Six Flags reports pre-merger results of legacy companies

I know my home park Fiesta Texas is always, always packed. They seem to be doing just fine financially. But it helps that they are located in a major metro area and a major vacation destination.

GoBucks89:

I don't know anything about Silver Dollar.

SDC sounds very similar to DollyW

Branson Mo. is a major vacation area in that part of the country.

Fiesta Texas seems to be the gem of the chain, and that's not a coincidence, given its leadership.

Jeff:

Your perception may matter to you, but if people are objectively spending money, your perception is a non-factor. I'm not even sure why you bring population into it. Even if any one market was in any significant decline, it doesn't mean there aren't people willing to spend money.

I'd suggest you reread my second post, as I admitted that I shouldn't have used "decline." And to deny that population matters is just ignorant. If the customer base you pull from is shrinking, you've got a problem.

It's not ignorant. The net population of the US, where the new Six Flags is spread out, is not going down. I'm not sure that it ever will. I'm quite informed, sir.

RCMAC:

Btw, people in Nashville go to Beech Bend, lol.

My bad. I had Nashville closer to Dollywood in my mind than it is. Thinking back on our trip, we started in the national park/Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, then headed south for a few days and stopped in Nashville for a day on our way home.

But I think destination status is huge. The more people you have coming near to where you are for reasons other than you, the more people you get who add a visit to you. Compared to Dollywood, I think Cedar Point gets a lot less of that. And destination status brings people with more willingness/ability to spend than day trippers.

I think I’ve lost track of what the argument is here, but I have to say that Lake Erie Shores and Islands reports an annual visitor count of 11 million. Ohio’s North Coast has been a destination for summertime leisure seekers for many, many decades and there’s plenty to do. And that should lead us to believe that at least some of those visitors also include a day at Cedar Point.
All visitors to Dollywood are visitors to Pigeon Forge. All visitors to SDC arrive in Branson. And Cedar Point visitors are on the Lake Erie shore. So one definitely feeds off of another. But at the same time there are millions of visitors to all three of those locales that have never and will never set foot in the famed, associated amusement parks.
So, honestly… what was it again now?

Probably something involving semantics.

Or seatbelts

Or sliders.

(whoever hits "or Maverick" on this one will be a hero)

It looks like the Six Flags legacy passes will be sold even cheaper than the Cedar Fair legacy passes according to this and they are allowing the old memberships to continue. Why they wouldn't even increase the price of the Six Flags passes by $10 to bring them a bit closer to the CF passes and even them out over the next few years is beyond me. They're already going to lose pass sale revenue from the people that formerly had both and now will only need one. I don't think this is a huge factor, but it's greater than zero.

We're on about year five or six of $99 passes at Cedar Point. The last few of these years have had some of the largest inflation in memory. Keeping top line revenue steady is losing because their costs for labor and goods have increased.

Maybe this is the Planet Fitness strategy of selling a ton of cheap passes in hopes that people don't use them. I still don't get it.

I think these execs and board extracted a sweet deal for themselves here and unless there is some trick they have up their sleaves to change the math, they've painted themselves into a corner and the likely outcome is bankruptcy within five years and the whole chain or at least many of the parks get sold for pennies on the dollar to pay debt. I don't think I'd be caught dead holding this as an individual stock the way these guys are running the business.

Maybe CP is expecting the lockers on TT2 to make up the difference from selling such cheap passes.

Detroit

Detroit has had population growth the last few years actually, it looks nothing like it did 15 years ago in most parts.

The last time Cedar Point offered the "regular" season pass was 2019. The pre-sale price in 2018 was $137. According to the government's CPI inflation calculator, $137 in September 2018 would be $170.50 in today's dollars. (June 2024 is the most recent I can get numbers for.) The regular season pass did not include parking, like the gold pass does. Additionally, before 2019, pre-buying a new season pass would only include one day in the old season. In other words, you could apply a day ticket in 2018 toward your 2019 pass, but you didn't get all of September and October, some of the busiest days of the season. Between inflation and the added benefits, I just don't understand how the pre-sale price of the gold pass isn't $199 - DOUBLE what they are charging.

Cedar Point makes up for all that lost pass $$ by their celery revenue . #bestdayever

With half price passes, attendance certainly hasn't doubled to compensate. And much of the rise in attendance over the years was by way of acquisition, most recently the Schliterbahn parks.

Well now they have delayed Georgia Surfer and Flash Vertical Velocity until next year… I wonder if they could add turntables to either?

I wonder if CF legacy management said why rush it? And I wonder if any pass holders will try and sue?

It is kind of a dirtbag thing to do…. New for 2024, roller coaster yada yada, then almost at the end of summer go ahead and say yeah, we are not ready to open cause we just want to take our time, new for 2025 instead.

TheMillenniumRider:

It is kind of a dirtbag thing to do

Legacy Six Flags would have continued to advertise a pile of dirt. At least the new company is setting things up for the possibility that the legacy Six parks will have their **** together in 2025.

Pile of dirt > Joker