Six Flags and Cedar Fair to Merge

[Mad Dog]

One major problem with Six Flags is that most of their parks, except for Knotts, sold out to the coaster craze and became primarily 'coaster parks'. Well, that worked for a while. But now the demographics have changed, and the Six Flags/Cedar Fair prime customers, teenagers and twenty somethings, are a declining demographic since family sizes started shrinking two decades ago, and have accelerated the shrink even more so now.
I remember when parks like Cedar Point, Paramount Kings in Cinn. before Cedar Fair, and even the competition's Sea World BGW were more balanced parks with lots of entertainment and non coaster attractions that would attract a larger, and older, demographic in addition to the youth..
Balance in parks is a plus. But the coaster parks got rid of the non coaster and entertainment attractions and became one dimensional. Now they pay
the piper. Their prime demographic doesn't have spending assets or spending power. The parks can only squeeze so much out of their bare wallets.
Heck, SF financial situation is so poor that they even have difficulty building unthemed new coasters, let alone a real theme park (Disney/Universal)
ride. Herschend has done better. Their parks remain balanced and I'm guessing that they might end up acquiring a couple of the best Six Flags parks.
They already bought Kennywood, though not really a regional park, but has always maintained a balanced attraction line up. A good buy there.

 

[kristenabelle]

One major problem with Six Flags is that most of their parks, except for Knotts, sold out to the coaster craze and became primarily 'coaster parks'. Well, that worked for a while. But now the demographics have changed, and the Six Flags/Cedar Fair prime customers, teenagers and twenty somethings, are a declining demographic since family sizes started shrinking two decades ago, and have accelerated the shrink even more so now.
I remember when parks like Cedar Point, Paramount Kings in Cinn. before Cedar Fair, and even the competition's Sea World BGW were more balanced parks with lots of entertainment and non coaster attractions that would attract a larger, and older, demographic in addition to the youth..
Balance in parks is a plus. But the coaster parks got rid of the non coaster and entertainment attractions and became one dimensional. Now they pay
the piper. Their prime demographic doesn't have spending assets or spending power. The parks can only squeeze so much out of their bare wallets.
Heck, SF financial situation is so poor that they even have difficulty building unthemed new coasters, let alone a real theme park (Disney/Universal)
ride. Herschend has done better. Their parks remain balanced and I'm guessing that they might end up acquiring a couple of the best Six Flags parks.
They already bought Kennywood, though not really a regional park, but has always maintained a balanced attraction line up. A good buy there.

I don't live far from SFGA, and haven't been there in almost a decade. I love Nitro too, but I can't do a full day of coasters anymore

 

[SkiBum]

One major problem with Six Flags is that most of their parks, except for Knotts, sold out to the coaster craze and became primarily 'coaster parks'. Well, that worked for a while. But now the demographics have changed, and the Six Flags/Cedar Fair prime customers, teenagers and twenty somethings, are a declining demographic since family sizes started shrinking two decades ago, and have accelerated the shrink even more so now.
I remember when parks like Cedar Point, Paramount Kings in Cinn. before Cedar Fair, and even the competition's Sea World BGW were more balanced parks with lots of entertainment and non coaster attractions that would attract a larger, and older, demographic in addition to the youth..
Balance in parks is a plus. But the coaster parks got rid of the non coaster and entertainment attractions and became one dimensional. Now they pay
the piper. Their prime demographic doesn't have spending assets or spending power. The parks can only squeeze so much out of their bare wallets.
Heck, SF financial situation is so poor that they even have difficulty building unthemed new coasters, let alone a real theme park (Disney/Universal)
ride. Herschend has done better. Their parks remain balanced and I'm guessing that they might end up acquiring a couple of the best Six Flags parks.
They already bought Kennywood, though not really a regional park, but has always maintained a balanced attraction line up. A good buy there.

Kings Island has added some more balance but I do agree about the majority of parks. Cedar Point is a coaster park, although I would submit that it never had any qualms about being so. The Point is also consistently busy. This just feels like an overstretched company who cannot maintain, either due to capital or due to management style, the parks. Maybe Cedar Fair was in bad financial shape but this was a poor merger, particularly for the park goers. Herschend has a few larger parks but most of the parks are manageable.

