Trackmaster

Well, we're all park patrons. We're all the "GP" unless we're executives that work for a park, its corporate office, or are an engineer at a coaster designer firm. I don't see how our preferences would deviate wildly from non-enthusiasts. I can understand what you're getting at to a certain degree. In addition to being a coaster enthusiast, I'm also a cinefile as well, so I care about more about foreign films, awards festival films,artsy indie films, and films by favorite directors than I care about Transformer or Harry Potter movies. But there's still overlap. I don't think that you have to be a coaster enthusiast to be a coaster snob. The parks get thousands of victors, maybe millions in some cases. I'd imagine that many of them nitpick about little things and complain "This Batman is the same as the other park's" or "Why do they keep giving these rides DC names, it doesn't even make any sense to put Wonder Women next to Batman if they're going to call it Gotham City" "Where's my path connecting the park into a loop?" The reason that the 300 mile radius is important is because its assumed that people will travel some locally. If you live in Maryland or Virginia, there's a good chance that you'll be going to KD, BGW, SFA, and Hershey Park in your lifetime. If your signature attraction is the same ride as something that's at another park you're kind of caught with your pants down. And it looks even worse, as casual coaster rider doesn't even go to many parks, and they're probably looking for reasons not to come back.

Not even sit down or floorless trains would save it. The only way Apocalypse would be good IMO, is if it had lap bars. How about a stand-up floorless with lap-bars??

With your interest in Urban development/planning and commercial amusement parks, I would be interested in what you think about Malcom Gladwell's ideas in his podcast "A Good Walk Spoiled" as a part of his Revisionist History series. Basically, he's talking about golf courses, and not amusement parks, but I think that some of the commercial real estate tenants could apply here. Most amusement parks take up a lot of space around urban areas that could conceivably be used for other public access purposes, but profit off of the land. And, in many cases, the land could be more profitable for other purposes, but may be locked into a historic lower value of ad valorem tax purposes. Personally, I'm a bigger fan of parks setting themselves up in more remote areas where a tourism scene can be built up around them, instead of trying to market to local markets. Lower property values, fewer restrictions, and a more enthusiastic, and refined customer base.

I guess that with my relatively short stature, it seems to be a major source of annoyance for many things in life, but when it comes to coasting, it makes it pretty ideal. I've never had an issue with any restraint really. Other than standard headbanging, and issues that everyone else gets.

I think that the problem is that there are about 40 SLC's in existence. When I'm going from park to park, I don't want to waste a credit on a coaster that I've ridden since I was a but a young lad. I'd rather experience new twists and turns, and get an understand on a new layout. You only live once afterall. Don't waste your precious time and money on standard SLC's.

Even if it wasn't as rough, its still a pretty unimaginative, uninteresting coaster. Imagine how much more fun you'd have on an RMC Raptor or T-Rex.

My point was that I don't want them putting a long-term investment into a coaster that I wouldn't want to be in the long-term plans. If the park keeps the Minderaser for another 6-8 years, you're gonna have a bad time.

If I remember correctly (and correct me if I'm wrong) SFNE announced that their Mind Eraser would get new trains. I would assume that if SFA's Mind Eraser was to get new train, they would have announced it somewhere. There's no point in getting Mind Eraser new trains if nobody knows that it has new trains. I mean you would hope that the park wouldn't put more money into that ride and double down on it. Its a 20+ year old SLC. Wouldn't it be better to invest in a modern, innovative coaster?

