Six Flags layoffs continue across the company

Employees impacted can continue in a part-time role or will be provided with a separation package and other benefits.

That is interesting with regards to the California parks. What is the motivation here? Less/no guaranteed hours therefore less committed spend?

This isn't altogether different to what Merlin have been doing, they concluded that they were running too many small independent businesses under a single umbrella, rather than one big company, sharing its resources at the right level where appropriate.

It seems bad though, that's for sure. If you take Jeff Siebert, him being responsible for the two Texas parks (about six hours apart) is curious - you can't do the same role you were doing in two places, it just doesn't work does it.

My best guess is that removing full time employees is more about theater than actually increasing revenue. Leadership can say they took efforts to make cuts (I imagine there will be more in other areas) even if it doesn't move the needle all that much. Same happened on the Federal side of things...sure people and departments were cut and it saved money, but it was nothing compared to the size of government. It's all theater.

But the sad thing is, real folks are impacted by that. Obviously, all the workers that lost their jobs. Then there is the impact of the park-goer. But I've always said, sometimes it takes ****ing with people's money to get their attention. If guest satisfaction decreases over the next few years and they stop showing up to the parks, we know why.

Until 5 minutes ago, I couldn't have told you who the president of Great Escape was. This woman was just unceremoniously fired and she took to the internet to profess her love for the park. Clearly a person you don't want as part of your company.........

They will take the park out of that girl when they close it.

What I find quite interesting about the president layoffs is that to achieve what they want to achieve with these mid tier parks, you need someone to be accountable for everything that park does, or doesn't do.

The president role feels like it's the right level of seniority and absolutely the right role for the performance of a park. Someone who is responsible for multiple parks nowhere near each other doesn't seem like the right shout to me.

They created a new role called Park Manager for this purpose. At Kings Island they let go of longtime GM Mike Koontz and gave the Assistant GM the Park Manager role. It’s probably more or less the same duties but with less pay.

That "probably" is doing a lot of work, with the assistance of "more or less."

• Will the Park Manager supervise the department heads, or will they report to someone at HQ?
• Will they have the authority to hire and fire people? What authority will they have to spend money to repair a ride or provide employee incentives or adjust menus or anything else that a person running a park might do? If a gear breaks, can they go to the local machine shop to get it replaced in a week, or do they need corporate to take a month ordering it from a preferred supplier?
• Will the Assistant GM be replaced, or is the Park Manager keeping that person's responsibilities in addition to whatever bits of the Park President's job remains? (If they are replacing the Assistant GM, then this is truly a penny-pinching move, because you're just saving the difference in salary between the President and the AGM.)

Apart from all that, I presume that at least some of the people being fired have valuable experience that will be hard to replace, if they ever can. Not all of a company's assets show up on the balance sheet. It's isn't clear whether the finance guys who have been put in charge understand that.

They probably only understand extracting profits for personal gain, much like PE. I don’t think that probably is carrying a lot of weight either.

Regardless, the concentration of power occurring is probably giving Kinzel a raging hard on.

hambone:

Will they have the authority to hire and fire people, spend money to repair a ride, provide employee incentives or adjust menus? ... Will the Assistant GM be replaced?

If a gear breaks, can they go to the local machine shop to get it replaced in a week, or do they need corporate to take a month ordering it from a preferred supplier?

Most of your questions are a qualified no, but the one thing that actually will improve is the availability of ride parts. With regional operators, it is standard practice to reach out to other parks to ask if they can spare a cup of sugar, so to speak. They are doubling their network of places that might have a specific part they might need. Come to think of it, keeping a warehouse on a certain piece of land in Maryland might not be a bad idea to help with procurement and warehousing.

True, until they use all the spare parts and don’t restock to save money.

It has been my understanding that many competing parks and chains have often had a handshake agreement that they'll help each other out if necessary. If Park A suddenly needs an out of production or time consuming part that Park B has, Park B is oftentimes willing to help out Park A (obviously for a cost depending on the situation) under the overall mantra of "if we can help you be better, it will make us all better".

What nobody is addressing: how is FUN actually GROWING revenue by cutting? It doesn't get more bodies in the park spending more money. I might also add, the current commercial running in every market with the "Funsultant" does nothing to motivate anyone I've talked to about getting to a park. When I show people social media videos of Rapterra, TT2, and others...that engages them and I always get a response "I want to go ride that!" Remember when Matt explained the emotional connection people have to parks? People love to be thrilled, what is Zimmerman-Bassoul & Co. thinking with the current advertising/marketing strategy?

