Markets respond to possible Six Flags property sales

No one's done it yet, so...

...ahem....

TAER IT DOWN!!!11!1!!!!11

Seems like a common sense business move for SF.

Another element to consider is that even "family friendly" parks can have off years as well. Universal shot down 15% -and IOA pretty destroys every SF park in existence based on appearance. The answer isn't as simple as blaming one aspect of a park. It's clearly the management behind the park that is at fault.

You would think that when he took over, he might have noticed how much work it would take to turn some of the properties into family places, it wouldn't happen based on adding a parade, raise prices past the competition, and then reverse the reputation in less than 6 months.

They can't turn a a bigger profit off of Magic Mountain with 3 million people only means they are unable to sell products at prices that their customers want.

I have to admit, having lived my entire life on the other side of the Mississippi River, with only a handfull of trips out to the left coast, I have no personal sentimental attachment to SFMM. In a cold hard business sense, if Shapiro thinks that the SF brand should represent a "family friendly" atmosphere, then the only logical conclusion is that SF would be better served divesting themselves of SFMM.

Seriously, for SFMM to get to the point of being considered a "family friendly" park there will have to be a serious investment of cash (fixing rides, adding flats/shows) and more importantly time (to erase the image of MM being "The Xtreme Park). And at the end of the day, even with the most rosy picture coming true, MM would *still* be a substandard product to Disney. Sure, being a poor-man's Disney is fine for SFGAm which is 1500 miles away from a Disney park. But when Disney is literally right up the road a piece it becomes more problematic.

I cant see what else you really expected them to decide. They could *try* and change the image of MM but really, would it make sense (cents)?
lata, jeremy
--if it dont make dollars then it dont make sense!

As to the whole family thing, teenagers live with families. If the teens don't want to go to Six Flags, odds are the families don't want to go. Younger kids generally go where their parents take them, however older kids have a bigger influence on the parent's decision.

Shapiro cannot, cannot not focus on teenagers.

yeah, but if we were attracting a million teens, they are still paying the parking price (unless of course they are dropped off) and you still have to add up all the costs of the "2 visit" season passes.

if those million teens are gone, thats a million x 2 visits.

obviously hypothetical, but... ya know? the perfect comparison is with geauga lake and SFWoA. no more teens. but... the family's don't seem to be coming in droves either. well, now you're screwed.

But you keep missing the point... the teens weren't going with their families. They were getting cheap season passes and going sans families, not spending any money. The Ohio park was like that in the worst way during the last year.

Family includes teens. Teens by themeselves are essentially different customers.

As a parent of a 20 year old, I have to disagree with Ride of Steel. I prefer a clean park with something for everyone. Many parents have, as Ride of Steel said, younger kids along with teens. Although the teens may want the extreme thrills, if there is nothing for the parents or younger kids to do, parents are not going to spend an entire day and a wad of cash at a park. This is why they simply drop the teens at the park for the day, and teens do not spend like parents would.

And again, Disney is just down the road. You also have Knotts which is more family friendly as well. SFMM is competing with two family friendly parks (and you cannot get much more family friendly than Disney!) and with their reputation as a teen hangout and less than stellar park maintenance, I know which park I would choose.

Not all teens require extreme thrills to have a good time, either. I expected my son to be bored to tears at Holiday World when we made the first trip when he was 17. Believe it or not, he was very impressed with Holiday World even though they had only the Legend and Raven when we went.

Focusing more on the whole family is definitely going in the right direction, but if Magic Mountain is a pretty profitable park, I still think this is a mistake. Yes it goes completely against the image they are trying to portay. Yes, it would probably take millions, at the very least, to make the park a true family park, that still wouldn't be able to compete for that market against Disney, Knotts, and Universal. Selling it doesn't seem like the answer to me though. If all they're worried about is image (and there could well be other factors, which I'm just not considering), why not just deflag it. Do the same for every other park that doesn't fit in the new mold well enough. You could even take them off the pick a park part of the website. Treat them as a completely seperate entity which few would associate with the Six Flags image.

Granted, I'm sure there are more reasons for this move, than just image, but if that really is a big reason for selling parks, I think there are better alternatives, especially now when so many parks are for sale (in all likelyhood, brining all the prices down).

Do the attendance numbers for MM include HH?

As I mentioned before, the best policy for a park is one which welcomes the teens but discourages the use of the park as a teen hangout that becomes family unfriendly. Even some of the family oriented parks are adding more thrills. Examples include parks like KB, LC, IB, and HW. Meanwhile KW continues to maintain that balance that brings in both families and teens.

