Richard Zimmerman has been announced as the new president of Cedar Fair. He replaces Matt Ouimet, who remains CEO, in that position.

http://m.richmond.com/business/local/article_a37a9e38-535d-51bf-bff3-6007cb75acd5.html?mode=jqm

I just want to know who will be the new KI GM now that Greg Scheid is Regional VP per his LinkedIn profile.

Richard Zimmerman was promoted to president and chief operating officer or COO of Cedar Fair, Matt ouimet remains as the chief executive officer or CEO of Cedar Fair.

http://ir.cedarfair.com/newsroom/press-releases/news-release-details/2016/Richard-A-Zimmerman-Promoted-To-President/default.aspx

Compare to the Kinzel era, in which Kinzel was both president and CEO of the company for 20-something years straight. It's entirely possible that I'm overestimating the impact of this, but I think this reinforces that this era of Cedar Fair continues to be about putting the right people in the right positions. The era of the most qualified person "coincidentally" being the CEO's son is a thing of the past.

 

I'm really curious about what Magenta Lizard pointed out, though. I've never heard of a Regional VP position at Cedar Fair, but that is indeed what Greg Scheid's LinkedIn says. It says he's a Regional VP of Kings Island, though... I don't know. Surely it's not just a title change. What I would assume a "Regional" VP position is for a park would make more sense in the case of multiple parks in the same chain being located close to each other (e.g. Kennywood and Idlewild.) Obviously, that's not the case for Kings Island, so I don't know. This would seem to indicate that KI will have a new park president, though. This is fun stuff to watch!

apparently this is a position he held before in 2011. http://www.richmond.com/business/article_ffc4c791-f01f-5f8d-be82-d91e7bc1b6ce.html

(This might be false)

Thanks for quickly correcting your post!

I made another adjustment, so I could remove the "this is false" disclaimer.

The first thing I thought of when I read the headline is that Matt Ouimet was leaving Cedar Fair.  He and his team seam to have done wonders for Cedar Fair financially.  

 

Zimmerman was promoted to Regional VP back in 2007.  I believe at the time, he was placed in charge of several parks (the Eastern parks if my memory serves me correctly).  I wonder if this will be true of Greg Scheid.  He has been with KI since shortly after Cedar Fair took over.  

 

As an aside, several past GMs of Kings Island have moved onto bigger and better things as well.  Craig Ross is now the President of the Dollywood Company, which is owned jointly by Herschend Family Entertainment and Dolly Parton.  The Dollywood Company owns Dollywood, Dollywood`s Splash County, Dollywood Cabins and Dollywood`s DreamMore Resort. Jane Cooper started her career at Kings Island, and eventually became CEO of Paramount Parks.  Today, she is President and COO of Herschend Family Entertainment. Al Weber was the GM of Kings Island from 1992-1997.  He was Paramount Parks CEO from 2002-2006 (when the parks were sold to Cedar Fair). He had short stints as interim CEO of Six Flags, and Palace Entertainment.  He is currently the CEO and President of Apex Parks Group, which owns Indiana Beach, among others (http://www.apexparksgroup.com/)

 

That was probably way more information than most people wanted.  But I like creating posts rich in content.  It has been a while since I have been on here to do that.  Life has been pretty busy for me lately.

Richard Zimmerman was promoted to president and chief operating officer or COO of Cedar Fair, Matt ouimet remains as the chief executive officer or CEO of Cedar Fair.

This is likely part of his succession plan.

I got kind of sad when i miss-read the article a few times thinking Ouimet was leaving Cedar Fair, I am very thankful he is not, i really like Ouimet, Glad to see Richard Zimmerman is being promoted! 

On 10/28/2016 at 11:49 AM, rhyano said:

I got kind of sad when i miss-read the article a few times thinking Ouimet was leaving Cedar Fair, I am very thankful he is not, i really like Ouimet, Glad to see Richard Zimmerman is being promoted! 

Are you still glad?