Who killed Geauga Lake?

[DirkFunk]

I don't know how you can blame the locals.

 

Because it takes no advanced thought whatsoever.

[thrillrider]

Overexpansion IMO is just the single greatest reason why the park was doomed. But I have heard from a few sources that attendance was actually in decline even during those years. If that is true then they are definitely to blame.

 

Wildwater Kingdom would probably still be here if it performed a little better. The same people who are crying over the park closing are the same ones who didn't visit when the park was at its best or chose to go to Cedar Point instead. I feel bad for the locals who truly were devoted to the park, but some of the same poeple weren't going.

 

They did visit! Enough to keep it open for 100 years.

[coasterkid124]

But not in the numbers that they had used to, even before the Six Flags era.

 

When Funtime/Premier ran the park, attendance was over a million each year. In 2000, it peaked to over 2 million when the Six Flags takeover actually began. But every year thereafter, the park great amounts of attendance, which fell to 700,000 in 2005. This is well below even the 1 million number from the 80s and 90s.

 

I'm just using the numbers here. The park lost nearly 1.5 million visitors yearly in the early 2000s. With the size of the property and overhead that they had, how could one expect the park to keep going on like that? If the park was still a small, family oriented place, it could have kept going on like that. So how could attendance disappear like that, when the park was arguably at its best, and the locals were "not to blame"?

[CP Maverick]

Because the locals did not drive 2+ million to Sea World every year. That's the group that pushed GL over a million per year. I made that pretty clear, I thought.

[DirkFunk]

So how could attendance disappear like that, when the park was arguably at its best, and the locals were "not to blame"?

 

Because "locals" weren't the only people going to SeaWorld. If your theme park is reliant on attendance from out of the area and loses/never obtains that support, then you fail. Furthermore, if your rationale is to combine the two gates to drive an attendance increase and longer stays and that never happens, then you may still fail on the basis of not meeting the required amount of entries even if you were to have maintained the previous high attendance figures.

[jconsolmagno]

Six Flags sealed Geauga Lake's fate when they purchased Sea World Ohio. The removal of another brand name in the area, no matter if it was just a case of a linking of the two parks, meant a lot less people would be attracted to the region, mostly due to a lack of awareness that the Wild Life side was technically still open.

 

They may have marketed as three parks in one, but with the removal of another big name in the region, people were under the impression that Sea World was just plain "gone." The inevitable financial troubles just hammered that final nail in the coffin even more.

 

I disagree. In 2003, SFWOA had 2.1 million in attendance. In 2004, Geauga Lake had about 600,000 in attendance after the Wild Side closed. Geauga Lake actually peaked in attendance somewhere between 750-800,000 in 2007 after XFlight and the launch coaster were removoed.

[Geauga Dog]

Six Flags may have over expanded the park, and I agree that is one of the causes for failure, but the park was still getting decent crowds to see Shouka in 2003. They may not have been getting the numbers they wanted but they were doing better numbers than when Cedar Fair took over. I'll never understand why they would buy the park, knowing there were animals and the fact that they don't operate animal parks, other than to destroy their competition. The fact that Dragster was a disaster in 2003, plus who can forget the commercials that "We drove past Cedar Point to go to Six Flags" that were airing at the time had of have really ticked off Dick Kinzel.

 

One last thing - you can't expect to increase your attendance when you don't add anything significant to create that draw. in the three years CF owned the park (actually four but 2004 was an awkward transition year) they added nothing to replace the holes in the ride side. Sure they put fresh paint on the buildings, finished the retrack of Wolf Bobs (only to have it derail in June of 2007 and let it sit idle the rest of the year - hmm, that should have been a hint), and add cornhole and a 3-Point Challenge Game is it any wonder people didn't really come back? Did they seriously think they would be able to make a quick turnaround of the park in such a short time? That's bad business thinking.

 

I disagree. In 2003, SFWOA had 2.1 million in attendance. In 2004, Geauga Lake had about 600,000 in attendance after the Wild Side closed. Geauga Lake actually peaked in attendance somewhere between 750-800,000 in 2007 after XFlight and the launch coaster were removoed.

 

I have to actually agree with the final numbers in 2007. The park was much more busier that final year than it had been prior. Those were numbers that GL was used to prior to Premier's purchase in 1995. GL could have easily survived with that attendance if CF would have smartly downsized the park to what was feasible for them. After all they seem happy with a park in Michigan that draws less than what GL did in it's final days.

[jconsolmagno]

Thanks Geauga Dog. WWK routinely had attendance numbers in excess of 150,000 a year and actually climbed over 200,000 in 2014 for some odd reason. Not sure what they did in 2016, but WWK wasn't a ghost town. I used to have a season pass to Sandcastle in Pittsburgh from 2012 - 2015, that park was empty M - F, same as WWK. I'm hoping the people that took over the Beach, can take over WWK before it's demolished.

[The Angry Darren Mullins]

Who killed Geauga Lake? I will go out on a limb here and say that it was Col. Mustard in the library with the revolver.

[boldikus]

Who killed Geauga Lake? I will go out on a limb here and say that it was Col. Mustard in the library with the revolver.

 

[grsupercity]

Six Flags may have over expanded the park, and I agree that is one of the causes for failure, but the park was still getting decent crowds to see Shouka in 2003. They may not have been getting the numbers they wanted but they were doing better numbers than when Cedar Fair took over. I'll never understand why they would buy the park, knowing there were animals and the fact that they don't operate animal parks, other than to destroy their competition. The fact that Dragster was a disaster in 2003, plus who can forget the commercials that "We drove past Cedar Point to go to Six Flags" that were airing at the time had of have really ticked off Dick Kinzel.

 

One last thing - you can't expect to increase your attendance when you don't add anything significant to create that draw. in the three years CF owned the park (actually four but 2004 was an awkward transition year) they added nothing to replace the holes in the ride side. Sure they put fresh paint on the buildings, finished the retrack of Wolf Bobs (only to have it derail in June of 2007 and let it sit idle the rest of the year - hmm, that should have been a hint), and add cornhole and a 3-Point Challenge Game is it any wonder people didn't really come back? Did they seriously think they would be able to make a quick turnaround of the park in such a short time? That's bad business thinking.

 

I disagree. In 2003, SFWOA had 2.1 million in attendance. In 2004, Geauga Lake had about 600,000 in attendance after the Wild Side closed. Geauga Lake actually peaked in attendance somewhere between 750-800,000 in 2007 after XFlight and the launch coaster were removoed.

 

I have to actually agree with the final numbers in 2007. The park was much more busier that final year than it had been prior. Those were numbers that GL was used to prior to Premier's purchase in 1995. GL could have easily survived with that attendance if CF would have smartly downsized the park to what was feasible for them. After all they seem happy with a park in Michigan that draws less than what GL did in it's final days.

 

Have you even ever been to MIA? They had 500,000 guest in 1998 and has steadily gone up almost every year since. Thats with a fraction of the over head the GL had