DirkFunk

Wal-Mart lives and dies off volume. Their margins are so low that if I saw an appreciable decrease in foot traffic, I'd run, not walk, from investing in them. Every business model is different. We have a pretty fair idea what the business model for Cedar Fair is. Clearly attendance is a relevant metric, especially as we see revenue increasing at roughly a similar rate.

I have airplane tickets to Tokyo, so I guess I can't pretend I'm not going there. Don't know if I'll do anything beyond the attractions in the immediate vicinty (Disney, Yomiuriland, Sega Joyopolis, Dome City, Hanayashiki) but I guess we'll see. I kinda want to do Fuji-Q and also don't because it is a pit of despair.

Its not any different almost anywhere. There's never been this many open jobs in history: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/12/us-job-openings-jump-to-record-high-of-7point3-million.html That's the job market. Pay has been slow to increase, in part because lots of businesses are operating in anti-competitive fashion these days (all those corporate mergers had an effect) and in some cases created monosopoys. But even that's changing as the open jobs number creeps up. If your primary goal is to make money, you'll go to where the money is. On the whole, I sense that GMs and HR figures in the theme park industry believe that they want to pull from people who aren't driven solely by money, but primarily from kids who want to have fun working at theme parks, which is outrageously stupid. This is what youth labor force participation looks like at the federal level: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU01300012 I didn't make that up on the fly. It's been stable at a summer peak in the low-mid 40s for a decade, down from mid-high 60s in the 1990s. That mentality is a dinosaur that somehow managed to lurch its way into surviving long past when the asteroid should have killed it. It doesn't matter how true it is either because its so engrained as a belief that even pointing at the parks that do something different goes nowhere ("That can't work here, this is how we've always done it" mentality).

I hate being a dick about stuff, but the whole "theme parks can easily get labor just paying minimum wage" thing is such nonsense. Cedar Point was platooning rides last year like they were Conneaut Lake while telling people on their quarterly calls that they're spending Trump's tax cuts on building dorms for international employees at most of the chain, and this stuff somehow still comes up. Offering more hours to employees is an obvious way to keep wages from increasing (which is obviously the goal here) while retaining services of people. If every other business in town can offer more money and more benefits, why would anyone work for Six Flags ever?

That was the case when they had a seasonal schedule too. Of course, the labor market now is the most competitive in 50 years, with the lowest U3 and U6 in my lifetime, but sure, it doesn't matter at all, especially when you're trying to staff for an extra 100 or so calendar days.

Given the limited number of hours of weekday operation, that seems pretty spurious to me. They'd be lucky to get most of those kids in before 3-4, and they're closed by 6. I can't tell you it isn't true obviously, but I also have a hard time believing that going to full time doesn't help at all in retaining help they otherwise would have been losing to those same businesses you mention existing in the vicinity when they could only offer them 16-20 hours a week and no benefits of any kind. That just doesn't make sense.

I'm not sure I understand your point then. If the job market as a whole is competitive and offering more to entry level service employees, obviously Six Flags can't offer less than they do now and be more competitive.

They at least have to give full time employees ACA level insurance given the size of the company and number of hours worked per week during qualifying periods. That's more than any other Six Flags offers employees and definitely more than any seasonal park.

I get that they need to install more indoor attractions, but slowing down major coaster additions sounds bad for me. Although being from Germany, we visit the US every year because of their massive coaster additions (Fury, Leviathan, Valravn, Steel Vengeance,....). What do you guys think does "slowing down" in Cedar Fair style mean? Only one big coaster every few years for the whole chain, more midsize coasters? If you look at the stretch of 2004-2012, Cedar Point built one roller coaster for 9 seasons of operation (Maverick). They built flat rides (SkyHawk, MaxAir, Windseeker), a new log Flume (Shoot The Rapids), kids rides, splash bucket, racing water slides, and Dinosaurs Alive. JMHO, but what's planned for 2019 reminds me of their new for 2009 addition of Starlight Experience (literally lights in the Frontier Trail) That year there was an officially recognized dip of 10% in attendance. But I could be wrong, of course.

Cedar Point needs indoor attractions yesterday, because when it rains, it's a goddamned mess. Not just one, but multiple attractions: flying theaters, "immersive tunnels", dark rides, simulators, shooter games like the Plants vs. Zombies or Mass Effect games, the whole 9 yards. The more of it, the better. They've been getting an earful on the conference calls about this for awhile too. There's no excuses that they can't be in some frame aware.

