COVID-19 Impacts on Kings Dominion

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Happy to rejoin this discussion. Of course we have all heard of Carowinds doing "Taste Of The Season", and crossing our fingers that KD would consider doing the same thing. Just as I mentioned before; I think KD could have pulled off a HAUNT with limited attractions. But now that the Halloween season is over; we are at the time of the year when Winter Fest would begin preparation. That means that the Peanuts area, Delirium, Dominator and Twisted Timbers would be our thrill classics for the holiday seasons. At this stage of the calendar, it is rather odd to see KD closed, given the fact that SFA, Bush Gardens Hershey and even Carowinds are open. Please educate me because I love to listen. Can anyone tell me whether or not KD's 2020 shut down was a company decision or park decision?

Since this is a KD forum, I'll only make this brief. I attended SFA's Fright Fest on Halloween. Me and my friend had been planning this day for a long time, and it was originally suppose to be at KD's HAUNT. So instead we went to SFA, due to Bush Gardens tight reservation policy. After 10 years of not visiting SFA, I was very impressed. The park had a decent amount of people in it as the evening progressed. Nothing close to what a KD HAUNT(Saturday) would look like, but enough people to justify being open. SFA only requires an arrival time and YOU CAN STAY AS LONG AS YOU WANT. I'm good at visual counting but Maryland's policy for theme parks must be well over 1,000 capacity, because there was probably 1,500 or 2,000 people in the park. Maybe more.

Back to KD. It is understood at VA's numbers are probably worst than VA's. Without getting into all the politics; we can agree that safety is first. But at some point Cedar Fair or KD themselves needs to call SFA, Bush Gardens and Hershey and see if they had any covid cases that came from the park. If there weren't many or if any; how did they prevent this with people visiting the park from different areas of the country? Once that information is collected, Cedar Fair should request a one-on-one meeting with Gov. Northam to discuss possible increase in park capacity for KD. SFA being only 2 hours away is a lot smaller than KD. And with it being smaller, there is a lot more chances of people catching covid if their capacity number is higher than Northam's 1,000 person limit. Remember, the virus does not know state boundaries. I have been keeping up with the news for a while and I have yet to hear any cases coming out of SFA. As we discussed before; a a good number of KD's attendance is from the greater Washington Metropolitan region. That's Northern VA, Washington DC, Maryland(Montgomery County, Prince George's County, Howard County, Charles County, Anne Arundel County, etc.). I am sure that many residents from those Maryland counties, visited SFA this season and would have potentially visited KD if they were open.

Again, this is not a rant. I am simply asking a big question from the KD Park Fans community. Educate and enlighten me in a fun way, so that we can all understand what direction and steps KD/Cedar Fair should be taking in order to convince Northam to raise the capacity number.
 
VA no longer limits parks to 1,000 guests.

I don't want to discuss spesific numbers, but BGW and KD both have new caps that are NOTABLY more than 1,000 guests. Currently KD does not plan to open in 2020 despite the increased guest cap.
 
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Zachary said:
VA no longer limits parks to 1,000 guests.

I don't want to discuss spesific numbers, but BGW and KD both have new caps that are NOTABLY more than 1,000 guests. Currently KD does not plan to open in 2020 despite the increased guest cap.
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This is news.

This gives me a little more hope of a 2021 season. I still think the park could pull off Winter Fest if they wanted to. It wouldn't cost them much and it would warm us up for the coming season. It's already early November. I would assume it would take them a good two to three weeks to set everything up. However; after such a long wait; I don't even think people would care if the park wasn't as lavished as it was last season for Winter Fest. The front area and the Eiffel Tower plaza would serve well. They could go a little easier at the bottom of the park and people wouldn't even notice. At this point, we just want to ride.

If we're talking about the Spring and Summer, we have to talk about reservation systems. I'd really love it if they used SFA's policy. But maybe that all depends upon the state your in. I feel it's better to let people stay as long as they want. With the limited time, a customer would be forced to by a ticket for each time slot if they wanted to do a whole day at the park. At that point your spending over one hundred dollars easy. Also, would Gold Pass members get dibs on reservation times?
 
mtorange said:
Thought so. If Northam had made the change much earlier, I think this would’ve been a realistic possibility. Oh well, at least we have Carowinds!
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The timing on this is really late, though I still think from a business POV that KD needs to try and re-open at some level for the winter. Staying closed isn't simply ceding the winter event to BGW, it's basically ceding the entire season to BGW which entails bleeding all potential customers and several existing ones for a whole year.

EDIT: I hope I'm wrong on this, but it looks like KD got totally out-maneuvered on this by BGW. The governors announcement coming so late with BGW already planning for bigger crowds being allowed at their Xmas event leaves little time for KD to scramble and do anything.
 
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rswashdc said:
The timing on this is really late, though I still think from a business POV that KD needs to try and re-open at some level for the winter. Staying closed isn't simply ceding the winter event to BGW, it's basically ceding the entire season to BGW which entails bleeding all potential customers and several existing ones for a whole year.

EDIT: I hope I'm wrong on this, but it looks like KD got totally out-maneuvered on this by BGW. The governors announcement coming so late with BGW already planning for bigger crowds being allowed at their Xmas event leaves little time for KD to scramble and do anything.
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I was thinking the same thing. I would book another visit to SFA for Holiday In The Park; but one of the employees informed me that Gotham is closed during the winter event. That eliminates Joker, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. I'd rather take the two hour ride and get on Dominator, Delirium and Twisted Timbers.

