COVID-19 & Coasters: Coronavirus Impacts on the Amusement Industry
- Thread starter GrandpaD
- Start date
Cedar Fair is pushing its impact on the local economy especially where it concerns Cedar Point.
sanduskyregister.com
Cedar Point's parent company argues it's vital to local economy
Cedar Point's parent company gave testimony to the Ohio House's Economic Recovery Task Force.
sanduskyregister.com
Agreed, though I do hope that many preparations are being made in anticipation of any announcements.
I'd assume (emphasis assume) that the preparation time might been a combination of what the State might mandate, what their consultants (and lawyers, for sure) might insist upon and then staff training.
I hope that CP’s case is different from that of the VA parks. Keep in mind that CP doesn’t typically open until late May, so they probably hadn’t even begun to prepare for the season when everything started shutting down. BGW and KD on the other hand were practically ready to open, with many employees already hired and trained and rides already commissioned. Not saying it won’t take a considerable amount of time for the VA parks to get up and running, but at least they won’t be starting from square one like CP likely will be.
The food supply chain is very stressed and messed up at the moment in ways that the average person is probably not aware of/ They are going to need extra prep time to rework menus and bring in food to open that part of the park to.
I agree @Joe in a normal start-up. But depending upon what physical changes might be mandated and constructed, training of staff in regards to disinfecting/cleaning, retraining of staff in operations (they probably only had a week or so as the park hadn't opened yet) it might take a month. And, as @horsesboy stated, developing menus for what food is available, ordering it and distributing it on site is going to take time as well.
Just some food for thought that I was pondering this evening:
How risk averse do we think the chains are at this point? SEAS has already made it clear that they have enough money to make it for a long time with the current status quo. Does a chain in a position like that actually want to open ASAP? In my mind, if the lead time is ANYTHING like what Cedar Fair is claiming, it seems like a real financial risk to start that reopening process if there is still a notable chance of a sizable COVID-19 resurgence. Why risk a TON of capital on the reopening process mid-crisis? If things go wrong, all that the parks will have accomplished is burning through a bunch of the cash reserves they will need if this doesn't wrap up relatively quickly. I could see where a false start could be a real danger for the financial stability of these park chains. Is the possible reward of open-but-attendance-capped parks with much higher-than-normal operation costs even remotely proportional to the fiscal or public relations risks at play here?
How risk averse do we think the chains are at this point? SEAS has already made it clear that they have enough money to make it for a long time with the current status quo. Does a chain in a position like that actually want to open ASAP? In my mind, if the lead time is ANYTHING like what Cedar Fair is claiming, it seems like a real financial risk to start that reopening process if there is still a notable chance of a sizable COVID-19 resurgence. Why risk a TON of capital on the reopening process mid-crisis? If things go wrong, all that the parks will have accomplished is burning through a bunch of the cash reserves they will need if this doesn't wrap up relatively quickly. I could see where a false start could be a real danger for the financial stability of these park chains. Is the possible reward of open-but-attendance-capped parks with much higher-than-normal operation costs even remotely proportional to the fiscal or public relations risks at play here?
Might work out best for SEAS if they can out last their competitors while they're all closed.
Sure, probably not great for us and I wouldn't want to see CF or SF go under but....
Personally, I don’t think SEAS would get much benefit if one of their competitors went under. The only park from either of those chains that really goes head-to-head with a SEAS park is KD, and that competition might even benefit BGW because we’ve seen the two parks use their proximity as leverage to market to out-of-state markets. Like you said, it would be shocking if any of the major chains don’t emerge from this crisis, so this point is probably (and hopefully) moot.
SEAS may not benefit from their competitors going under, but taking some of their competitor's subscription base during the crisis isn't a bad move.
While BGW and KD are about equally difficult to open under COVID-19, SEAS could take advantage of competitors by getting parts of their Sea World parks open. Sea World's animal exhibits are one of the easier things to open under social distancing orders as compared to rides heavy parks which need significant operational changes. Sea World could sell $20 tickets to visit the park's animal exhibits and include a snack, bottle of water, and a souvenir. This is pretty simple way to build goodwill and get a lot of people in the park that typically go to their competitors, which helps build their membership up. As they get more attractions set up to work under social distancing, ticket prices can be increased to be closer and closer to normal pricing.