Short answer: no Long answer: By distributing money over a 12 month period rather than just the three month peak summer run, it insulates the company from risk related to poor weather or events that might cause tourism shock (terrorist events, for example). It also helps the companies in their financial reporting as right now increasing revenue in Q1, 2, and 4 year over year can be seen as offsetting any potential losses in the usually most important quarter (3, July-September). Is the market that stupid? Kinda sorta. Additionally: If I hand you $100, you might want to budget your spending or saving of that $100 over a long time frame. But these are publicly traded corporations. That money shows up on the quarterly ledgers and federal reports. They in turn have to describe what it is to their shareholderst that they will do with the money, whether it's dividends to shareholders, capital expenditures, or paying down existing debt. Six Flags could try to pile up cash on hand, but there would be an investor revolt right now if that happened. But the problem with your line of reasoning is that for a firm that is publicly-traded company, that must confirm to US GAAP on an accrual basis, you cannot legally treat the revenue differently based on whether season passes are ratably charged over 12 months, or paid out at once. Refer to my journal entries. With a season pass, upon sale, they're unearned revenue. It doesn't make a difference when the cash is paid. Revenue is still recognized over the expected life of the season pass, as are the expenses. You don't just magically get to create piles of revenue out of nothing. And OK, if you want to play the "shareholder be trippin' " card, then I'll give respect to that. I'm thinking in terms of my own business acumen, where I'm not going to fool myself into thinking that money is better just because its paid over 12 months instead of at once. I care about raw cash received, I don't necessarily care when it comes in. But I know that most people don't have great business acumen. Although.... one problem I have with that is that 99%+ of the trades are made by supercomputers who have all of the data and think like computers. And almost all of the equity is held institutionally: index funds, mutual funds, retirement funds, endowment funds, non-profits, hospitals, schools, etc. So we're still talking about almost all of the transactions with material equity being decided on by a heartless bot making trades every nanosecond and who thinks like I do and just thinks logically.

I agree with most of what you've written, but I do take issue with this last statement. For the vast majority of people, their only interaction with the stock market is a 401(k). They don't have the option to invest in the stock market for a bit then pull their money out when they want. Once it's in there, it's in there until they retire. So they're going to be weighing between paying all at once and having the peace of mind from no obligation beyond that, or paying a bit at a time and having greater flexibility that comes from not having to come up with all the money at once. Right, I feel like if more people used index funds or ETFs this wouldn't be as much of an issue. With Vanguard funds, you can put more in and out pretty easily. Granted, they do lock you out of a fund for two months if you make a withdrawal, but as long as you have 10-15 funds, you can go in and with glee and it doesn't matter for liquidity and harvesting losses. Obviously there's risk with the Beta, but as you're mimicking the market, its not nearly as volatile as if investing individual companies. To me, not having the money in the market money for me is the huge risk and opportunity cost.

Few reasons as stated prior in the thread, but I'll highlight a few. -Constant cash flow throughout the year. This looks better on the books and to investors. Having cash coming in even during months the parks are closed. -Higher rate of sign ups. We keep seeing SF report growth in their membership sales. Personally the closest SF park to me is about 6-7 hours away. I still have a membership due to the low monthly cost. Psychologically it's easier for someone to part with $9/month then $200+ up front. (depending on park, used $200 as an example) -Higher retention rate. Memberships force people to go through a cancelation process. Compared to just NOT renewing it. I'm sure they have thousands of membership holders who may not even remember they have a membership. That's just a few examples, I'm sure there are tons more with the financial numbers to back it up. Interesting. That all makes sense to me being an accountant. I've even considered setting up Six Flags and Busch Gardens memberships because of how cheap they are. It's also a lot more likely to get people into the parks since they don't have to pay $70 or so once to get one person in. I feel like from a reporting standpoint, it wouldn't matter if cashflow came in over the winter months or not. The nature of the industry would be factored into the stock price, and financial analysts and accountants would understand the reason behind the spikes in the cashflow. They're not stupid enough to get excited over the same or less cash spread out over 12 months instead of 8-9. And from an installment standpoint, the revenue recognition would be the same for the client. It doesn't matter if a season pass is paid for all at once, over 12 installments, or over 9 installments, the revenue would be recognized evenly over the operating year of the park. Initial entry: Cash xx unearned revenue xx Monthly close entries: unearned revenue...... xx Revenue ............................ xx They just offer the installments so that people won't think that it costs as much when it sounds like $10 payments every 12 months, instead of $115 up front (even though they're paying more with the installments. But you'd have to calcuate the net present value with a 10% discount rate to figure out if you come ahead with the extra time that your money could be in the stock market.

Where are the pics??

