News The King Is Dead: Kingda Ka (& Zumanjaro) Closure & Demolition Confirmed
- Thread starter Python_Survivor
- Start date
According to Marcus Leshock (very reliable insider) some sort of announcement is going to come soon
Direct Link to Embedded Media Source
This is blowing up in their faces and I can’t be happier. Local media picking it up now, including the bigger NYC and Philly media outlets. Six Flags corporate cannot be happy.
Zimmerman and CF as a whole screwing around with the NYC/Philly metro area and having it blow up in their faces is pretty amusing to watch. They're gonna learn quickly that they are NOTHING like Ohio.
I personally think it would be hilarious if the mainstream media became the reason they change their mind
The question that has come to my mind is would the media frenzy have started earlier if we didn't have the legacy Cedar Fair Zimmerman led war on media platforms that have critical coverage of the company?
Mostly if the rumors are true the die has been cast and it's to late to reverse course. The question if this blows up and has documentable negative effects on the company does an investor have a possible complaint for it not being disclosed in the quarterly call especially given that they touch on things that this would have an impact on.
this is true both from the media standpoint and customer standpoint. there is way more media scrutiny, but also way more competition for attention/customers. tickets for the family have only gotten more expensive. if you're taking your family for a summer day out, you can choose between $300 dollars just to get in the door, or driving an extra half hour down the shore to point pleasant. you have NY, Philly, the Shore, so much to do. outside of that, losing a marquee thrill attraction like this is such a major blow for the teenager/older thrill-seeker audience who are gonna feel like the park isn't worth the price anymore.
since the pandemic, Cedar Point rebounded to pre-2020 levels immediately, and hit a record attendance number in 2023. GA has seen its lowest numbers in a decade, and in 2023, saw lower numbers since at least 2006. I just don't see how this move makes sense from anything but a pure cost cutting calculation, shrinking overhead to expand profit rather than expanding the park's attendance and appeal.
That, and people from NYC/Philly take great pride in where they are from, and the things that define those regions. Kingda Ka is one of those things, and is a staple for anyone who grew up/lives in those areas. If they remove it without any sort of announcement, and don't give it a proper replacement, people WILL be pissed, and GAdv is going to lose even more money than they've already lost over the past several years. I don't buy for a second that CF is just going to kill off Ka and not give it a proper replacement for years, as it would kill the park. Hershey is a direct competitor, and in my opinion, has one of the best coaster lineups in the country. Their atmosphere is also full of charm, something GAdv has lacked since the early 2010s. If you compared both parks, say in the late 2000s, people would say GAdv has the better lineup by far, but a little over a decade later, and things have completely changed. People from these areas have started to recognize that Hershey is far better in pretty much all categories, and it explains why their attendance has gone up, while GAdv's has gone down. People are simply choosing to go there instead, and I can't blame them one bit.
CF is going to learn quickly that this isn't a Valleyfair or MiA situation where park guests will not care as much if major changes like these are made. They're quite literally poking the hornets nest trying to pull a stunt like this, and it will NOT end well for them, unless they can somehow convince themselves that GAdv going under isn't going to completely wreck their company.
incredibly true. GAdv is viewed by a lot of local GP as kind of a cheap dump at this point and a significant step down from other parks, with no real "vibe" or charm of its own compared to Hersey, or even Dorney or Knoebels. Its the Walmart of theme parks that you drop your middle-school age kids off with their friends so they have something to do in the summer.
I love GA, its been my home park my whole life. The last few years had me optimistic about the park's future, especially taking the time to refurb the Wheel and Log Flume, finally fixing the dream street pathway, and adding Flash, even if they were botched a bit. But this really took a lot of the hope I had out, and now has me thinking that the future of this park is gonna be in charging premium money for sub-premium experiences even more than it has been, sanding away any of the edges and making it into an optimal money extraction machine.
Of the hope and belief that at the very least if this ends up biting corporate in the ass Great Adventure's people could smooth talk themselves into a better replacement for it than what is planned for 2026. Even if it ends up pushing a proper replacement into 2027 or beyond I'd much rather avoid a further PR disaster than what is already happening.
This makes it sound like they're really doing the bare minimum in terms of deciding what to replace it with, which I really don't like.
And here I am hoping they announce Ka's closure via a blog post in February for the lulz.
It's why I said earlier that the first few years under Cedar Fair are going to be weird. Many of the actions that are going to happen in the next few months are based off of decisions not based off of sentimentality but based on costs and prior experiences. It's going to be a minute before everything settles and actual, concrete plans can be put into action. This isn't the first time Great Adventure has been in a slump, it won't be the second time, either.
I'm also going to add, in the face of the sentimentality of people trying to defend Kingda Ka here, that even before COVID Kingda Ka did not justify its costs of operations based on its total ridership and its uptime. Its impact on guests coming to the park is heavily overstated considering while I worked there it was barely scraping into the top 10 in overall ridership for Great Adventure, some years even losing to rides like Green Lantern, Dark Knight Coaster, ***Congo Rapids***, and ***__LOG FLUME__***.
Maybe if TT2 wasn't such a shitshow we wouldn't be having this discussion or at least a more positive and hopeful discussion, I don't know. But TT2 was a shitshow, still is a shitshow, and will probably continue to be a shitshow based on what I've been hearing.
