Neat we're progressing as a society to the point where the trash can take itself out now.
Early Park Closures
- Thread starter Crunchewy
- Start date
Neat we're progressing as a society to the point where the trash can take itself out now.
There are parks that are famous for closing early for low attendance with a weather excuse: Great Adventure, SFNE, maybe some other SF parks. I don't recall hearing a complaint against KD anywhere but here, and mostly 1 person here. One reason may be that those parks are still drawing more people when that happens, so it's reported.
Good management isn't always equivalent to what we want. I can't fault the logic of some of KD's recent decisions. Having a great lineup compared to the park's ability to draw people is definitely to my advantage. Right now KD may be the best park in the world, in its overachievement. If "success" is consistent 1+ hour wait times, you can keep it.
@super7, there are parts of your posts I sometimes want to like, but you can't finish a post without going completely overboard.
I'm repeating myself here, but have you spent time in the park after 9 PM on multiple summer nights and years? I doubt you would be asking this is you had. After I got over the initial enjoyment of how great it was, I couldn't help notice that they were almost surely losing money, at least when considered independently. That was 2009 and continued for 10 additional years.
Good management isn't always equivalent to what we want. I can't fault the logic of some of KD's recent decisions. Having a great lineup compared to the park's ability to draw people is definitely to my advantage. Right now KD may be the best park in the world, in its overachievement. If "success" is consistent 1+ hour wait times, you can keep it.
@super7, there are parts of your posts I sometimes want to like, but you can't finish a post without going completely overboard.
It is just April.
I'm repeating myself here, but have you spent time in the park after 9 PM on multiple summer nights and years? I doubt you would be asking this is you had. After I got over the initial enjoyment of how great it was, I couldn't help notice that they were almost surely losing money, at least when considered independently. That was 2009 and continued for 10 additional years.
I have in the past before we were season pass holders multiple times. We enjoyed it so much but we may be a minority and if so, they have to do what they have to do. I think my hang up is more with advertising one thing and then doing another on a consistent basis. The 7pm closings last year were awful but they did try their best to give us more than our money’s worth and I respect KD for that. But I appreciate all of the perspectives here and it helps me see a little more from their point of view. I guess I’m just in a minority that would spend all night waking around a park like KD. Just feels peaceful. But I get it. I just hope they don’t revert back to 7pm closings again!
You're not alone. Kings Dominion in the evening and at night during the summer is easily one of my favorite VA park experiences. The atmosphere is just incredible.
I love Carnival, but I honestly believe that a smaller event that runs for more of the summer (Starlight Spectacular-style) may be more helpful at Kings Dominion. BGW's evening events manage to keep huge crowds in the park until close—surely the KD market isn't that different...?
I love Carnival, but I honestly believe that a smaller event that runs for more of the summer (Starlight Spectacular-style) may be more helpful at Kings Dominion. BGW's evening events manage to keep huge crowds in the park until close—surely the KD market isn't that different...?
I totally agree that KD is at its best at night. It has such a charm to its atmosphere that's unlike anything else. The 8pm closings during Carnivale almost felt like a tease about how those nights used to be.
One hunch I have about KD's hesitance to close late is that it might still be somewhat staffing-related. What many guests don't realize is that when a park closes, most employees stay behind for several hours to clean their location and prepare it for the next day. The fewer employees a location has, the longer it takes the remaining staff to complete that cleanup.
For example, let's say Border Burritos is fully staffed with 10 employees. If it closes its doors at 9pm, they might head home around 11pm. But now let's say Border is understaffed and instead only has 5 employees. Now they still have the exact same amount of cleanup and prep work as they would if they had the full 10 employees, but they have only half the staff to do it. Now they might be getting out around midnight, if they're lucky.
Now let's say the park does stay open until 10. On those understaffed days, that crew might not get out until well after midnight. And if they're like most KD employees, they probably don't live very close to the park, so they probably have a 30+ minute drive home, putting them home around 1am or so. That's pretty brutal.