Sounds like quite a bit of what I predicted a few weeks ago is coming to fruition:
- 2-4 week lead time to open
- Possible no parks open in 2021
- Disney/Universal likely time be the last open
All things that saw some pushback that the companies are saying very well could be what to expect. And I think it was personally easy to predict this:
- 2-4 week lead time: Many states require rides to be tested and inspected for operations if they aren’t used for a certain amount of time. So it is likely that needs to happen. Much of a parks staff is seasonal part time, so they need time to hire and train that staff. There’s going to been to be food and drink orders made, some of which is in short supply. And there also needs to be work done to set up social distancing capabilities.
- Possibility of no parks in 2021: I take this back to the lawsuit discussion in the BGW thread. While it’s going to be very hard to prove Coronavirus was picked up at BGW, no park is going to want to be the one that gets known for it regardless of how it happens. All along the real only way to limit the cases was a vaccine. So it might be a wait for that situation.
- Disney/Universal having to wait. With a regional park they can very easily limit who and where people come from. A regional park could email everyone with an address within a 1-1.5 hour radius that the park is open, limit the numbers per day, and extreme clean everything. For more regional parks that’s your core customer anyways. If Disney/Universal did that they (1) wouldn’t get many people, but also (2) resort stays are a core part of their business. Making money off people that have to stay there, have to eat there, and have to entertain there is huge.
- 2-4 week lead time to open
- Possible no parks open in 2021
- Disney/Universal likely time be the last open
All things that saw some pushback that the companies are saying very well could be what to expect. And I think it was personally easy to predict this:
- 2-4 week lead time: Many states require rides to be tested and inspected for operations if they aren’t used for a certain amount of time. So it is likely that needs to happen. Much of a parks staff is seasonal part time, so they need time to hire and train that staff. There’s going to been to be food and drink orders made, some of which is in short supply. And there also needs to be work done to set up social distancing capabilities.
- Possibility of no parks in 2021: I take this back to the lawsuit discussion in the BGW thread. While it’s going to be very hard to prove Coronavirus was picked up at BGW, no park is going to want to be the one that gets known for it regardless of how it happens. All along the real only way to limit the cases was a vaccine. So it might be a wait for that situation.
- Disney/Universal having to wait. With a regional park they can very easily limit who and where people come from. A regional park could email everyone with an address within a 1-1.5 hour radius that the park is open, limit the numbers per day, and extreme clean everything. For more regional parks that’s your core customer anyways. If Disney/Universal did that they (1) wouldn’t get many people, but also (2) resort stays are a core part of their business. Making money off people that have to stay there, have to eat there, and have to entertain there is huge.
COVID-19 Superspreader Events in 28 Countries: Critical Patterns and Lessons
In the absence of any comprehensive database of COVID-19 superspreading events, I built my own.
quillette.com
For parks this is a huge problem on rides as the droplets can travel several meters from a cough and possibly shouting. Rides would almost certainly have to mandate wearing of masks and these masks would have to be able to both be of sufficient quality to block droplets, but also needs to be robust enough to stay on through intense rides (i.e. your typical surgeon mask isn't really designed to be worn at 60mph).
So this is saying "A Quite Place" was a documentary sent from the future? Time to learn ASL!
This is a damn good idea and one that I HAD NOT considered at all! All three SeaWorlds and BGT could totally just open as small zoos and, honestly, I bet they’d see some real success. Since zoological ops have to continue through the shutdown anyway, those are sunk costs already. The cost of making zoological areas “social distancing ready” (read: massively increased sanitation basically) seems minuscule compared to what would be required for rides and the like. The staffing requirements for an aquarium-style SeaWorld or a zoo-style BGT would be comparatively tiny as well. Add all of this up and the financial risk seems really small—very well may be worth the potential reward.
Really, I think this idea is great. I hope someone at SEAS has considered this path already...
Governor Northam just announced during his briefing that Kings Dominion will have representation on the Task Force for reopening businesses in VA. I anticipate a list of task force members to be released after this briefing ends, but he did say that this task force will discuss what Phases 2 and 3 will look like in the Commonwealth.
He listed what Phase One will look like (I’ll put those in the general COVID-19 thread), and he did say that this task force will discuss what Phases 2 and 3 would look like.
****CORRECTION: This task force will discuss all three phases, not just Phases Two and Three.****
Back to KD and BGW, he did not give a date as to when they could reopen, as I anticipate that he does not yet know when that could be. This task force will discuss what social distancing will look like inside various businesses, including amusement parks.
Edit: after submitting this post, the Governor’s Office released a list of names on who will be on the task force. KD will be represented by Owen Matthews.
Former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam - April
Governor Ralph Northam, 73rd Governor of Virginia
www.governor.virginia.gov
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