I'm not going to speak for everyone, but I'm sure there's some here who might disagree with that claim. In any case, Six Flags has over the last few years seemed to primarily focus on building more coasters at Six Flags Magic Mountain, usually to replace old/bad infrastructure. I don't see any evidence at all that they've been harmed by this. They're not going to draw tourists away from Universal and Disney in Southern California, and the locals seem to be willing to go bankrupt before they actually drop their annual passes to Disneyland. They're going to do a mix of stuff - classic dark rides, Wild West area, and modern rides both thrilling and family oriented - because that's what Knott's has been since the 1970s and was most successful as. It certainly isn't a recipe you can replicate at Michigan's Adventure or something.

You turn a much higher profit when the amount of money you are generating far exceeds the expenses related to generating that profit. If Cedar Fair doubles their per cap spending overnight while losing 50% of their audience and increasing their personnel and supply expenses to create a better environment, they will see a decrease in profit. Now while the percentages were obviously quite different, this is basically what happened to Mark Shapiro and Six Flags and why it went bankrupt under him. Not every retailer operates the same way with the same margins. You can't run a supermarket like a mattress store. You can't run a regional amusement/theme park with the same mentality of Disney World and their ~30,000 hotel rooms. A lot of people have been trained via really bad theme park business analysis on the internet that somehow "cheap" season passes lead to less money extracted from people's wallets. Oddly, CEO after CEO at regional chains says the exact opposite on these earnings calls, and while they've been doing it, they've been running excellent profit margins, paying out healthy dividends to investors, and running the stock prices up to 3/4/5x what they were during the recession. A lesson should be learned from that, but since it doesn't jive with what people have been told about per cap spending being the end all-be all, they ignore it or argue that it's somehow wrong.

What works for one market doesn't work for another sometimes. Kinzel learned that lesson pretty hard. I think they opted to replace a thrill ride with a thrill ride in the same space. Financially, that was probably the best move they had available. Maybe a $100 million dollar Snoopy trackless dark ride does better, but probably not enough to recoup costs now or ever, and with reasonable likelihood they just get compared negatively to Disney no matter what. Some people certainly are. Some probably aren't. I'll be the first to be proven wrong if their reimagining of Ghost Town Alive is a hit at Cedar Point. There's no passholder base there that can really get into it because they're almost entirely built on day trips and the occasionally longer weekend style stay. There's no Disney competitor to try and draw away people from due to cost or crowds. Cedar Point is the regional 800 lb gorilla there.

My gut tells me that this isn't a Cedar-Fair-specific problem. The economy as a whole was up for a long time and over the last year it plateaued (and showed some volatility). SIX and FUN are highly cyclical. Cyclical companies follow the market and FUN is following the market. The sky is not falling but they still probably expected their huge new additions to help them outpace the market a bit and they didn't. Six Flags only seeing an attendance increase of 5% while expanding Holiday in the Park and adding a bunch of new facilities is also a pretty bad sign for them park vs. park. I think that they've seen the slowing in attendance growth has led them to open the purse strings a little inf 2019 and we'll see what effect that has.

Bingo. All the general improvements we're lauding (and honestly most of them are really good) didn't have a net positive effect on the attendance or a huge increase in spend per person to make up for the lack of attendance increase.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/26/18197567/six-flags-illinois-biometric-information-privacy-act-facial-recognition So Six Flags isn't gonna be happy with the decision, but guess what? 14 year olds can't consent for a whole lot anywhere any time.

Uhhh, Raptor, Montu, Alpengeist. Sure. Uh. :consults spreadsheet: 40. And like 5 fairs. I think just 5. Visiting Efteling this summer and staying at Hotel Efteling and just doing all the Efteling things until I couldn't do them any more because we had to go to the next town. Emerald Coaster at Sam's Fun City. The OTSRs on this otherwise stock Galaxi that's themed to Tom And Jerry in every way but name really make it. All 600 SBF Visa spinning coasters I rode. Melt, probably. I mean I had plenty of "fancier" meals at Disney Paris, Efteling, Phantasialand, et al but Melt. Fenix. Michigan's Adventure. If I end up on probation and can't leave the state, at least I have a Platinum pass already paid for. Hayabusa, which is also the best ride themed to a star of the long defunct FMW wrestling promotion. Also great because no one actually rode it that I know of and it was so extreme it like blew itself into a million pieces, so it was probably the best. Steel Vengeance. It doesn't spin, unlike all those awesome SBF Visa rides. Revere Beach Lightning since I would have to go back in time to ride it. The SBF Visa opening in Metro Detroit, because it will be closest by. Camden Park. White Lightning. HITP because COASTERS. Mystic Timbers shed because the park is open long enough to get to be night time and make it more effective. St. Louis. Intamin since they built Schwarzkopfs and still exist. Island. Ober Gatlinburg's mountain coaster on New Years Eve. Legit 100 minutes. Waited less for SV or Taron this year. Probably Boulder Dash. Any Intamin 1st gen. Maverick. Sky rides. Shooting dope in the bathroom stalls, climbing the animatronic dinosaurs, and retrieving other people's hats in active ride zones. Knott's Berry Farm because fried chicken. My closest park would be Craig's Cruisers in Grand Rapids, which has a bomb ass SBF Visa Spinning Coaster. That's like 100 reasons alone. Lift. Yeah, I'm not dumb. Man, I dunno. Wolverine Wildcat is pretty trash. When they talk I get Heaven's Gate douchechills. Something in a middle eastern funfair that has Batman airbrushed on the side next to like 50 other cartoon and comic book characters. Uhhhh, I dunno, wear and tear on joints? Voyage. Yeah. I seem to have lived. Yeah, because its on RCDB. If it isnt any more then no. Smash that like button if done properly. WILD EAGLE WILD EAGLE WILD EAGLE FLYYYYYY .38 caliber round. You can't make me. Also I legit don't have one.

