Six Flags posts net loss of $100 million in second quarter

Lies, we have been griping about the loss of the Pirate Ride for decades.

I'm coming out of lurking more to give a shout-out to Dollywood’s Weather Guarantee since it seems relevant to the conversation of getting guests into parks when the weather looks to be poor.

"If you experience rain interruption that restricts rides, attractions, and your fun at Dollywood, causing your visit to be shortened, please stop by any ticket booth before you leave to receive a complimentary return ticket valid for any operating day during the rest of this season."

Love,
Dolly. 🦋

Well it’s been a while. I don’t think I’ve been here since the pandemic…

A few notes:

This merger reminds me of when WWF bought WCW. WWF was considered the gold standard while WCW was dying. WCW still died but that lack of competition made WWF (now WWE) grow stagnant for the next 20 years.

I’m so glad to see others realize the impact of constantly giving away the gate. Even when Cedar Point first announced their $99 pass back in 2019, I said it was a bad business move. On Facebook I called it the Gold Pass Apocalypse. Don’t get me wrong I love a good deal as much as the next person but not at the expense of ruining something I love.

And also like I’ve been saying on Facebook, I miss Matt Ouimet. It’s nice to see others feel the same way.

As for Dollywood’s weather guarantee, SeaBreeze here in Rochester, NY has been doing that for years. If the majority of rides shut down due to rain for an hour, you are entitled to a rain check. You have to leave when you get the rain check, but it definitely counteracts a so-so weather forecast. Darien Lake did something similar between Six Flags reigns. They also did a short line guarantee; if you waited more than an hour for any ride they would give you a one-time exit pass to use on any ride. But they would blatantly lie, cheat, and steal to not honor those promises.

Dollywood operates their advertised operating hours, even if it rains and the crowd is low. They only close the park for true severe weather that puts people in danger. That’s saying something about how much they think of their customers if they’re willing to give a rain check on a rainy day when they keep the park open.

Griping about a business that won't stay open when they are likely losing money shows a complete lack of understanding about how the world works. That's great that Dollywood does that and I'm sure they are making up the money somewhere else, but I won't fault a park that shuts down when there are more employees on grounds than customers.

Um, let’s extend that:

”Sorry, folks, we have more crew on the plane than passengers; we’re going to stop in Chicago rather than continue to Los Angeles.”

”Sorry, we don’t have enough customers so we’re only showing half of today’s movie.”

”Sorry, the restaurant isn’t busy tonight so we’re taking your half-finished meals and you have to leave now.”

When I buy a ticket to an amusement park, and the park calendar says it will be open from 10 am to 9 pm, I expect it to be open to 9 pm. And if it doesn’t stay open, I expect a refund - and given that it cost me time to get there and money to park, good customer service would be to compensate me somehow for those things too.

Yes, yes, weather. But baseball games give rainchecks. Amusement parks should, too.

bigboy:

...a complete lack of understanding about how the world works.

Welcome to Coasterbuzz.

hambone:

And if it doesn’t stay open, I expect a refund

And I would bet that most if not all parks offer that.

I enjoyed all of your apples-oranges comparisons.

You literally wrote "Griping about a business that won't stay open when they are likely losing money shows a complete lack of understanding about how the world works." I gave you three examples of businesses where people expect it to stay open regardless of whether the business is making money. If you meant something else, you should have written something else.

hambone:

”Sorry, folks, we have more crew on the plane than passengers; we’re going to stop in Chicago rather than continue to Los Angeles.”

Been there done that, and had flights cancelled and combined. More than once. They don't even take off. It is always explained as "maintenance" but it is not hard to figure out what the real cause is when both flights were less than half full to begin with.

Thankfully (?) it's been a long time since that's happened. Delta has gotten very good at packing planes. I suspect some of that is non-rev standby but still.

Oh, and rain checks for baseball only happen if it doesn't make it out of the fifth inning.

Brian Noble:

Been there done that, and had flights cancelled and combined.

And it's totally legitimate to gripe about it, and people do, and airlines have about the worst reputation, other than amusement parks, that I know of. Such that there are laws requiring airlines to compensate customers when they do that.

As Brian pointed out, your airline example actually does happen.

I believe the other two are poor comparisons because of scale. A restaurant staying open when it's slow isn't losing money like a theme park with hundreds of employees. Maybe I should have said "theme park" instead of business.

And, again, I doubt theme parks are closing in these situations without offering a free return opportunity, especially to someone that asks.

Along the same lines, it seems like there's still complaints about parks limiting their hours more and more. I think, just like grocery stores not being open 24 hours and restaurants often closing before 10pm, parks took a hard look at when they were actually making money in the tough staffing times following COVID and figured out that closing 2 or more hours earlier was worth it in the long run.

I'm not so sure I remember a time where the regionals were open super late outside of events or maybe July 4. I don't know that covid meaningfully changed the hours and if it did I certainly haven't noticed.

Hard to give a free return opportunity with a season passholder, granted they can come whenever, but still, hours lost. What if these people spent 1-3 hours driving to a park only to get a day cut short. I personally don't much care if it rains provided it isn't a driving long term rain. A light rain, or cloudy all day rain occasionally conditions are great park days so I wouldn't hesitate to drive.

bigboy:

A restaurant staying open when it's slow isn't losing money like a theme park with hundreds of employees.

