DirkFunk

The park operated as much for fun as for profit for the owners. When a few business closed up locally (I think their biggest group of the year was a RV construction company) in '08, they basically quit along with them. At this point, you'd be buying a couple beat up rides that haven't operated regularly in years, Afterburner, and empty cages for the tigers that ended up at a sanctuary. I've been past a few times in the years after closing and I just don't see what you're gonna do with a Bayern Kurve that has parts laying all over the ground.

Cedar Point 2015: Sell the park immediately to whomever can spend the most for it. Cash out stock options. Buy $100 million dollars worth of weed. 2016: Get high 2017: Get high 2018: Get high 2019: Get high

I grew up with Riverside and it was far worse run than under Six Flags. JMHO. Also I don't think there was much in terms of smoke and mirrors that they had to do to get investment bankers to go with it. They had some money already and a host of parks that at least at first appearance were successful. Six Flags was a brand in the industry with cache and a ton of mature amusement parks printing money so long as they didn't screw them up too badly. Nothing about it on paper should have been a massive failure. But they spent the money in all the wrong ways, and well, you know the end result.

Warner Bros. was definitely imperfect, but Premier's interest in SFOT leading to them finding financing for the whole chain when it was made available to them led to lots and lots of terrible.

The theme doesn't appear to be BMX based but more cycling (i.e. Tour De France) based. Either way, uhhh, interesting choice? Did whoever it was who picked rides for the Paramount parks get hired on at SeaWorld?

It doesn't matter how good I think a megalite or Maverick (which, ostensibly, YOLO is their equivalent of) are or could be at Magic Mountain in my argument. And Cedar Fair had a hellacious time trying to market Maverick because it lacked those grabbing "firsts" and records. They have trouble marketing anything. Megalites are great ideas for smaller parks IMO (or a place without a larger equivalent ride, like Knotts), but for a place like Magic Mountain, it doesn't fit. They have a huge non-looping steel coaster.

The "ehhhhh" rides would be a notch better, if theming, landscaping, etc.....were maintained (like a Busch Gardens let's say). I don't think locals want to pay prices comparable to Busch admission prices that allow for such theming and upkeep. Is it that locals won't pay the prices or that they've been conditioned not to over the years?

Chance has been very clear that Lightning Run was their's and an entry point/demonstrator that they can built big coasters. As for a Megalite at SFMM....I have no idea how they market that successfully. "Come ride this crazy coaster without loops! OK, Goliath doesn't have them either and this is half as tall, but still, please come ride it!"

The Beast is the classic example. Aside from that - Mindbender at Edmonton (every aspect is overrated. EVERY ASPECT) and probably Prowler at Worlds of Fun (boring, not much airtime, ending is an afterthought). I disagree far from the consensus on those rides.

Oblivion is the worst. End thread.

Yeah, I mean, you see stuff like Mondial Top Scans once in awhile in both places. It isn't like Europe is the land of milk, honey, and Top Star Tours or KMG XXLs on every street corner. (I think cost is probably relevant too here. A lot of flat rides being bought in the US have been for awhile and still are Italian rides - Zamperla, Technical Park, Moser. There's a deserved reputation for cheapness there. Mondial's credibility went out the window with the worthless Windseekers and the flying body on Long Island's Top Scan. Huss, as stated before, is basically doing not much more than sell eastern european fabricated parts to rides they sold a long time ago. Why doesn't KMG sell left and right to parks? They're dutch and probably expensive.)

As someone who's traveled overseas, I don't necessarily think that the US actually has a comparative dearth of flat rides. Heide Park, for example, has 9 flat rides. SFNE, a comparable US park, has the same exact number of flat rides. The big differences are societal in nature. Flat rides in America don't run like they do in Europe, which traces back to how the carnival rides operate in each country IMO. The US carnival circuit is based of enormous companies who take over the whole midway and only occasionally book in pieces from outside their company to fill it out. This has been the case for decades and decades - Conklin and Royal American years ago, NAME, Wade, RCS, etc. today. You do see big iron on the road though generally for independent midways: Florida, Texas, Minnesota,and to a lesser extent Wisconsin after they changed over since apparently sales there haven't been as hot. Over in Europe, practically every major fair is independent and showmen only own a few pieces at any given time. There's no wristband deals, and if you pay 5-6-7 euros to go on a spinning ride, you expect to get your money's worth. And generally speaking, they deliver. If anything, it makes as much sense for the US to have large rides as Europe does given that we have cheaper gas and probably cheaper labor too, but the economics of the beast don't allow it. You just can't do that when instead of collecting $5 a ride, you're scanning some kid's wristband over and over that cost his parents $22. There's also the issue of rider habits: when the top grossing attractions at major US fairs typically end up being giant slides, permanent fairgrounds skyrides, and music rides (Musik Express/Swiss Bob/Himalaya/Matterhorn) over coasters and giant multitrailer flat rides, why not just invest more in one trailer attractions to essentially complement that stuff?

That dude really likes Schwarzkopf rides. Like really likes them.

Completely not shocking and long term few enthusiasts are gonna care. This to me speaks to the chain's willingness to start scrapping the infrastructure that's actually good and was put together well and trash it. Hustler was well done in every way with all sorts of little touches people could look for. Hopefully what goes in that space is high capacity, looks good, rides well, and doesn't require that much maintenance.

This is exactly what I think is going on. To a t.

