OFortuna

As said, Discovery Kingdom was purchased in 2007. It can't operate year round and it sits on about the most expensive real estate available in the chain. SFA's a popular pick when it comes to doomy futures too. Nothing's worse than SFKK. They closed a huge chunk of the park off and just didn't run it this past year in addition to the massive accident last year.

Option 1: Tap into revolving credit (which is where they get their budgets from). Option 2: Sell parks. Option 3: Chapter 11. If they couldnt afford to pay dividens for years and theyre in huge amounts of debt its not like they have $300mil sitting around. Then again if theres one thing SF has been good at its putting off the inevitable. I always look to Euro Disney as an example of how a park can manage huge debt for long periods of time and still stay operational. The problems: -Credit market is atrocious. State governments are begging for money from the government. Imagine being a company saddled with enormous debt and no clear method as to how to pay it off. -Euro Disney found someone to throw in capital to keep the show running in the middle east. Given the state of the economy at the present moment, its a bit unlikely that foreign capital is gonna come flying in for Six Flags. -Someone mentioned how its a great buyer's market in real estate. It is! The problem for Six Flags then is that the land their parks are on is worth less too. That means their assets aren't worth as much, which means they can't get as much out of them when relying on them to get credit, of which there is precious little for them to get. Reality check: Six Flags, at its peak, had 47 properties making money for it. It now has 26. The chain has been cut in half, but the debt wasn't because the value of the assets they sold, in general, was nowhere near what they had paid for them or had invested in them. The original executive team ran out of the company with millions of dollars in the bank and the stockholders and park goers have gotten brutally shafted. It should be no surprise then that the company was built on the work of real estate investors looking for a quick buck given how things have turned out. In short, you can expect bankruptcy. And as others have said, it is indeed possible to go through a restructuring and come out alive. However, it is not possible for the Six Flags you see in existence today to come out the Six Flags that survives a Chapter 11. If they enter bankruptcy, and make no mistake, they will enter bankruptcy, they will need to eliminate assets as part of the restructuring. Their assets are amusement parks, and the ones that are sold will be sold to anyone, including people who have no interest in running an amusement park. I would honestly tell you that if you have interest in visiting Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom or Discovery Kingdom in 2009 to probably put off booking that airfare until the last possible moment.

I openly laugh at the idea that there will be financial aid to assist people who bought $40,000 cars and want to still drive them. But ignoring that, let me answer your primary question. If we boycotted gas for one day, there would be no change unless (and this is a big unless) people decided to, you know, do something other than drive their car. People are in denial about what is happening and are in many cases refusing to do that. Not that many of them have a choice. I wouldn't mind taking public transportation to work, but the savings off $30 a month at the cost of over three hours of my day in transit on one of the most pathetic busing systems around doesn't fit my needs at the moment. Of course, we could invest money into that rather than try and cut gas taxes (who wants to be the politician who says the "holiday" is over on Labor Day?) or save stupid people's mortgages, but that will not happen.

Except that wouldn't solve his problem because the DVD's are shot on DV, which isn't HD. Many HD camcorders us DV for the recording medium. I know Sony's records on MiniDV in 1080i.

No offense to her, but I'm not even remotely the kind of person who watching Entertainment Tonight style pap, and I know that the reason she's getting to wear million dollar shoes is for the promotion of the shoe maker. Same reason she's probably going to get a really nice dress for free for the night. Its all so you can say the name of the designer who gave them to you when asked by reporters (which will probably preceed questions about Juno) on the red carpet.

She didn't. Designers use shows like the Oscars to put their name out by loaning celebrities enormously expensive items to wear on the red carpet. edit: Beaten to the punch by seconds.

Crook is a longtime internet troll who uses any opportunity he can get to make people angry at him. He went on Hannity and Colmes once claiming the Holocaust never happened, faked his death a couple times, et al.

Cool and Fresh is infamous. That ride is actually something like 7 years old and spent several years in testing. The rumor was that when it ran for it initial TUV certification it pulled something like 12 positive G's and got shelved for a few years.

Russia is a logistical nightmare to get in and out of due to visa restrictions placed on US citizens. Even a cursory look will make this clear. Its a really poor choice right now for independent travel.

Someone else mentioned the possibility of charges due to spending overseas. A lot, if not most, credit cards are charging a 1% fee for any transaction that occurs overseas. Additionally, you might want to notify your bank and credit card company that you plan on using your cards while you're overseas. Having a bunch of sudden transactions in Europe can lead to them putting a stop on your card, and that can lead to things that are not fun. Otherwise, enjoy yourself and take some pictures of DUS's super cool suspended monorail.