I think that outside of pure seasonal carnivals, many parks who charges per ride also charge at the gate too. Many of the small beach parks come to mind. But that may be a dying breed too, I think that many of them are switching to free admission. I'd personally want to have something keeping people out, so they weren't taking in my intoxicating atmosphere for free. I think that charging per ride is a lot more feasible too with better technology now. We have the technology to scan in using fingerprints, wristbands with chips, smartphones, or keycards -- all of which can come pre-loaded with money or preferably linked to a credit card. So there's no need to wait in line for token or tickets. I'd say that in exchange for pay per ride, I'd focus the park to make money on the rides and admissions, and not so much on the hidden fees. No gouging for parking, food, souvenirs, arcade games, etc. I'd allow food in, have quality options for high end dining that were competitive to restaurants, have reasonable parking with transit busses that were chartered to population centers, and institute a Disney-like Fastpass system (but also integrate it with smart phone accounts and touchscreens across the park) where guests could reserve their spots for rides virtually for free, and no person could jump in line simply because they had more money. I'd also strip out most of the non-elite coasters and rides, and make every ride an experience within themselves that were balanced and appealed to the guest with high standards. So each ride would have the same fare. No kiddie coasters, no scramblers, no wild mice, no Vekoma boomerang, etc.

Its a pretty simple economic concept. There are two ways to make money in business. You can present your product as a commodity and earn a profit off of a large volume and reducing costs to as low as possible. Or you try to differentiate your product and offer something at a premium, and you hope to earn a profit by having a higher sales price, while understanding that you may be limited by a smaller potential customer base and with higher operating expenses. The lower and lower that SF prices their season passes and single day tickets after normal discounts, the more that they rely on the fact that their customers don't mind a cheap, bland user experience, and don't mind that no coasters of quality tend to be built. They're happy riding the lazy river most of the day, and maybe stopping in for a whirl on the scrambler, or SROS. Why not? But if you start putting money into the park, you'll raise prices. You'll drive out the non-serious visitor, those of lower socio-economic statuses (who are probably great people who you get to know them despite the fact that they've been down on their luck by birthright), and the "Basic B." But with their absence, you'll attract people who are starving for a great experience and will save up to go, or those who have high levels of discretionary income, where spending for them is just a status symbol. Those people aren't going to accept old, worn out clones and lazy rivers. They want elite B&M coasters, and preferably RMC's. In my mind, you get what you pay for. If you are OK with paying $8 a visit, ride your Vekoma garbage and leave us alone. If you want RMC and new generation B&M original designs, you might have to pay a little more. Ironicaly, the Greatest Designers of Our Generation seem to be mostly at SFI parks. Clearly they haven't rescued SFA yet, but it seems like the parks that RMC have been going to take their parks seriously, and are interested in the future, and not accepting mediocrity.

You sound like a 70 year old marketing guy at a board meeting. I'd imagine that the absurdly low cost of season passes compared to the price of tickets come down to two assumptions/philosophies: 1. People are going to buy a season pass and forget about them. They go once, and forget to ever go ago, so on those customers, you make 20-30% more than if you just sold them a one day ticket. 2. You consider the admission price to be the price leader because you actually want to make money on parking, arcade games, Flash Pass sales, food, upcharge attractions, etc. Personally, I don't agree with these philosphies, and I think that analytic, numbers savvy, and tech savvy 25-30 year olds would have these people for lunch. Here's the reality: 1. Some people may buy the season passes and forget about them, but the reality is that many people do go 10-15, bringing their price per visit to less than $8 a visit in some cases. Sure, they may not have gone that many times if they were paying out of pocket, but they're still using your facilities, adding congestion to the park, increasing your insurance, etc. There are many variable costs that go into a park experience. And one of the main problems that "rough" parks like SFA has is that lower income families buy $60 season passes for their kids, and drop them off at the park all summer. The park makes no money, and gets a reputation, because 12-17 year old kids act like... well you know kids. They don't listn to rules, they make scenes, and they have no money. 2. Bringing me to my next point. If you think that somebody, or a family is cheap enough to pay $60 a head on season passes to a crappy park, and to keep coming back all year, what do you think that the chances are that they are buying a lot of your overpriced stuff? Don't think too long or hard on that one. I just in general follow a business strategy of trying to stay as close to paying per item of service as possible, without being a pig about it (I can see the problems with a Spirit Airlines style of marketing). In general, I'd try to charge per visit, I'm mostly against the season passes, but I may allow the if they're costly enough to make them worth my while. If it were up to me, I'd charge per ride, and have a modest admission price too, but I'd see what my board thought as well, people have an emotional attachment to paying one price for an admission all day it seems sadly. I think that with technology, we could easily use a fingerprint recognition or wrist-band system to ensure that all rides are rationed and accounted for. If people had to ration the number of rides, it would help with congestion and wait time. If people are just binging on rides for free, we're not appropriately rationing number of rides by priority.