PF as well. Sevierville is a different story - I don't recall being charged at Smith Creek last year and definitely wasn't at Tennessee Legend last month.

Spending all day at Fun Spot, much less two, seems crazy to me. More logical option seems in my mind to be that you go to SeaWorld or Universal for the day then Fun Spot at night (since they're open until midnight pretty much all the time). Universal is very often closed early. They, like Disney, don't really "do deals" any more. The BBQ places are the obvious stops.

... or just cut those positions entirely and keep churning out food at the same glacial pace that they do now. My money is on that option. I authentically think they'd do that. I chalk their low staffing up more to the job market being hyper competitive. I even think going year round at multiple parks is a sort of retention strategy (also revenue on infrastructure they have to maintain anyways) to replace increasing wages.

I never carry my pass - I've got it on my phone, so why bother? It's inevitable that they'll go that route. You can order by app and pick up at McDonalds or Little Caesars, for crying out loud. Only a matter of time with theme parks.

Those issues will go away increasingly as I'm sure Six Flags (like everyone) will transition to having more and more touch screen ordering. They already do ordering on the App for food. Then they can move the staff back to primarily working on making it.

Again, it's about the perception of savings/value vs. what you actually spent that Six Flags gets. A slice of pizza and fries isn't actually worth $15 in labor, building maintenance, and materials (food, paper plate/basket thing). Technically you save money with the pass in so much as the prices there and at Cedar Fair parks are exorbitant, but you're still adding to the park's bottom line. After all, if Six Flags passes were, say, $400 at the most basic level, you wouldn't bother to get them. They know that.

I look at it like this: Did I save money with my Gold Pass this year? Well, if I compare the value of the Gold Membership to the cost of individual entries to the parks, sure, I saved money vs. paying to go to SFOT twice, SFGAmer, La Ronde, SFStl, and SFMM. Now, if I didn't have a pass, would I have gone to SFOT twice? Nah. I'd have gotten a QBot and gone for one really exhausting day. Would I have gone to La Ronde? No. SFGAmer? No. SFStl? No. SFMM? Definitely not - that was a work trip and I got 5 hours sleep that night while everyone else with the team spent a long night in bed. I had to pay for hotels and gas and car maintenance and Ubers for all this. I never really come out ahead compared to spending my time birding or hiking because of the other costs involved. The official language is: You agree that Six Flags may change your monthly membership payments any time after the expiration of the Minimum Term. Six Flags will give you notice of any change in your monthly membership payments before the new payment amount goes into effect, by sending a notice to the email address you provide. If you do not wish to continue your membership at the new payment amount, you must cancel your membership as described in the Cancellation Procedure below. When the new payment amount goes into effect, Six Flags will charge your Card for the new monthly membership payments of all Members, unless you cancel according to the terms of this agreement. You acknowledge that your monthly membership payments may be different from others’ monthly membership payments because of discounts or promotions offered to others for which you may not be eligible or which are not available at the time you sign up.

But it's not really a "break even" though, right? The only people who get the meal deal and season passes who manage to only be at cost to Six Flags are people who go a lot - like probably 40+ times a year. Maybe your value per visit is only $25 or so when you get to the end of the year, but that's not what's relevant. What's relevant is that you spent $300 up front + whatever else you get. If you spent $100 on a season's pass w/parking in the past you would have needed to buy 14 $15 meals to even approach what you're spending now. They aren't spending anything extra, really, to acquire that money from you. They've even been able to push the price of food higher knowing that it will push you into buying a pass. I do the same thing. I think we all do. But I also understand why this makes money for Six Flags and why they're doing so well.