DirkFunk

1%ers can't spend enough at Six Flags to justify them being catered to. There aren't hotels. There aren't paintings for sale or crystal Bugs Bunny and Superman statuettes to buy. There's no luxury steakhouses or modern american restaurants with $50 entrees. There's no cruise ships to move people towards. Then you're getting a sense of value. And perhaps you renew if you're happy with it. So you spent like $250-300/person on products and services you don't intend to use? Like, you get that the pricing is in part based on expectation of consumption in addition to what the price has to be to get you to buy it, right? So whatever that "next to nothing was", should you willingly not use it, is them extracting money from you that you were never going to spend in park. The lines are because of the meal passes (getting utilization out of the staff which was already present, selling the stock already bought), of course, and selling a "premier" skip the line meal line pass would perhaps shorten the wait which was created by the passes in the first place. Again, you'd be paying more money into Six Flags for services you didn't ever need or want before because of other premium services you've purchased that never existed in the past. Is it starting to make sense now how Six Flags is making money? Like I've said before, I've seen plenty decent operations there compared to Cedar Fair parks. I'll take a Six Flags Great America or Great Adventure in October over Cedar Point or Kings Island in October any day.

I can think of four exceptions - Northern California (Discovery Kingdom and Great America), southern California (Magic Mountain and Knott's), Washington DC / Fredericksburg VA (America and Kings Dominion), and Philadelphia PA (Great Adventure and Dorney Park). Exactly, and in the non-California examples I still feel like you have two parks (Dorney and Six Flags America) that are primarily appealing to the ultra-local market, in large part because of the free water parks. They're not really trying to compete otherwise. Knott's is basically the Orange County locals park for people priced out of Disney, while Magic Mountain is the locals park for people who live outside the valley or aren't super rich kids. SFA doesn't draw much from NoVA but does from Prince George County (predominantly African American but still upper middle class suburb) because reasons.

I heard some cool stuff about this project from a friend of mine: really excited to see the end result. It's flown way under the radar.

There are three problems here with looking to appeal to 1%er families: 1) They are 1%ers. That means there are 3 million of them in the entire United States. Six Flags' needs to appeal to significantly more people than that. 2) They already have products they like - Disney World, luxury resorts, adventure travel. 3) If they decide they want big coasters, then often Six Flags is the only real game in town. They're by far the most convenient "big coaster" park for the people living in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta. They got you to pay, what, 2.5x/3x more than you would have paid for a standard season pass (probably something close to a Platinum Pass) to get food that is priced at only a profit margin of 300% and some slips to ride a couple things with a minimal wait which are handed to you by a staff member that was already being paid. Sounds like their pricing scheme worked! Think how many times you would need to show up with a standard pass to generate the same amount of revenue from you.

I don't buy into it being a "race to the bottom" mentality. They're pricing for their market (which will never, ever be something akin to Disney parks) and they have management that understands that per capita spending isn't the end all-be all for success. I think back to Eddie Lampert's argument that his terrible operation of Sears was to increase margins by reducing costs related to things like renovations or branding. Obviously he intended to dismantle the company, but he had to have a rationale for doing so without going to prison, and that one fit even though it clearly and definitively was in total opposition to how the retail industry operates.

In a global recession, everyone is going to be hurting. Everyone. Six Flags is in a position that is relatively safe because the cost of creating a competitor product in the markets where they are is so absurdly high, no one will do it. That's one of the reasons for the high valuation. If the concern is "what if there's a downturn," then what of Cedar Fair? They have a far higher amount of debt-to-revenue, no real potential for international licensing deals since they don't really have a "brand" - I don't even know that they can use Knott's since Smucker's bought the brand in 2008 - and some of their biggest parks are in lousy markets for an economic correction - Cleveland and Cincinnati. People apply the thinking that Six Flags is Six Flags, and that's just not the reality at all. When did Six Flags run multiple trains like they do now in the late 1990s/early 2000s? Practically never.

Depends on when you buy and sell said stock. At this point, I think valuation of the stock is probably alright - maybe a little low, but the big gains are long in the past. What experts? Most people I know have no such belief in such inherent cycles except Austrian school weirdos. There's an argument that deficit spending during positive economic growth is inherently stupid, but that won't in and of itself cause a recession (though intentionally blowing up the market and causing the prices of goods/services to rise would definitely do so).

Six Flags' business model is bordering on revolutionary for regional parks. Value of the company makes them bigger than SEAS, Cedar Fair, etc. And honestly? They're operating as well or better than any other time I can recall in memory. Yeah, there's some Disney nerds out there put off by the wraps on coaster trains, but those people are also the least adventurous souls on the face of earth.

A more realistic multiple? What, 1.75 instead of 1.5? Most people don't buy CF Platinum passes. Season pass prices are based on what the market itself demands in pricing and high per capita spending isn't necessarily relevant to the guest experience. In fact, it's a totally overrated and misunderstood metric that people hype. The last management crew that pushed increasing it finished the job of driving SF into bankruptcy.

I was there that day. Also - January 4th 2018 I believe was colder yet and it ran then too. Not sure it got out of the 20s.

