Six Flags having a soft year in US and Europe

Umm, all water is free, except if it is bottle then they need to charge because the water is made by a company, get it...

Yes, SF needs to fix up some of there older parks. Some of there parks are getting pretty old, and need to be fix up, like new entrance, paint jobs, other stuff to make the parks atmosphere better.

Some of you really miss the big picture, and also need to travel to more parks (if you can drive yet). All major park chains charge high prices for soda and food, and this includes Paramount and Cedar Fair. Even HersheyPark charges $2.50 for a 20oz. soda. Why? Because they have the expensive rides, and the big staff to operate them. Someone has to pay for it all, and you're it. Holiday World has two coasters, a few spinning rides, and a small waterpark. That's a huge difference. Let's not compare apples to oranges. And Jeff, how much do you think Paramount has lost on all those free PKD tickets to people who waited in line for Hypersonic, only to have it break down?

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Batwing-Bow Down

Jeff: How can you say Attendance does not mean anything, they have to pay there way in to the park right? Also most of the non-spending is taking place in europe just like Burke say's.
There is an 18% growth on EBITDA for july from last year in american park's.
The slow spending is not really happing here its in europe.
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Army rangers lead the way

Attendance isn't the thing you need to rely on to grow. It reaches a point where attendance becomes flat. When you do so many discount programs and give away your passes for $40, they mean even less. If I go a dozen times, I paid a little over $3 per visit. Attendance isn't where the big pay-off comes from.

That's why per capita spending figures are so important. If each guest isn't spending more than $30 in the park on average, they aren't going to do as well.

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Jeff
Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
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Your using figures that everyone who goes to SF buys a SP, our local church sent 4 buses of people there and only 4 people had SP's and they where from SFDL. They all bought group discount tickets.
Just like when school's go they buy tickets in group rates not SP's.
I would like to know though what the season pass ratio is to regular ticket buyer's.

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Army rangers lead the way

I have heard that SFWOA has been selling group tickets for as little as $8 per person. It is no wonder why attendance figures may be "ok" but revenues are down.

It is like when a baseball team says there are 20,000 paid admissions when it is obvious there aren't 10,000 people at the park. They lose out on the 10,000 people who would have bought food drink, etc. If those 10,000 would have spent $20 per piece, the club lost out on $200,000 even though they had a good attendance on paper.

Your mixing it up Wahoo skipper, the diffrence between the 2 is that everyone is showing up at the park's compaired to the stadium's, if you look at the article i posted above it says most of the non spending in parks is in europe, so they must be buying here. The revenues are not down its there #'s that they expected this year that are down. Also can you tell me how many people for the $8 a person deal we paid close to $14 a head.
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Army rangers lead the way *** This post was edited by supermandl on 8/16/2001. ***

I should have been more specific, sorry. Their gate revenue takes a hit even when they say their attendance is not dropping significantly. One way to keep attendance up is to offer deep discounts on group admissions. My understanding was that the $8 was for a major company.

All I am saying is that their attendance numbers may look impressive but not necessarily lead to a healthy bottom line.

PKD, BGW, and PKI dont charge for water. They just dont tell anyone that its free. Except at PKD when there was a heat advisory, they were telling people to go get free water so they didnt like pass out.