Cedar Point loves big numbers: 93 mph top speeds, 420-foot heights, 95-degree drops and 500,000-gallon wave pools.

So when it came time to unveil the park’s new addition for 2011, the 30-story, $5 million WindSeeker swing ride, the marketing department wanted to generate some added thrills. Rather than sending out a news release or holding a press conference, the Sandusky amusement park made the Aug. 24 announcement first to its more than 508,000 Facebook fans.

Cedar Point had considered such a social media strategy for some time. “But we didn’t have the numbers [of fans] until recently,” says Clark Culbertson, Cedar Point’s vice president of marketing.

That’s because Cedar Point only took control of its Facebook page from a fan in the spring of 2009. Since then, the park’s fan base has doubled, thanks in part to posting a series of clues leading up to the WindSeeker’s big reveal.  

“Our Facebook fans are some of our most loyal supporters,” Culbertson says. “We wanted to give them the heads-up first.”  

Of course, traditional media played along, spreading the word that Cedar Point had some major news on Facebook without giving anything away.

In a similar move, Ford Motor Co. introduced the new Explorer via Facebook this past summer. “Seeing what Ford did gave us more confidence we were doing the right thing,” Culbertson says.

In fact, hundreds of comments flooded the Facebook fan page soon after the WindSeeker announcement. And in the two months since, Cedar Point has added almost 100,000 more fans.

“I think you’ll see more of that in the future,” says Robin Innes, Cedar Point’s director of public relations.

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