Six Flags hopes to have better year with capital expenditures and better pricing

Have you guys ever been to Darien Lake? If any of the parks needs capital expenditures, i feel it is this one! This park is nice for being just an amusement park, but it's by far the worst Six Flags park in the chain. They have rides older than the other parks, they have used rides, not enough thrill rides, not enough roller coasters to compete with the other SF and Paramount Parks, and they are not even the coaster capital of NY anymore. This park has really been neglected of new and better attractions since Superman was built. Alone, the waterpark has all of 4 waterslides all together (excluding hooks lagoon) and a crappy land planout. Darien Lake needs these capital expenditures that SFMM or SFGa,; they always get new rides/attractions and leave DL in the dust. I know tons of people who are not getting season passes this year to boycott how bad this park has been getting. 1999 was the last slightly glorified year at Darien lake, and it's all gone to bust since then.

Okay Cameron, I'll agree with that line of thinking, but they'll never get of out their HUGE debt if they don't change the way they do things (if they even can at this point). If they went into this venture with the "Disney" service attitude, they probably wouldn't be in the trouble they're in now. But hindsight is always 20/20. However, if I was them, I'd put a few less coasters in "chainwide" and use some of the money toward paychecks for employees (tough to get good help if McDonalds is paying more...in essence we put our lives in the hands of people who didn't, or worse, couldn't get hired in a fast food chain).

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Goccvp1

If I had something inspiring to say, you'd be reading it now.

I would have to agree with bcampione, in one aspect that SFDL always gets neglected and has been for 4 years now. True we do get very good concerts good live shows but where is the coasters!

SFDL always maintains great attendence but never gets rewarded for this, I'am crossing my fingers and hope to get a new coaster in '04 but enough is enough Six Flags has been neglecting this park since SROS.

I wouldn't go as far and say that this is the worst park in the chain but there is a ton of potential for this park and Six Flags is only concerned with SFGAM,SFGADV,SFMM. They do very well with these parks but neglect the other parks. Let's hope for the best.

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Your Park only has 1 good coaster! That's too bad!

How is not adding major attractions considered "neglecting" a park? I dont understand the logic here.

"Neglect" to me is when a park is not maintained and the service is poor. Just because a park is owned by one of the big corporate companies doesnt mean it should keep getting new rides on a consistent basis.

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Arena football has arrived in the Windy City. Go "Chicago Rush"

The coaster vs. employee example is a little short on long term logic. If you're talking a 20 year plan, here's a more realistic example.

Boy spends childhood summers at local park. Boy grows up and years later, visits. Has a bad customer service experience. Some time passes, he visits again, giving the place another chance. Same experience. Man decides never to return with family of 5. Breaking the cycle of "childhood summers" x3. Aggitating one family can mean losing 4 families later, and the geometric progression continues...

As a PKS stock holder, I would love it if my $5.50 per share stock went back up to $20 or more, but not at the expense of the company as a whole.

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". . . don't you know baby that life is a scream!" - Gordon Gano

Let's keep this on topic, people: Six Flags. Only use a specific park to make a specific point than can be compared or contrasted to the rest of the chain.

Hypothetical question- Six Flags goes belly up. What happens to its parks? I sure as heck don't want ot see Great America auctioned off because some bozos in Oklahoma couldn't keep a bunch of other, potentialy profitable parks, well, profitable.

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I hear America screaming...

As someone who has worked for four major theme park chains (Cedar Fair, Anheuser Busch, Universal, and Disney), I can honestly state that money only motivates you so far. It is the respect and recognition given to me by my superiors that motivates me to work harder and make the park in which I am working as good as possible. And in my experience, all of these chains succeeded to some degree.

As a visitor to many Six Flags parks, I found for the most part, workers who did not want to be there and could care less whether or not I was there as well. And after writing a letter to Six Flags CEO Gary Story to complain about my bad experience at SFNE and getting NO response, it seems he doesn't care about me either.

There is an old saying about customer service. If you receive good service, you will tell a friend. If you receive bad service, you will tell 10 or more.

Think about this Six Flags before attempting to fix your problems with band- aids when you are in serious need of employee re-training surgery.

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Check out www.themeparkdiva.com for info on my new show!

I agree with OrlandoCoaster. Every Sixflags PArk I've been to has been bad experiences and I have told at least 10 of my friends. I then go and recommend Cedar Point, Bush Gardens, PKI, and Holiday World as suggestions as parks to got to.

On the note of new coaster brings customers, I beleive If the customer service and the upkeep of the parks atmosphere I will only go once to ride the new coaster and probably not return.

Worst experience at a Six Flags Park was at SFWOA. Very dirty, Rides were constantly breaking, not running rides to thier capacity (causing long, long, long waits), Ride attendants to busy looking annoyed they're there or play grab a**. Well there is alot more I could go off on but I know I will never return back to that park unless things really change. I don't even go to my home park at SFEG were I find similar problams

IMO, the customer service problems at SF are way overplayed. The bad reputations of certain SF parks seem to cause people to generalize that all SF parks have poor customer service. I have had no problems at sfgadv and sfmm for example.