SF will probably promote a former SF manager to CEO and the parks will suffer. From the moment this deal was announced, I figured that Kings Island would start to get back into the same shape it was prior to Cedar Fair when Paramount was letting everything fall apart.

 

[AvoidTIMtation]

We'd be here all day talking about the horrible decisions Six Flags has made over the years. My least favorite era being the one where they said they'd add a new attraction to every park every year, which forced them into a corner with random carnival ride additions. But I honestly think their recent investments and additions (at least at their bigger and better performing parks) have been pretty good. While places like Darien Lake and St Louis will definitely be closed or sold off sooner than later, the major parks will be fine. Six Flags and Cedar Fair will always be regional amusement parks so I'll never expect anything other than that. However I still continue to *hate* the fact that they'll be holding the DC License hostage for the next several decades though.

 

[UniversalRBLX]

I think the parks need to go back and improve on the existing experience versus adding new marketable attractions.

Theme parks used to be nice areas to just be in, roam around and enjoy entertainment and dining. Now entertainment is rare and dining options are absolutely disgusting in quality and price. Made it to Cedar Point a few weeks ago, and the busiest area of the park on my visit was the nicest/more pleasurable area to be in (Frontier Town) that also offered the best food quality in the park, go figure.

If the parks gave a similar level of attention to place-making (doesn't mean Disney/Universal-esque theming, just creating a nice environment), they wouldn't be struggling as much.

Knott's is a perfect blend of nicely themed areas with traditional amusement rides.

This might be a controversial point, but some of the larger parks would probably benefit more from replacing or improving existing experiences versus simply adding more.

 

[Mad Dog]

Kings Island has added some more balance but I do agree about the majority of parks. Cedar Point is a coaster park, although I would submit that it never had any qualms about being so. The Point is also consistently busy. This just feels like an overstretched company who cannot maintain, either due to capital or due to management style, the parks. Maybe Cedar Fair was in bad financial shape but this was a poor merger, particularly for the park goers. Herschend has a few larger parks but most of the parks are manageable.

SF will probably promote a former SF manager to CEO and the parks will suffer. From the moment this deal was announced, I figured that Kings Island would start to get back into the same shape it was prior to Cedar Fair when Paramount was letting everything fall apart.

I think Cedar Point, even though they went too full cycle on coasters and tore down, or decreased, all the other fun stuff that used to
be Cedar Point, will survive and end up being bought by someone substantial. Cedar Point is not just a park, but it's a full vacation destination.
But it would be better served if it got back in balance. I loved Cedar Point when I went in the 1970's, 1980's, and even early 90's....but hated it when @UK-Trigg and
I visited a few years ago. CP was on his bucket list for a US visit, and he was greatly disappointed, even though he's a coaster fanatic. But he
wanted more than just coasters on hot sun baked concrete.
and to @UniversalRBLX point. Yes Frontier Land is the best section of the park....but it was even much better when it was almost Diagon like in the past. It was fully woods enclosed and isolated, and you didn't have all the visual interruptions like now. It also had enough demonstration and
live entertainment that you could spend hours upon hours there. And there was a Jungle Cruise type ride near it through the swampy forested area
that's now just a mass of hot concrete and a coaster or two.

 

[AvoidTIMtation]

I think the parks need to go back and improve on the existing experience versus adding new marketable attractions.

Theme parks used to be nice areas to just be in, roam around and enjoy entertainment and dining. Now entertainment is rare and dining options are absolutely disgusting in quality and price. Made it to Cedar Point a few weeks ago, and the busiest area of the park on my visit was the nicest/more pleasurable area to be in (Frontier Town) that also offered the best food quality in the park, go figure.

If the parks gave a similar level of attention to place-making (doesn't mean Disney/Universal-esque theming, just creating a nice environment), they wouldn't be struggling as much.

Knott's is a perfect blend of nicely themed areas with traditional amusement rides.

This might be a controversial point, but some of the larger parks would probably benefit more from replacing or improving existing experiences versus simply adding more.