A restaurant running at or near capacity probably isn't generating the revenue that a theme park is when at/near capacity either. Scale works both ways.

One can bash me as much as they want for griping about these ghost weather closures at these parks, but the simple fact is it chases off customers. And that is bad business in the long run. It may be good for short term profits but not long-term profits as we are seeing now.

it also makes harder to hire quality employees. What quality employee wants their hours cut with no notice? Yeah, we hear the whining that they cannot staff the parks This is probably another driving force in Dollywood remaining open on a rainy day. They treat their employees with respect.

Once the customer knows there’s a chance of early closure because of low attendance (blaming the weather) they will not travel long distance to go to these locations if there’s any chance of Bad weather. Rain checks really don’t matter if people have traveled a distance to get there. it just means they have to spend a lot of money to go there again

Good example examples of the effect of this can be found within the same company. Carowinds is infamous for closing for low attendance. Despite all the millions of dollars invested in Carowinds recently. Kings Island on the other hand does not have this reputation and if one attends Kings Island on a rainy day, they will still find a decent crowd at the park.

Early closures further localizes the customers that attend the park. And local customers do not have to attend the park as long, eat at the park, etc., and are less likely to spend as much money at the park.

I do understand business and it is not a wise business plan to depend on perfect weather for profitability. It’s actually an idiotic business plan with as much money that is invested in these facilities. Plus factor in that they only install attractions for children and thrill riders. They can only operate a limited number of days of the year when school is out and the weather is perfect. It’s a horrible business plan.

ANY business that closes early repeatedly is a sign of failure. Upsetting customers (even a lower number of them) that are supporting the business is not a good business policy and will lead to a loss of sales.

There are better ways to handle cost cutting on bad weather days. Close the shops and restaurants that aren’t busy and allow employees to go home that want to go home. I think most customers and employees would be OK with that

Bottom line is that these early park closures show that they do not care about the customers. Their focus on season pass sales and pre-payments make them care less about the customers. This is one of the downfalls of the company. Depending on the season pass customers that don’t spend much at the park each visit.

This and other cost cutting strategies are not successful in attracting and retaining customers They are just a piece of the doom of this company at this time.

If this business plan is so wonderful go ahead and invest in company.

super7*:

Carowinds is infamous for closing for low attendance.

Granted, I do not live close to Charlotte, but yes, I hear about Carowinds closing early all the time. Once a week or more in reality.

Oh wait. That's only from you. Nowhere in any of the rollercoaster/park groups that I'm in have I heard this even once. Except from you. Your one bad day, which at this point was years ago, just keeps getting shoved in our faces.

No one controls the weather*, it can only be analyzed and predicted. Sometimes decisions to close parks early are made based on both the current weather and the next few hours' forecast. Sometimes flights get cancelled, even pre-cancelled, due to weather. Sports, concerts, etc.

Sucks

*I have occasionally made the sun rise in the west.

I advise that one follow the Carowinds Fans Only page on Facebook. One will see how many times in the season they close early. Many of the times they close early the park doesn’t even have the decency to post it on their own Facebook page. Probably because they have cut staff so much that the person responsible is in some other location.

https://www.facebook.com/sh...tid=wwXIfr

This page also post photos of the parking lot from the Sky tower that has a low number of vehicles (an eye estimate is 1000 range) most of the times except on a Saturday. that is on good weather days. That’s not a sign of a healthy park

Last week alone, they closed the park twice early at 5 PM two consecutive days. Last year in the month of June and early July they closed the park early something like 12 times.

But go ahead and keep bashing me and defending a company that’s failing because of the way they treat their customers…..

I've seen people not named super7 call out Carowinds early closing a few times on Reddit; they do seem to have a bad reputation for closing early.

Yeah, I can vouch as well, I’ve seen gripes from many more than one person about carowinds, and kings dominion, closing for weather that may or may not exist. So either super7 is running a decent bot farm, or, cedar flags is pissing off guests. I’d guess the latter.

Again, I understand that parks are outdoor businesses. I'm not saying they could or should try to make all entertainment or even most entertainment accessible during bad weather. What I'm saying is that if revenue is down because of bad weather, and we can expect more extreme weather going forward, and we've seen a reduction/removal of indoor or all-weather attractions...maybe we can return to some higher level of entertainment that can continue to run when weather is bad.

Doing this would have benefits even when it isn't raining. Back in the day, Disaster Transport was popular just because (at the time) it had working air conditioning. I remember riding Pirate Ride as a kid just to get out of the sun and it was actually quite fun (it closed at the end of that year). Anytime I'm at Dollywood, sometimes it's just nice to sit down and listen to music under a covered roof.

There isn't one big thing that's going to make the experiences at these parks better. It's a bunch of small things. Giving people shade is a small thing. Giving them entertainment is a small thing (my mom used to just sit in the picnic area because she didn't ride roller coasters. Lost revenue right there).

Or Six Flags can keep firing CEOs because it rained a lot (I say this jokingly)