SFNO has carried the chain this season!!!

What state do you live in wahoo? I need a part time job and I would like to make $9 an hour! What kind of work are you talking about?

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Formerly NoLimitChic

I work in South Florida. We are in an upscale community that has high expectations. If I were to pay minimum wage like everyone else around here there is no way I could get competent staff that would be acceptable.

That is the kicker. The parks charge a pretty penny and raise our level of expectations. Then, they hire whoever they can get and cannot get those employees to present an acceptable level of service.

Again, Disney has as much trouble as all of the other parks. There needs to be a shift in the philosophy of the industry. They are willing to spend $20 million on a ride but are not willing to raise wages $1 an hour which might mean an extra $3 million a year in salaries.

Thanks wahoo.....I just *knew* someone could explain it in English....;)

...and even though the employees you can get for an extra dollar an hour may not be Jessica Alba or Beyonce Knowles, as long as they're polite, pleasant, courteous and helpful, they could be as ugly as me for all I care...;)

Bottom line for me....this IS the hospitality industry, not the *rides* industry.....if you think you can skimp on the cost of employees and still thrive in this industry, eventually you'll find out differently...

There's that old phrase, "Penny wise, and pound foolish". In other words, saving money in one area that really counts that costs you bigger money in the overall picture.
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If you have a problem with clones, the solution is real simple—Stop traveling.

Wow! I didn't think that I would get this much response to this post. Cameraman is right. Panther Modern is right. Most of you here are pretty intelligent people. No, my math is fine Mike Robinson. What I should've really compared the numbers to was the amount of season passes that SFNO sold! They over tripled what Jazzland did in one year and those numbers has account for something! Individually, the park has done well and the scary thing is, it could've done even better. The weather did indeed play a key factor as New Orleans has seen it's wettest year in history! Already went through one hurricane. Just imagine a normal summer! The park has enjoyed a nice profit this year. This I know, but can't tell the source.

PM, you were right in saying that it's the job of the maintenance crew to keep the rides running. But their undertaking is huge at SFNO. The park has more flat than most in the chain.

In closing, I am going to say this. This is my opinion and should be taken as such:The little theme park made a case for itself to become SFI's newest megapark. It may not happen in 2004, but look forward to some great things out SFNO in the near future!

While season pass sales have been great your numbers are quite a bit off... This season will most probably be comparable to the 2000 season (or possibly better depending how this Fall/FrightFest season goes). So I'd expect somewhere just over 1 million. In an old newspaper article the park claimed to be profitable in its first season so hopefully this year will follow. I do think we'll be seeing some new attractions in the near future, now what they are I'm not sure. I think the weather, some small mistakes, and mishaps have hindered attendance and performance quite a bit, even though they were still doing great. So the potential definitely is there.

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Backseat Lee said:

The little theme park made a case for itself to become SFI's newest megapark. It may not happen in 2004, but look forward to some great things out SFNO in the near future!

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Uhm... I'm pretty sure it doesn't have the population density to become a "megapark". It will probably never be on the scale of SFOT, SFGAdv, SFGAm and SFMM.

Yeah, it did better than it did before, but as horrible as Alfa treated the park, as someone already stated, it had no choice but to go up once Six Flags took over.

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Panther Modern
SixFlagsHouston.Com
An Astroworld Tribute Site

I don't think he mean't "megapark" in that sense. Just that it's much bigger and better than Jazzland and in a sense that you could call all Six Flags parks "megaparks" due to what kind of work, money, and time goes into them. In comparison, I've heard SFNO's transformation will be comparable to SFNE's.

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Cameraman said:
I don't think he mean't "megapark" in that sense. Just that it's much bigger and better than Jazzland and in a sense that you could call all Six Flags parks "megaparks" due to what kind of work, money, and time goes into them. In comparison, I've heard SFNO's transformation will be comparable to SFNE's.

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Now that I can believe. I wouldn't hold my breath for that hyper right away tho.
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Panther Modern
SixFlagsHouston.Com
An Astroworld Tribute Site

Tho a Hyper would be nice somewhere on the Gulf Coast....

SFI has done a remarkable job transforming Jazzland into SFNO. Don't believe me? Go to www.sfno.com and look at the before and after photos. Congrats to SFI and the people of NOLA for turning this park around.

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Nashville needs a theme park!

Quoted from Six Flags's six month report on Aug 12:

For the first six months of 2003, revenues from consolidated operations were $381.6 million, compared to $397.1 million for the comparable period of 2002, representing a 3.9% decrease, driven by a 3.9% decrease in attendance at the consolidated parks. Total revenues per capita were flat to the prior year. Excluding the New Orleans park, which was not owned in the 2002 period, revenue decreased by $26.4 million (6.7%) in the 2003 period, as a result of an attendance decline at the consolidated parks of 7.2%, offset by a 0.6% increase in revenues per capita.

Do the math and Six Flags revenue this year including SFNO is over $15 million less than last year ($397.1 - $381.6). Without New Orleans it would have been $26 million. Therefore, New Orleans was responsible for bringing in about $11 million in revenue ($26.4 - $15.5).

However, Six Flags spent over $20 million on that property this year. So the park actually lost Six Flags a lot of money, over $9 million unless things really turn around for Fright Fest. Way to go! Six Flags would have been better off financially if they hadn't rebranded Jazzland for 2003.

*** This post was edited by Pancake 8/27/2003 2:35:16 AM ***