DirkFunk

Took the words out of my mouth. 2012 was Dinosaurs Alive and Luminosity at the expense of Paddlewheel Excursions and Wildcat also.

I don't think they're getting anything substantial. They have real problems there (as is often indicated with this thread) in terms of staffing, utilities, and with local governance. They should be working on fixing those first, because doing so will allow them to bring up their capacity on the dry side and start smoothing out a lot of the issues they have (especially on weekends). They've done the orthodox "It is 1985, how do we do this?" solutions to some of those problems, but they probably need to start joining the 21st century and looking at new ideas.

It does business. The loudest voices saying it doesn't are, I find, generally people who last visited 8-10 years ago (if not longer).

I highlighted the one I see here. Just because the entire park isn't on the verge of being liquidated doesn't mean that someone in a high up place doesn't feel a tinge of desperation. Cedar Fair was not in danger of going Chapter 7, but you can't tell me Dick Kinzel trying to make a deal with Apollo wasn't something out of desperation. The shareholders had his head and ended up seeing exponential growth in stock price. Families are a pretty wide segment - a cursory suggests 35-40% of the households in the region have kids. I'm not convinced relying on Facebook impressions is going to get them there, but I'm sure it is part of the strategy. If it is the whole one, again, from a shareholder perspective, I'm concerned. I bring up Disney because they are the clear market leader and from which the lineage of the present CEO of Cedar Fair comes. Looking at their other parks, it seems to be that those parks are clearly moving a direction more closely related to Disney. On the other hand, I'm trying to think of a single time when a park made a change to purposely not charge or greatly reduce charges to part of the customer base and it worked out to show significant customer and revenue growth long term. I can, however, reel off a long long long list of parks where that didn't work. Most recently, James Atchison joined the list of people who tried that to no avail. I specifically chose those because they are direct revenue to the park. Upcharge rides and Photo Pass plans and VIP tours all fit into that too: just creating new revenue sources from whence there was only tickets, merch, and games at one point. Kings Dominion is a park with an SBNO coaster sitting in it: it is not Universal Studios building Harry Potter and going pseudodisruptive in such a manner that they could stay upmarket and see mass growth. To me, it seems like the folks in charge are choosing volume over increased per cap spending and that concerns me. Especially since it contrasts greatly with what is happening at Cedar Point, Knotts, Great America, and Carowinds.

"Desperate" doesn't only have to apply to parks that are closing. If the goal at KD is to make it a more family oriented park rather than thrill oriented and what has been done already (Planet Snoopy, bringing back the singing mushrooms, etc.) hasn't worked, one interpretation of that strategy is that it is doomed to fail because they are inherently now a thrill oriented park. If you refuse to let go of that strategy in spite of all the indicators being that it isn't working and may never work, letting people into a park for free instead of charging $45 for admission might be a desperate move to try and retain position in the corporate ladder for some. I specifically used this scenario because it can easily be construed as a "strategy in progress" for as long as one is willing to let the strategy go on. If I was an investor, I would be very concerned about this move for two reasons: -Without a serious outlay of marketing cash (which costs money), market awareness of the plan may prove lacking and thus primarily be used only by people currently visiting the park. In other words: you have to spend money to specifically not lose money. -When you give away the gate, it should always, always be a concern as to what happens if the strategy proves to be non-viable. If the plug is pulled in 2018 or 2019 on this, how do you sell to the family of a 5 year old that's had free entry for their kid the last year or two to spend $50ish bucks for a one day? These are things I'd consider from the standpoint of an investor. If I lived anywhere near KD and had kids, passes for the park would be a no-brainer. (to use another point of comparison here in the industry: in Q2 2016 Disney saw an overall reduction in attendance and occupancy, especially in Orlando. "Household Economics" suggests that Disney then would need to succumb to market forces and start reducing prices in order to keep numbers up. Instead, they still saw an 8% increase in revenue YoY because they simply jacked up prices and cut labor costs via staffing/hour reductions to make up the difference. They will continue to do that if numbers continue to go south until which point that revenue growth flatlines. And even then, they might still increase consumer price & cut costs rather than reduce the expense of their resorts and "devalue them" with the rationale that future expansions will drive visitors to Orlando again and thus resolve that issue organically.) What's the difference between the Platinum Pass hike, inclusion of skip the line services, and all you can eat plans with this?

LOL. Well, hopefully it works out better than the last launched coaster in Jersey that opened 4-5 months late.

