Shapiro says significant change in store for Six Flags

I think I tend to like what Shapiro is saying. It sounds like he is very smart and has some good ideas for this chain. I think he realizes the disparity between some of the parks and wants them to all be similar.

I also think that the corporate sponsorships will be a huge boost to the parks. I look at what Disney has done with corporate sponsorships and see a park that has almost every ride sponsored by some corporation. That is all extra money. And with as many parks as SF has, it would add up to alot of money. that would help get them out of debt, and also help to have more money to add new attractions.

The X-box village could be cool if it was rides themed to X-box characters or games, but not cool if it was just a bunch of X-boxes so that you could go there and play them as you wish.

All in all, it sounds like pretty good ideas are coming from the top now. And just think, he has only been chair of the company for a little over 2 days....imagine what will come after weeks or months.

I'm not sure who wrote the comment, since the users name didn't show up, but I love Papa John's Pizza. I only wish it weren't so damn expensive. I'd rather pay $20 for a Papa John's pizza than I would for a generic park pie.

By the way, does anyone remember the whole controversy at FedEx Field over the pizza supplier? I'm seem to remember Domino's getting the axe in favor of Papa Johns, even though they had a contract.

As for the corporate sponsorship thing, I say go for it if it actually provides something worthwhile. As it was, Wild One was sponsored by Sherwin Williams, but you wouldn't know it. So where was their money going?

Clever ideas for marketing and product tie ins and supplier partnerships and all that is great. But it won't solve the problem.

What Six Flags needs to do first, before they do ANYTHING else, is to take a good, hard, HONEST look at EVERY park in the chain. Start by taking a walk through the park and look around. What do you see? The last Six Flags park I visited was Kentucky Kingdom, and if I were to take over that park, the first thing I would do would be to send a crew through with a pressure washer to clean every surface in that park, followed by another crew to paint everything that doesn't move and a lot of things that do. Clean it up, trim the vegetation, and fix the peeling paint. That's not millions of dollars, that's hundreds of dollars. But the return on that sort of investment can be tremendous. Next, deal with all the broken equipment. What good does it do you to spend millions of dollars on new rides, then ignore them until they break? A few thousand dollars in maintenance will protect a multi-million-dollar investment. Every ride in every park should be running on every operating day. You're operating an amusement park, and that means people come to ride the rides. People invest their time and money in your park and they expect a return on that investment in the form of rides that operate. If you don't deliver, they won't come back. It's that simple.

Jeff made an important point further up that bears repeating. The people who come through the gate with all the little green pieces of paper in their pockets are not merely demographic groups. An amusement park is not a broadcasting operation where you as a park operator are in the business of delivering eyeballs to advertisers. Instead, you are in the business of entertaining all those people in an effort to get them to give you those little green pieces of paper. Those people are stakeholders in the business just as much as the people holding common and preferred stock. Those people walking through the gate are the ones you need to work hardest to please. Make them happy and they will hand over those little green pieces of paper, which you can then distribute to your shareholders. That will make the shareholders happy. Never forget about the people coming through the gate, and never aggravate them in an effort to please shareholders. In the long run, the shareholders will be happier if the customers are happier.

Seriously, this isn't rocket science. But figuring out how to fix Six Flags is something that isn't going to happen in a board room. It has to happen on the midways. Ideas are great, but the first thing Shapiro needs to do is to visit his parks, and see what it is like to spend a day there. That should give him more great ideas than he knows what to do with!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

*stands up and applauds*

Can Dave and I take that "park tour" WITH Shapiro, we'll give him even more great ideas! :)

no more teens! we want moms with young children. someone get me wes craven on the phone!
*** This post was edited by dcb1008 12/16/2005 1:54:12 PM ***

also he says, "where are the tie ins with iPod and Google?" in the same breath as "Papa John's Pizza."

Dave -

I believe Shapiro has already said he will visit each park in the next 30 days. However, I agree with Gator, I would love to take the tour with him.

It's not just advertising per se that bothers me, since like everyone says we see it in every entertainment venue already. Frankly, I don't care if they cover the trains for Kingda Ka with enough advertising to make it look like Jeff Gordon's Chevy.

So if they're going to do like everyone else already does, why have a press release to announce it? I just have this feeling that the advertising and product tie-ins are going to be something extreme. Like telemarketer extreme. Like you're in a 200-acre supermarket checkout lined with candy. Like a total sensory assault. Like grab you by the ankles and shake until every bit of loose change in your pockets falls out.

My first suggestion for product tie-in would be "Trash Mountain by Waste Management."

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I believe Shapiro has already said he will visit each park in the next 30 days.

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Correct, starting Jan 1 he's going to take a whirlwind tour of the parks.