If it goes, it's probably gone. Would be way to expensive to build a new park and make money.

lololol i love this word filter

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They both take up a lot of personnel time - you need bodies to rent skates and clean the ice after all - but ultimately the point is valid that I think each company approaches the events different. Cedar Fair's perspective is more along the lines of what Hershey, Kennywood, and BGW do in how limited their ride options are, and Six Flags is going to be Six Flags for better or worse because their infrastructure is more limited. Personally I like that when I go to SFOG in a couple weeks, there's gonna be coasters and flat rides galore. Thought that ruled about SFSTL too. I don't want to make a long (like 5+ hour) drive just to go drink hot cocoa. Anyways, is it "smarter" what CF does? Maybe, maybe not - I don't have the books in front of me to tell you what the visitation looks like, how they generate spending, etc. But I don't believe that they have "legal" impediments to running many of their coasters for even a half a second. I'm not some naive teenager.

LOL, well, yeah - of course parks have different policies. I think that's the gist of the last two pages. They can change them too. Cedar Point used to run their coasters in the rain up until the Magnum incident where two trains bumped. Then this year, it was back to running in the rain again. What changed? Certainly wasn't state law.

And that's fine. Let me ask you: Do you think New Jersey would not have it regulated multiple times in the 232 pages of amusement industry regulations (I cheated and looked already, obviously) that parks defer to operations manuals provided to them by the manufacturers? Alternately, do you think it's possible that there was a determination made in-house by someone at CF as to what "safe operating temperature was" which was above the possibly nonexistent such figure provided by the manufacturer? Consider the preponderance of evidence for a moment. I'm not telling you that it isn't true, but I'm just asking you to think critically. Which do you think sounds better to tell a front line employee (who will then interact with guests outside the closed ride): "Maintenance determined that the ride was unsafe to run because of temperatures" *OR* "management would like to skip staffing this attraction if possible to save a few bucks at the end/beginning of the season when crowds would be expected to be light, ergo it's closed, please visit our souvenir stand"?

People are told complete BS all the time by parks - like obvious bold faced lies - and run with it as being truth. Is there actually a temperature listed in the B&M operations manuals that prevents them from running in the cold? I mean, I seriously doubt that there is if for no other reason than Six Flags does it *all the time* and Dollywood does it *all the time* and BGW does it *all the time* and SDC does it *all the time*. If they aren't following the manual of procedures as set by the manufacturer, they're going to run into all sorts of gnarly issues with insurance. It also means I have to believe Ohio has more regulatory requirements than Ed Markey's home state of Massachusetts or the state where they forced Great Adventure to redo the control system of Kingda Ka, lest it actually operate at the same time as Zumanjaro.

I just think you should take a step back and think, "Is it really worse or have I just gone so many times that I notice these things?" If you'd like to arrange a trade where I get SFStl and you get Michigans Adventure, BTW, I'm happy to make that deal with you.

We're still doing this, huh? Revolution can't have lapbars because its illegal in CA to have inversions without OTSRs. Wood coasters can't launch or go upside down. It's impossible to put floorless trains on a standup coaster because the heartline is totally different.

I'm old enough now to know that until the plane tickets are booked, there's no way to guarantee what if anything I'll be doing. I didn't plan to get a Six Flags pass for the year, and instead I'll wind up riding at least 5 of the 6 Justice Leagues in the US. Right now: -WDW minus Magic Kingdom (that's on the books) -Cedar Point -Canada's Wonderland -Six Flags Great America -Kennywood -Kentucky Kingdom -Howard's Apple Farm and Sluggers and Putters for the credz If everything goes kinda like I expect, then there won't be a single permanent roller coaster for a 250 mile radius that I haven't been on. Most of the portable ones too. I'll be in New England come Memorial Day but aside from SFNE, I have nothing definite down. Maybe Canobie since it's been at least 10 years since I went there last - maybe more like 12-13. Or Edaville since I never went. Or Quassy. Not Compounce though. That place sucks now. I am defintely hoping to be in Iowa enough to go to Adventureland and the State Fair, but that's also true of a lot of other localities.

Wooden coasters with dynamic/inverting maneuvers.

Most of the water rides removed have been ones that dated along with the park's inception or at least during the burst of activity in the late 70s/early 80s for theme park construction/expansion. They just got old. They also require large footprints, which increasingly landlocked parks want to take advantage of. I'm sure they'll be "back" - most parks still have at least one or two. Good log flumes are hugely popular attractions for example.

I'm happy Downdraft is going away because it isn't very good - the cycle lasts an eternity because it takes forever to stop, not because it does anything cool. Top Scan or Bust, IMO.

Libertyland was a nonprofit entity sitting on city land; think a situation kinda like Kentucky Kingdom, except with an even more aggressive to chuck the park mentality from City Hall. The city could have done all sorts of things to assist since it was an asset that was valuable to the general populace, but they did the usual thing and thought short term, immediate payback potential and of course when the recession hit, that ended any hope of the area being redeveloped (if there was really any shot at all). Given that there were serious issues with kickbacks on other projects, its not entirely unlikely that Libertyland being set up to fail (poor investment in infrastructure surrounding, reduction of transit to park, bad revenue sharing deals, skyrocketing rent and utility costs that would have been generated by the city) was something which had been prepped in backrooms with briefcases full of money.

That park has Cedar Point levels of attendance. Should Cedar Point get a coaster that can only do like 700 PPH in a theoretical sense? Nah. That's stupid. Luckily their management realized that and thus everything they've built coaster wise of late has been to increase the overall capacity of the park by installing or retrofitting rides into people eaters. Whizzer's line is painful enough. Why put in something lower capacity than that with a ride model intended for small/mid size parks looking for a signature thriller? It doesn't even fit a need, whereas indoor or signature family attractions would.