From Cedar Point’s Facebook…
Duane Palmer WHAT’S THE UPDATE ON SHOOT THE RAPIDS? LOTS OF MONEY SPENT ON A RIDE THE PUBLIC CANT ENJOY, WHATS UP!
Cedar Point We’ll have an update in the next few days.
Sounds like this is good news! We hope Cedar Point can get the ride open soon!
From the Sandusky Register…
SANDUSKY
Cedar Point is still looking to make a big splash with its new Shoot the Rapids water ride, but the thirst for thrills won’t be quenched this weekend.
That means winners of a May charity auction, too, will have to keep on waiting to be first aboard the ride.
A state inspection to certify Shoot the Rapids as safe to ride was cut short Tuesday when amusement park officials said they weren’t ready to complete the inspection, said Kaleigh Frazier, an Ohio Department of Agriculture spokeswoman.
“Cedar Point determined they had some issues they wanted to address with a manufacturer,” Frazier said. “We’re kind of waiting for Cedar Point to contact us.”
Once Cedar Point contacts the agency, the inspectors will return. As of Friday, the agency was still waiting to hear back, Frazier said.
The amusement park has missed two deadlines to start the ride. The park planned to certify Shoot the Rapids on March 16, but bumped that date to May 29, which has come and gone.
That said, Cedar Point has apparently decided not to announce any more public deadlines.
“We don’t have a specific date when it will open,” said Robin Innes, the park’s marketing director. “We want to get it open as soon as we can.”
Crews have already been trained to run the ride, but there will be additional work before it opens, Innes said.
Documents from Tuesday’s partially-completed inspection mentions problems with the ride’s boats. Noting items that need to be fixed, the Department of Agriculture inspector wrote, “All boats being repaired to manufacturer’s specifications.”
Innes said he can’t elaborate.
“We’re working with the manufacturer just to make some modifications to the boats and operation system,” Innes said.
On May 10, Richard Kinzel, Cedar Fair’s chairman, president and CEO, said the manufacturer made the flume — the channel that holds the ride’s water — but contracted out the boats.
The boats turned out to be the wrong size when delivered. The ride was designed and built by IntaRide LLC of Glen Burnie, Md., a company that has built successful, signature Cedar Point rides like Top Thrill Dragster, Millennium Force and Magnum.
Thirty participants who won bragging rights as the first official riders on Shoot the Rapids have since been told to “please be patient,” said Ron Rude, executive director of the Firelands Chapter of The American Red Cross.
“We are waiting for word from the park,” Rude said.
The Red Cross Firelands chapter raised about $7,000 when it auctioned off “first rights” to the ride, but the nonprofit can’t count the money until it gives the winners their promised ride, Rude said.
“Of course, that’s on hold until we know what’s going to happen,” he said. “When the ride actually happens, we will know what our receipts are.”
One of the original 30 bidders in the contest had to drop out — he was deployed overseas with his military unit, Rude said.
“We had one gentleman who was being deployed to Iraq,” he said. “Someone else replaced him in his seat. I was sorry we could not give that soldier a ride.”
From the Sandusky Register…
SANDUSKY
Cedar Fair is still carrying a big load of debt on its back, and the deal with Apollo Global Management that was supposed to remove that weight collapsed in April.
But Cedar Fair executives, who find themselves still running a publicly traded company, say they are moving quickly to fix the problem.
Cedar Fair hopes to announce a method for dealing with the company’s debt when it hosts its annual meeting at 9 a.m. June 7 at the Sandusky State Theatre, two top company executives say.
Dealing the company’s approximately $1.6 billion in debt has been the top priority ever since a deal for Apollo Global Management to acquire Cedar Fair fell through, said Dick Kinzel, Cedar Fair’s chairman, chief executive officer and president, and Peter Crage, Cedar Fair’s corporate vice president, finance, and chief financial officer.
Discussions on how to fix that are moving quickly, they said.
The next major task after dealing with the debt will be to figure out a succession plan for Kinzel, 69, whose current contract with the company expires in January 2012, Kinzel said.
“You can’t hide the clock,” he said.
Cedar Fair executives are hoping for a turnaround year in 2010 at Cedar Point and the company’s other amusement parks. Cedar Fair has invested in new rides at its parks, but the season also will depend on factors that are out of the company’s control, such as the weather and the recovery of the economy, Kinzel said.
During an interview at his offices that lasted about 40 minutes, Kinzel discussed several other points. Among them:
* At the end of 2011, if Cedar Fair knows it had a good season, the board will consider resuming cash distributions in 2011.
“It will be a very, very modest distribution,” Kinzel said.
The goal is to make a small distribution to at least help unitholders with their tax liabilities next year, he said.
Q Funding, the company’s largest investor, last week urged that cash distributions resume immediately.
* Cedar Fair is no longer attempting to sell the Worlds of Fun park in Kansas City, Mo., and Valleyfair park in Shakopee, Minn.
“The only reason we put those up for sale was to try to save the distribution,” Kinzel explained.
The future of the Great America park in Santa Clara, Calif., is less certain.
Local officials are trying to put in a new football stadium next to the park for the San Francisco 49ers. Cedar Fair filed a lawsuit against the city and the 49ers last month, saying that the project violates California’s environmental regulations.
* Kinzel said Cedar Fair will continue to maintain Cedar Point’s status as the amusement park with the most roller coasters and rides in the world.
