United Parks reports down quarter, year

I live 35 minutes from Seaworld Orlando and anywhere between 90 minutes and 3 hours from BGT depending on Champions Gate traffic. I'm currently on year # 3 of no longer having any type of annual pass for the chain and other than the occasional moment of craving a ride on Mako or Iron Gwazi, I barely even remember the parks are here.

Now if the ride operations and uptime returned to the way Busch ran the parks, I'd go back in a heartbeat. I don't want to have such a strong dislike for such beautiful parks with fantastic rides. They've just made the idea of spending any money or making any effort to drive down I-4 incredible unappealing for the experience they're offering.

Yeah, it's really a shame. Fantastic attractions can't trump crappy operations. Not just crappy, but dismal. My kid is finally a Mako fan, but I can't justify passes when even he's frustrated with single trains and glacial crews.

It is quite alarming that Marc’s strategy to improve weakening demand is to cut more costs. I also think the “one-time” phrasing on bad debt is disingenuous considering it comes from season passes and memberships. Surely there will be guests who fail to pay every year.

The experience just keeps getting worse and worse at the parks.

I was at Busch Gardens Tampa on Thursday . Kumba, Sky Ride, Rapids all open an hour after park opening and also close an hour before the park closes. Wild Oasis closes 2 hours before the park closes.

Iron Gwazi is basically an up charge ride now with a metal detector and mandatory paid lockers, $4 for 2 hours or $12 for an all day moveable locker with rumors other rides will be getting the same policy. There is no way around it unless you have a non rider you can leave your phone and keys with.

Removing 3 rides since mid 2023 and only adding 1 low capacity roller coaster to replace one of the rides and down to 1 water ride.

1 train operations are fine on a slow weekday when everything is a short wait but they rarely add a second train to a coaster even if the line gets up to 45 minutes on a more crowded weekday.

Ride closure page on the website was removed about a year ago as well as the boards outside the entrance gate that lists the closed ride. Cheetah Hunt was just closed for over 3 months with no communication from the park. Same with Falcon’s Fury, it’s been closed for over 2 months with most seats missing restraints. Even if you call the park, you get told everything is open because it goes to an outsourced call center that is not up to date with what is open and closed.

If your first response to poor results is cutting cost in a hospitality business, you've already made the wrong decision.

I'll echo what others have said. We visited the Sea World Orlando and Busch Gardens Tampa back around Halloween. Both parks are beautiful and have great attractions. But the operations in both places were dreadful. Everything is staffed at half of what it should be, ride units are half of what they should be, and many of the crews, although they were not rude or unsafe, just did not have a care in the world about moving things along. Only super low crowds enabled us to do MOST of what we wanted ONCE in a full day at each place. Not only that, they really dick you on their All Day Dining deals when park hours are already short, most food venues open later than the park and close earlier than the park , and lines are long making it hard to eat more than twice and get reasonable value out of your purchase. It will be a long time before I give that operation another dime.

This time in theme parks is really getting defined by great attractions and events being undermined operations through either cost-cutting, poor management, or both. The creative side seems stronger than ever in terms of the number of skilled people available to make new things happen but it might not matter much if the business of theme parks (or at least regional theme parks) keeps stumbling.

Sadly the amusement industry is on its way down. As I have always said, the best time in the business was during the late 90's early 2000's. I don't think we'll ever see that again. I now praise more than ever the smaller, family owned amusement parks. You can feel the care for their customers.

My last visit to Sea World Orlando was Nov 2024. And it was, in fact, my last visit.

We tacked on an extra day to our Universal trip the day after Thanksgiving, and man what a mess. It was the first time I can remember leaving any park thoroughly irritated. The late openings, closed rides, apathetic staff, awful food, surcharges... SWO somehow made the old Six Flags blush.

And I would love to get to BGT, but not when things are like this.

Rick77:

Sadly the amusement industry is on its way down.

There are a lot of parks that would beg to differ.

Danimales:

SWO somehow made the old Six Flags blush

That was the exact same feeling I had when I decided not to renew my pass a few years ago. When the SWO/BGT experience fell lower than a 2002-era trip to Six Flags.

Same. Just irritation and sadness the last time I visited Sea World.

Rick77:

Sadly the amusement industry is on its way down

If they think they can simply exist and make bank or in the case of United, buy it to sell it then yeah. It’s down alright.

There’s nothing stopping Sea World from competing with Disney or Universal again other than a desire to do so. There’s a lot of potential especially for their seasonal events to pull crowds from the very crowded seasonal events at the other parks. Especially for locals. But it would take a few seasons to build back trust and they aren’t going to make the investment when they can just charge another $5 for parking to make the numbers look better.

Too me it’s Shapiro era SF, but with great new rides, but the cash grab for a mediocre customer service is the worse. I can still remember my shock when I saw the pricing for parking at BGW last year. Then the quality of the ops and food has dropped like a rock since the late Busch era. The ops at BGW didn’t seem to be at level of the Orlando parks, but definitely behind Great Adventure last year.

I don’t what they are misinterpreting from Universals build a thon, but you can’t really price higher then Disney and Uni in everything but the gate for a far more terrible experience.

The private equity approach to Hospitality has me far more worried about United then SF. The opening of SFOT, and Reilly meeting not just the management at each park, but YouTube and SuperFans is really promising. I think everyone realized the handling of the ride closures hit harder than past management cared to think about.

Jeff:

If your first response to poor results is cutting cost in a hospitality business, you've already made the wrong decision.

...there's always the Vegas approach and just raise prices across the board. That'll fix everything.

This chain had gouged customers (while reducing the customer experience) to the point they aren't coming back. Sky high in-park prices, 5% upcharge, upcharge for certain rides after guests have paid admission etc.

In the meantime, operations is mediocre at best. Staggered area openings with all attractions not available during operating hours, cutting operating hours, low attendance closures ect.

They sell their season pass for an appropriate price and don't offer meal plans, so that part of their business strategy is good IMO. However, once one gets in the park, any purchase feels like absolute extortion.

Somewhere there is a medium between giving away everything and gouging. But the major chains cannot or do not want to locate it.

Charging more for a recreational product is not price gouging.