wolverinechris
Mega Poster
I had a bit of an interesting encounter a few weekends back; thought you guys might appreciate the story.
Just to preface this, I'm from the US, in CA at the moment. We were visiting a couple of family friends who are from the UK, but have been living in the US for at least 5 years and in CA for more than 3.
We were about to go visit Disney, which got us talking about theme parks. They'd both also lived in Ohio for a couple of years, and we got onto the topic of Cedar Point. One of the two had actually realized that Cedar Point was a fairly world-class park; the other had no idea. Then, it got a bit more interesting - the one who knew about CP told the other one that from what he knew, Cedar Point and...Blackpool...were the two best that went back and forth.
I think this speaks a lot about Blackpool's marketing, and really makes me wonder a bit about both CP's and SFMM's marketing. They've been in LA for at least 3 years and still have no idea that SFMM is way more competition for CP than Blackpool is.
I've not been to Blackpool, and I certainly bear them no ill will (really wish they'd send some TVRs to this side of the pond, though! If only our government weren't quite so worried about us and TVR wasn't such a mess...but I digress). It's really a bit surprising to me, though, just how popular Blackpool is. Again, I've not been there, but it really surprises me just how much attendance Blackpool gets, especially when compared to Alton. For goodness sake, they got more than TWICE the attendance in 2007 (http://www.themeit.com/attendance_report2007.pdf). Weirdly, though, they seem to be absent from the 2008 report, while Alton is still there.
Anyone care to comment and/or shed some light on any of the above for us uninformed Americans?
Just to preface this, I'm from the US, in CA at the moment. We were visiting a couple of family friends who are from the UK, but have been living in the US for at least 5 years and in CA for more than 3.
We were about to go visit Disney, which got us talking about theme parks. They'd both also lived in Ohio for a couple of years, and we got onto the topic of Cedar Point. One of the two had actually realized that Cedar Point was a fairly world-class park; the other had no idea. Then, it got a bit more interesting - the one who knew about CP told the other one that from what he knew, Cedar Point and...Blackpool...were the two best that went back and forth.
I think this speaks a lot about Blackpool's marketing, and really makes me wonder a bit about both CP's and SFMM's marketing. They've been in LA for at least 3 years and still have no idea that SFMM is way more competition for CP than Blackpool is.
I've not been to Blackpool, and I certainly bear them no ill will (really wish they'd send some TVRs to this side of the pond, though! If only our government weren't quite so worried about us and TVR wasn't such a mess...but I digress). It's really a bit surprising to me, though, just how popular Blackpool is. Again, I've not been there, but it really surprises me just how much attendance Blackpool gets, especially when compared to Alton. For goodness sake, they got more than TWICE the attendance in 2007 (http://www.themeit.com/attendance_report2007.pdf). Weirdly, though, they seem to be absent from the 2008 report, while Alton is still there.
Anyone care to comment and/or shed some light on any of the above for us uninformed Americans?