The important thing to keep in mind with the current staffing situation and the "Great Resignation" is that paying competitive wages isn't enough. You need to incentivize and retain employees with a livable work experience and provide some level of a work-life balance. Who's going to want to work at a theme park and get home at 1 in the morning, when you can work somewhere else and be comfortable at home hours earlier? Cutting hours may be a way to provide some level of reasonable working hours to the park's employees. The idea of opening the park an hour later to allow them to close an hour later makes sense from a financial perspective, but when you consider the human element of the employees that will end up at home in the literal morning hours, the idea is less enticing.
To be clear, this is all just a hunch. But maybe part of why hours are the way they are, is that KD sees the reality of their staffing situation and realizes that they can't burn the candle from both ends -- that their staffing situation will only be even worse if they stay open later.
Don't get me wrong though, I'd love to see the park open at night more. I 100% agree that their being open 9am to 5pm on Fridays during the spring season makes no sense. From a financial perspective alone, you'd think they'd make a lot more money if they shifted their hours to accommodate families who want to stop by the park after work and school.
One hunch I have about KD's hesitance to close late is that it might still be somewhat staffing-related. What many guests don't realize is that when a park closes, most employees stay behind for several hours to clean their location and prepare it for the next day. The fewer employees a location has, the longer it takes the remaining staff to complete that cleanup.
For example, let's say Border Burritos is fully staffed with 10 employees. If it closes its doors at 9pm, they might head home around 11pm. But now let's say Border is understaffed and instead only has 5 employees. Now they still have the exact same amount of cleanup and prep work as they would if they had the full 10 employees, but they have only half the staff to do it. Now they might be getting out around midnight, if they're lucky.
Now let's say the park does stay open until 10. On those understaffed days, that crew might not get out until well after midnight. And if they're like most KD employees, they probably don't live very close to the park, so they probably have a 30+ minute drive home, putting them home around 1am or so. That's pretty brutal.
The important thing to keep in mind with the current staffing situation and the "Great Resignation" is that paying competitive wages isn't enough. You need to incentivize and retain employees with a livable work experience and provide some level of a work-life balance. Who's going to want to work at a theme park and get home at 1 in the morning, when you can work somewhere else and be comfortable at home hours earlier? Cutting hours may be a way to provide some level of reasonable working hours to the park's employees. The idea of opening the park an hour later to allow them to close an hour later makes sense from a financial perspective, but when you consider the human element of the employees that will end up at home in the literal morning hours, the idea is less enticing.
To be clear, this is all just a hunch. But maybe part of why hours are the way they are, is that KD sees the reality of their staffing situation and realizes that they can't burn the candle from both ends -- that their staffing situation will only be even worse if they stay open later.
Don't get me wrong though, I'd love to see the park open at night more. I 100% agree that their being open 9am to 5pm on Fridays during the spring season makes no sense. From a financial perspective alone, you'd think they'd make a lot more money if they shifted their hours to accommodate families who want to stop by the park after work and school.
Isn't there a sizable chunk of like preschool-aged kids with a parent or friend's parent who will show up earlier in the day on Fridays too though? I always assumed that the 9-5 hours were an attempt to accommodate that audience. Oh, and school groups.
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We were here Friday and planet snoopy was DEAD. There were some school music competitions so there seemed to be a lot of middle schoolers and maybe high schoolers here. Our kids are 7 and 2 so we spend pretty much the entire day at planet snoopy. They had a blast and there was no wait for anything. It was fun to have no wait but my mind couldn’t get past if I lived local and wanted to come for the evening that we wouldn’t have been able to but they have their reasoning I suppose and they must have forecast making money due to the school groups. There were tons of people using these green pieces of paper as fast lane passes and getting rides marked off. Must have been some kind of package for the people there for competitions.
This actually raises a good point that I hadn’t considered — those Friday hours might 100% exist just to accommodate school field trips. Then anyone else who shows up during those hours is just free business for the park.
Honestly, I think KD was bad the year after Volcano closed permanently and, in that year, I suspect it was out of extreme need because it really did feel like the park was hurting that year (the few times I went it felt like a ghost town) but even then they still only closed when weather was at least a plausible explanation. Outside of that year I really don't think they were different than any other park.
