Cedar Fair and Six Flags merger to complete July 1, mostly Cedar Fair executives to lead new company

Ha! I bought the one they did for Demon Drop, mailed to me in Seattle. Stalkers left a note in it saying, "We love CoasterBuzz!"

Do they also like pancakes?

Speaking of…

Its gets sad for MA when you realize the last new ride was the cast off Vekoma SLC from Geauga… I do hope when CGA closes something goes that far, instead of just to Discovery Kingdom.

Dorney just got a new ride, so anything is possible.

hambone:

Well they should move Magnum, it's sinking.

Perfect coaster for KI Vortex's old spot.

Anyone else buy more FUN stock either right before or after the merger? I tried to time a big purchase at the perfect time, but it didn't work out so well haha but not too bad. I missed the sweet spot to purchase... overall my total shares are down about $300 total with total 50 shares now, but that includes both my old and new shares, and they were down much more before my purchase so I guess it worked out in the end. And I'm confident now that everything seems to have levelled out pretty much there will be some steady increases coming in the future...

I had all of 10 shares of SIX for funzies, which became 5 shares of FUN, and it's still 40% down from when I bought it years ago. That's why I mostly avoid individual stocks.

I received units as a bonus once in the mid-90s. 25 units I believe. The units split a few years later, which doubled my # of units. At some point I got wise to the idea that I could reinvest my dividends instead of taking the small cash payout. That was my smartest move because all these years later I have about $10k worth of shares.

I don't own any other stocks and it is because I am not a knowledgeable investor. When the units were tanking, I held on to them because of my personal connection to the company. There was no other good reason to do so, and I was just lucky that things turned around. I probably will never share the (now) shares. I can't even take a nice trip on that amount. We look at it as something we can hand down to our kids to connect them to the beginning of our relationship. (Met my wife at CP).

I have no connection to Six Flags. I did go to Magic Mountain a few times when I was a kid but, interestingly, I've never visited another Six Flags park.

Investing does not need to be hard, the fact of the matter is all the super plugged in guys who eat and breathe this stuff on Wall Street have been shown consistently to underperform the market index most of the time. If you simply choose to invest in index funds you can capture the market rate which beats 80% of the active stock brokers year over year. If you want to learn more I highly suggest going here:

https://www.bogleheads.org/.../Main_Page

Bogleheads are named after the founder of Vanguard John Bogle and are a non profit group of DIY investors trying to spread the word on index funds. They are entirely supported by donations. I got serious about investing during the pandemic and the results so far have been very good, despite the horrible year that was 2022. This method will not protect you from stock market crashes, but if you can stay the course through those tough times you have (at least in US markets) always been rewarded.

Yeah, most of my investment and retirement accounts are index funds and ETF's that generally market perform or better. I have thousands of shares from a former employer (IPO) that I stupidly held on to, and those are worth about 1/6 of what they were. I'd be four or five years closer to retirement had I sold those.

I’ve probably plugged this before, but this book is a great start on thinking about money intentionally. I bought a copy for each of my kids when they graduated from college:
https://www.penguinrandomho...d-pollack/

And this is probably the next one on my shelf:

https://www.goodreads.com/b...-investing

Both are essentially the Bogle strategy: buy a handful of index funds with regular contributions, reinvest the dividends, and rebalance periodically to track your desired risk. Once it is set up, it takes less than an hour a year to manage.

Thanks for the advice.

I have one and a half shares of FUN. I used to have about forty or fifty, I can't remember for sure, but it was going nowhere fast, so I sold it when I quit my last job to fund my living expenses while I reorganized my life. My opinion is that it wasn't worth buying, especially not that the distributions (dividends) have got so low.

I use the Robinhood app to buy shares. It lets you buy any dollar amount of a share you want, so you don't have to buy an entire share if you don't want to. And it's free to buy shares. Nice app for someone who just dabbles in it, like me. But a dabbler probably doesn't know what he's doing enough to make money at it.

The app says that I have gained about $20 from my share-and-a-half. Maybe I should have kept all the shares I got rid of.

Not sure if this was posted somewhere or not, but since Ouimet has been brought up several times, I thought it interesting that he had this to say recently (a few weeks ago) about why he stepped away:

The merger of SIX Flags and Cedar Fair was not going to play into my strengths. A major component of value creation from any merger is the achievement of cost efficiencies. Some executives are particularly good at the discipline it takes to do this; I am not one of them. For me, this objective also runs counter to my bias towards improving the guest experience. I’m not saying you can’t do both, but in the near term, with pressure from investors, the cost synergies usually take precedence.

In other words, it's not a shock so many of us have noticed.

Where did you find this? It's crazy just how diplomatic he can be while being honest. He's my favorite boss of all time, and I didn't even work for him.

https://www.linkedin.com/po...er_desktop

He posts a lot of insightful stuff on there.

I had to log in to my Linkedin account for the first time in months to post a job hiring, and there it was. There is a bit more to what he said, but that's what jumped out at me the most.

Merger talks were ongoing for 5-6 years before being announced (with some degree of certainty the merger would happen when Matt left). And people here have been complaining about achieving merger synergies (in terms of costs) long before the merger was consummated.

I always forget that LinkedIn is a thing, until I need a job. I'm surprised that some people use it as often as they do. Matt's bigger comments that I identify with:

The ones that concern me most are those who fall into two categories:
1. Those who can’t imagine anyone doing the role as well as them.
2. Those who don’t acknowledge that their skills don’t match the future needs of the business

I'm not exaggerating when I say that this is the reason for the failure or every business that I've worked for that tanked, whether it be public or family-owned. Zero exceptions. There are businesses that I observe now that I think are in that situation.

I follow Ouimet on LinkedIn and I agree he is a good read. He posts some great stuff on leadership but also gives at least some glimpses behind the curtain. I really think he could (and should) parlay some of his writings into a book. I'd buy it.