Okay, theme park gurus, I need your help. An online friend is in Southern California right now visiting theme parks. We have plans to meet up on Saturday at Knott's Berry Farm for the current Peanuts Celebration promotion, which takes place only on weekends.
Saturday is forecast for a major storm moving through L.A. and Orange counties, with heavy rain, winds, and possibly thunderstorms expected.
Will Knott's open on Saturday? According to my previous question about how theme parks make their decision to close or not, people said it was a purely economic decision. If so, do they expect enough people to show up despite heavy rain to justify their operating costs?
A couple of notes: 1) All park closures at Knott's in recent memory have been on off-season weekdays. 2) On days with steady rain, most rides at Knott's, especially the outdoor roller coasters and thrill rides, do not operate. 3) Most of the events for Peanuts Celebration are outdoors-- my guess is that these would be cancelled if the rain is heavy enough. 4) The next day, Sunday, has been announced as Charlie Brown Day, and I would expect big crowds that day (and the forecast is considerably better for Sunday).
My friend is coming with his wife and grade school daughter, and they were planning to enjoy the Peanuts festivities and family rides. I am thinking he may change his plans Saturday morning if it's pouring rain, regardless of what Knott's decides to do.
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As usual, you made the correct call, Robert. I am in awe of your theme park expertise!
I was monitoring a season passholder group last night, and 95% of participants predicted Knott's would be closed today.
As a side note, Magic Mountain was closed today (and I believe yesterday, as well).
Let's see how Sunday plays out at Knott's. It's Super Bowl Sunday, but the game doesn't start until 3 pm West Coast time.
The Super Bowl seems to have no effect on theme park attendance, but the weather forecast getting worse for Sunday might.
I wasn't there, but from following social media, it looks like Sunday had low turnout at Knott's, much lower than the Charlie Brown Day for the first year of Peanuts Celebration in 2018.
It wasn't heavy rain, but off and on showers and a little windy. You would have thought that with all the rain the previous week, people would have been stir crazy and out at Knott's in big numbers, especially with the Charlie Brown Day promotion.
On another note, the photos and videos I saw from Saturday, with flooding on Main Street in Ghost Town and near the Merry Go Round in Fiesta Village were hard to imagine. A couple of employees were in high spirits as they waded into the Fiesta Village pond to try to get the water level down, but it was a little horrifying to witness, even on video.
I think the notion that guests "delay" visits because of rain is not real. If you're a season passholder, you're not going on a rainy day simply because you don't want to get wet. However, because you can go any other day you want throughout the year, it's not like you plan a replacement visit to make up for the rainy day. Therefore, a rainy day visit is just one of the hundreds of days throughout the year that you don't spend in the park. If you were going to go for a special event, you were planning to go anyway, and simply having a rainy day in close proximity is not going to cause you to upset your schedule to arrange a visit for a special event you were not already planning on attending. That means the Sunday Charlie Brown Day probably had a baseline number of guests that were planning to attend, and the rain in preceding days did not contribute to that baseline. When rain disrupted the day, it only reduced the baseline of guests wanting to attend the special event on a rainy day.
I see this all the time on the east coast. Rainy days rarely contribute to crowds of days after, even when special events are involved. Those special events have built in crowds that plan those visits far in advance.
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Knott's stayed open today (Thursday) while Magic Mountain closed, and as we talked about in a previous threadparks close due to anticipated low attendance more than the bad weather itself. I think that with it being the weekend and the Peanuts festival going on, Knott's would need to see horrific weather forecast to bail on a Saturday.
That said, I think if the forecast holds, Sunday will be crazy busy at the park, regardless if it is open Saturday or not.