Another Round of Six Flags Layoffs?

From my LinkedIn feed this past week, there appears to be a number of “open to work” postings from SF folks. Anyone got any intel if they just axed a bunch in this latest round?

AI will be running the parks this year, no use for humans! Ha

None of this is shocking.

More lay offs

More parks sold or closed

More inconsistant operations across the chain

More blaming of bad weather.

Does this drama ever end? 😭

Literally as many seasonal parks are opening for this season this week. What great timing.

Yeah, I saw a few of those too. Some of them were long-time experts in their areas. The brain continues.

For anyone looking for opportunities, whether seasonal, part-time or full-time, the careers section of Enchanted Parks website is now functional.

In fairness to Six Flags - and really, they've used up any benefit of the doubt, but to continue - they offloaded a decent chunk of their portfolio. There ought to be some managerial reductions in HQ along with the in-park personnel.

On the other hand, I don't know whether that's a fair description of the recent cuts, and even if it is, you have to identify the right people to let go, not just the ones with the biggest salaries.

I know there are some entertainment cuts, and the parks they shed were not exactly entertainment centered. What a tragedy.

What's sad on the legacy Cedar Fair side of things is that they spent the entire 2010s carefully building up entertainment, creative planning, dining and guest experience focused roles in the parks. So many of those parks were the best they had ever been in the 2013-2019 time frame. And rather than build on that in this decade the merger has not only washed it away, but taken some of it to levels worse than it had been pre-Ouimet.

Indeed. Cedar Point opens in less than one month, and when I go to the park web site and search for shows, I get:

See All Shows
0 Results

No results found

I'm sure there will eventually be something there, but to not even bother listing them at this point in the spring? It does not inspire confidence.

The only thing learned at Winter Chill Out was that Jack Aldrich Theatre will feature a "Generations"-type show.

Not sure what that means.

While the park does open soon, doesn't the actual Live-E start significantly later...like June-something?

That said, you would think they would know what is coming and have it detailed, as now is the time when most people are starting to take a look.

I've seen a couple of posts on Facebook tonight saying that Jeffrey Siebert is no longer with the company.

That would be weird. He's been in charge of five parks for less than a year.

It appears Six Flags is already abandoning the Regional GM strategy they implemented only very recently. Now the parks are into two regions each run by Senior Operations Vice Presidents, Jason McClure and Jessica Naderman. McClure has mostly legacy SIX parks and Naderman has mostly the legacy FUN parks. The largest parks now have a "Park President" role which sounds similar to the legacy GM roles. Sounds like Siebert was a victim of this latest reorg.

I definitely see adding the park presidents as a John Reilly move. He knows that you can't generalize across all of these regions, and that you keep your moneymakers happy as the first priority. Glad to see that he's trying to un****tify some moves from before he had the reins.

Sad to hear about Jeff. I wonder what happened there? Did they not offer him a bump, or maybe they did but not at a park he wanted? I'm sure he'll land on his feet, he is a well respected guy.

Bringing back park presidents for 10 parks.

Canada’s Wonderland
Carowinds
Cedar Point
Kings Island
Knott’s Berry Farm
Six Flags Great America
Six Flags Great Adventure
Six Flags Magic Mountain
Six Flags Over Georgia
Six Flags Over Texas

https://www.ocregister.com/...residents/

And there's the unofficial list of the parks they actually care about keeping around.

The two glaring omissions I see are Six Flags Fiesta Texas and Kings Dominion.

I haven't been to SFFT, but by all accounts, it is a well run park (did they really let Jeff Siebert go or did he go on his own?) at least by Six Flags standards with good attractions in a growing market.

I've been to Kings Dominion several times and I find it to be a gorgeous park that could really use some attention in the operations department. This is also a growing area with a ton of money in the population and they just closed SFA which eliminates their overlap. It really seems to me like they should want to focus here (similar to other big markets that have been underperforming like Magic Mountain, Great Adventure, Over Texas, Over Georgia) and hit a home run with the guests this year and set themselves up for sustainable success, especially as the main competitor (Busch Gardens Williamsburg) seems to have taken a turn for the worse. But that would make too much sense and this company hasn't done much that makes sense in recent times.

Edit: I was doing some digging trying to figure out what happened with Siebert and found a rumor that there are talks of Herschend buying SFFT and Dorney. Maybe he'd come back to run SFFT under Herschend. I wonder if KD would be included in that deal as well? I can see the comments coming in now if another round of park sales happens. "Last year my pass got me access to 41 parks and now it's only 31 parks. Shouldn't I get a 25% discount?"

I am a little confused about layoffs in Entertainment as Great Adventure is really ramping up in park entertainment. That doesn't add up.

Unless with the new Park Presidents that is now getting shifted to a Park centric function not corporate. Kinda would make sense with a place like Great Adventure which has the safari to tie into the in park shows

MDOmnis:

The two glaring omissions I see are Six Flags Fiesta Texas and Kings Dominion.

The interesting thing about these two: They are the two most closely paired with one of the Sea World/Busch parks.