SF Conference Call details - 6 parks may sell

You've dealt with foreign workers at Cedar Point and at Put-In-Bay.

Just curious but what does "dealt with" mean?

What do you think it means? It means he encounters them all of the time because that's where he spends his free time!

I think there is a valid point to be made about foreign workers, but it isn't that they aren't capable.

Sooner or later the amusement parks' reliance on them is going to backfire when the well dries up...and it will. What all of the companies did was put a band-aid on a problem without addressing the real issues.

And, the real issue is that they have to make the working/living experience attractive. They have to make the wage attractive. (IE, if you expect your employees to provide better service than the next guy then you need to pay them better.)

foreign workers, in my experience, are very hard to train on the rides. Many grasp the concepts after a thorough explanation / showing them, however, when it comes to customer service, comments / questions by the public, etc -- it just doesn't work. Also, all the "little things" in regards to park rules, are very hard to get across. When it comes to rejecting people too short for the rides, they have trouble explaining to the guest that they cannot ride, and simply let them go. Of course, this can happen w/ any employee, but when parents do the "convincing speeches" they seem to give in when parents are yelling at them and they don't know how to respond.

When they can't speak english well, they can't interact with other employee's either [specifically ones that require more than one opperator] during the day. Employee's start hating their jobs because they are "stuck w/ the kid who can't speak english", customers can't get the answers they want and cannot interact as they normally would, and a domino effect occurs.

Of course, there are exceptions, but they are few and far between (again, from personal experience).

What's worse is when these workers have contracts, and we have fluently speaking english workers that have worked at the park and have a strong following and commitment with the park, but we have to send them home just so we can fulfill the foreign worker contracts.

my $0.02 *** Edited 6/24/2006 12:30:48 AM UTC by SFDL_Dude***

For once I wish Cbuzz had avatars:

http://www.micechat.com/forums/showthread.php?p=714599#post714599

"The problems don't stem from the number of attractions necessarily. Also, your logic seems flawed since if you remove one of the roller coasters you're likely going to have to replace it with another ride of some sort. Last time I checked, the family attractions also require maintenance".

No, the problem isn't number of attractions, it's number of *rollercoasters*. If my logic is flawed, than so is Mr. Shapiro's.

1) Rollercoasters attract teens. Too many rollercoaster attract nothing but teens.

2) If you remove a rollercoaster which cost 20 million to build, is down alot of the time, and has cost you upwards of $10 million in maintainance costs to date, and in it's place you build a family flat which costs a third of that, is open everyday, and costs one tenth of that to maintain, your telling me you don't see the logic there? You can move Scream to another park so that you don't lose your investment(something they'll have to do if the park closes anyway), and more importantly, you send a *message* that you are serious about changing the park's image.

The Paramount Parks have already proved this theory.

But let's not kid ourselves or play stupid here. The reason SFMM is in danger has nothing to do with being a poorly run park, lack of families or anything else having to do with the park itself. This is a *money* thing, pure and simple. The land is valuble, Shapiro needs a quick fix, there lies an opportunity to pay down debt, get the company out of the red, turn a profit, then sell off the entire chain. This isn't the last stop for Six Flags, trust me. The entire chain is in trouble. What's going to happen once Shapiro's family focus backfires?

These people don't think long term because they aren't true *theme park* people, they're 100 percent businessmen. It's what they can get now. *** Edited 6/24/2006 3:20:56 AM UTC by DWeaver***

But I am one of those people that could careless about a new family ride. Unless the new family ride is a high-teck thill ride or dark ride. ;)

^If that is the case we can blame you for SFMM closing as YOUR TYPE is what scared away the families. :)

I mean, I like a log flume or a good flat ride. But I don't think that they sould take out a coaster to put a family ride in.

A couple interesting things to note.

1. Look at the parks there selling. If everything they plan on selling goes, the only park they'll have west of Texas will be Marine World. For that matter with the Oklahoma parks and Wyandot Lake gone they only have SFStL and SFGAm in the Midwest (although not sure if Oklahoma considers itself part of the Midwest or not).

2. Six Flags bought all 3 Funtime parks, and assuming Cedar Fair doesn't buy Darian Lake (or the Columbus Zoo lol), they will now have sold them all to different owners.

3. Cedar Fair will now without a doubt become the 2nd biggest theme/assument park operator and Six Flags will drop to at least 3rd (guessing they'll still be fairly far above Universal, but not sure).

Interesting comments there CCMR. It is almost like the SFI chain only want to have parks on the East Coast if they keep this up. :)

IF Busch buys any park it will be SFStL as that is where the HQ for A-B is located.

I believe that Six Flags America also was once a Funtime park. They didn't announce a plan to sell this park but I wouldn't be surprised if this one goes on the block eventually.

^Which is a shame because SFA is a fairly young park and would be 100% more easily fixable than SFMM. One of the biggest problems being instead of actually working on improving the park experience, someone decided to play Roller Coaster Tycoon with the back portion of the park. Everytime I go to the park (which...trust me, is rarely) I just can't help but walk back there and just say "Man, what were they thinking?"

