Now Six Flags "hates poor people?"

Cedar Point removed the boat ride (twice), Forbidden Frontier and took our mutlple live entertainment venues over the recent years. So it appears that trying to get rid of the non-thrill customers.

Which might work for that park just because of their sheer number of roller coasters in the crowd they attract because of that. But the other parks don’t have this kind of pull for thrill riders, and if they did, it would just dilute the thrill crowd from Cedar point.

super7*:

What moderate type rides they had such as dark rides, transportation, rides, etc., that everybody could ride together many parks removed because they were too “boring.”

I argued this same point years ago. My in-laws live in Sandusky and my wife and I both worked at Cedar Point. She worked there more than 10 years, and I was there about 4. It was our life and it was the reason we are together. My kids are 19 and 22 now and we've taken them to Cedar Point less than 4 times in all those years. Why? Because they don't really enjoy thrill rides.

Contrast that with Disney where they've been probably 40-50 times. We keep going back because, for the most part, we can spend the entire day together. Not only do we visit often, but we spend a lot of money every time we are there.

Six has some work to do and I'm not confident that the current leadership is capable of getting it right.

I think a big challenge for SIX - the old Six Flags and New Six Flags Worldwide - is they’re being managed by Wall Street. They’re not alone in this obviously. But the Street wants returns of 15% and they want it now, or next quarter at the latest. Fun Forward or The Big Reset or whatever they’re calling their plan is an effort to buy time, but having worked too long for a corporation that Wall Street always thought was underperforming, my experience is that the effort to buy time is rarely successful. So no matter what you want to do to make the company healthy, the sugar rush is too hard to resist.

Beyond that, all the public moves suggest that this is a company hungry for cash. Selling off parks, deep discounts, starting next year’s pass sales in July, layoffs, prolly other stuff you could mention - if they were desperate to raise cash, I’m not sure what they’d do differently.

I agree we are seeing this company. Just try to tread water to stay a float on Wall Street. But they have done this by cost cutting And I believe they’ve already surpassed the amount of cost cutting where it’s already negatively affecting revenue.

It would definitely be a long process to make this company highly successful. They would have to invest in moderate and indoor attractions to attract new customers and to allow the parks to operate in hot, rainy and cold weather. After investing in these attractions, it would take years for the customers to actually start coming in enough numbers

what they have done in the past is install one or two of these attractions like the boat ride at Cedar point, not build up on it with other attractions for the same type of customer and then eliminate the attractions because they’re not getting enough of these customers. It takes a full day of attractions to attract these customers not just one or two.

it’s the same thing with their live entertainment. They have a few shows. They don’t get your crowds because they don’t have enough live shows then they end the live shows.

i’m pretty confident that the current management does not have what it takes to turn this company around. All they know is roller coasters and kiddie rides.

united Parks is becoming just as bad with their new installations. All they are installing now is roller coasters. But at least at some of their parks, they are maintaining their legacy moderate attractions, especially at Busch Gardens, but they also need to invest in more moderate attractions to keep this moderate crowd.

I may have already made this argument in this thread, but people are more of the difference than equipment. Disney and Dolly get this. Less people means a lesser product. Machines can't be hospitable.

That's what made Forbidden Frontier (which got even better with the addition of Snake River Expeditions) so great. The actors were, for the most part, so good at what they did, and clearly enjoyed what they were tasked with.

Raising a glass for Otis, who was the best of the bunch.

Yes, it had the best bathrooms in the park. Yes it had the best place in the park to relax and have a beer (or whatever you prefer), and yes it had arguably the best quick-service food in the park, but the actors were great, and that experience was just so unique to the park.

It wasn't perfect (i.e., I never understood why the "story" never changed year to year), but I don't understand why the park hit the eject button so quickly on what had to be an enormous investment and had a lot of perceived room for growth.

It's not like it tried to kill people like its predecessor.

That said, all will be forgotten and forgiven when they build a world-class log flume there.