What happened at SFMM was too many high intensity rides with little to appeal to families with younger kids. Naturally the families went to DL, KBF etc and left SFMM to become a family unfriendly teen hangout.

I will state again, a properly designed big park should have plenty of attractions for everyone. They should attempt to draw from all age groups. The problem with the teens and young adults is when they are the only ones attracted to a park.

SFMM is the most obvious example of this problem for Six Flags. SFAW had also become such a park but now it is gone. The big challenge now will be to reshape SFGA which is still top heavy with big coasters.

I remember SFOG as it was back in the early 1980s. It was clearly a family oriented park at the time. There were only three coasters. Family attractions were everywhere. In many ways it was like LC as it is now. Six Flags is likely to return such parks as SFOG to their roots although with more coasters than in the past.

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But you keep missing the point... the teens weren't going with their families. They were getting cheap season passes and going sans families, not spending any money. The Ohio park was like that in the worst way during the last year. They were getting cheap season passes and going sans families, not spending any money.

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The point I am trying to make was that they WERE making money. Obviouslly not as much as if those same million teens were now entire families, but the fact of the matter is (with Geauga Lake anyways) was that those 3 million visitors at one time [which were mostly teens] have dwindled down to dismal numbers of "family folk" which didn't make up for all those teens and their season passes.

Lets say 1 out of the 3 millon we teenagers, the fact of the matter is, that's 1 million x $50 season passes, + add in the parking fees they would HAVE to pay to visit [unless they were dropped off]. that's a pretty hefty hunk, even if it's "JUST" teens. Now we are cattering to the families that will vist once, and the attendance numbers just arn't there... of course per capita spending is up (because prices were raised), but if the attendance isn't there marginally to make up for the lost people in the first place, what's the point.

It seems that snyder & co, as well as cedar fair, both underestimated how much they would really be losing.where did all the people go? was it really worth it for them to market to this new group? Of course, in the case of Geauga Lake, the animals were a huge factor as well, but, I think there's a lot more to it than just saying "teen's don't spend money", and it just seemed like snyder & co just read these message boards and is like, oh look, I think jeff is right, teen's don't spend money so lets just eliminate them and charge lots of money for everything!

Why not *gasp* market to both? A park with teenagers in it doesn't have to be some horrible place where families are going to stay away from... not all teen's are horrible people, and not all teens are going to vandalize the park, etc. there are other ways to stop that than simply not trying to market them to the park. THe fact of the matter is, they DID spend the money on the cheap passes, and they DID spend the money to park. Sure they wern't buying souveneirs, and they wern't playing games, etc. but to say they were making the park NO money is completly false, and if the numbers don't replace them, which they havn't, then you're gonna be screwed.

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As I mentioned before, the best policy for a park is one which welcomes the teens but discourages the use of the park as a teen hangout that becomes family unfriendly. Even some of the family oriented parks are adding more thrills. Examples include parks like KB, LC, IB, and HW. Meanwhile KW continues to maintain that balance that brings in both families and teens.

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^ he posted this as i was typing. *THIS* is the correct answer, IMO

Yout walk into a park like Paramounts Kings Island or Canada's Wonderland and you see all kind of people, and their attendance numbers are very high (from what i've seen). THey have many large roller coasters and thrills, families visit in drove, but many teens go in large groups, get dropped off, etc. and have a great time. Are these parks in trouble? -- Yes they are being sold, but I think it was for other reasons besides poor park opperations / profits / etc. You walk around and you don't see vandalism, you see lines because their are tons of people, and the numbers always look promising at these parks. Rides are open and well maintained compared to chains like SF, and that keeps people coming back.

// alan j

*** This post was edited by SFDL_Dude 6/23/2006 11:36:14 PM ***

Arthur, do you mean Great Adventure or do you mean Great America? Please be specific and use SFGAm or SFGadv., or something to that effect. Unfortunately, they share the same first four letters abbreviated, and they both have their share of big coasters. But I'm guessing you mean Great Adventure since it has Nitro, Medusa, El Toro, and Kingda Ka. I actually think Gadv. has some balance though. They've got Blackbeard's Pirate Train–a fun Zierer junior coaster, Skull Mountain–a family-oriented in-the-dark coaster, Runaway Mine Train (title?), and a Zamperla kiddie coaster.