The truth is that SF is the scapegoat for every little annoyance enthusiasts experience at parks. Sometimes I get the impression that people go to SF looking for problems.

The truth is that whatever SF does people will complain.

As has been said before. It's short and simply. They are only worried about this summers gains and sales. Add rides and the attendance will increase that year period. If they were truley worried about the long term fix their is much that would have been addressed long before now.

Mr Rush: I would agree with you if it were just enthusiasts, but you get similar opinions around here from 30 and 40-something family folk in my area. Just because they're not enthusiasts doesn't mean they're stupid. If they think it's just enthusiasts, then the company, like you, are missing the bigger picture.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - Sillynonsense.com
"Pray that your country undergoes recovery!" - KMFDM

Mr. Rush, if it was just enthusiasts, the attendance at the SF chain parks would not have dipped the way it did. One of my best friends drives tour bus, and in 2001 had 12 trips to SFWoA. He informed me that all but one group that he took there came back to the bus complaining about how dirty the park was, and how bad the service at food stands was. Every group that complained swore they would never have another group outing at the park. That's a lot of "bad word of mouth" to have out there.

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Goccvp1

If I had something inspiring to say, you'd be reading it now.

The only thing that will bring people back in droves is CUSTOMER SERVICE. If the park has 1 or 20 rollercoasters it don't matter when people left P!!SSED OFF because of poor service and rides running in low capacity mode.

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Charles Nungester.
It's official Lesourdsville Lake is closed for 2003*** This post was edited by Charles Nungester 4/29/2003 10:37:35 AM ***

Parks develop reputations. Six flags has developed a bad reputation in many areas of the country. And for most people this reputation isnt about not having enough rides or bad customer service - the reputation they have developed is that many times when people go to their parks they dont have a great time. Now if you analyze this, you will find that this normally caused by things that can be fixed with a greater emphasis on making the customers happy, aka Customer Service. Things like making sure the employees are friendly, the lines move efficiently, the rides are open as much as possible, etc...

Building more coasters to bring more people into your parks just passes this bad experience onto more people, thus further spreading their bad reputation. They need to start sending people home with good impressions of their parks so that their tarnished reputation can recover.

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Is that Freedom Rock? Well turn it up dude !!

Yes, it does seem very evident that SF has a reputation problem with regards non-enthusiasts as well as us enthusiasts.

But surely there are quite a few SF parks which have decent enough (average) levels of customer service and consequently a decent enough reputation amongst non-enthusiasts.

In other woeds, parks like WoA, to take pehaps the most infamous reputation, will of course have a bad rep. amongst enthusiasts and non-enthusiats alike, but a park such as GADV, which in my experience has at the very least adequate customer service will be perceived accordingly by non-enthusiasts but may often suffer a SF chain wide generalization by enthusiasts.

Nobody ever said it was a chain-wide problem, and SFGAm seems to be a favorite among us.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - Sillynonsense.com
"Pray that your country undergoes recovery!" - KMFDM

I really hope this attempt to bring in more money works. I know people are really skeptical about it but it would be awfull if Six Flags had another down season.

I know that when I went to SFGAdv. this year the staff was very pleasant. I hope that the abundance of new rides at SF parks will help their performance substantially.

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"Life is like a roller coaster; there are ups and downs and it's over all too fast."

Fight Back at: www.realizethis.com

You know, I really believe in my heart of hearts that there are only TWO SF parks that have these "problems" everyone harps on: SFWoA and SFAW. AW's problem is indeed that there hasn't been enough cap expenditure. SFoWA's is a service problem. Those can be legitimate beefs. Pretty much all the other parks get a bad rep that I would say is limited to so-called enthusiasts. I mean, when you consider that two of the least highly regarded SF parks: SFA & SFKK both saw increases last year *without* adding a new ride, that leads me to think that these "issues" are not as big as some might claim.

lata, jeremy

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American troops "have started to commit suicide under the walls of Baghdad. We will encourage them to commit more suicides quickly." Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf

as they say, it only takes one bad apple...

How many times have you heard someone say they wont go to eat at some particular chain restaurant because they had a "bad experience" in the past?

The reputation that branded products develop can be both a blessing and a curse. Do a great job and offer a quality product and the people will respond. Do a terrible job and offer a low quality or inconsistent product and the people will respond. When someone is going to shell out $50 for a day at a park (or $200 for a family) they want to feel reasonably sure that they are going to have a good experience for their money. I personally have never been to a SF park, but because of the reputation they have on this and in general amongst my non-enthusiasts friends, I am not willing to risk a day and my hard earned money to go there. Now in my case, we are talking about SFWoA, the closest park to me, and that is an extreme example.

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Is that Freedom Rock? Well turn it up dude !!