It isn't that I don't understand the rationale of "Make it cheaper and build more rides." If next year, attendance is up 1% and per cap spending is down due to having let in 10,000 (pure spitballing here; likely more than that, but a good number for the example) kids for free that you would have previously scored $45 a person for minimum, how long do you keep up the experiment in the hopes that you build up a new base of regular consumers? Remember that you don't have the same degree of information about your visitors as Disney does given the many modes by which an individual can buy tickets to the park to track their trends directly. The obvious metric they're going to use here are season pass sales for success. If they see a significant increase in those, it might be a big win that is likely attributable to the Pre-K pass. But that also suggests volume as growth driver over individual sales, which is more the Six Flags model than Disney.

Theme parks are inherently money grabs. You don't usually start letting people of any class in for no money at all because you're seeing that demographic spike in interest. You do it because they aren't coming and you need to lure them in. Maybe it creates a consistent Kings Dominion consumer because that market is extra special different than any other in the chain, or maybe BGW is eating their lunch for families with young kids, and giving away the gate for 3-5 year olds is the best strategy they have right now to lure them over to Doswell. I'm guessing it is the latter. It makes a whole helluva lot more sense. And you do it for all the reasons previously prescribed over the last 15 years of "family ride" discussions on the internet. Cedar Fair also did something comparable back in the Kinzel days when they dropped prices on some of the goods in park at Cedar Point like popcorn and cotton candy to ultra low levels. My recollection is that attendance fell that year and they never repeated it. edit: In regards to market research, I'm sure a lot of people on their Facebook complain Kings Dominion costs money, as they do any service or product on the face of the earth. Additionally, if they went out to an market research/survey firm, paid 50-100K for them to look at what families wanted, and their consultants came back with "Make admission free and build more rides," I'd laugh my ass off. If I had to do everything all over again, I'd enter that industry and happily accept money to tell corporations incredibly obvious things.

TBH: Free admission to anyone 5 and under in an attempt to score per cap spending from the parents sounds like a desperation move. "We built rides for kids and not enough came. Double down!"

Did they actively market via tv/radio/etc that Gale Force was a new ride for 2016?

Yes.

I mean, I'd probably look at their age and then go about to doing something else.

I've had good days and bad days. The best days I do stuff like knock out two on Millennium Force now that everyone heads to Valravn, then head to Maverick and knock out a couple more there. Or Gatekeeper.

Yes. It is clearly on the blue prints. Hopefully they clean it up a bit though and get some new chairs.

I think it opens at like 9. The early entry gate is beyond Starbucks so people can go there. As for music? No music but there will be loud teenage girls. It's a weekday. I can cope.

I know they're footing a major portion of the bill but I'm not entirely sure. That's a question for someone like DirkFunk who knows way more about this type of thing than I do. I don't know the specifics of who owns what, but Sports Force is building and (to my knowledge) operating the facility while Cedar Fair provided them the land to do so by buying the old airport. My guess is that if the Sports Force finds that it isn't working for them, ownership would turn to Cedar Fair and they'd do something-something. One thing that is important to understand about this move is that it opens the door to Cedar Point extending its season in the Fall by adding in weekdays much as it does now in May. Maybe not full tilt operation, but kinda like a Legoland where it is open more Thursdays and things like that.

You know the "You're never too important to have to do work remotely at Cedar Point?" Yeah. So - since I have to make a call next week, does anyone know if the Starbucks A) opens with the park at 10AM B) is it blaring music or anything like that?

RIP mini golf https://www.cedarpoint.com/what-s-new/hotel-breakers-expansion edit: and while already known - https://www.cedarpoint.com/what-s-new/cedar-point-s-express-hotel

I just got off the phone with the Dead Sea, and it would like me to tell you that y'all are salty over bumper cars.

Well, then I guess you aren't going to Cedar Point Shores either regardless of what they do.

https://www.dorneypark.com/what-s-new/2017-announcement More dry park capacity for a place that barely needs it. Structural stuff like the bar and the picnic area is the real win, I guess?

The park is a ghost town except Fridays.

I think with one solid off season, IB should be able to get their things in order and really come back much stronger in '17. Just my two cents.

The argument that Disney would be wise to inconvenience those people for the sake of getting them to book official hotels is stupid. And it comes down to one thing: Capacity. Disney does not with their three hotels have anywhere near enough capacity to be able to accept all the people staying in those hotels plus their current numbers of guests. Also, they don't have a hotel with a competitive price point to lure them away. Shutting them out completely would have been spiteful and done nothing for Disney's own bottom line, since they need the hotels across the street to increase multi-day, out of town stays that spend money in the parks.

Does that really make sense if the goal is to push the stock price up? I don't see any reason to believe they'd want to start competing in Orlando or with themselves in San Antonio in the hopes of increasing market share. Their business model seems intrinsically opposed to what SEAS needs to right itself, which is significant capital investment.