Maybe. If TT2 wasn't too expensive and worked like it was advertised, I'd assume every hydraulic launch coaster would be lining up for a rehab. TT2 falling on its face indicates KK and TTD are just going to be money pits to the end of their life
So, just a little reminder here— Great Adventure is in really bad shape from years of deferred maintenance and neglect from past corporate management. They kept adding big, expensive coasters that are also expensive to maintain while maintenance budgets kept getting cut. Kingda Ka may be a draw, but the expense probably outweighs the ROI.
Hopefully the loss of three rides is the extent of removals (otherwise they probably would have pulled demolition permits for more), and my expectation currently is KK may end up SBNO for next season while a replacement/upgrade happens that uses parts of it.
There’s a saying “a surgeon has to cut to cure” and that is the case here as well. They need to get expenses in line with current attendance in order to grow attendance in the future.
Hopefully the loss of three rides is the extent of removals (otherwise they probably would have pulled demolition permits for more), and my expectation currently is KK may end up SBNO for next season while a replacement/upgrade happens that uses parts of it.
There’s a saying “a surgeon has to cut to cure” and that is the case here as well. They need to get expenses in line with current attendance in order to grow attendance in the future.
yeah I get that but I have concerns that they haven't applied the proper tourniquet to control bleeding before starting that cutting.
What I am seeing on social media and not just the enthusiasts end of it but GP as well now that the story is getting wider circulation is ugly if this was a simple budget cutting with no extenuating circumstances such as insurance suddenly saying that they won't cover it for next year after the Top Thrill settlement then no an announcement call is really a bad call. Especially if it SBNO next year. There are post of the park directly using KK to push sales for next year that are well post merger I be generous and say preremoval call but that might not even be correct. The PR fall out may end up not just being about the loss of a beloved right but people's faith and trust in the park and wider SF company to deliver on what they are promising and if so that might take far longer to recover from. The time for transparency is not just here but has been here for a while and so far they are not delivering.
I personally have seen the park weather worse in 1984 and 1987 and bounce back.
Passholders always threaten to not renew and never come back, but the majority do because it’s still a good value. If they see pass sales drop they offer something new “free” with pass purchase.
Rebuilding seasons are never ideal, but if they don’t fix things then they really lose the core audience.
Now, with losing one SBNO attraction and two low ridership attractions and possibly having two others SBNO with a promise of something better coming for 2026, they really have to get the stuff they’ve already got running on time and at reasonable capacity. The park needs to continue cleaning, painting, fixing to make a real, noticeable difference. If they deliver on that, things will be fine after a season or two.
Passholders always threaten to not renew and never come back, but the majority do because it’s still a good value. If they see pass sales drop they offer something new “free” with pass purchase.
Rebuilding seasons are never ideal, but if they don’t fix things then they really lose the core audience.
Now, with losing one SBNO attraction and two low ridership attractions and possibly having two others SBNO with a promise of something better coming for 2026, they really have to get the stuff they’ve already got running on time and at reasonable capacity. The park needs to continue cleaning, painting, fixing to make a real, noticeable difference. If they deliver on that, things will be fine after a season or two.
The issue I see is this is really going to test the limits, not of what pass holders will take, but what single day ticket purchasers will accept.
Yes SFGAdv has it's issues, but it was the SF chain as a whole before this that were all suffering the same 'slow death' so to speak. So when you take a park that's been on slow decline, and you accelerate (Pun somewhat intended) the issue by effectively closing an entire part of the park with all these closures along with El Toro's own issues, it makes it hard for people to want to invest the time and money to come to you. They are trying to pull people from the Philly and NYC metro areas with the shore right there to boot.
Holding off on this announcement, not having future plans ready to announce, not even being able to market park improvements ("Come see the all new Great Adventure") is a HUGE PR miss. It's really hard to recover when people forget you are there after a 2-3 year spell of trying to rebuild. I feel like the biggest thing that will let them "get away" with this is that the new Six Flags has Dorney, and Hersheypark is somewhat at its limits.
I know a lot talked about this fear when Six Flags and Cedar Fair merged that the lack of competition meant that there would be a lack of urgency to improve, and I think we're already seeing it with the unannounced closures or rides, 'random' reshuffling of projects, and straight up horrible PR operations.
Yes SFGAdv has it's issues, but it was the SF chain as a whole before this that were all suffering the same 'slow death' so to speak. So when you take a park that's been on slow decline, and you accelerate (Pun somewhat intended) the issue by effectively closing an entire part of the park with all these closures along with El Toro's own issues, it makes it hard for people to want to invest the time and money to come to you. They are trying to pull people from the Philly and NYC metro areas with the shore right there to boot.
Holding off on this announcement, not having future plans ready to announce, not even being able to market park improvements ("Come see the all new Great Adventure") is a HUGE PR miss. It's really hard to recover when people forget you are there after a 2-3 year spell of trying to rebuild. I feel like the biggest thing that will let them "get away" with this is that the new Six Flags has Dorney, and Hersheypark is somewhat at its limits.
I know a lot talked about this fear when Six Flags and Cedar Fair merged that the lack of competition meant that there would be a lack of urgency to improve, and I think we're already seeing it with the unannounced closures or rides, 'random' reshuffling of projects, and straight up horrible PR operations.
If Great Adventure can get their cleanliness and operations to the level Dorney is it would make a HUGE improvement.