But I think that's the difference between major theme parks and regional ones. The exact same people are going to these parks over and over, multiple times a year, some even more than that. So I think the need to add attractions more often than not makes sense.

Disney/Universal can go several years without adding anything because the majority of guests go several years between each visit.

 

[Mad Dog]

a BTTF....Back in the mid 70's I was a district manager for Radio Shack and I lived in Toledo, Ohio and then Monroe Michigan, so Cedar
Point was just a fairly short drive. My wife and I would go there at least a dozen times each summer. The park was always crowded.
And for those unfamiliar, there's also a nice sand beach and park hotel right on Lake Erie. It was a long time midwest vacation destination and
was built in the 19th century. The amusement park was well balanced with attractions and live entertainment in a heavily forested, great
ambiance setting.
And guess how many coasters the park had in the 1970's. The closest substantial park was Kennywood with it's four
classic coasters. Cedar Point had......'ONE' coaster..........and CP was packed daily with family visitors of all age demographics. ........ Yes, CP
needed to go with the trend in the last three decades and build some coasters for the expanding teen audience, but they went too
far out of balance, and now with a quickly declining teen demographic, they really need to achieve some balance.

 

[Jerroddragon]

Would making some sort of light show help?

Like Universal castle show

I know its not a golden bullet but would some sort of light show at that scale help some of these parks to keep people staying until the nighttime at some of these parks during the peak seasons? That along with more live music would be welcome

 

[Mad Dog]

Six Flags has some real wishful thinking. They want to get their per guest spend up to $100, BUT they still
go after the teen/early 20's demographic that is economically challenged. It makes no real business sense.
They really need to get all their parks in balance to attract a wider, better economics, demographic. Giving the
store away to super cheap season passes just gets you more of the same demo with no money.

 

[UniversalRBLX]

But I think that's the difference between major theme parks and regional ones. The exact same people are going to these parks over and over, multiple times a year, some even more than that. So I think the need to add attractions more often than not makes sense.

Disney/Universal can go several years without adding anything because the majority of guests go several years between each visit.

Well even the regional parks go years without anything substantial. Not saying to complete eliminate investment towards new coasters, but I think the years between major investments should provide smaller investment towards improving existing park infrastructure, entertainment, etc.

When it comes to Six Flags, they struggle because the don't create a welcoming environment for their guests. The fact that SF charges cheap admission and passes, and yet struggles attendance wise is pretty telling that it's not a pricing issue but a quality issue. I love coasters, but I can't enjoy them when I'm forced to wait 45-60 minutes for each one with horrendous operations. If I don't want to ride a coaster, I'm out of luck if a park doesn't offer something else beyond them.

Six Flags has some real wishful thinking. They want to get their per guest spend up to $100, BUT they still
go after the teen/early 20's demographic that is economically challenged. It makes no real business sense.
They really need to get all their parks in balance to attract a wider, better economics, demographic. Giving the
store away to super cheap season passes just gets you more of the same demo with no money.

Bingo. You're also not going to increase per capita if your guests are stuck in queues thanks to horrendous park ops. There's a market/demand for places the entire family can experience together at a reasonable price as long as the quality is there.

I don't think the parks intentionally want long queues, they just don't want to invest in their employees and give them the right level of compensation/training.

 

[Jake S]

I just don't think the profit motive driving an enormous conglomerate like New Six Flags is compatible with operating theme parks that are in tune with the incredibly diverse locales that they exist in. It has to be homogenized. It has to be cheap. It has to cut corners. It can't allow local control, because that defeats the purpose of conglomeration in the first place.

It stinks out loud!

 

[UniversalRBLX]

I just don't think the profit motive driving an enormous conglomerate like New Six Flags is compatible with operating theme parks that are in tune with the incredibly diverse locales that they exist in. It has to be homogenized. It has to be cheap. It has to cut corners. It can't allow local control, because that defeats the purpose of conglomeration in the first place.

It stinks out loud!

I'll be honest, I thought combining SF and CF could have worked out assuming it was done to streamline corporate/business functions and operate the parks at a more regional/local level with the best of each business taking over the other similar department. Boy was I wrong.