They definitely aren't growing revenue by cutting these park level people. They are only saving cost. The question is if revenue actually declines in time due to diminished local accountability and leadership, market specific insight and adjustments, declining guest service, etc. I would wager to guess that a lot of long time fans of these parks feel a lot less inclined to support them out of loyalty knowing that they're only supporting some large conglomerate, not so much the local business that they had real emotional attachment to. That's a hard thing to quantify and it might not be that much of a factor, but it is something non-zero.

They can't achieve 180 million in cost savings by canning full time people because these people don't make that much money and there aren't that many full timers to begin with. My guess is they start slashing seasonal labor costs too by 1) shortening park hours and cutting operating days, 2) eliminating rides, 3) eliminating Live E, 4) cutting staffing on remaining rides (think two people checking restraints instead of four, one person operating a flat instead of two, certain rides opening late and closing early and other nonsense like that). 60-70% of their admissions are from pass sales so they can cut your experience to the bone since they already took your money and the terms state "subject to change," or whatever, but it isn't sustainable for more than a season or two. They need to look only at places like Great Adventure and Magic Mountain which each used to do 4 million guests a year and now do half of that to see how devastating poor customer service can be. Does anyone in charge right now care about the company being sustained beyond the next couple of years? Zimmerman, Fisher, and Bassoul are all near retirement age and collected big bonuses for pushing the merger through and probably have more on the way if they hit their "synergy" numbers. You'd like to think the board would see some issues here, but alas Bassoul is chairman and probably has several yes men along for the ride.

MDOmnis:

My guess is they start slashing seasonal labor costs too by 1) shortening park hours and cutting operating days, 2) eliminating rides, 3) eliminating Live E

They have already done all of this for the 2025 season that just kicked off. Unfortunately I see more unique/"out of print" rides that are expensive to maintain unceremoniously cut from parks in the coming years and I don't see parks like Cedar Point bringing back the level of Live E they had a few years ago.

I’m telling y’all, a seance might be in order to summon the spirits that can stop this train wreck! 😂

MDOmnis:

1) shortening park hours and cutting operating days, 2) eliminating rides, 3) eliminating Live E, 4) cutting staffing on remaining rides (think two people checking restraints instead of four, one person operating a flat instead of two, certain rides opening late and closing early and other nonsense like that).

1. they said they will be doing that
2. already done
3. already done
4. remember the boards in front of six flags that said “these attractions not operating today” expect those in all the parks and a rotation of rides placed on them each week.

BrettV:

I don't see parks like Cedar Point bringing back the level of Live E they had a few years ago.

I just looked, and admit that I am plesantly surprised. That could be because expectations were so low, but...

https://www.cedarpoint.com/entertainment

Only a handful of those have started; the bulk are mid-June through mid-August.

I'd love to see the executive compensation be tied to something like NPS. If you have that, chances are the revenue and profit will come. There's no universe where those scores go up with these cuts.

The thing that bothers me the most is that so many of these people show dedication and love for what they do for very little pay. I'd trade that in a heartbeat for being well paid for something I'm indifferent about doing.

Brian Noble:

I just looked, and admit that I am plesantly surprised.

All of the listed venues had shows last year too. What’s missing is any kind of replacement for the big production shows they had on the outdoor stage in front of Iron Dragon.

Jeff:

I'd love to see the executive compensation be tied to something like NPS.

I worked in a place where NPS was tied to metrics for leaders and bonuses. If you were front line and the guest sent in a survey other than a 9 or 10 of 10, an investigation was done and unless it was proved that it was out of your control, you received a write up. Spoiler, it was almost always deemed in your control. If NPS becomes that important that money is on the line, those leaders will not forfeit those dollars and at all costs the survey will be driven into the customer for 10/10.

Every employee I knew that was front line basically told the customers that if they didn't rate a 9 or 10 that they would get in trouble, could get fired, help me fix everything before we depart so its a 10, etc. At that point the NPS is no longer a functional metric, and just a box to check, and an annoyance to the customer for being conditioned and coached on the surveys.