 Alrighty! I'm here to talk about Cedar Fair and theming in today's video. So for those of you that don't know, Cedar Fair owns a lot of parks. For the Canadians that are watching, that are on the more general public side of it, Cedar Fair is the company that owns Canada's Wonderland and operates a bundle of theme parks across North America. So for example, they have parks like Knotsbury Farm, Cedar Point, Kings Island, Carowinds, and more. And recently, Cedar Fair has been transitioning into a more theme park versus amusement park kind of company, and it's truly exciting. And in today's video, I'm going to discuss why it's important and why it's so awesome that Cedar Fair is transitioning into this more theme park-based company. I'm going to use mostly Canada's Wonderland as an example, but I'll touch base on the new dive coaster for Dorney Park and other projects like at Carowinds. I'm also going to touch on a little bit of the Cedar Point new additions for 2023. As they kind of counter kind of what I'm talking about in this video, but not necessarily because they're starting to come together as a total package. But let's start it off. So back in 2006, Cedar Fair bought the Paramount Parks. Canada's Wonderland was one of them. One of the first additions that Cedar Fair made into Canada's Wonderland was Behemoth. Behemoth was a hyper coaster, and it was actually the most successful addition in Canada's Wonderland history, more successful than that of Leviathan. It brought in a lot more crowds. It was viewed as just a huge crowd draw, and that mostly is because, I mean, look at it. It was like the tallest thing to ever enter Canada's Wonderland. It was big, it was impressive, and it looked really cool. I remember this is kind of the coaster that made me really follow construction projects. With that being said, Behemoth came with next to no theming, a very bare minimum storyline other than the word big. And the entrance sign is very generic. In fact, I'm one of the people that hates it. I hate the Behemoth sign, I hate it with a passion. It's got next to no theming, its station is literally concrete and steel frames and a red roof. But then, if you look over the era, they brought in Leviathan in 2012, and it was a moderately okay themed station-wise and statue to fit into the air area of Med Fair. So this coaster was a massive addition. It was Canada's first giga coaster, and it was the first giga coaster made by Bolliger and Mabelard. Hopefully I pronounced that correctly. And so it drew in a lot of crowds, it drew in a lot of attention, and yeah, I personally don't consider it a themed coaster, but I guess a lot of people do, and I can see why. The trains are semi-themed, the station is semi-themed, and the statue is kind of impressively themed. I'll give it that. But outside of that, it's a parking lot coaster with next to no theming. But then, Cedar Fair started to want to bring this concept back to life, Frontier Canada. And then, at around the same time, we saw other parks start to introduce theming like carowinds. Cedar Point was starting to focus on the Maverick area with steel vengeance and all that. And you saw storylines starting to form with third coasters. So Yukon Striker was a dive coaster made by Bolliger and Mabelard, introducing the Frontier Canada area with some, I would call it moderate and heavy theming. I'm gonna call it moderate and heavy theming just because it wasn't necessarily the most in depth, but it is an area that is still got work to do, which we'll discuss in the podcast and other videos. But nonetheless, they were reintroducing Frontier Canada, and there were small conversations and discussion going on about future projects like World Expo coming back to Canada's Wonderland. With that being said, even newer additions that are coming into the Cedar Fair chain are showing that there is a continued effort to bring in more theming and stronger look presence to create these atmospheres that Cedar Fair has talked about on their conference calls. Cedar Fair is heading down a place making mindset, which is amazing in my opinion. I think it's absolutely fantastic. And it really shows in their newer addition. So for example, if you look at Canada's Wonderland, Snoopy's Racing Railway is a phenomenally themed kid slash family coaster with drive tire launch coming to Canada's Wonderland and Tundra Twister as an even more impressively painted and themed flat ride first of its kind coming to Canada's Wonderland as well. Now when you compare it to something like Soaring Timbers, Soaring Timbers was supposed to have a paint job but never got it. So this is really awesome to see that Canada's Wonderland did commit to the paint job. We head on over to Aeronautica. I hope that's the right name for this area. Over at Carowinds. And honestly, when I saw the rendering sword, I thought it looked tacky. I didn't necessarily like it. It didn't make sense to me. But the more I read about the importance of this theme to Carowinds, the more it made sense. The more I saw, like for example right now on this construction tour posted by Carowinds on their YouTube channel, I am a lot more impressed. It's really cool. I like the paint jobs that Cedar Fair has been doing to even their small flat rides. It really creates that place making atmosphere that Cedar Fair is aiming for. What I like about the direction that Cedar Fair is heading is it's almost like that step in between like Disney versus an amusement park. So they're really putting effort into their attractions. So yes, they're never going to build those $100 million, $200 million attractions, but they can build those 30 million, $5 million, $3 million flat rides and coasters and still create this really awesome place making experience that fits into the region that that theme park is hosted in. So for example, a place like Carowinds is able to have this aeronautical theme that fits into the place that Carowinds is housed. Canada's Wonderland is able to introduce Trent here, Canada, which is a very important slash story based themed area that makes sense to the Canadian culture that Canada's Wonderland sits in. So I'm really excited about the future attractions that Cedar Fair is going to build as I really like the identity that Cedar Fair is identifying to their home parks region. And I like that that's the way they're going. Honestly, it separates the parks from that whole corporate identity. So Cedar Fair and Paramount and all that kind of had that corporate identity. And now they're kind of like regionally developing their parks, which is really awesome to see. So I'm really excited to see what kind of theme Dornie Parks dive coaster will have, as that'll tell us even more about the direction that Cedar Fair is heading. Now, when I look at Cedar Point, I know that it looks very generic. To me, it looks very generic theme when it was announced, but it's going down the boardwalk theme. And I think once complete, and again, I feel like this is going to be a multi year project. So we'll see more in 2024. But I'm really excited to see that area finished off, because I feel like it's going to look a lot better than we think. That's what I find when it comes to Cedar Fair is they like to improve the areas when they build these new attractions. I'm always really excited when they announced the location of a new attraction. Anyways, hope you enjoyed today's video. Thanks so much for listening and watching. Hopefully you have an amazing weekend, guys. Bye.