 

[Jake S]

I think the merger may very well make the company more efficient; that's indisputably The Benefit of capitalism. But that certainly doesn't guarantee things will get better!

 

[AvoidTIMtation]

Six Flags has some real wishful thinking. They want to get their per guest spend up to $100, BUT they still
go after the teen/early 20's demographic that is economically challenged. It makes no real business sense.
They really need to get all their parks in balance to attract a wider, better economics, demographic. Giving the
store away to super cheap season passes just gets you more of the same demo with no money.

I think they're fully aware of the reputation for being the teen hangout spot and were trying to change that. I remember the previous CEO said they wanted to increase prices for that very reason, basically to keep the riff raff out, along with the chaperone policies. But the problem is these parks are what they are, and they have way too many of them. The only way heavily investing in them in a way to make them a more premium experience would work if they had *way less* parks than they have now. Unlike the major vacation destination parks, they can't charge a premium price or people will just stop going and they'd be in an even worse financial situation than they are now.

 

[DeadSexeh]

When it comes to new additions they are doing it right. Look at things like kings dominion expedition area, kings islands adventure express area, they are nice areas. The food has been greatly improving. The big missteps are the shorting of hours and season.

They need to keep entry prices higher to change the demo from teens and daycare service to a family client. This means they have to suffer several years with lower income, which i don't know if they can weather the storm. It takes time to change the perception of the product. They probably should have dropped the six flags name due to the stigma it has, if they wanted to go the nicer park route. I just hope they don't give up on the model of quality food and beautifying areas of parks like they currently are doing.

 

[HandsomePete]

One major problem with Six Flags is that most of their parks, except for Knotts, sold out to the coaster craze and became primarily 'coaster parks'. Well, that worked for a while. But now the demographics have changed, and the Six Flags/Cedar Fair prime customers, teenagers and twenty somethings, are a declining demographic since family sizes started shrinking two decades ago, and have accelerated the shrink even more so now.

Nailed it, and also add to this that kids are content to hang out indoors playing games online with their friends, TikTok, etc. There’s so much more competing for teens’ time these days that getting dropped off at a theme park has dropped way off compared to the 90s/00s.

Just to underline how bad it’s gotten for Six Flags, you can currently buy a Kings Dominion 2026 gold pass for $95 that includes the remainder of this year, Fright Fest, the recently added November days (RIP Winterfest), and all of next year… oh and it’s good at all 40+ parks. Granted it’s pretty much impossible to go to all of them, but when you’re valuing your park annual passes at about $2 per park something has gone really wrong.

 

[Southerncoasterer]

My 2 cents. This merger was done in order to streamline both companies. They DO NOT intend to run 40 theme parks. Expect several parks to go bye bye in one way or another, as the long term intention is to keep their core parks with one or two mid tier parks that make money without major investments.

The next CEO will be someone that can help them make that transition. If you don't see major investments and upgrades at your local park, it may be because it's on the chopping block.

 

[AvoidTIMtation]

My 2 cents. This merger was done in order to streamline both companies. They DO NOT intend to run 40 theme parks. Expect several parks to go bye bye in one way or another, as the long term intention is to keep their core parks with one or two mid tier parks that make money without major investments.

The next CEO will be someone that can help them make that transition. If you don't see major investments and upgrades at your local park, it may be because it's on the chopping block.

I definitely agree with this

 

[HandsomePete]

My 2 cents. This merger was done in order to streamline both companies. They DO NOT intend to run 40 theme parks. Expect several parks to go bye bye in one way or another, as the long term intention is to keep their core parks with one or two mid tier parks that make money without major investments.

That’s 100% the point. They’ve already announced that Six Flags America outside DC is closing. The issue is that while there will be forced efficiencies at a corporate level and efficiencies if they can take rides from closed parks to add to others, they’re just going to be walking away from markets from a revenue side. Sure they’ll sell SFA to a condo/subsivision developer, but there’s basically no overlap between that park’s anttendance and KD despite being only 100 miles apart. I think they’re just going to end up as a smaller company that is no more profitable than the individual parts were before.