Snyder named chair of Six Flags board, directors still looking to sell company

that's my point. the redskins on the field are huge draw win or lose. the team is a monopoly. desire is extremely high regardless of the record. so to praise snyder for his business success is naive. and to believe that since he made more money on an nfl team than the previous owner he can succeed with sf is also short-sighted. what you can expect is the business to become more profitable without giving the guests (fans) a better product. in fact, he has said some scary stuff, like that bad weather is no excuse for poor attendance. while this is true in the nfl, it is obviously not true with theme parks. do you go to sf in the rain? do you go to a redskins game in the rain? if you're a busy mom with 2 busy kids and you plan for a week to go to sfa, then it rains, can you simpy just go the next week, or is there a good chance you're not going to go at all? how does he plan to recoup those visits? my issue is that he knows less about theme parks then he did about the nfl and the nfl is a simple venture to succeed at in the 21st century.
*** This post was edited by dcb1008 12/2/2005 5:42:47 PM ***

Ask the Rams, Raiders, Oilers and Raves (previously Browns) if they were able to succeed in the NFL without moving. I don't think the NFL is so easy to succeed at.

Weather? Kiernan Burke blamed poor weather for a failing SF for several seasons. Then when the weather finally did turn ugly no one believed him.

Before Snyder was owner of the Redskins, at the age of 34 I believe, he ran a extremely succesfull marketing company. He is been an adult for 20 years. He's accomplished a lot, including being the youngest owner of an NFL team at the age of 34.

What's going to happen with SF?

Ticket Prices: Yes, they will go up but remain competitive with competing parks.

Season Pass Prices: I hope you bought your Season Pass at the rock bottom price of $55. That's the last you will see of it. Expect Season Pass Prices to go up. If the passes stay as a all parks for the price as one, expect that fact to be exploited. I see this possibly become a two tier pass.

Premium Pass that includes all SF parks for $150
Single Park pass for $75

Parking: Slight increase unless the lots are overflowing and parking is a premium. Then he will exploit the parking price.

Season Pass Parking: Are you kidding me? I pay $30 now. I pay for that in three trips. I see season parking going up alot. I don't know how much, but alot.

Concessions: Marginal increase. You can't increase to much or people will just tailgate. You want to keep these people inside the parks eating. BTW, expect concessions to be farmed out with a improvement in service.

New Attractions: He's already said expect smaller, inexpensive family attractions the next several years. He'll listen to the more experience people around him when it comes to this.

Real Estate... I hope he doesn't sell parks off like SFA. If he sells the land off around the parks expect a disclosure in the paperwork explaining your buying a home next to amusement park and expect the noise. I think it's just to early to tell on this one. I suspect if Burke and Co thought he was going to close parks Burke would've used that as a rallying point.

Coasterguts, I have to agree with you on some of these issues..

Season pass increase is fine so long as it is like you said...Around $150 for an all park pass, $75 for a single park. Not at all to expensive if you ask me.

Parking is one I will say that if it was no more than say $50 for a season pass parking, I'd still pay it. But here again, don't try to rape the public, otherwise you will drive them away. Same for one day parking. $25 may be justifiable at a Redskins game, but don't even consider it for an amusement park. As for the premium parking, I think that idea sucks, but I guess there will be people willing to pay it. Not me.

Food...You hit it on target. If it goes up too much more, people will just go to their coolers in the car. Especially families with smaller children.

New attractions...I agree with you, don't look for anything major for a few years except maybe at the bigger parks.

Now comes the hot topic, real estate. I don't care what kind of clause or disclaimer or ammendment you put in, if they sell off property to raise money and someone builds homes there, you will have these new home owners fight them at every level possible. I've seen it too many times, especially in Maryland. I recall about 10 years or so ago, in northwest Baltimore Co where a hog farm was downsized and much of the property sold off to a developer to build homes, but the hog farm continued to operate. The home owners knew there was a hog farm when they bought their homes and they had all signed disclosures acknowledging the hog farm. After about 3 years the homeowners had had enough of the noise and smell of the hog fam and sued. Guess who won? It wasn't porky pig, that's for sure. You may be right that it's too early to tell, but if it does happen, you can expect that any park will be limited to any future expansion. That's just a sad reality of todays world with the "npt in my back yard" mentality.

The above post is from me. For some reason my screen name didn't show up.

To suggest a 2-tier season pass structure isn't a good idea. Well, the idea itself is a good idea until you look at the competition - Cedar Fair and Paramount both offer all-parks-with-your-pass features (the only exception is CF with GL/CP because of proximity). Anyone know about Busch parks?

Busch has a two tier pass. A Platinum Pass gets you into all of the Busch Parks. Then a regular pass will get you into wha tever park you purchase it at. I think this is chainwide, I know for sure it's the deal with BGW.

"Real Estate... I hope he doesn't sell parks off like SFA."

Highly Unlikely. I could be wrong, but time will tell. What I could see closing is some parks that aren't even flagged, including The Great Escape Lodge. Yet I can't say which of those unflagged parks are performing well.

"If he sells the land off around the parks expect a disclosure in the paperwork explaining your buying a home next to amusement park and expect the noise."