*** This post was edited by Jophish 12/16/2005 9:19:32 PM ***

I definitely agree with Rideman about paint. Does the ride run any worse if it's not painted? Of course not, but it does make people wonder about the commitment to maintenance. That's why I had to applaud the decision to finally repaint Mind Eraser (with brand new colors) and Joker's Jinx (the original colors) at SFA. Now if they can work on Batwing which was terribly faded in comparison to years past. The Hurricane Harbor makeover was also great, with all the new colors and buildings. All those things were steps in the right direction, but where things fell down as usual was in operations. It seemed like more than half of the ride operators weren't aware that we paid money to get into the park (even if I did have a dirt-cheap SF season pass). There was too much playtime (it was supposed to be playtime for us, not them) and not enough paying attention to the guests.

There were numerous safety violations that I encountered as well. Since the season is over, I might as well mention my scare on Batwing. So I'm in my seat not really paying too much attention while I'm talking to a fellow enthusiast. I'm trusting that the ride op is closing the lapbar correctly. We're going up the lift hill and suddenly I realize that my lapbar is about a foot or more away from my torso. I'm like "oh crap." There's no way to close it down any further once in motion. Well, obviously I survived the ride, but I did hold on for dear life to the handles.

Hurricane Harbor had its issues as well with lifeguards not paying any attention to what was going on. My main concerns were on the waterslides where they weren't giving clear signals about when to go, or they weren't paying attention at all. This is particularly dangerous on the high speed in the dark slides. Let's say you have a kid who weighs 60lbs. being followed by a 250lb. man who isn't aware that the kid is below him. The results could be very ulgly.

"Correct, starting Jan 1 he's going to take a whirlwind tour of the parks".

Actually it's already started. Shapiro took a tour of SFMM last weekend with Dell Holland and a few other big wigs. The funny thing is, if you visited the park that day (which I did), what you would have seen was hilarious. The rides were STACKED with operators, and every ride had the best capacity I've seen at the park in years. They were actually assigning seats on Riddler's Revenge and X. The park was also clean, and there was much excitement around the Tatsu construction site. The park obviously recieved a head's up. lol

Xbox village........

that's the worst thing to happen to video games since G4.....

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Actually it's already started.

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I was just relaying what Shapiro himself said in an interview:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10467156/

I know what your saying. I wasn't saying you weren't correct, only that one park has already been visited, the year round one of course...

actually he did not visit MM, that was a rumor.

I think it's good for Shapiro to visit the parks, but I think it would be better to make multiple visits to the parks to get a better overall feel. I would also send in "secret shoppers" if I were him.

That sounds like the ticket, excuse the pun. Spread a rumor that Shapiro and/or Snyder are coming to whatever park you're going to, on whatever day, and you might actually see some customer service in action.

Six Flags does use secret shoppers. I have seen reports from them.

See, that's the problem, Shapiro cant go to the park and be led around by the "GM". What he should really do, is have his wife (or some other soccer mom type he trusts) and his kids (or some neigbhorhood brats) and send them up to the parks during a summer saturday. That's about the only way they'll be able to see the true frustration that many guests have had.

Sure, it's great to go in on the off/slow season and get a "lay of the land". But during those slow periods, operations tend to be better. One needs to see things during the pressure cooker of the busy times to see if the pressure makes diamonds or just compact trash.

In either case, I'm willing to give them a shot with an open mind. While not a huge fan of the Xbox, I can see rides themed to properties as a good thing. Additionally, I know I *used* to like going to SFGAm primarily to play Karate Champ back in the day and with the popularity of "CyberZone" type places, an Xbox village could work. Granted, that would seem to appeal primarily to the teens and twentysomethings that the parks are already overly focused on.

Stick with me... I will get to my point at the end....

A few years ago the state of Pennsylvania had a program known as "Capital for a Day" where the governor would visit a city in the state and basically that city would be labled "Capital for a Day." It was a time for each city to show itself off as well as lobby the governor for grants, help, what ever.

US RT 30 goes around York PA and is the so called By-pass, though it has 11 lights in a 5 mile stretch. It is notorious for being a very congested and slow moving road. Then Governor Robert Casey was scheduled to visit York as Capital for a Day and he was going to be travelling the rt 30 By-pass to just get some idea of the traffic nightmare that it was in an effort to get some sort of state funding to help fix the problem.

The trip on 30 was supposed to be at around 3 or 4 pm... but the Governor's handlers rescheduled it for around 10 or 11 am... so the governor would not get caught up in the heavy traffic... the very problem that he was there to observe.

Now why do I have the feeling that Shaprio's visits to the various Six Flags parks may be like this... visit the parks on a Tuesday in May or June, so the heavy crowds / long lines won't cause problems?*** This post was edited by SLFAKE 12/19/2005 10:33:14 AM ***