Kings Dominion lets go of employees, offers severance

Synergies at work.

From the few folks I have spoken to who work at one of their properties, the culture and vibe there is at an all time low and just about everyone is walking on eggshells wondering if they are going to get the next pink slip.

Not a fun environment to be in at all and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

as predicted, this is going to be a sh!tty year for the parks, with cost cutting and other service reductions.

To be blunt, I’ve resigned myself to it and have made other summer plans besides my local home park. We haven’t even begun to see the curtailed park hours and other service reductions yet, so I’m not wasting money on big trips to Cedar Flags this year. Hopefully i’m proven wrong.

I'm not really surprised. I've been through phases like this at various companies, and it's the worst when the company does not appear to be materially at risk in some long-term way. I suspect they'll repot some measure of growth in EBITDA this quarter. When I have worked at companies engaged in this "cost control" stuff, at the point of a turnaround, what happens is that they end up going on a hiring spree within the next few quarters. I bet that's what we'll see here. Which only makes it suck more for the people who get let go.

In this case, I don’t think the merger was the primary cause of these layoffs. The experiment of year round operations at KD did not work, and it no longer makes sense to have as many full time staff.

But with that said, the Cedar Fair of just a few years ago would not have laid these folks off. The version of Cedar Fair before that wouldn’t have hired them in the first place. I guess it’s better to have tried, but I’m sure these folks who were let go didn’t know they were signing up for an experiment.

I'm curious to see if this is an isolated event specifically at Kings Dominion or if the chain is about to go through mass layoffs at the park level. There are a lot of folks at these parks with decades of knowledge and losing a lot of them won't be good for the parks. And articles like this won't be what folks in the Legacy Cedar Fair markets want to see after already being skeptical about the simple perception of Six Flags coming to town to take over their park.

Let the cost-cutting begin.

In honor of those lost, here's a toast to the workers at Kings Dominion, especially that time they let my wife and I drink our beer on the ferris wheel.

Kings Dominion is a beautiful park, located on a highly traveled interstate with moderate climate. Yet it does not get the attendance that it should.

Paramount management decided that it is a park for coaster riders and kids and removed attractions and show venues that appealed to other markets of customers (the type of customer that lets Dollywood operate almost daily during school season)

Cedar Fair did nothing to attract that kind of customer back. In fact they eliminated live entertainment last year to make it worse. BGW has a it’s issues but at least it’s maintained it’s major non thrill attractions and show venues.

Rapterra is just going to regurgitate the same customers that already go to the park

This is a chain wide problem for the Six Flags parks. The high majority of the parks have 2 types of customers. Thrill riders and children. They miss out on a huge piece of the population.

The cost cutting can only go so far to prop up the stock price. The company has no oath to growth IMO. It’s a poor investment