If they did anything close to this stupidity, it's definitely goodbye SFA. Well thanks for calling my idea stupid without even providing justifications for it. I postsed a well thought out multi-paragraph business plan while you spouted out a sentence of vulgarity. Way to go. The word, "stupid" is "vulgar"? I learned something new today. I think that its not logical or right to attack a person's character when you disagree with what they say. It makes more sense to try to look at the argument and try to improve it or create counterpoints. You should probably know that calling somebody "stupid" or saying something is "stupid" without saying why is going to push buttons and is not going to come across well. Just thought that I would help you out there. For example, when I was talking about increasing the price of season passes, people created a counter point where they mentioned that they would not pay $400 for a season pass, so my idea might not be practical for the real world. I appreciate this argument, and appreciate the time they took to write it. However, the argument was fallacious. Primarily, their math was faulty. I was talking about a multiple of 4-5 based on the expected price that somebody would pay at a park after normal discounts. SFA is $70 sticker price at the gate... in name only. You can buy online and get tickets for $45, and probably find even better discounts elsewhere without looking too hard. Maybe somebody can double check the facts on that, but with soda cans, online discounts, etc. only fools really pay for the full stick price. So let's assume $45. Now let's assume a multiplier of 4.5. 4.5x42=$202.50. Yes, its a high cost, but not anywhere near 400. And if you don't want to pay that, that's a good thing. As I was saying, a main problem for the lack of profitability at parks like SFA is the cheap season pass cost. You can buy an SFA season pass for $62, plus this comes with perks, coupons, exlusive stuff, etc. So maybe the raw component of the entry to the parks is something like $52. Let's say that they go 8x a year. The park is making $6.50 a visit off of you. Not very good. Those are rookie numbers. You have to pump those numbers up if you want to make money, and put it back into the park. I think that to make the kind of margins that they want, they need to think in terms of revenue earned per visit per guest. There is a limited capacity at the park, and they need to maximize their earnings per visit, while managing costs. If fewer guests who are cheapskates choose to not get season passes, great! If they choose to not buy individual tickets, great! If they choose not to go, you probably weren't going to be making much money off of them anyways. Sources: https://www.sixflags.com/america/store/season-passes https://www.sixflags.com/america/store/tickets SMH, not a big deal whatsoever. Took what I said out of context, but not uncommon here. Taking feelings into account, I'll say this. Walmart makes a lot of money, because they sell a lot of stuff cheap. SF is a business. Someone, somewhere with a ton of education (or maybe not) put the math together. But Six Flags is not a very solvent firm. They were delisted at one put from the NYSE, with the season pass issue being one of the key problems. They had Dan Snyder from the Washington Re***ns as the head of the board at one point. I think taking an approach where you view the product as a commodity and trying to reduce costs is fine for retail, and maybe for airline flights, but I don't see it being the best approach for the entertainment industry. I think that you make money by attracting upscale customers who are willing to pay more, and cutting out the riff raff.

I feel like the idea of raiding tombs brings up an interesting ethical conundrum: Is raiding tombs an equivalent to grave robbing? Is it alright to rob graves and excavate scared sites if its for the preservation of history and for scientific discovery? We wouldn't know nearly as much about our past if it wasn't for these missions. But some might argue that the dead and their belongings should stay buried. Thoughts?

