Now Six Flags "hates poor people?"

I know I've said this a couple times, but the combined season pass strategy is turning out to be a total dog.

The active pass base (which reflects total outstanding and active season passes and memberships), totaled approximately 6.7 million units as of June 29, 2025, down approximately 579,000 units or 8% compared to combined active pass base for legacy Cedar Fair and legacy Six Flags at the end of the second quarter last year.

This roughly equates to $57 million dollars in lost season pass revenue. Attendance down 9%, with 8% fewer season passes sold. Pretty clear what the problem is here. I don't buy the weather argument as people decide to buy a pass before the weather stinks.

I actually saw a post in a Great Adventure FB group praising the park for fixing landscaping. Think about that. The issues in the Six Flags Entertainment chain are definitely things that have been neglected for probably over a decade. Live entertainment, clean parks, maintained landscaping and decor, food quality along with maintained rides. Things that you don't really think of at first about a park but go a long way to improving the day while at the park.

Think about the list of things I mentioned. Where are all those things done better. It's been named in this thread repeatedly as the parks that do things right. Disney, Universal, Dollywood, Busch Gardens Williamsburg... YEP! Probably not a coincidence.

Add to this the fact that everybody has a device in their hand right now to put a park on blast for what they percieve as an issue at a moments notice. You have to be very careful of the above things. Sirens Curse is getting to be a meme for the downtime and evacuations even though it's not really having more issues than previous new designs had years ago. The issue is people have less patience and just think that something that is actually a safety mechanism is now a problem.

Anecdata: I went to Great Adventure a week or so ago. The park was clean, well maintained, looked good. Food was a notch better than I remembered. A lot of stuff was going down, back up, back down - Jersey Devil, El Toro, Flash, etc. Nitro was running three trains and stacking despite the crew doing their best (part of the problem was everybody carries drink cups now, so everybody has to go through the train, ditch their cup, and go back through the train). El Toro was mostly smooth and flying. The Flash coaster is a real winner.

So mostly good except: losing Kingda Ka and Green Lantern leaves a giant hole on the left side of the park. It's basically El Toro, Medusa, Superman (which you may or may not like) and ... that's kinda it, especially since the log flume and mine train were closed. (Didn't they just overhaul the log flume?)

And: the place was empty. Not a complaint, just an observation. Well, it was a weekday and the hottest day of the year. This seems to have become an unintentional tradition for me and my friend, except in the past we've noticed people arriving at 5 pm or so after the water park closed. This year - not so much. After summer camp groups left at 4 pm or so the place was deserted.

They lost two major coasters, and although I'd say trading KK and Green Lantern for Flash is a win, they haven't promoted Flash much (at all?) that I've seen. Remember that viral Millennium Force campaign? What happened to that kind of marketing? I guess it was cheaper to hire a no-name spokesperson and ... [waves hands].

Great Adventure is a ghost town because people are still pissed at the whole Ka fiasco and it being removed. The locals have a huge axe to grind and blame Zimmerman for all the removals, the failed 50th aniversary last year and the loss of Holiday in the Park.

I wouldn't be shocked that the park is empty next year also.

The log flume got work and then supposedly a log post updates had something go awry and it's down for either repairs or ... if you believe socials to remove it after this year.

Adding : The huge hole to the left of the entrance is probably a planned themed area like Jungle X at Kings Dominion. I use that as example because it probably has the most coasters of an area they did a retheme. I mean Aeronautica Landing at Carowinds has like 1. Area 72 at KI has 2?

Lord Gonchar:

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

Yeah, I was having the same thoughts while reading several responses before yours. And then I started thinking, I wonder if Gonch will jump in...and lo and behold...

I was in multiple shows throughout high school...dramas, comedies, musicals. I even shared the stage with Christina Hendricks (of Mad Men fame) a couple times. My dad was a fixture in community theater throughout my childhood and teen years, always playing the lead in several marquee shows like Fiddler on the Roof, The King and I, The Music Man, Oliver!, South Pacific, etc. My family would see shows like Cats, Les Mis, Phantom of the Opera and others at the Kennedy Center, even caught a production of Phantom in London eons ago. I appreciated and enjoyed all of it.

While my tastes shifted during adulthood to the point where I only go to the theater every once in a blue moon (mostly because my wife enjoys it), musicals for the most part make me cringe now. Not always, but often; for instance, I liked Hamilton (saw the filmed version on Disney+) and would like to take my wife to see it live at some point, but have no real desire to see it again otherwise. My kids hated Hamilton; they didn't even make it through the whole show. They gripe anytime their mom suggests seeing a play or musical. Though, admittedly, we saw a local community theater production of The Wizard of Oz the other day because my son's friend was cast as one of the main characters. We all enjoyed it, but it had its issues because...well, it was a local community theater production. But if I'm being honest, I only enjoyed it because my expectations were tremendously low, and I recognized that my son's friend's performance was good...for an 18 year old kid in a community theater production. But it was not without a lot of cringe.

All that said, amusement park live entertainment is among the cringiest...no offense to any amusement park entertainers intended. Especially the "revue" type shows (maybe I'll get a kick out of those when I'm 80. "Oh, that revue just tickled me so!"). There have been a few decent quality shows I've seen in my lifetime at amusement parks, but most of those, in my mind, were decent quality "for an amusement park." I just can't wrap my head around the idea that removing live entertainment is among the primary decisions that have driven down attendance.

Maybe, just maybe, there is value in market/park-specific messaging and advertising and the generic "Funsultant" ads that show a generic Vekoma Boomerang or something in the background don't excite people to jump out of their chair and go to the park. But they saved something by going with the same ads for all parks. I actually have seen a bit of a shift toward more Cedar Point focused ads and content in the past two weeks or so. Not sure if the other smaller parks have the ability to do this as well.

