Just look at the way WDW or BGW handles opening of their parks.
Busch Gardens opens certain sections of the park late, and both the Magic Kingdom and Epcot open in stages and it works very well for those parks. They basically increase the capacity of the park and the number of rides open as the park gets busier. By opening the rides in stages, it helps maximize efficiency for the park and actually helps to spread people out as the morning goes on. People who come in for Joe Cool will be moving to the back of the park after they have had the chance to ride the rides in the front and the new guests coming in will presumably start at the front of the park and work their way back. I've never really heard any complaints about the way WDW handles it, and I think it could work very well for CP as well.
If the park opens in stages, they can still use the resort gate, or they could just use the beach gate instead until Soak City opens. Epcot has 5 resorts that use the International Gateway entrance and that entrance doesn't open until 11:00, even when the park opens as early as 8:00 for Extra Magic Hour.
I've been to WDW 13 times and I personally prefer the way they open in stages rather than opening the whole park at once. It allows you to extend the feeling that the park has just opened a little longer as you experience less lines in the areas that have just opened. For example, you could be on the first train of the day for Raptor at 9:00, the first train for Millennium at 10:00, and the first train for Magnum or Gemini at 11:00.
Families will have Kiddy Kingdom and Peanuts Playground open at 10:00 to enjoy, followed by Gemini Children's Area and Camp Snoopy at 11:00.
I've done it at Disney where I hit Space Mountain at 8:00, then go for something like Pirates or Jungle Cruise at 9:00, and back to Splash Mountain or Big Thunder Mountain at 11:00, and I can be one of the first riders of the day on all three rides instead of just one if the whole park opened at once.
Not only does the staggered opening make the park more enjoyable for me because you get to enjoy shorter lines on more rides throughout the morning, but it saves Disney the hourly wages for a few hundred employees who work in the other areas of the park. If it takes 500 employees to operate those sections of the park, just by delaying the opening by one hour for those sections, the park would save more than $25,000 a week or more than $1.3 million a year in the case of a Disney park. Cedar Point's savings would be slightly lower because of the shorter operating season, but the savings would still be substantial enough that money could be spent elsewhere in the park.
2008: Supervisor
2005: Merchandise / Ride Photo
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Saltwater Sandals - Saltwater Sandals