Experts predict more park sales after Six Flags results

Fewer Flags, More Fun?

Seriously though, I don't know anyone in the enthusiast community or a theme park employee that felt good about this merger in the beginning. Then when it was quickly figured out that the new combined chain was essentially going to be Cedar Fair with the Six Flags name, there was some optimism. And now after a full season, I think a lot of people are surprised at how bad it actually was.

Cedar Point will be fine. So will Knotts, Kings Island, Carowinds and probably Magic Mountain and Six Flags Great America. But a lot of the rest? As they said in Aurora in 2004, the FUN is back!

Selling parks will have the added benefit of allowing the remaining parks to add "new" attractions by cannibalizing the sold ones. Six Flags leadership will see it as win win.

Kings Dominion is my home park, and the land on which it sits is not yet a suburb of the Richmond metro area, but will be in 5-10 years, and there's already tremendous demand for more detached homes around that area. Unfortunately, it wouldn't surprise me if they sell the park in that time frame because the cash is too much to pass up. They also have to compete with the demonstrably superior experience provided by Busch Gardens, about an hour south.

I had zero optimism the moment it was revealed that the merger was being designed in such a way that Cedar Fair shareholders would not be allowed to vote; because they know it would have gotten voted down.

I quite literally made an "April Fools Thread" on P-Buzz (IYKYK, right RCMAC??) about the companies merging (maybe 7 years ago?); it worked because it toed that line of being something technically possible but yet so incredulous it became obvious once you remembered it was 4/1.

And now here we are.

Greg77:

Kings Dominion...

I am hopeful Kings Dominion is safe. It has a lot of valuable assets (the brand new Rapterra, I-305, Twisted Timbers, the newly retracked Grizzly) that aren't really relocatable. And I'd argue the Kings Dominion experience (at least pre-merger) is the best it has been in a long time while the Busch Gardens experience isn't nearly as good as it was (but is still infinitely better than the Tampa park).

OhioStater:

I quite literally made an "April Fools Thread"

I swear the new corporate Six Flags logo in the old Cedar Fair font and color was posted somewhere on April Fools Day several years ago.

There's a second article worth reading (linked in the first one): https://www.cleveland.com/t...uptcy.html

Much of the same, with some different quotes from the "experts" who somehow thought this merger was a good idea:

Both Hardiman and Speigel were supportive of the merger, which joined together the two largest regional amusement companies in a union of equals completed in July 2024.

Whereas it seemed pretty obvious to me and most other folks here that this was a merger of poop and vanilla ice cream - not so bad for the poop, but ....

All we can do at this point is hope the smaller parks aren't stripped down for parts.

hambone:

a merger of poop and vanilla ice cream

Six Flags filed bankruptcy in 2009/10 in large part because it could not refinance its debt (in large part because banks were struggling during the Great Recession). They recently refinanced their most pressing debt so that now they do not have any debt that needs to be refinanced before 2027. So the situation (at least at this point) isn't the same as it was 15 years ago.

But it could get there around the first half of 2027.

Not sure about the other parks, but Cedar Point was very busy over Labor Day weekend. I wouldn't say any one day broke any records, but each of the three days was well above average.

It is kind of funny that most of what is happening after the merger was predicted by this community here. I'm not saying that any of us have what it takes to run a $2 billion company, but sometimes there are some pretty good insights around here from people that have lived and breathed the industry as much or more over a period of decades than some of the people in charge.

When looking at the majority of the SF legacy chain parks, they all seem to have similar issues that Geauga Lake had. Where it's going to take a lot of capital to turn it around. Some parks have a huge potential, but to get to that it will take years and capital to address.

They talked about doubling attendance at SFMM, how much time and money will it take to turn it around / undo the SF perception?

A long ass time, but they can't work on repairing reputation until the product has been repaired, and that is currently questionable as well.

I think many fans have said "this merger won't work" and they might turn out to be right, but for the wrong reason.

There is one factor that is not getting enough attention and that leisure tourism in the US has absolutely tanked this year. This is not related to the merger, just bad timing. This merger may lead to disaster because they underestimated the likelihood of demand dropping by 10% year over year.

And as much as people like to groan when executives cite bad weather, C suite leadership will never publicly admit that fewer people want the product. That's what the new CEO will do though: "Our problems are because we lost our way, and now we're going to fix it".