As mentioned, the announcement is late, but doesn't mean it can't happen. Maybe they don't decorate as much and they give us another attraction to make up for it. To defeat decorating the entire Lost World section of the park, they could just build a small path that designates you straight to I-305. To compete with Bush Gardens, KD should not limit guest to reservation slots. Just use the SFA method and require an arrival time. After that you can stay as late as you want. If I-305 were open; people would definitely flock to the park.
 
MikeLovesKD said:
I was thinking the same thing. I would book another visit to SFA for Holiday In The Park; but one of the employees informed me that Gotham is closed during the winter event. That eliminates Joker, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. I'd rather take the two hour ride and get on Dominator, Delirium and Twisted Timbers.

As mentioned, the announcement is late, but doesn't mean it can't happen. Maybe they don't decorate as much and they give us another attraction to make up for it. To defeat decorating the entire Lost World section of the park, they could just build a small path that designates you straight to I-305. To compete with Bush Gardens, KD should not limit guest to reservation slots. Just use the SFA method and require an arrival time. After that you can stay as late as you want. If I-305 were open; people would definitely flock to the park.
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Some issues with both of those solutions. I would be willing to bet that I305 has similar limitations to most of BGWs coasters. It's simply too cold for them to run. Even more so at KD where it is typically colder than at BGW.

I doubt that they would go to an open ended time frame for the same reason that BGW doesn't. It limits the number of people you can have in the park that day. If your cap is 3000 would you choose to be open for the entire day and only allow 3000? Or would you rather have two time slots and be able to get 6000 people? Honestly it's not a question that I would pick the one that lets more people. That's what the parks in VA have to decide between.
 
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KD hasnt done a daytime winter event so it would likely be the single slot in the evening starting at 4 or 5pm.
 
rswashdc said:
KD hasnt done a daytime winter event so it would likely be the single slot in the evening starting at 4 or 5pm.
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That's a fair point. But I don't think that means they wouldn't do what BGW is doing. BGW used to open for in the late afternoon and gradually opened earlier and earlier
 
According to the CF Q3 earnings call, there are conversations being had about KD potentially reopening this year. I’d have to assume the new increase in capacity for VA Parks along with CF having no parks open this winter season outside of Carowind’s are some huge factors that contribute to the change in mindset. There’s also a lot of salt being poured in the wound with BGW being open in a limited capacity format since early August, it seems like there is a very real chance that we may have two of Virginia’s parks open in some form or fashion by the end of the year.
 
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Connor said:
According to the CF Q3 earnings call, there are conversations being had about KD potentially reopening this year. I’d have to assume the new increase in capacity for VA Parks along with CF having no parks open this winter season outside of Carowind’s are some huge factors that contribute to the change in mindset. There’s also a lot of salt being poured in the wound with BGW being open in a limited capacity format since early August, it seems like there is a very real chance that we may have two of Virginia’s parks open in some form or fashion by the end of the year.
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The thing is with indoor activities shut down, I think KD's Winterfest would be better than BGW's modified event. Getting KD reopened by say Thanksgiving could give them a good opportunity to pull the market their way with a more attractive event, and really boost Winterfest overall.
 
Connor said:
According to the CF Q3 earnings call, there are conversations being had about KD potentially reopening this year. I’d have to assume the new increase in capacity for VA Parks along with CF having no parks open this winter season outside of Carowind’s are some huge factors that contribute to the change in mindset. There’s also a lot of salt being poured in the wound with BGW being open in a limited capacity format since early August, it seems like there is a very real chance that we may have two of Virginia’s parks open in some form or fashion by the end of the year.
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My wife's coworker received an email from Kings Dominion. The email was asking this person if they would be interested in working for a "special event" on select dates from December 4th through December 27th. I received an image of the email from my wife asking if I knew about this, but did not post it here because I did not want to divulge the name of the person outright.

Not trying to blow up anybody's spot, but wanted to pass this information along.

So it sounds like there may be a mini-Winterfest at KD after all.
 
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Life comes at you fast if you’re on staff at King’s Dominion, eh?

They’ve got a month to spool up, will be interesting to see what they pull together. I’ll pop up to ride TT.
 
Pretty sure the employees haven't been notified about this yet and just happened to find out about it from here or from areas of social media where it's been shared.

They're figuring this out as we are figuring this out, just like the parks that opened this summer during the pandemic.
 
I wouldn’t be shocked if we learned that the success of BGWs reopening is playing into this decision.
 
In their earnings call they mention fall is the time of year they market and sell season passes. The fall/winter events are effectively big marketing events to promote sales for the rest of the year. If only BGW is open, that’s a lot of revenue leakage that KD can’t really do much about.
 
I don't know if I'll go (because of covid), but I'm glad to see they'll be opening. I did enjoy the event more than I was expecting last year. Just seeing all the lights and music and taking a few rounds on the open coasters was worth it.

Do we know what the capacity limit is?

Bonus, maybe you'll be able to see some of the trackwork on Grizzly. Get pics if you go! I guess that depends on how close you can get. Maybe not at all.
 
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