Cedar Point goes silent after park injury
If you have ever stood in a queue at Cedar Point, waiting to hop on one of its premier rides after dropping a mountain of cash for the opportunity, you should be furious.
Last week a woman waiting to ride the Top Thrill Dragster was seriously injured when something flew off the coaster and struck her in the head. What was it?
We don’t know.
Who is the woman?
We don’t know.
How badly is she injured?
We don’t know.
How did this happen?
We don’t know.
What steps have been taken by Cedar Point, which remains open, to ensure that its guests are safe after the incident?
We don’t know.
A week later, we don’t know much of anything.
That we remain so completely in the dark is due to a series of deliberate decisions by Cedar Point to evade an explanation of even the most basic facts of the incident.
Instead, park officials have twisted away from questions with all of the speed and contortions of one of its world-class coasters.
On Wednesday, the park’s director of communications said in a prepared statement, “Our focus continues to be on the guest and her family. Because the incident is still under investigation, the ride remains closed and there is no additional information to share at this time.”
It’s hard to go horribly off-course during a public relations crisis in just two sentences, but Cedar Point has managed it.
This is not to suggest that the park does not care about the guest and her family.
But the actions of park officials in the past week do suggest that their primary concern is protecting Cedar Point. They are working hard to talk as little as possible about an incident that makes the park look bad.
If Cedar Point’s sole focus was truly the guest and her family, one might encounter some statement or public acknowledgement about her condition on the park’s website. Navigating there on Thursday, a full four days after she was injured, a visitor to the site instead was greeted with the question, “What type of admission are you looking for?”
In fact, the only reference to the health and well-being of its guests on that main page has nothing to do with the Top Thrill Dragster injury. Instead, it comes way down at the bottom, in the form of digital fine print:
“BY VISITING THE PARK, YOU VOLUNTARILY ASSUME ALL RISKS RELATED TO EXPOSURE TO COVID-19.”
The park cares so much about the feelings of the injured woman that it has
not acknowledged on its page for Top Thrill Dragster that the ride is temporarily closed, or otherwise altered its breathless sales pitch for the attraction.
“Put the pedal to the metal because no speeding tickets are cited to Top
Thrill Dragster...but look quick, before you know it, you’re hurtling back to the ground...”
“We aren’t kidding when we say that this high-octane sprint to the checkered flag knows a thing or twenty about horsepower,” it concludes.
If only Cedar Point knew a thing or twenty about sensitivity and accountability.
This silence comes at the expense of all of its guests, not just the woman who is injured.
In 2019, the year before COVID-19 sent the economy into a tailspin, Cedar Fair reported record attendance across its 11 amusement parks and four waterparks, which include Cedar Point and Kings Island. Attendance increased 8% to 27.9 million guests.
They should be the focus of Cedar Fair bigwigs, and officials at Cedar Point.
The local media in northwest Ohio, thank goodness, has kept up consistent pressure in the face of such stonewalling.
That pressure will be essential if the public is to receive the answers it deserves. This was proven after the catastrophic ride failure of the Fire Ball at the 2017 Ohio State Fair killed one fairgoer and injured several others.
After months of sustained media scrutiny by The Dispatch and other outlets, coupled with intense public pressure, a new law meant to improve ride safety standards went into effect two years later.
The media looks to be doing its job after this incident at Cedar Point, but all of us have power to wield.
Cedar Point may continue shilling its Fast Lane wristbands, its gold and platinum passes. But until officials there start talking, and meaningfully, every one of us should be giving Cedar Fair’s parks a hard pass of our own. tdecker@dispatch.com @Theodore_decker