. From there numbers declined back to pre-SF days of around 1.5 million [approx the average between GL and SWO]
In comes Cedar Fair, with the story of how they want to return Geauga Lake to the small family amusement park it once was. After one year of operations (without the animals) attendance is around half of what it was before. Well they obviously didn't understand the relationship the animal park had with bringing people outside the area to the park. Kinzel has even admitted this himself.
So to continue their plan with the "disappointing" attendance figures, they come up with the brilliant idea to downsize the park. How do they start downsizing? By expanding the waterpark further away from the central location of the park. Not only that, this "new" waterpark actually has LESS in it than the previous one. With that, they also cut out easily the busiest time of the year when they cut the Haunt. [If you want to know why they did this, look at the before & after for CP's Halloweekends. It's not a secret that the Haunt was cancelled to help boost Halloweekends.]
Ok, now they've got a new story. The park is underperforming [at about 70% of the old attendance with the animal park] and "too big" for the attendance it brings in. So with this they decide to dump the most expensive [and most popular] rides in the park. Now, I don't really have a problem with this being they wanted to bring back the old Geauga Lake feel, right? Well, they really didn't. Did anyone else see the old rotting waterpark? That should have been cleaned up. [But why, if they were closing the park anyways?]
They took out the two biggest attractions and raised prices, yet the park was still performing at around the same level, or better. Each employee and GL "fan" I've spoken to over the summer has told me that things were turning around and people were starting to come back. Wait a second, they took out rides and raised prices, yet attendance was up?!? This can't be right.
So, fast forward to now. They can't do nothing with the park, it's been performing better than in previous years. [Still well under the one million mark, but it's in no way a pit sucking in dollars instead of producing them.] They already had planned on taking out Dominator and Thunderhawk, that is obvious. (Contractors were at the park months ago.) Well, that puts them closer to their "original Geauga Lake" that they proposed to us, but Cedar Point's attendance was down. [See: Haunt vs Halloweekends ^] They couldn't do any capital improvements to the park, they were having a hard time justifying a $25 million waterpark that was smaller than the one it replaced. They can't add the "big" coaster Spehn wanted as it would pull more people away from Cedar Point. So, instead they look at it from the almighty dollar standpoint. Cedar Fair is in a HUGE debt right now, and Geauga Lake is a $170 million collection of rides, land, and a waterpark. Redistrubte the rides, sell the land, and the waterpark is basically paid for...
Here are a couple of Spehn's comments closing day during my brief conversation with him...
- Asking how he felt about Cedar Fair taking out rides:
- "The footprint of the park was too big for the attendance."
[Well, jeeze Bill, maybe the waterpark was fine where it was?]
- Asking what he thought of the comments about "competition" between Geauga Lake and Cedar Point:
- "We have to work together."
[Does this mean Cedar Fair wants Geauga Lake's guests to go to Cedar Point instead? It certainly contradicts the claim that Cedar Fair operates each park independantly of each other. It also leads me to wonder, will Kings Island ever get anything that could overtake Millennium Force or Magnum on people's favorite lists?]
Geauga Lake was not a "failure" on it's own. Cedar Fair allowed the park to "fail" and thus pulled the plug. And if you think it was NOT because of competition, Cedar Fair has said it will not sell the park to anyone interested in developing an amusement park on the site. They bought it to kill it.