And reopen the bathrooms.

Budgets are tight, best we can do is a splash pad. But half of the features are going to be out of order.

But to Kevin's point, humans, especially in the arts, want to impact people in a non-trivial way. And while I think most of them are underpaid, at the risk of sounding exploitive, why not use that? I don't know if I'm typical, but live entertainment consistently leaves a greater mark than any ride. There's a reason I've seen Hamilton seven times, at more that a hundred times per (my) shot. Tap into that. I know some of the managers at Cedar Flags... they would take that opportunity if you gave it to them.

Even Fiesta Texas has gotten rid of most of their live shows these days. And for decades was known as being a ‘live show park’. Feels like execs chose thrill rides over live entertainment years ago for whatever reason

With a theme park has a great live entertainment show , I always choose to see it over and over again over any ride. My thought process is that the ride will be there next year, but many of those specific entertainers will not even if the show returns.

I find it sad that Hershey slaughtered their life entertainment several years ago. Some of the best theme park shows I ever saw were at Hershey. They still have a good number of attractions for the modern crowd, but their live entertainment has went to nothing and when they do have it, it’s now corny and character based. I fear that Hershey is heading the same route as they took out a slow moving ride this year and took out a live entertainment venue (although they had already cut the entertainment from it) for a new trail ride this year.

The only two parks I can think of with strong or decent amount of live entertainment AND the proper venues for the crowdon the east side of the country are Dollywood and Busch Gardens, Williamsburg. They also present this live entertainment and comfortable, sit down and shaded or air-conditioned venues. That’s the other downfall of what live entertainment Six Flags has. Too often you have to stand out in the heat and watch it.

Although most of the live entertainment at Dollywood is definitely not the type of Live entertainment that I prefer, It’s definitely the attraction therefore, the non-thrill riders as they really only have currently one non-thrill ride. The train. So it appears a strong lineup of mediocre live entertainment with good venues is better than no live entertainment.

I think that cedar point axed forbidden frontier so quickly simply because it fell under live entertainment, and that was one of the areas they decided to attack when the cost-cutting started. The boat ride probably fell under the same fight because it had a number of live actors.

These parks who have been cutting entertainment costs are doing so because their guests are telling them (via surveys) that it doesn’t matter- what matters to them is how many rides they can get on.

There is this weird feedback loop effect going on:

• They struggle to attract new customers (or former customers) so they add shows, parades, events to diversify their base
• Marketing says “we’re not going to gamble our annual budget on this, you have to advertise the thrill rides” so they don’t market it
• The people who visit only care about rides and they fill out surveys saying that shows don’t matter
• CFO says “why are we wasting money on shows?”… rise, repeat.

What really breaks this cycle is if the CEO has the conviction to stick with it for the long term to build up several generations who visit because of the shows. I don’t think any of the publicly held operators have the patience for this right now.

I wonder what would have happened in this industry if Knotts had not experimented with Halloween and had the fortitude to stick with it for decades before being purchased by Cedar Fair.

Dollywood also has the museum, and you all need to give those shows a chance, especially the shows during Christmas. Christmas in the Smokies comes in second to Epcot’s Candlelight Processional as my favorite theme park show period. If you leave that show with a frown, you truly must be a Grinch, it’s Christmas compressed into 50 minutes. The absolute standout in that show is the song sung by Gabriel Mary and Joseph. Gabriel heralds Jesus conception, Mary then sings her reaction, followed by Joseph singing his, then for the finale they all sing their parts again together and perfectly blend them, it’s amazing.

The new Dolly show that runs in the spring that runs through her life from Coat of many colors up through today is also extremely well done. It’s not all country shows in the summer either, they typically have the bubble show, a acapella group and usually a pop or rock show. The only season where the shows don’t interest me much is the fall when they bring all the gospel groups in.

I never listened to country music growing up, I hated it, but that park has converted me to a country fan. I now have hours of country music in my library, I’m partial to the fast pace bluegrassy/rock anthems but they are still very much country tunes.

