Six Flags posts $1.6 billion loss for 2025

super7*:

About six years ago, they used to count their season pass revenue over the first five visits so anything after that was considered zero revenue. If that’s still the case, then in their shortsighted minds, they were viewing all those season passholder visits at the holiday events as zero revenue visits. Which absolutely isn’t true because the revenue should be spread over all the visits that one person makes

Making my head hurt because by November nobody gives a @@@@ about unamortized pass revenue. . If they already amortized the Season Pass revenue earlier in the year, it has zero impact if they cut Winterfest. That cash was received and blown, it matters not whether you should have booked some revenue in December. (Yes in a perfect world you’d book revenue ratably over actual days used, but after 5/6 visits you’re talking about single dollars).

the calculus was/is “do winter events bring in more cash than you spend” and “how many season passes won’t get bought over winter and all next season if we cancel the winter event”.

Unless you’re saying that they normally book some of that new Fall pass purchase as revenue days (1 of 5 or 6), (2 of 5 or 6), etc., and thus new pass purchases (from Labor Day through Xmas) didn’t get any revenue recognized in Q4 because they were sitting under the Xmas tree and not yet activated?

if that were the case, they would have said that (huge amount of deferred revenue normally recogízed in Q4 now sitting on the balance sheet ready to hit the P&L in Q2). Yeah, that ain’t it.

So do they count meal plans the same way from revenue? After X number of meals they just don’t count them anymore as revenue? I’ve always wondered how they account for meal plans. I always found it interesting that the registers (at least at CF parks) range up the full price then zero-ed it out. Same with all-season drinks.

From Six Flags annual report:

Revenues from multi-use products, including season-long products for admission, dining, beverage and other products, as well as the
first 12-month period for membership products, are recognized over the estimated number of uses expected for each type of product. The estimated number of uses is reviewed and may be updated periodically during the operating season prior to the ticket or product expiration. The number of uses is estimated based on historical usage adjusted for current period trends. Membership products beginning with the 13th month following purchase are recognized straight-line. For any bundled products that include multiple performance obligations, revenue is allocated using the retail price of each distinct performance obligation and any inherent discounts are allocated based on the gross margin and expected redemption of each performance obligation. The Combined Company does not typically provide for refunds or returns.

ShaneDenmark:

the registers (at least at CF parks) range up the full price then zero-ed it out.

At KI they ring up a price that's around 75% of the real price then zero it out, same with drinks. There's a meal plan SKU they use. An $18 meal plus drink at Brewhouse rings up around $13 and $2 before the zeroing. Any accounting theories why they're doing that?

The $13 on the receipt is the approximate dispersion of what they account for per meal use. That value changes throughout the year to get the most accurate accounting possible.

But here’s the real story: A $99 meal pass, divided by $13 is about 7.6 meals per person for the season, requiring 3.8 visits at a minimum. So the park expects dining plan holders to visit less than 4 times. Passholders without a dinning plan visit less, closer to the 2-3 visit range.

But it can get way deeper than that. The actual cost to the park for the meal may only be $5.00. Which would mean that to truly lose money, the holder may have to eat 20x (ish.) And since the meal is "free," maybe they'll splurge on that $6 brownie or cookie that they otherwise wouldn't have bought. Or add the guac. Or have a beer.

You also have the harder to measure value of having the plan holders in the food line, or eating at a table. When the venue looks busy, people planning on doing a pretzel for dinner may see it and say "Wow, lots of people in there, must be good," and decide to try a meal instead.

Of course, what really cracks me up is entering the park on a 6pm-12am day and seeing people lined up at Backbeat for easily an hour.

CreditWh0re:

how many $20 an hour employees are going to shuttle between two parks because of flexibility?

I only suggested it because I heard stories from my Uncles that they worked at Geauga Lake, and a couple of times got moved to Cedar Point temporarily. I could be misremembering what exactly they said, but I do know one of them mentioned helping an Evac on Magnum in 2005.

Tommytheduck:

Of course, what really cracks me up is entering the park on a 6pm-12am day and seeing people lined up at Backbeat for easily an hour.

The meal plans have created a running of the bulls to the restaurants.

I was long gone before Cedar Fair acquired Geauga Lake, but I could envision a situation where GL employees could have been asked to work at Cedar Point, say for Halloweekends, and have been put up in housing. Less likely the reverse since Geauga Lake didn't have dormitories.

I think that would be the key to any "labor sharing" between parks. What typically happens, and did in the case of Cedar Fair + Paramount + Six is that those acquisitions were explained, in part, by being able to derive efficiencies in back of the house areas such as marketing, sales, purchasing, etc. However, those efficiencies didn't come without a cost themselves, and it does seem to be that we are being told today that, by not respecting the individual cultures/personalities/dynamics of each individual park, they may have inadvertently damaged those parks in the eyes of their target markets.

That certainly happened when Geauga Lake was acquired. Both Cedar Fair and Six thought they could go in and sprinkle their magic dust on that park to make it something bigger and "better" than it was. I think the folks in the greater Cleveland/Akron area just wanted their beloved park to be a periodically improved Geauga Lake that had the heart and soul of the park they grew up with. Cedar Fair and Six offered "New Coke" and "Pepsi Clear". NE Ohio didn't want either.

The first time I had Crystal Pepsi, ironically, was at Geauga Lake.

Crystal Pepsi! That's what it was called. That was the year of clear, of the "Clear Craze". You could get just about anything "clear". Clearly, it was a fad. Can you even find Zima anymore?

Zima had a limited return in 2017-ish, and I bought some to get drunk like a college girl. Remember Clearly Canadian? That's a thing again.