Yeah, the dude who sells amusement rides for a living is getting his info from the Dippin Dots man. Lurk and learn.

Of course. Which is why both rides saw major restraint redesigns, and Knott's ultimately bought new boats.

Maybe you should double check your facts before defaming the dead.

I can't believe some of the answers around here. Heck, New Pleasurewood Hills was mentioned but not as a candidate. That place was an utter joke when I went 5 years ago. It reminded me of Camden or Williams Grove. PNE Playland has a fun wood coaster, but that's all-she-wrote. The rest of the park looks like its a parking lot.

Its upscale for park food. You're not gonna confuse it with a Michelin two star or anything, though. Its a decent meal, and a nice alternative to burgers and fries. WDW is, in my mind, the clear winner. Its really not close at all. Every style of cuisine, most of them extremely well prepared, with dining options that simply don't exist in other amusement park settings (namely, Victoria and Albert's and California Grill).

Six Flags is already a national brand, whereas NASCAR was a regional sport attempting to expand. That's probably the biggest difference in comparing the two right there. Not only that, you'd be hard pressed to find people in the 18-34 demographic in this country who live near a Six Flags and are not aware of its existence, but would go only if there were Wii's set up. Back to NASCAR: the fact that they offered advertising space for an array of items didn't in and of itself make them more popular in the US. People aren't going to watch NASCAR merely because Jeff Gordon was in Pepsi commercials. NASCAR used the expansion of TV and the additional time given to them by cable networks to build their brand up on a national basis, and once they did that, they had the cache to make more demands, have more races, and so on. That they offered to have the names of their races be bid on much like most professional team stadiums wasn't a factor, as they had been doing that already since the 1960s. edit: To put it all in a better sense, Six Flags is not anticipating seeing an increase in attendance from having stations featuring Wiis on display. They are anticipating the same attendance based on their other rides and so on, but additonal money coming in from Nintendo thanks to using other wise poorly used space or space that was not providing income and putting it in use as marketing space for Nintendo (who pays them for the property they use). It has nothing to do with building new market share.

People don't watch NASCAR because its sponsored by major corporations anymore than people watch American Idol for the Pepsi commercials. That said, its extra money in Six Flags' pocket, and they can rip out stuff that didn't make money like benches and put Wiis everywhere. Which will be great, until half of them don't work. Perhaps Wii will become a new QBot attraction?

Good man. Last one I attended was the International Fighting League Final at Mohegan Sun about two weeks ago. I hope you're equally stoked for the arrival of Cro-Cop....

The people named from PARC are not people I'd get real excited about if they were running my home park. They nearly sank Visionland and Jazzland when they were in charge there.

Can't believe I missed this until now. Good lord. In any case, big ups to visiting Lumpini Stadium, given that its been one of my big travel goals for the next 5 years. Any idea who was fighting when you went, or at least a date so I can figure out who was fighting? Heh.

The park industry in Asia, particularly in booming economies like India and China, have very few ties to the West, so getting information about new facility development would be tremendously difficult. Just last year, clones of S:UF, Thorpe's Colossus, a Motorbike coaster, a Screaming Squirrel, among others, were built and opened in China.

The parks closing in Japan is no big surprise. The economy there has been in a downturn for a long time, and many of the parks that closed were rumored to be in trouble (rightfully so) for a long time. I remember rumors that even Parque Espana was in trouble. Concievably, it still could be, for all I know. That parks in the US are closing is no big surprise either. Six Flags' struggles were known for years and I think a lot of people had accepted that at some point the debt would catch up with them. With places like Williams Grove, well....if you had been to Williams Grove, you'd understand why.

The choice of the Hard Rock property isn't simply because its available. The hotel/casino sitting on the Seminole's property is the brand new (or, at least, really close to brand new) Seminole Hard Rock/Casino-Hotel. Their chief interest in the name/properties is the gaming aspect, as most of the Seminoles' current interests revolve around that. For instance, also this week, their promotional fight group Warrior's Boxing recieved their license to promote shows in Las Vegas. Its probably not a coincidence that it was announced that they now own the Hard Rock there as well. As for the park, I wouldn't worry. Its too far ahead with too many contracts on the table for them to give up suddenly. This has likely been several years in the making.