“This is the crown jewel, Cedar Point,” he said. “Capital will continue to go into Cedar Point.”
* Despite speculation that Cedar Fair might merge with the bankrupt Six Flags amusement park chain, Kinzel says he and his board have never had any discussions with the management of Six Flags about merging with the rival company.
Six Flags bondholders interested in buying the company came to Cedar Fair to ask questions about the amusement park business. Testimony in Six Flags’ bankruptcy hearings revealed that meeting and sparked all of the merger speculation, Kinzel said.
The debt problem, which forced Cedar Fair to suspend cash distributions last year, was supposed to be fixed when Apollo Global Management bought the company and took it private. Unitholders resisted the deal, which was terminated on April 6.
Some of the possible new options for dealing with the debt include amending the company’s current bank agreement, negotiating a brand new agreement with the banks, issuing more units in the stock market, selling assets or doing a bond offering, Kinzel and Crage said.
Cedar Fair has hired J.P. Morgan to weigh its options for dealing with its debt. Opportunities to deal with the debt are much better than last year, Crage said.
“The markets really have shifted since last year,” Crage said.
Kinzel said he did not know if he will retire in 2012. That’s up to the board, he said.
He said it’s possible he could stay on the board after that.
“No decisions have been made,” he emphasized.
“Succession planning is very, very important to this board and very important to me,” he said.
Kinzel said he believes the proposed merger with Apollo failed largely because of the emotional attachment investors have to Cedar Point. Many of the unitholders are small investors who live in the Sandusky area.
Kinzel said he’ll spend much of the time at the annual meeting walking unitholders through the last nine months and what motivated Cedar Fair to try to sell the company to Apollo.
Six Flags went bankrupt last year “and their investors lost everything,” Kinzel said. Cedar Fair was struggling at the same time Six Flags ran into trouble, he noted.
Crage said it was very unlikely that Cedar Fair would have gone bankrupt, too, although in 2009 “there was a possibility we could go into default,” he said. If that had happened, the banks would have renegotiated Cedar Fair’s credit terms, likely imposing higher interest costs, Crage said.
With the end of distributions, once the company got the offer from Apollo and negotiated the best deal it could, Cedar Fair had a responsibility to let the unitholders decide, Kinzel said.
From the Sandusky Register…
SANDUSKY
Next year, the thrill is back.
Cedar Point’s new ride for 2011, which already has been ordered but not been announced publicly, will be aimed at thrill seekers, said Dick Kinzel, Cedar Fair’s CEO.
The amusement park’s long-term plans for new rides is closely veiled.
But during an exclusive Register interview with Kinzel, he pulled the curtain aside a bit.
Cedar Point Press Release
SANDUSKY, Ohio, – Midway through the winter on Lake Erie, construction crews on Shoot the Rapids, the new water ride at Cedar Point amusement park/resort in Sandusky, Ohio, are taking the park’s new river-ride adventure to a higher level.
Throughout the fall, crews cleared the 2.5-acre site and completed a majority of the groundwork — mostly below the surface. Trenches were dug, footers for support columns were poured and waterlines for the ride’s landing areas and special effects such as geysers and water sprays were installed.
Now the crews’ focus is higher — about 8.5 stories above the ground.
Earlier this week, crews began erecting portions of the ride’s steel track. Although Shoot the Rapids will be the park’s third water ride, it will still use steel tracks and two lift chains to carry the boats to the top of two hills, one of several exciting features of the ride. The $10.5 million project will be the most expensive water ride ever built at Cedar Point.
“Planning and timing are crucial to any major construction project on Lake Erie in the winter,” said Ed Dangler, Cedar Point’s Director of Maintenance and New Construction. “All the underground work has to be completed before the ground freezes. Working on frozen ground takes a lot more time which adds to the cost of the project. Plus, after the ride is built, there has to be time for testing and training before the ride can open.”
The ride’s first hill, its largest, will be 85 feet tall. It will be three feet taller than the park’s Snake River Falls that opened in Frontiertown in 1993. It will also be one of the tallest water ride hills in the world. After plunging down the first hill, riders will travel through a rustic setting with wooded areas and canyon walls that spray guests with water. The second hill will carry riders up nearly five stories before sending them to the ride’s grand finale — a splash landing through churning rapids and spraying water from all directions.
Before the track can be erected, several steel support columns, some as tall as 80 feet, must be lifted into position and bolted onto the concrete footers. Overall, 18 steel columns will be required to complete the project. Under normal weather conditions, Dangler expects the lift hills to be completed toward the end of the month.
At the same time the lift hills are being assembled, crews on the ground are framing and pouring the ride’s concrete trough. When completed the trough will be nearly 1,500 feet long and will require more than 5,800 cubic yards of concrete. The slope of the trough and the ride’s pumping system, consisting of 12 pumps, will move the boats along the 2,100-foot-long course.
In March after the ride’s structure has been completed, the electrical and water-pumping system will be installed and the ride’s loading station will be built.
After that, it’s weeks of inspections, testing and training so that Shoot the Rapids will be ready to provide a brand new and exciting ride experience for park guests on Saturday, May 15 when Cedar Point opens for its 141st season.
For additional information about Cedar Point and the new Shoot the Rapids water ride, please visit cedarpoint.com or call the park’s general information line at 419.627.2350.