And at what cost, too! *** Edited 6/24/2006 12:45:53 PM UTC by matt.***

I posted these comments in the news thread but also wanted to post them here [slightly alterred with new comments at the end] as I feel I'm witnessing a head-in-the-sand mentality from some people.

Every year the magazine I work for holds an annual sales meeting. The CEO of the company, who works in our corporate office in New Jersey, always attends. We spend a few days talking about what new ideas have worked, which have not, and begin planning for the coming year. Inevitably at some point the CEO will interupt and ask, "What about...?" or "What if we...?" or "How would you, our advertisers, or our readers feel if...?" or "How would the bottom line be affected if...?" and appears to be asking for our thoughts or opinions. I've come to learn that he's not really asking for our opinions. Rather he's BS-ing and the decision to embrace his ideas or changes has already been green-lighted.

At our Aug 2003 sales meeting: "Why publish 52 issues a year? Why not publish only 26?" A few months later he announces that beginning in 2004 we drop to 26 issues.

At our Aug 2004 sales meeting: "What if you used the same size paper as your sister publication?" Yep...after 40 years of being the same page size as "Time" and "Newsweek" we completely redesigned the magazine to fit a "Variety"-sized page.

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 branding strategy" I'm of the mindset that the decision is already made.

Now of course I could be wrong. After a long hard look Shapiro & Co could decide to reverse year upon year of mismanagament, drop tens of millions into and totally renovate SFMM from a thrill park to a family park in a market where families are already served -- in better fashion! by Univ, Dl, DCA, and KBF -- and then spend millions more trying to convince the LA-area marketplace that the rebranded park is now a great place to bring the family.

But my stong hunch is that by the time Shapiro dropped the S-bomb on those six properties during Thursday's conference call that the wheels were already long in motion. From a purely selfish stand point I actually hope some other entity comes to the rescue and continues to operate the park, otherwise I'm going to see a more-crowded Knotts!

But all it takes it the sad realization that for at least the last five years I have only visited the park once, simply to renew my really inexpensive annual pass so I can visit better-run parks on my travels. My most recent visit in late May to ride Tatsu was the first in many years that I actually saw an improvement in look, feel, and operations thanks to Shapiro & Co.

But will I feel sad if the park ceases to exist? Will I miss it? Not really.

*** Edited 6/24/2006 1:21:56 PM UTC by Mamoosh***

The challenge of making Six Flags parks more family friendly appears to be a big one. As an example of another chain having a similar problem with a former Six Flags park, all you have to do is to look at Geauga Lake. Six Flags built too many coasters while ignoring other elements in the park. It's not only difficult to dispell the negative image from the Six Flags days but also difficult to bulid a family image that can give GL an identity of its own. *** Edited 6/24/2006 3:25:27 PM UTC by Arthur Bahl***

Six Flags America was not a Funtime Park. Geauga Lake, Darien Lake, and Wyandot Lake were the only three parks under that company.

Arthur, you make a very good point with bringing in Geauga Lake. Sure it has made a big turnaround in cleanliness and overall look of the park but still seems to struggle due to the negative image SF gave it. I do give CF credit for what they've done and unfortunately is taking much longer to complete a full transition. Personally I think they are on the right track and things should start to improve in the near future.

SFMM, OTOH, seems to have an image that is even worse than what SFWoA had and to change that park around would be much more difficult.

X Factor

SFA has always been a Tierco company, even under Six Flags. SFA has bigtime potential versus some of the other parks which may be either landlocked or would need to remove something to put something else in. There are so many empty parcels of land in the existing park it's not even funny. Let's say that do sell off SFMM. There is a lot of room where maybe you could accomodate say an "X", "Viper", or "Scream."

We do have some terrain also (believe it or not). Look at the difference in height between Superman's station and the first drop for example. I also don't buy the argument that a terrain coaster can't be moved. I'm not saying this could happen in every case, but, you can create terrain. Take one part bulldozer, one part dirt out a dumptruck, and a little landscaping and you can create terrain.

My big question is why are they targeting parks that are open, when their New Orleans property may be damaged beyond repair (or beyond SF's money to repair it)? It seems like it would be logical to get rid of SFNO first before any operational parks.

Also, how much did they get for GL and Astroworld combined? About 230/40 million? Even with that money coming in, the corp. still can't manage their money? The land sale of MM would be roughly 300 million from the estimates I've been reading, less taxes and deconstruction costs, so I'm not seeing a huge financial upside beyond what they have already seen with their previous park sales and the apparently limited benefit the park received from those sales.

How exactly do you suggest they "get rid" of SFNO? I can't imagine anyone buying the park as is and I can't really imagine the land being worth very much either.

I mean, what exactly could a buyer do with any of it?

IIRC SF is under contract to operate that park. I also suspect they are still dealing with their insurance company.

Someone wanna help me out here?