Often at this time of year there is a down turn in participants, particularly on the weekend. With all the new things that are going on, and with your successful summer of camps and events, a little slower time now could be a good time to look to finish a project, take a much needed vacation, get the team together for a planning session, and review the year so far. If you see a time in your schedule where you will disrupt the fewest number of people, you can use that as a guide for when you should be planning your events and remodels. If you are newer, and need to see what happens at this time of year, keep track of when your numbers dip over according to the school and town calendar. Those are times when, if you are closed for a week or two, you will effect the least number of people and so your planning and your work on the park will not effect your bottom line as much as closing some other time.
You should remodel every so often. Changing ramps up, putting in new course design and new obstacles is a way to get visitors who might be a little tires of skating the same old thing back into the building and excited. You can have a launch party once you reopen, generating buzz and revenue, send a press release, invite pros, really work it. If you need to clean up the appearance, put some paint on the walls, re organize your front, this could also help generate some good feeling for your park. While certain things don't require you to close or not for long, remember to see all projects through the lens of your patrons and if putting up caution tape and protection walls is going to be too restrictive, or limit too much skating area, then shutting down for a few days can serve as keeping your quality high while improving your value. Staging your build is a good idea, having all the needed supplied and workers can speed up the remodel.
Doing other things like review, summer review, staff training, and vacationing is all a healthy part of running a business. You just worked for thousands of hours, you can take a little break. You should constantly be reviewing what worked and what didn't, how to work better, and where you can provide for your customer's needs better. So if it slows down a bit at the start of the school year, Ramp UP.