Retrofitting a steel coaster with spinning cars isn't unheard of - IIRC Jungle has lived two lives, one as a standard kiddie coaster (which is how I rode it in '02 along the Champs Elysees) and was retrofitted with spinning cars afterwards, eventually ending up at a permanent park. Still, that doesn't mean that's why Hersheypark is doing here or even that it is likely.

As you are pessimistic What is the optimistic viewpoint based on what we're seeing? Six Flags attendance dropping as the prices inside continue to increase, eventually reaching a stable point in which the parks have manageable attendance on a daily basis but burgers are $25 and Cokes are $10?

Disneyland and WDW are different beasts. Disneyland has a huge and vocal guest base of annual passholders living in Southern California who pay (IMO) crazy money for a season's pass to the place and fill it practically every day. Annual passholders at WDW are a tiny minority of the guest base, and they pull far more people internationally than does Disneyland. Disneyland is a *local's* park and they've raised prices over the last 10 years at something like 300%-400% over inflation, yet attendance isn't dropping. Magic Mountain, meanwhile, was on life support just a scant time ago, and reverting to the old Premier Parks ways is unlikely to dig it out when that's what put the place in the hole to begin with. What part of Six Flags right now do you think reflects superior quality over 3 years ago? Or the Shapiro Era? The worst thing I can say about Shapiro is that he greenlit the Dark Knight mice-in-a-box rides. And so if we see Cedar Fair down 7-10%, I think there's reasonable questions that have to be asked about them as well. Are their plans working? Do they need more time to convert people to thinking of them differently? Are there policies in place that may be hurting attendance (i.e. their rain policy at Cedar Point)? SeaWorld Parks has strikes on it none of these other places have against them: Blackfish and Death At SeaWorld. They've gotten rolled by the media now for the last year. There hasn't been a park, much less a chain, that's gotten taken out to the woodshed like that since the race riots that helped kill parks like Boblo and Crystal Beach. They're building up a debt load again, letting the infrastructure fall apart, and the attendance is dropping. If they want to raise prices, cut hours/pay, plaster more ads in the parks, and try to defer more maintenance to make up for this, they might be able to keep "growth" happening at least virtually for a little while. The thing is, you're telling this story to people who saw this coming once before to the same company. We're watching history repeat itself.

TBH Airplane Coaster has the kind of layout I imagine was amazing and different in the 1940s or 1950s and won't be so now, so hopefully they manage to squeeze some great thrills out of it. I'm still confused as to why they'd build that ride specifically, but it isn't like I'm gonna complain about a new wooden coaster.

Advertising revenue was listed as being up to $16 million dollars from $11 million year during the same period in 2013 during the Q2 shareholder report Monday. Either they increased the ad rates in the park (doesn't seem likely) or they simply decided to increase the number of opportunities for advertisements.

LOL someone else used the beaten wife analogy before me. Damn. I was hoping to slow burn that one, you know? At least there's always the follow up "I deserved to get hit" comparison. "_INSERT MARKET HERE_ doesn't deserve/already has a destination park to go to, so Six Flags needs to market itself and operate in a totally different manner. This is the park they/we need, man."

Well, it isn't just an issue this year. If it was just a sudden issue in 2014, the company wouldn't have gone bankrupt and Kentucky Kingdom, Astroworld, et al might have never stopped operating. The Shapiro era marked a change in the way they operated and put a premium on trying to improve the guest experience to generate increased per caps. It failed largely not just because the company has institutional problems with operations, but because they had a massive debt load that pulled the park down into the abyss. The present management post-Chapter 11 had much of that debt load eliminated via the magic of the court system. Of course, now they're rebuilding that debt load.... There are actually noticeable differences in operation beyond just price increases. Staggered attraction/area openings and closings and later openings are right up there. SeaWorld's numbers were down last year, even at Orlando where they built a new expensive (crappy) attraction, yes. But blaming the economy solely for that decline is nonsensical and we all know why. Cedar Fair was slightly up IIRC in 2013 and while they admit that they expect lower attendance, no one is expecting a 8% drop when their numbers are released. Per cap growth of 11% is a nice looking number, but I don't believe for a second that it is sustainable.

No one is saying that Disney and Universal are regional parks. Though, come to think of it, most of Disneyland and USH's attendance comes regionally. But ignoring that for a moment, my point is that people will fill up $300/night motel rooms and pay $90/day for admission for their family in increasing numbers even with increasing expenses while attendance is falling at places like Six Flags that are far cheaper. The sorts of people taking their family to Orlando for a week are probably not the sorts of people who can't also afford a day trip to a regional amusement park if they wanted to. They're just choosing to not go. Apparently Wall Street isn't stoked about the way they're doing things either based on the recommendations for the stock generally being hold or sell and it dipping on this news yesterday.

The amount of people dead-sure this ride is going to be a B&M in this thread just kill me.

Attendance down 8% and per caps up 11%. If Six Flags was pretending to be using the (fake) business model of Sea World with their "we want to lower attendance" mantra, this might look a little better. Right now it looks like people have started to stop going and that Six Flags is bleeding those who do in order to make up the difference. Do they realize this is only going to keep encouraging that number to fall? Do they care? They'll probably just close 30 minutes earlier next year. FWIW, Cedar Fair is talking like they might have an attendance drop, but they're still expecting strong numbers overall. Meanwhile, it doesn't seem like Disney or Universal with their $90+ ticket prices are having any issues getting people through turnstiles.