Where Gadv. got seriously unbalanced recently though was this year when there was was one major flat (the Top Spin) and the Vekoma Madhouse left out of the 25-new rides package (minus the kiddie area) from 1999. Gone is the Frisbee (now at SFGam), the Jump (who knows what happend to it), the Zamperla Polyp (?), the double-sided Chance Inverter (?), Evolution (now Excalibur at SFStl), Breakdance (I believe that wound up at SFOT this year, and if that's not the case, please reinstall it somewhere in the park), and I'm sure the Chaos was removed for this season as well. We also lost the Condor to SFGAm (as far as I know), but I can't blame that move on Premier since that was probably part of ride rotation under the old Six Flags.

I meant Six Flags Great Adventure. This park is big enough to be a two way park (teens AND families). As long as the park has big thrills it will continue to draw teens. Enough family oriented attractions should draw the families.as well.

The thing to remember is that there are some parks that are able to have the two groups coexist. I doubt that Six Flags will start a major coaster demolition project. The main thing is to prevent the parks from becoming a hangout for trouble makers and to make sure that plenty of families are in the parks to create the desired park environment. Getting rid of the teens completely should NOT be a goal. Remember, many families have teens and they want thrill rides including big coasters.

Every year the magazine I work for has an annual sales meeting. The CEO of the company, who works in our corporate office in New Jersey, always attends. I've come to learn that when our CEO asks, "What about...?" or "What if we...?" or "How would you feel if...?" that he's not really asking for our opinions. Rather he's BS-ing and the decision to embrace his ideas has already been green-lighted.

Aug 2003 sales meeting: "Why publish 52 issues a year? Why not publish only 26?" Shortly after he announces that beginning in 2004 we drop to 26 issues.

Aug 2004 sales meeting: "What if you used the same size paper as your sister publication?" Yep...shortly thereafter we completely redesigned the magazine for a different paper size.

So when Shapiro says they're "looking into" the option of selling SFMM and then gives a laundry list of reasons why SF would even considering selling the park -- i.e. "land value" and "doesn't fit our new company family strategy" I'm of the mindset that the decision is already made.

Saddest thing of all: I really don't care. My one visit each year to the park, made simply to renew a really inexpensive annual pass to be used at better parks in the chain on my travels, has been MORE then enough. I always left more frustrated than when I entered. The only exception in the last 5 years was my visit in May to ride Tatsu...I actually enjoyed the park and noticed some steps in the right direction. But will I be sad to see the park closed? Not really....

*** This post was edited by Mamoosh 6/24/2006 8:30:08 AM ***

You could see the writing was on the wall the moment Shapiro made his first SF tour of the parks. He didn't seem to pleased with SFMM from the onset and pretty much made it known.

I love coasters just as much as the next enthusiast, but after visiting this park, I couldn't believe that a park of this size is pretty much just coasters and not much else.

No reason why this park cannot have the same variety as CP, SFGAm, or PKI.

Chitown I totally agree. One of the complaints I heard about Great Adventure pre-Premier was that it was all coasters from a non-enthusiast. The 1999 overkill expansion sought to remedy that so there would less time waiting in lines, due to lots of flats. I don't know if it did reduce lines or not, because it was always very crowded when I visited. It's kind of the old "expand the highway, and eventually you have more cars on the road than you did before you expanded" problem. It also didn't help that two of the rides–Evolution and Jump–rarely ever ran. Out of five or so visits, I never caught Evolution.

It did admmitedly work very well at PKI though during Beastbuzz. They do have quite a lot of flats, although they don't have many sophisticated flats with the exception of TR and Delirium (not sure how complex Avatar is). That does make a difference. Even with 36,000 people in attendance, we only waited 45 minutes for the Italian Job at about 1pm in the afternoon, which surprised me considering they were only running two trains (I believe). I would've loved to have ridden Tomb Raider again, but with the line all the way outside of the entrance, that wasn't going to happen.

Well if we could see the condition the park was in, someone taking a *careful* look at the park was obviously going to see even deeper into the decay.

I need to get out to SFMM soon, as I'm starting to feel the park may be done by the end of the year.

Maybe teenagers would spend a little money if food, drinks, and souvenirs at Six Flags parks weren't atrociously high.
*** This post was edited by RiFT 6/24/2006 2:24:32 PM ***

Right...that's like saying I'd marry a woman if she didn't have a -- well, I suppose there are better analogies ;)

LOL...classic :)