the_man

If Universal successfully stops this development then the community should rally against whatever they have planned for Wet N Wild's spot.

The Pixar film is obviously a stop gap. I wonder if it's a direct result of other things (Shanghai/Avatar) being grossly over budget.

Interesting decision to make a big ride with a lift consisting entirely of tires in the state that gets the most rain in the country. I don't know of any coasters with the "tire lift" that run in even light rain.

Is it me or is Sea World really bad at announcing things? I am more confused about their strategy now than I was before. SWSD - no more stadium whale shows and maybe a hotel SWO - whale stadium show (for now at least), maybe a hotel, maybe a truck ride/dark ride sometime in the future? SWSA - whale stadium show to stay (for now at least), maybe a roller coaster sometime in the future? Other than the show leaving SWSD is any of this stuff actually official? They basically showed a bunch of pictures and said "this is the land we have to build stuff on, someday we might do that." I'm sure they have more detailed plans than they are letting the public know about but seriously what kind of announcement is that? Looks like they just wanted "Sea World" and "expansion" to be in the news.

The Blue World project is a huge waste of money. Before being canned Atchison basically handed each park a $100 million project that they could have used on other new attractions and now it's illegal to breed whales in California. Sea World doesn't have Disney or Comcast money to be lobbying so much and spending $100 million on something that may not work out, for the sake of their business long term IMO they should just stop breeding and move on.

There seems to be a theme here from the trip reports. 1 hour wait for fast food is obviously unacceptable no matter where you are or how busy the place is. Places like Cedar Point and sports stadiums can have 40,000 people in them and still keep food waits reasonable, it makes no sense why SFGAm can't do that. The sad thing is they are probably spending way more than they should be on their food service because of turnover. More turnover = less staff, more people that don't know what they're doing, and less experienced managers. In my opinion the pay isn't even that relevant because these kind of jobs are low pay everywhere. They need to ask themselves why they are having so many issues staffing the place and try to fix that.

Hulks renovation is not unprecedented, Disneyland did it to Space Mountain in 2005.

virtualglobetrotting.com/map/james-reid-andersons-house/view/bing/ An interesting note the CEO's estate is very close to Great America. I'm assuming he's moved to Texas since becoming CEO but the home is still owned by him, so I would think he visits SFGAm probably just as frequently if not more than any other park.

I think the only reason they are spending so much fixing the place up (again) is because having it be crappy is a huge black eye for the Walt Disney Company. I don't think Disney believes it has a great future like the American/Japanese/Chinese parks otherwise it would get a major new attraction at least once in awhile. Has this place ever made money on a somewhat consistent basis? The only reason it hasn't closed is because it would be a huge PR nightmare with all the job loses and all the government favors they got to build it.

Also another thing to remember about Six Flags is that for the past few years the company has actually been making money. So their current strategy (cheap season pass/sell lots of Flashpass/ads all over the place/build cheaper rides) seems to be working. Obviously it makes the parks feel more like money grabs than full fledged theme parks, but since it's making money I seriously doubt the CEO is going to change strategies. The shot callers aren't standing in lines in the park, they are in the back room looking at the amount of money they are making by selling more Flash Pass. I'm sure they get a lot of letters from people complaining, but like I said, with no competition it's just one of those things where people can either go to Six Flags and deal with it or not ride roller coasters (maybe a very small percentile will travel to CP instead, but those are a very small amount of statistical outliers).

Sounds like a classic example of being crappy due to lack of competition. There are 10 million people that live in Chicagoland alone, what incentive does Six Flags have to try and be good when the place is always jam packed anyway? If another park opened up in the area i'm sure you would see a big improvement, although that will never happen because SFGAm has such a huge head start and a big waterpark nobody has that kind of money to build something that would compete.

The fact is this is a big noticeable attraction that people will want to go hang out/drink at that's not Citywalk, and it's only a mile down the street from Universals precious future hotels where wet n wild is. The motive is pretty obvious here. The whole idea of "we support at a [substantially] smaller height" is BS, they know the developers not going to build at 200ft.

It's kind of funny, theme parks are always having to deal with nimby's but now that Universal is so successful they pull a 180 and are the nimby.

People with no conceptual understanding of elasticity of demand should not be allowed to be in this discussion because they are wasting everyone's time (including themself). Instead of babbling about something you know nothing about try to learn something about basic supply and demand. Do you really think Disney gives a **** if they price you out? It's their job to make money, not to make it affordable for everyone. It has nothing to do with your feelings, it has nothing to do with "Walt wanted it to be affordable for everyone," it has nothing to do with "i'm never going to see another Disney movie because their parks are so expensive" (which is BS). If their executives knowingly leave lots of money on the table guess what, they get fired. That's how it works.

An upper deck ticket for a Clippers game is usually around $60-70, and a lower deck seat is usually around, get this, $200-300!! For one 3 hour basketball game. And parking is between $15-25. I have no idea how expensive season tickets are but without knowing I still feel confident saying it's way more than I can afford or be willing to pay. But it doesn't matter because they will probably sell out anyway. You can't beat the ole supply and demand curve. Disney is probably under priced as well I was watching an interview with Bob Iger and he said they are not priced to elasticity.