Six Flags loss widens in what exec calls "transition year"

For my 2 cents...I would much rather be in charge of turning DCA around than the Six Flags chain. Or ANY park in the Six Flags chain for that matter.

DCA is indeed only a few rides away. The Six Flags chain has YEARS of piss poor service to make up for. One park can (will?) be turned around. The other...may be best suited to keep operating as a real estate trust.

I said it before but I think it is worth saying again... you can literally point to any park you want and say: this park hardly has any rides, what a failure! I can point to some other park with very few rides and say: this park is great, what a success! Playing this game is like saying I went to a big mall with lots of stores and it was great and a small mall with few stores and it was terrible therefore the quality of all malls is dependent only on the number of stores. The volume of stores (or rides) is not the determining factor.

Intamin Fan, I completely agree with you. I don't think that removing rides without adding anything new is the best strategy for the reasons you mentioned - fewer attractions and the same number (or more) people makes the existing attractions less enjoyable.

The point I am trying to make is that rides, shows, family areas, etc. are all lumped into the category of "attractions" by most people who go to these parks. Unlike people on sites like this, the operation of every park is not picked apart to death to the point where guests are analyzing the number of rides vs. shows vs. everything else under a microscope. If Six Flags can offer something new and market it properly I don't think it matters much what it is.

Of course Six Flags should give its guests more reasons to visit its parks, but fighting over whether a spinny flat, giant flat, hyper coaster, inverted coaster, water slide or whatever is the magical key to success is infinitely regressive and doesn't hit at the heart of the issue. Clearly we have learned nothing from history. A park with a lot of rides that is dirty, unfriendly and has a bad atmosphere will fail. The fact that old management put in coasters instead of flats is not relevant. Fortunately, I think Shapiro has that much figured out.

Jeffrey, I agree. It's going to be "fixed" in a few years. Thanks to John Lassiter of Pixar, they are reportedly going to dump about 800mil into the place in the next 5 years. That's more than the park itself cost in the first place! But, as you said, that's a totally different situation than SF.

I like DCA simply because it's not simply a rehash of what's across the plaza. Both parks bring something unique to the Disney experience.

Peabody... thats intresting about Pixar dumping money into the place, now I see why the big rumor is for the Cars ride!

I was always under the impression that one of the many issues with DCA was the fact that some 60%+ of Disneyland Resort's attendance comes locals/CA residents, who didn't really want to visit a park based on their home area.

Kinda ironic - DCA attendance has actually been on the up-swing as of late (and not just from the 2fer tickets like it was in the past) and that actually surprised the DCA higher-ups causing them to wonder if they should really close/rehab as much stuff in the near future as they thought (they don't want new visitors to come to the park and find half the stuff in rehab).

I think I'm one of the few people who went to DCA and enjoyed myself. The rides, the atmosphere, everything - I thought it was all pretty cool.

Wow, people really shortchange the "general public". They know a lot more than you think they know.

Anyway, I wish Six Flags would just close and get it overwith. Every year their debt grows larger and larger. I just don't think they are a viable business anymore. ;)

^ Yeah, it's inevitable. :)

Millrace too bad your wrong. Six Flags debt will actually be going down since they sold of a lot of their parks. So you are wrong.

Look at cedar fair. They are doing nexactly what six flags did that got them in trouble. Did they really need to buy the paramount parks?

Also spending of guests went up. That means a lot.

Stop with the fanboy comments and actually look at the data out there.

The new management is fixing the problems that we complained about with the old management. It takes time though.

Cleaning the parks and fixing customer service and ride reliability wont show that it worked instantly. It wil ltake a year or two for the word of mouth to work.

Looks like someone missed snack time. :)

You're funny, majortom.

HUGE difference between what SF did and what CF did....and how they did it...and where they did it....and when they did it...and who they did it with....

In fact, the similarities are almost negligible...

Colonel Mustard, in the kitchen, with the candlestick!

Ah-ha, the truth comes out! millrace, you CF fanboy!