If they did anything close to this stupidity, it's definitely goodbye SFA. Well thanks for calling my idea stupid without even providing justifications for it. I postsed a well thought out multi-paragraph business plan while you spouted out a sentence of vulgarity. Way to go. The word, "stupid" is "vulgar"? I learned something new today. I think that its not logical or right to attack a person's character when you disagree with what they say. It makes more sense to try to look at the argument and try to improve it or create counterpoints. You should probably know that calling somebody "stupid" or saying something is "stupid" without saying why is going to push buttons and is not going to come across well. Just thought that I would help you out there. For example, when I was talking about increasing the price of season passes, people created a counter point where they mentioned that they would not pay $400 for a season pass, so my idea might not be practical for the real world. I appreciate this argument, and appreciate the time they took to write it. However, the argument was fallacious. Primarily, their math was faulty. I was talking about a multiple of 4-5 based on the expected price that somebody would pay at a park after normal discounts. SFA is $70 sticker price at the gate... in name only. You can buy online and get tickets for $45, and probably find even better discounts elsewhere without looking too hard. Maybe somebody can double check the facts on that, but with soda cans, online discounts, etc. only fools really pay for the full stick price. So let's assume $45. Now let's assume a multiplier of 4.5. 4.5x42=$202.50. Yes, its a high cost, but not anywhere near 400. And if you don't want to pay that, that's a good thing. As I was saying, a main problem for the lack of profitability at parks like SFA is the cheap season pass cost. You can buy an SFA season pass for $62, plus this comes with perks, coupons, exlusive stuff, etc. So maybe the raw component of the entry to the parks is something like $52. Let's say that they go 8x a year. The park is making $6.50 a visit off of you. Not very good. Those are rookie numbers. You have to pump those numbers up if you want to make money, and put it back into the park. I think that to make the kind of margins that they want, they need to think in terms of revenue earned per visit per guest. There is a limited capacity at the park, and they need to maximize their earnings per visit, while managing costs. If fewer guests who are cheapskates choose to not get season passes, great! If they choose to not buy individual tickets, great! If they choose not to go, you probably weren't going to be making much money off of them anyways. Sources: https://www.sixflags.com/america/store/season-passes https://www.sixflags.com/america/store/tickets

If they did anything close to this stupidity, it's definitely goodbye SFA. Well thanks for calling my idea stupid without even providing justifications for it. I postsed a well thought out multi-paragraph business plan while you spouted out a sentence of vulgarity. Way to go.

I wouldn't assume it has much to do anything within the box that you're thinking of. A lot of it probably has to do with zoning and clauses buried within the contracts that SFI has. If they rent the space from a real estate holding company, they have to fulfill their leasing agreement. If they own the land, they have to use the land for what it is zoned for unless they get a board to approve the re-zoning of the area. They could probably sell the park to another company to run it as an amusement park, and would probably take less approval from the city government, but then you're back to square one: if you don't want it, why would somebody else? As I was saying, SFI had an agreement in their contract when they owned Six Flags New Orleans that they would keep the park up and running in exchange for the rights to owning the land. Obviously Katrina, and SFI saw that as their excuse to abandon an underperforming park. New Orleans disagreed and tried to get them to honor their agreement and rebuild the park, but SFI has ignored that since then. It seems like for now New Orleans declined to go through litigation for now. I'm not sure if that's a standard practice in these operating agreements, but I wouldn't be surprised. Housing and hotels and office buildings tend to be an easier and more profitable business venture in tourist areas or major cities, but you could argue that they can't profit as easily without nearby attractions. So a city has a vested interest in keeping attractive attractions up and running. They'd rather keep the housing stock more competitive and lure in businesses and attractions. Businesses usually pay more in taxes and use fewer city resources.

But if you think about it, the way to curtail the "reputation" issue is to make the park more upscale, and a better destination park, so that you can charge a lot more. Really, what kills SFA is how cheap the season passes are. The sticker price for a single day admission isn't that low. Then after discounts, the price comes to within a range that it's expected and reasonable. But when you have a season pass that's $10 more than the sticker price of a single admission ticket, it just gives lower income families a cheap babysitting option for the summer. And those kids just cause trouble and don't spend money at the park. The business reason for why they give away the season passes is to get people into the park more so they'll buy food, pay for the parking, and pay for the games, etc. But obviously you're not getting that with that customer base. The best way for SFA to be more solvent, would be to either do away with the season passes, or price them at 4-5 times the price of a single day ticket, and maybe throw in a coupon book to make it a little more appealing. And not that I've seen any park do this, but I think it would also be a cool idea if they required any kid under the age of 18 to be accompanied by an adult. It would help save the park from liability, and help curtail the mischief and misbehavior. Also encourage a customer base that has disposable money to spend.

