Six Flags moving corporate headquarters to Arlington, Texas

I guess the best case would be no one cares and they keep visiting as they've always done. The worst case would be that a whole lot of people who have had 50-150 years of tradition with multiple generations of their family going to these places react negatively, lose their sense of loyalty to them, and stop going.

In other words, there is either zero or negative ROI on what it would cost to change signs and do the marketing and since the company is already bleeding money, it would be a stupid move.

I don't really care where the head office is located or whether they call it Cedar Fair or Six Flags.

I'm pretty sure we all know it's Six Flags, whether they officially brand it that way or not.

I've been to CP 40 times so far this season, and I'm going again tonight. Tomorrow will be my fourth trip of the season to KI. I don't have any major complaints about either park. The biggest change I've noticed is the increase in pass and add-on prices, and I'm on board with that.

I think everyone would be happier if they spent more time at the parks and less time online speculating and complaining.

Six Flags is made fun of consistently by comedians and late night TV. I'm sure if they did the most basic investigation that they would find it's damaged goods.

@Credit - Six Flags own CEO, Bassoul, famously complained during an investor quarterly call that the Six Flags brand attracts "Wal-Mart" type customers when they want to attract Target type customers. Cedar Fair legacy strategy focused on attracting "Target type customers" (and providing an elevated experience at that level) especially at their largest parks such as Cedar Point, Knott's, Kings Island, etc.

One potential advantage of consolidating branding under one name: It allows for more scalable advertising. If Cedar Point has no connection to Six Flags, you have to develop a near standalone ad campaign. If you can attach Six Flags to everything, then it becomes simpler.

Not necessarily better, but simpler.

Cedar Fair logo still has life at Dorney Park (at least when I took the photo two weeks ago during my drive-by).

I’ve heard that internally everyone has seen data that shows how bad the “Six Flags” brand is received by consumers. It’s complete malfeasance to double-down on a brand identity that is driving the consumers they need away. We are at a point there is no “turning the Six Flags brand around” just like there was no saving Spirit Airlines when it became the butt of jokes everywhere. It pains me to say this as someone who grew up with Six Flags of the 80’s when they were on the same level of a Cedar Fair park.

Gunkey Monkey,

On an unrelated note, some former employees of Geauga Lake opened up their own amusement park here close to me in Alliance, Ohio (I work in Alliance but live close by). The place is pretty simple and called "Fun Times Fun Park", but they not only have the Tilt-a-Whirl from Geauga Lake, but also a ride called Gunky Monkeys.

The marketing savings are not meaningful. They already make ad campaigns for specific markets to promote new rides and season pass sales.

The real cost savings is cost of goods for retail, games and f&b.

The revenue upside with a single brand identity is nationwide sponsorships and promotions.

This year Six Flags has appeared to have changed the way they do surveys. Instead of giving specific surveys to each park, they give the same survey to every park. This gives them some controls of parks that already have a similar ride that the survey is asking about.

The same thing is likely happening with the Six Flags over North Ohio. Cedar Point is in the control group for park names. The survey responses will be used to justify renaming a different park. It will be framed as the pushback for renaming the park is not as strong as the pushback for renaming Cedar Point.

Six Points over Cedar Flags: The park nobody asked for.

Scott Allen:

The same thing is likely happening with the Six Flags over North Ohio. Cedar Point is in the control group for park names. The survey responses will be used to justify renaming a different park. It will be framed as the pushback for renaming the park is not as strong as the pushback for renaming Cedar Point.

You would hope but we are talking about companies that have been doing things bassackwards for a while now.

CreditWh0re: a long time back in this thread....

Of the legacy SF parks, the name really only resonates now with Atlanta and Dallas and to some extent New England. The other parks were always still referred to by their prior names (Great Adv, Great America, Magic Mountain etc.).

At this point any thoughts on massive rebranding to just a single SF name has gone out the window.

Well I'll eat my words and again marvel at the absolute stupidity coming out of Arlington. (No one from the CF side of the house would have thought this was a good idea at this stage).

Let's throw away decades of brand recognition and replace it with one that has negative equity

wahoo skipper:

Cedar Fair logo still has life at Dorney Park (at least when I took the photo two weeks ago during my drive-by)

Kings Island as well, bigger but less obvious. It would be a colossal waste of money to change it to the six flags logo.

Jeff, I appreciate the comments you made to Susan Glaser. I’ve had multiple communications with elected representatives in Ohio about this “survey,” the entire situation with Six Flags financially, and the economic impact it will have if they make certain changes or decisions. Hopefully this go-around they are listening when they didn’t prior to the merger.

My guess is that Six Flags over North Ohio was put in as an intentional bad answer. By putting it in, every other name with Six Flags in it was better by comparison. If they do add the name somewhere, they can say, we listened and only made a small change.

The Six Flags name doesn't help here, but conversely it might help the brand of Six Flags itself some. I could see Cedar Point, a Six Flags park or something like that written more even if not an official name change. The park is still the flagship park or one of them at a minimum and the corporate higher ups at some point will want the Six Flags name more affiliated with it even if they stay smart enough to not push it too far (not a guarantee).

Might make a separate thread on this later, but my kid self got what I wanted. I was team Cedar Fair/Point and liked seeing the Ohio company grow and seemingly gain vs the bigger players. Well, they got so big they took took over Six Flags. What I didn't realize a couple decades ago was that victory and defeat pretty much look the same and now we have to have the same conversation we would have if Six Flags had bought Cedar Point 20 years ago.

I think that's right about "North Ohio" being the obvious last choice. And I think they're not saying "A Six Flags Park" because Cedar Point also encompasses hotels, the campground, the marina, etc.

"A Six Flags Resort" has a better ring to me than "A Six Flags Experience," which reminds me of the experience of waiting twenty minutes for a sad, soggy $19 burger. And in any case, I don't think it helps Cedar Point's image, but maybe they think it will help sell multi-park passes if more people know that CP, KI, Great America, etc. are all included?