Six Flags layoffs continue across the company

While expected, I'm sure this is blow to all involved, and we shouldn't lose sight of what it will do to morale for those left standing. That is the incalculable cost to the company...and it's not nothing.

I understand that the company would get rid of redundant support staff after the merger, but eliminating GMs and Presidents is inane to me. These are people who worked their entire lives in the industry and know their parks inside and out. As we've seen on both the good side (Fiesta Texas with Jeffrey Siebert) and bad (Carrie Boldman at CP), the guest and employee experience can be significantly impacted by the quality of leadership at the helm.

Try and imagine what Fiesta Texas would be today if it weren't for someone of the caliber of Jeff Siebert at the helm for the past several years. Actually, you don't have to try hard to imagine, you can just look at how over Texas has been run in the same time period with a revolving cast of questionably qualified people. Get ready for this disease to spread around the company.

I’ve said to former industry folks, this is Six Flags Worlds of Adventure-Premier Parks style management all over again. The sad part, the CEO/COO and a few others have bonuses and financial rewards baked into their merger contracts that reward them heftily for target goal achievement the first couple years. Once they get that they will bail leaving a disaster for others to clean up.

To remind everyone as well, Bassoul made $20+ MILLION by forcing this merger. He was failing as the former CEO of SIX trying to correct all of their problems but he too is going to be able to walk away a wealthy man as others are terminated, face pay cuts, do the work of 2-3 people in one job now, etc. So much for FUN!

The product has already gone downhill, the snowball was already started rolling a few years back. This will only accelerate it. I haven't been to a Cedar Flags park in a couple years now, and I have no intentions of going anytime soon. My focus is shifting to the private owned and the Herschend properties, and overseas.

Asking the "GM" to also run a department, particularly one as important as Operations, is ludicrous. How is he/she expected to maintain the global view of the entire operation while being mired in the day to day of running a department? I can assure you I could not do it...and I'm in a not unsimilar situation. No matter how capable that individual is, important things will be missed and hopefully it only results in a bad customer service experience. It could end up being something worse.

The loss of talent to the company, and to the lager industry, is a bit staggering.

wahoo skipper:

lager industry

Seems like the lager industry stands to gain in a number of markets.

(And yeah, this is a stupid decision. When the guy who turned the company around said “I want no part of this,” the board should have paid attention.)

My God, you people would not be good in business. You aren't even considering what really matters: the portfolio synergy.

You're saying Six Flags should merge with Molson Coors?

Only if they want half the workers laid off.

A post from Greg Scheid, the former long-time VP/GM of Kings Island and then promoted to Regional VP before Tim Fisher fired him in favor of his buddy from Village Roadshow.

As Greg mentions, there is no way Zimmerman, Fisher, Bassoul can look at the Board, or anyone for that matter, with a straight face and say these guest-facing role eliminations will do anything but decimate the guest experience and quality of the parks at the legacy FUN parks. As I mentioned in a previous post, that trio is 64, 65 and 68 respectively. They are going to tear this company + parks like Knott’s/CP/KI/Wonderland to the bone over the next 2 years - results will be dismal - then retire with a golden parachute and leave it to someone else to clean up.

If Knott’s Berry Farm, Cedar Point, Kings Island, etc don't need a General Manager… why in the hell does the company need a $10M/yr Executive Chairman in addition to a CEO and COO.

There are not many good succession plan options currently in the company. I honestly think the best case scenario is this Bassoul/Zimmerman/Fisher experiment of spreading the bare bones, ****ty Six Flags experience to all of their parks fail — and Michael Colglazier, former president of Disneyland Resort and former president of Disney Parks International, who just joined FUN’s board earlier this month (and is only 58) steps in as CEO to clean this all up.

It was likely from the beginning of the merger that the parts would collapse to the Six Flags level and not be brought up to the Cedar fair level. Now it looks like this is reality.

I believe the reason Cedar fair had quality years over the last decade was because of the presence of Matt Ouimet. And now that’s going as well

only in this corrupt society can someone like Bassoul run a company into the ground and fill his pockets while doing it?

The former Taft parks were just now recovering from all the years of Paramount destruction. What’s going to happen in the next several years we may never see corrected.

First Matt Ouimet spoke out on the day the FUN board members met up in Sandusky. Now Greg Scheid speaks up after more unjustified terminations. Anyone want to place bets on who’s next? I’d love to hear from the Cedar Fair big-wigs (aka Kinzel era) who still own significant shares in FUN.

^Not sure that matters. Cedar Fair’s 3rd largest shareholder - Neuberger Berman - spoke out against the merger both privately and publicly … and Zimmerman basically told them to eff off and Cedar Fair unit holders don’t have a say in the matter and not entitled to a vote due to a technicality in ownership (the deal was specifically structured so FUN unit holders would not be allowed to vote on it due to FUN being the controlling party at 51%, which required SIX to pay a special dividend to its shareholders prior to the merger).

This just feels like Six Flags trying to copy the FAANG strategy — cut 10% of full-time staff and frame it as a big cost-saving move. But that logic doesn’t track here. In tech, those cuts could save billions because salaries are so high. At Six Flags, your typical full-time park employee isn’t making much to begin with. Even the handful of GMs let go weren’t pulling massive salaries.

The real costs are still seasonal labor and capex, so it’s hard to see how this really moves the needle financially much — even short term.

And that’s before even getting into what this does to the guest experience. Full-time employees are the heart of the parks. They’re usually the ones most invested — they love the place, care about the guest experience, and stick around despite low pay because of that passion. If anything, these are the people giving Six Flags the best return on investment. Cutting them might save a few dollars on paper, but it chips away at one of the few things that actually make the parks function well despite relatively poor investment in talent.

Tech companies also over hire when they are growing and have a lot of bloat. Can’t say that about a seasonal amusement park.