Cedar Fair / Kinzel Article

© 2007 Toledo Blade/Dave Zapotosky

Yesterday the Toledo Blade ran a very interesting article on Cedar Fair and spoke with the CEO, Richard Kinzel on many subjects.

Here's the link to the article.


Some things I noticed:

· Attendance at the former Paramount Parks dropped 200k this past year.
· The former Paramount Parks had 40% of their attendance from season passes, while the legacy parks have only 10%.
· CP's attendance in '07 was 3 million
· With the money the company uses to pay dividends they could build a hotel at Canada's Wonderland, fix one at Cedar Point, and expand Kings Dominion's camp ground - which lets us known these are desires of the company.
· Geauga Lake's wooden coasters will be sold or scrapped.
· The company still gets calls from people who want to purchase Canada's Wonderland from them.

After reading all that I'm surprised that there weren't any plans announced to further the company's involvement in accommodations at any of its parks. Obviously that's one area they can try to improve revenues in to get themselves out of the hole they are in.

I do think that Behemoth at Canada's Wonderland is only the start of a much larger expansion phase for the property.