Maybe it's hard to overcome ripping out six rides, including the tallest coaster in the world, at one of the top two or three parks in the legacy Six chain. Don't expect that situation at Great Adventure to magically improve next year since the next coaster is now delayed. Landscaping and better food are nice for the people that show up, but from what I hear, there haven't been very many people showing up.

Maybe it's hard to overcome the constant dribble of negative press coming out and media/people twisting it into more than it is. "Six flags closing two parks... Is your local park in danger?" "Six Flags laying off hundreds." "Holiday in the Park cancelled in multiple cities, will Winterfest be next?" "Fall event at Michigan's Adventure cancelled. What does the future hold?" They even sent the same generic email with a different state name filled in for each of these cancellations. "New Cedar Point coaster has stalled Four Times!"

Then there is a lot of reports of closed rides, food locations, lack of ice, cups, etc at parks that formerly had pretty good reputations like Kings Island and Kings Dominion. Yesterday I saw people saying all B&M's at Six Flags Great America will run one train for all of August. WTF? So much for "focusing on delivering the best experience during our core season."

It's one small mis-step after another with nearly nothing positive to counter it. I still say the name Six Flags has a negative connotation and rather than take for the company name, they'd have been better off to slowly distance themselves from that.

Now word has come out that the Peanuts contract is up at the end of this year and they are discounting all the Peanuts merchandise.

The only thing that has been positive news the whole summer is that they are practically giving away chain wide passes for next year. And I'd argue that really isn't good news for the future prospects of the company or the parks we love.

And again, all of that fits the narrative of a company looking for immediate cash wherever it can be found - as does the reference to accelerating deleveraging in the financial summary. Their conversations with their bankers must be very interesting.

Fun:

We found the CFO…

Somebody's gotta keep this ship afloat.

I dunno, everyone has their likes, but live entertainment rounds out the experience. At my coaster nerdiest, I spent a fair amount of time at the Red Garter. And if you look at the energy they Disney puts into parades, and the people who watch them, indicates to me that they matter.

MDOmnis:

Maybe it's hard to overcome ripping out six rides, including the tallest coaster in the world, at one of the top two or three parks in the legacy Six chain. Don't expect that situation at Great Adventure to magically improve next year since the next coaster is now delayed. Landscaping and better food are nice for the people that show up, but from what I hear, there haven't been very many people showing up.

6 rides? Try 8!

And yes it has seriously impacted the gate at Great Adventure. I don't think the delay of the replacement was 100% on Six Flags but they can't escape the blame from the general public because the way they approached the closing of Ka. Any little thing that could possibly hint at a closure of something will be deemed an imminent closure.

Even the upcoming retracking of El Toro by Intamin and not by in house maintenance is being questioned.

And yes if you go into Great Adventure there is a noticeable difference in things. But as you said you need to walk in the gates which enough people have sworn off the park until the replacement for Ka is built and it meets their standards some of which are totally unattainable, break Falcon's records otherwise the are getting false records.

Jeff:

And if you look at the energy they Disney puts into parades, and the people who watch them, indicates to me that they matter.

In fairness, I wasn't lumping in places like Disney in with my diatribe. They do just about everything differently than the average regional park, and it works incredibly well.

Is IOA a good example where entertainment on a reasonably large scale has been rounded up and replaced by roller coasters and stuff that is Potter shaped.

I always associate that park with entertainment, stuff like Sinbad, Mat Hoffman, Poseidon's Fury, shows in Toon Lagoon, Triceratops etc - but over time, they've all gone away. I seem to recall some sort of close up magic thing too.

I figure the use of more IPs creates some challenges for some parks - not all, obviously - Disney is built on that, of course. Also, to do something 'proper' in entertainment these days, the costs associated with doing that are not really sustainable if revenue is only coming from the park gate.

I have a lot of great memories from Lusty Lil's as a kid; got pulled up on stage twice around ages 8 and then 18 (I still have my button from one of those experiences somewhere)...had to help them sing along to some song both times. Maybe it's better than some regional parks (or maybe I just have bad taste), but I find the talent at Cedar Point to be quite good, especially at Red Garter. The new comedy show this year was a very popular (at least when we were there) addition. Girls are 17 and 13 and they always want to check out a show. Or two. I think the shows they have are fine. In fact in addition to the shows there's live music happening all over the park these days.

I wasn't necessarily talking about shows, though, I was talking about the Forbidden Frontier experience. For a family with young kids it was fantastic. I just don't get why such a large investment was given up on so soon. The actors made it awesome. I mean, the atmosphere was extremely detailed and incredible, but the humans made it what it was. Interaction is still a good thing. In fact in 2025 it's almost a delicacy.

Speaking of awesome Live-E at Cedar Point, already planning Halloweekends; Wake the Dead is an fun experience, and I hope some of you in here got the chance to see what might be the best Live-E ever at Cedar Point, The Tell Tale Heart in the glass-blowing theater. That show could have played at any park anywhere. Sad it had to move on, but time and change....

I guess you can take my lunch money now.

OhioStater:

I was talking about the Forbidden Frontier experience. For a family with young kids it was fantastic. I just don't get why such a large investment was given up on so soon. The actors made it awesome.

In some of these park locations, it’s probably hard to find talent to act and run these shows. LA and Orlando obviously have tons of talent. I imagine It’s a whole different story in Sandusky or Missouri, Minnesota, etc…..

BrettV:

There it is

Ouimet called it in his linkedin post.

OhioStater:

I guess you can take my lunch money now.

I'm pantsing you too...

...just because.

Remember this the next time you enjoy something.