School groups make sense up until school is out for the season but I still personally think they would be better opening really late in the afternoon and staying open into the night hours. The only real logistics problem with this is that KD has a combined water park and not a separate gate and you can't safely run a water park when the sun begins setting. I'd love to see them have a day or two in the week that they just don't open the water park and open the park from 4 or 5pm until midnight -- but I'm in the minority of their customers that could care less about the water park.
The fact that CF as a whole runs their water offerings as an integrated park is a huge huge miss.
The others I’ve been to are set up well for this but I feel like they should go to separate connected parks.
A KD entrance, a Soak City entrance, and an integrated gate between TT turnaround and Apple Zapples to the Coconut shores area would be nice. Then there’s different levels of ticketing (one park or both parks) and a tier of pass that includes both.
They don't do this "as a whole" .... Really, they are the same as Six Flags and Palace in regards to this (a mix of separate gates and combined parks). I just think certain markets/parks make more sense because they wouldn't stand on their own alone. Dorney is probably the greatest example of this combined park working well. I think KD is probably closer to the point where they could separate the two but it's kind of on the fence IMHO. Other parks in the chain work great separately like CP which also used to be combined until it grew to a certain point. I'm not sure about KI but I think they do have a separate gate there if nothing else.
I think an issue with separating the dry from the wet at KD is a lack of outside access - one must have ticketed entry into the dry park to get to the entrance of SC, it doesn't have a standalone gate and parking/shuttle service to where one could enter SC without going through KD proper.
They could use the old safari road to build an entrance/exit to a parking lot behind SC, still have expansion space to do it as well, and could open up the area between CaG and Racer for KD proper expansion and pull all of SC to one side.
I think I explored this idea when going in-depth on the park land thread - not a bad idea, just don't see anyone willing to greenlight the money without also making some huge water park expansions to get it competitive with WCUSA.
IMO they need to add a few more feature thrill attractions in addition to the collection they currently have, perhaps infilling a lot of the existing space so it doesn't feel like you need to walk all that far from one attraction to the other. Moving the lazy river and splash pad to South of R75 shouldn't be that big a deal, however I'd imagine that they'd probably be better off investing in new slides to replace the ones up front given how old they are.
And unlike what I proposed in the other thread - the more I think about it, the better it'd be for park operations to not immediately build a separate parking lot and a guest-facing road for SC, but instead offer a shuttle service. The challenge comes with no immediate highway entrance or exit in the vicinity of the proposed entrance without finding some way to rebuild the existing parking booth and/or roads - using a shuttle can allow them to maintain the existing parking setup with minimal rebuild necessary (except maybe resurfacing the existing maintenance road)
Compared to WCUSA, I think Soak City is too small to operate as a separately gated water park. I think of Soak City as basically a marketing tool for the rest of Kings Dominion. What Soak City lacks in competitiveness with WCUSA, KD gains in competitiveness with BGW by being able to market itself as "two parks for the price of one one."
If I'd never been to either park and was deciding whether to spend the day at BGW or KD, the ability to also visit a waterpark without having to drive off-site or buy a separate ticket would be a major selling point for KD in my book.
If I'd never been to either park and was deciding whether to spend the day at BGW or KD, the ability to also visit a waterpark without having to drive off-site or buy a separate ticket would be a major selling point for KD in my book.
For what it is worth, Soak City being integrated with KD is a massive downgrade for me. The likelihood that I am going to combine trips to the dry and water parks is incredibly low. The last thing I want to do is wander around a dry park looking like a drowned rat. And it also creates the requirement for me either to make one or two extra trips to my car for the bags with all of my changes of clothes and toiletries or to pay for a locker. I get why they are set up this way, but it pretty much ensures that KD is for me only a dry park.
Come on if they open Soak City as a separate park some here will just simply complain that it closes early for lighting.
This is exactly the point I was making. KD isn't a park that makes sense to split -- it's not that CF is opposed to doing so. Other parks and markets make more sense to operate separately while some, like Dorney and KD, have benefits to the combined system.