Why not both? SFA has a TON of land they will never use. Why not have some sort of City Walk/Disney Springs arrangement where Six Flags builds and leases space to some of these higher end bars/shops? Bars and shops would be unlikely to complain about any noise (unlike if they leased the land for condos) and it would be a year round source of income... Eh, I'm not sure Six Flags is a brand that can pull that kind of upscale marketing off compared to Disney or Cedar Fair. Interesting idea. Heck, they could maybe even put hotels in there, or luxury condos that were heavily reinforced and soundproof, and made all the new residences acknowledge that they waive all rights to complain about noise in the future in perpetuity. I feel like bars and restaurants and shops would be a great way to go, but they're not nearly as lucrative as luxury housing would be that close to DC. Also, keep in mind, there are a ton of lucrative private government contractor firms with tons of skilled jobs all over southern Maryland and NoVa as well. Any area that is undeveloped is coveted, as housing is limited, and for areas that are already developed for housing, it probably already has existing older style housing that isn't as desirable for younger wealthy people.

It's not so much about revenues minus expenses, its about the economic opportunity cost. Sure, you can run a park, and take in more money than you spend, and that's fine. But if there is an opportunity to sell at a premium to an investor who is either overpaying for it, or could make more than you could, you would be a wise businessperson to consider that option. Remember, some money is fine, but even more money is even better. Think about it this way. In one scenario you're taking a risk, and hoping that you can squeeze a profit margin out of a risky venture and cover costs. In another scenario, you have tons of cold hard cash shoved into your pocket, you can sell off the assets of the parks, and other invest the money in institutional equities, return it to shareholders and buy back some of the company, or plow the money into better performing parks, or acquire parks that might be better placed to properly serve the public and operating at better margins. You either grow and you evolve, or you die.

I thought I said much of that but can't find it. I don't think things are to that point -- possibly the whole area would need to become more dense to the point of changes in government attitudes to make it worthwhile. Still, even if they're looking at selling 20 years, this affects what they are willing to build. Water park expansions are mostly cheap and don't hold up well 20 years anyway. A Sky Screamer is practically a portable ride compared to a coaster. One thing occurs to me reading "high end restaurants, bars, and shops" -- if they do that, leave some rides behind in operation, just change the whole nature of where they're at. Yeah, I've seen that before. Maybe the Wild One would even make the cut, as its historic. Ironically, the original location of Paragon Park followed this same concept. The park was dismantled, and turned into beachfront property and used for other commercial purposes, but they leaved behind a historic Carousel. Now granted, the insanely high property values of land so close to DC could explain why SFI should sell to maximize the land's economic value, but it doesn't explain why the park is run so poorly, and why they've torpedoed guest experience to the point that they have. I guess Apocalypse? Come on. You can't even count that on your coaster count because any reputable human being would have already ridden Iron Wolf.

If you think about it. With the gentrification and sprawl from DC, that land that SFA occupies might be way too valuable to be occupied by an amusement park, especially considered that over half of it remains vacant as a buffer zone. Economically, the property would probably see its highest and best use as a mixed purposes residential real estate and commercial area. They could put in luxury high rises, and high end restaurants, bars, and shops, and make it into a very desirable place to live for wealthy DC lobbyists, lawyers, professionals, and young rich recent grads. Especially now that the metro has been extended further out to it. I'd say that unless the city has a clause in the contract that requires the park to stay (as an attraction to conceivably help improve the attractiveness of the area), SFI would be smart to cash out and sell to a developer. SFNO had a clause with New Orleans like that, but it appears that it wasn't honored. The city tried to enforce it, but SFI scooted out, and they weren't about to re-build in an abandoned swamp.