Six Flags appoints Selim Bassoul as new CEO

Think Raptor is bad? What happens on Gemini is much worse. Most times they can't run two trains on each side without setting up.

Yeah. Gemini and Blue Streak are both tied for "what the heck happened?" compared to what those two rides were/are capable of delivering in terms of capacity.

Tekwardo said:

Especially when I go to parks like SDC and Dollywood and the food is good, op’s are great, parks look amazing, rides are top notch. And most of the complaints from the previous three are pre-covid.

I had the weirdest cross section of parks last week. I went to Dollywood, Six Flags Over Georgia, and Carrowinds. I had the most fun at Six Flags and the least fun at Dollywood.

Dollywood was oversold, the Christmas decorations were fine, and the coaster operations (for the two I managed to get on) were average. Security was a complete disaster. I don't think I ever need to ride the train again. It's neat that it exists but there's nothing to see and it takes too long. I like Dollywood but this wasn't the best experience. No heat lamps or fire pits?

Six Flags surprised me. The park was really nice, the Xmas stuff was interesting (smores over real fires was a highlight), and the coaster operations were solid. The tree canopy (charm!) and 5 rides on Goliath were also highlights. Their entrance needs to be redesigned to take into account new security procedures but it was at least efficient.

Carrowinds' new entrance is stunning and the Xmas decorations were the best out of the three parks. They had street performers out everywhere and the parade was fun. Copperhead Strike's operations were very good. Got 4 rides on it.

BrettV said:

Yeah. Gemini and Blue Streak are both tied for "what the heck happened?"

Blue Streak is pretty obvious to me. Loose articles, PTC trains, confirming seat belts first... Gemini I have no idea what they're up to there. Raptor is confusing as well. I'd like something in between screaming at me to sit the **** down as soon as the gates open and what they're doing now.

BrettV said:

Yeah. Gemini and Blue Streak are both tied for "what the heck happened?" compared to what those two rides were/are capable of delivering in terms of capacity.

IIRC, both of these changed significantly (and slowed down) when they went to full-automated control. But, that’s dim memory speaking.

Did they finally remove the manual train parking on Gemini? Last I recall from maybe a few years ago it was still the last remaining manual station controls.

Jeff said:

Have you seen what they're doing at Fiesta Texas? Not just the new dive coaster, but the new front gate and exactly the kind of general renovation mentioned above.

Jeff tends to get what he wants. That’s by far one of the best ran parks in the chain/this country.

Tekwardo said:

Yeah. Gemini and Blue Streak are both tied for "what the heck happened?"

Blue Streak is pretty obvious to me. Loose articles, PTC trains, confirming seat belts first... Gemini I have no idea what they're up to there. Raptor is confusing as well. I'd like something in between screaming at me to sit the **** down as soon as the gates open and what they're doing now.

I didn’t say that. STOP PUTTING WORDS IN MAH MOUF!!!

;-P

Tekwardo said:

Jeff tends to get what he wants. That’s by far one of the best ran parks in the chain/this country.

Indeed. I consider him a friend, but honestly I hope his long term trajectory is executive leadership. He gets it. He's really one of the best in the industry.

I wish he would ascend to COO quickly and CEO eventually.

STOP PUTTING WORDS IN MAH MOUF!!!

Ha ha. Whoops. Fixed it.

The newish president at SFOT is doing a lot of work to improve the park and I don't think it's a coincidence that he previously worked for Jeff at Fiesta Texas. One thing I heard about Six Flags following the late-90's Premier purchase and post-bankruptcy was that management bonus potential was closely tied to saving labor and operating expenses. That gave them an incentive to let the parks fall apart and languish with bare minimum staffing. It's starting to look like they're moving away from that.

That’s good to hear. Anyone that goes to management after training under Jeff is going to be an improvement.

Dude is seriously just super nice. He made sure we got the first non public ride of the day on Rattler opening year, and the first public ride. And was super excited our group was there and that eh got to hang that morning.

I don’t typically gush over park presidents and above, but he’s infectious.

It appears that the first move the new CEO has made is to gut the corporate team. The team listed here was twice as big under Spanos:

https://investors.sixflags.com/corporate-governance/leadership

In some respects it is a shame that many talented individuals are seemingly no longer with the company. On the other hand, it does appear that Bassoul intends for parks to mange more autonomously, which frankly I don't think is a bad thing. The shared services model evidently did not produce the intended results and perhaps that is what lead to Spano's departure.

It seems weird to ditch the in house counsel. That company is more than big enough to need one.

I am not sure how you run a $1.5 billion company with the CEO having 20+ direct reports (all park presidents are reporting to him plus CFO, etc.) SIX has eliminated practically every corporate position other than their CFO and CIO. Difficult to "manage by committee" a $1.5 billion company with 15 different directors/VP's in the various groups they just eliminated any corporate leadership/strategy - including operations, F&B, merchandise, engineering, human resources, entertainment, marketing. Heck, even Kinzel realized after the acquisition, he needed some corporate level leadership for strategy, development, innovation, etc. that weren't bogged down with the day to day ops.

Will be interesting how this plays out. SF is taking a strikingly different path than CF - who seems to be building a suffocating corporate apparateus in Charlotte. Ouimet breathed new life into park-level management by allowing GM's to run the parks; from outside it appears Zimmerman/Fisher are over-correcting for Kinzel micro-managing from Sandusky by micro-managing from Charlotte but with now with a corporate staff about 150x larger.

That's a really good point. In my experience, I've been able to manage up to 12 direct reports, but those were IC's. Managing even six managers directly is very challenging, and I found that difficult.

I heard that this week has been a bloodbath at their corporate HQ with more than 80 people being shown the door. All of the corporate VP positions except the ones listed in the link above were eliminated.

From a very practical matter, who even executed the elimination of their entire corporate office employees (finance, IT and sales were only groups seemingly spared). They don’t have a CHRO anymore or any corporate HR staff, or a General Counsel or legal staff.

Who actually managed the terminations - and for the VP level folks, the exit packages, etc? The new CEO himself and board members? This appears to be a page right out of SEAS/Scott Ross. Bigger question - who is calling the shots at SIX. Their most tenured board member started in Jan 2020. Which is staggering. They don’t have a single board member on from pre-pandemic era OR when Spanos was hired in 2019. Their current CEO is 64 and just canned every possible successor. What’s SIX 3 year plan - promote a park GM to CEO of a $1.5B public company?

Where are you getting that they have no corporate HR staff?

And while I get what you're saying about succession planning, have they ever promoted a CEO from within? Not in the last 30 years as far as I'm aware.

If any of that is real, that's cosmically stupid. I get concerns about corporate bloat, but from a scalability perspective, you need bodies to do the work. This is not an immature organization at this point. I suspect that most corporate positions made sense.