Highly Likely. Didn't Burke mention selling of some land next to SFA in the SQ Conference Call? In anyway since Snyder is now on board, that land will still be sold anyway. Only time will tell.

*** This post was edited by SF Critic 12/2/2005 10:06:04 PM ***

You guys are funny, can't we just wait and see what happens instead of damning Snyder before he even gets a chance?

The one thing i've noticed during all of this is, most of you know nothing about him or his past business ventures. So to be so critical is just short sighted. He made enough in the past to buy the Skins for 300 Million, so he must have done something right.

Are there going to be big changes? Yes, SF is in deep trouble and is in need of a major overhaul, this oversized behemoth of a Co. is due for some sliming.

Will prices go up? They should, here in SoCal MM and USH are the only parks with rock bottom price Passes. Theres no money in that, ask Disney.The premium AP has gone up $150 since 2001 and people still buy them.

Clean up the parks, make them safe and enjoyable for the whole family. That's where the money is. The teenagers don't have the money, the parents do.

Of course this is all IMHO. ;)

Is it that hard to take cues from HW on how to run a park right?

Years ago, my brother who lives in the MD/suburban DC area told me about this arrogant ass who bought the Redskins and was going around acting like a spoiled child. So, no I don't personally know Mr. Snyder, but I heard of his reputation long before he became involved with Six Flags.

I have no problem with raising the price of season passes or things like that. And I'm all for increasing the family-friendly atmosphere. I don't even have a problem with the brand name partnering (to a degree) since we pretty much see similar things at other parks, sports and entertainment venues.

But with the addition of Shapiro, I can see SF parks turning into expanded ESPN zones. What I mean by that is constant, incessant brand exposure and also an explosion of upcharge attractions. It wouldn't surprise me to ultimately see a "tiered" park experience, where the type and amount of attractions a person has access to depends on how much they are willing to shell out. Maybe it works in a pro sports stadium where you can have everything from skyboxes to cheap nosebleed seats.

If it happens, I'll say I told you so. If it doesn't, I'll be glad to be proven wrong.

coasterguts I disagree with most of your points.

Ticket prices will stay in line with their competition. I can't see them increasing much outside of inflation.

Your two-tier system has an ineffective pricing gap. $75 sounds right, but $150 doesn't. It's not luring enough for the people that only went in to pay $75. Furthermore, I'm sure if you looked at the figures, total visits per year would not be too different for guests who only visit their home park against those who visit others in the chain, and as such it wouldn't be a real financial burden to have guests visiting multiple parks.

With parking, theme parks don't have the same constraints that a stadium does - it's not at nearly the same premium. There's no way that parking season passes would cost more than a third of the total pass cost - back to the pricing gap thing.

Food can't change really. The margins on this will have been already finely tuned. The administration and management teams at the parks don't just sit there doing nothing until a new coaster comes along you know.

I agree with the family rides, but I think that is the logical step Six Flags needs to take. You only need to look at Paramount or Cedar Fair to see that $15 million coasters aren't the solution to everything.

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It wouldn't surprise me to ultimately see a "tiered" park experience, where the type and amount of attractions a person has access to depends on how much they are willing to shell out.

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SF already does this. It's called Q-bot. ;)

New Attractions: He's already said expect smaller, inexpensive family attractions the next several years. He'll listen to the more experience people around him when it comes to this.

Why is everyone complaining about this? Why? Almost Every single Six Flags park needs smaller, inexpensive (did he actually say that?) FAMILY attractions to get things in a better position. Six Flags needs family rides. And if you really think that since Dan Snyder is in there now, they're not going to build any coasters and what not, remember, he may be on the board, but there are 4 other members that have no affiliation with Snyder.

I hope they cut back. I think this year, purchase wise, was a good year for Six Flags. Four coasters, with quite a few other types of expansion. Perhaps the focus will be on improving the Family experience.

That wasn't a complaint Tekno. I'm just pointing out he will listen to the advice of others. I'll stand up and be the first to admit my home park doesn't need another coaster. Family attractions, yes, flats that run consistently, yes. A new coaster, unless it's a family coaster like a mine train, no.

I see the smaller parks being sold.

then sfmm and gadv being turned into disney and universal studios type parks.

thats what i see out of it. because there would be no way that they will sell gadv. unless cedar fair buys it or disney . That park has the potential to be an awesome park.

Remember i said the potential.

How do you Disneize Great Adventure. Disney isn't synonymous with record breaking roller coasters and thrill rides.

Actually, Guts, I knew you weren't complaining, but many others are complaining about it.

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Your two-tier system has an ineffective pricing gap. $75 sounds right, but $150 doesn't. It's not luring enough for the people that only went in to pay $75.

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Actually, look at the Busch parks. BGT sells "Fun Cards" for somewhere in the $65 range, but to get access to other parks in the chain, its $300 (2 years).

Even at $150 it pays for itself in three visits once you account for admission plus various passholder discounts.

*still holds hopes for a chain-wide parking pass*

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I recall the top Busch passes have many additional bonuses for the holder which create this additional value.

They do have some additional benefits. But the Busch passes don't get you into 20+ parks either.
*** This post was edited by coasterguts 12/4/2005 3:23:13 PM ***