Sunday, August 9, 2015

Cedar Fair Hunting for Classic Amusement Rides to Bring to Parks


This past week the L.A. Times ran a very interesting story on Cedar Fair's new quest to find classic amusement park rides to add to its parks in the future.

The story points out that CEO Matt Ouimet has sent people on a mission to search through Europe for classic rides that would fit in with the offerings across the chain.  It seems that his desire is to bring back older rides that were once located at each of the parks, giving a sense of nostalgia to long-time visitors.

This is a very interesting story, and not something that I would have expected... but it certainly could turn out quite neat.  Some of the parks in the Cedar Fair portfolio don't have super long histories, meaning there aren't a ton of rides that have been removed.  Others have been around for a century and have a list of former rides that would be pages and pages long.

The article goes into some very thorough details about which of the parks might benefit from a variety of flat rides, comparing them all against what parks have or do not have in their existing inventories.  A lot of work was put into that, I can imagine, and it is worth a read.

With Cedar Fair showing their "placemaking" abilities in recent expansions at Knott's, Cedar Point and Valleyfair, for example, it will be great to see these classic rides come to life in appropriately themed settings.  Can't wait to see what they bring back from Europe!


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