Have you guys really talked yourselves into the problem being a lack of shows?

Kids these days do love the singing and dancing that is so popular.

Hospitality? Sure. That's people. Every person that touches a guest. Friendly gate workers. Fun ride-ops hitting intervals, game hosts that actually give a ****. That kind of stuff.

Absolutely.

Hearing wannabe theater students perform medleys of old pop standards for Grandma's dumped by their families, drunk dads, overheated fat ladies, and breastfeeding moms looking to duck out of the crazy of the midway?

I feel like I should start demanding all of your lunch money.

No idea how the Cedar Point boat thing Kevin is talking about worked, but it sounds a lot like role playing (hell, that's where my nerd comes out). And while great on paper, role playing situations have been notorious failues at even the biggest places...

I'm looking at you Galactic Starcruiser.

And before we overthink that whole thing again. Another comes to mind. One I experienced back in its day.

Triceratops Encouter.

Honestly? One of the coolest things I've ever seen in a park. The animatronic was great. The actors stayed entirely in character and were fun, engaging and encouraging.

These people were met with mostly shrugs and deep inquiries like, "Is that dinosaur real?"

To which they'd have to smile for the umpteenth time and mutter through clenched jaw, "Of course she is! And she's a beaut! We're just doing a little medical exam on her. Anyone else like to know anything?"

And watch as the unwashed, sunburned masses shuffle away wondering what the hell that was supposed to be.

When the idea of playing along with an idea is too deep for your audience...or their expectations...well, you need to pivot.

That was a bit derivative of the actual conversation. But seriously you guys, shows?

With that said, I go back to generational difference, technology and rapidly changing social norms.

Interaction is scary in 2025. We avoid intertacting at all costs. Delivery food gets left at your door. The world is more impersonal than ever. We don't want to interact. Putting more people between the guest and the experience isn't going to help. They're skittering away.

While Dolly and Disney are the gold standard, I can't think of two less cool places if I'm 14 or 15...

...and if you find that kid, take his lunch money.

News just hit that Zimmerman is out by the end of the year. Not sure I'm confident in this board to pick the right replacement, but good riddance. Take Tim Fisher with you.

Wow, interesting.

https://www.businesswire.co...ssion-Plan

Will submit as news.

Lord Gonchar:

Have you guys really talked yourselves into the problem being a lack of shows?

We found the CFO…

Second quarter revenues below expectations.

https://finance.yahoo.com/n...34789.html

Well, no tears for Zimmerman coming from me. I think he was a big part of the problem.

I don't think the specific problem is shows. I think it is broader. There isn't enough generational/family appeal in some of these parks. Thrill ride after thrill ride after thrill ride grabs headlines and appeals to the fanatics. I don't think it appeals much to the family with three kids under 10 years old, for instance.

So, while I don't think Cedar Point or one of the Six parks having a new show would move the needle that much, I do think a mix of entertainment options that includes a couple of good shows, some good family rides, value in food variety (note that I didn't say "cheap food") and a family-friendly environment (ie teens not running over the place) would work for many people...including older adults.

I only went to Opryland once, and that was when I was much younger and was big into rides. Other than a crazy indoor coaster that left me bewildered and a good bobsled-style coaster, I remember very little about the park. I do, however, remember that they had excellent live entertainment. Some of Dollywood's coasters are a bit too aggressive for me as I get older, but I go there nearly every time I'm in the area because it is a fantastic park in totality. (I'll echo the comments about their great Christmas show).

Reading the quarterly results, it seems that the "merger of equals" has turned into "oof the legacy Six performance is really terrible compared to legacy Cedar." Every bullet highlights how the legacy Six parks are contributing much less than 50% to the bottom line.

I'm honestly surprised they still get $34 in admissions per capita. Of course if attendance wasn't down 9%, that number would be lower since the season pass mix is so high.

There it is