Cameraman

I am also not going to watch the video because I want the ride to be a surprise. I did this with USF's Mummy (I also didn't read any posts giving away spoilers!). Not knowing what would exactly happen made the ride much better.

LOL, if the rides worked then there would be a lot less of a problem. The latest buzz seems to be that many of the flat rides were leased from the manufacturers, and the manufacturers will not renew the lease on the rides or lease new equipment to fix the rides and will take them a way.

You can see the watermark on virtually everything in New Orleans East. You definitely don't forget about what happened out there. Here's a little peek from Michoud Blvd of the bus entrance into the parking lot. I believe the lot is being used by fema for trailers.

That's not what I was referring to. I was referring to the thread (and article that started the thread) "Six Flags Debt Restructuring--Selling Two Parks!?!," which took place before the Frontier City sale and SFoG articles. At the time of that article there was nothing said by Six Flags that they would sell exactly two parks. I was assuming that's what OzCatter was referring to when he said "...they've sold 2 SF parks, as they said they would." I agree that at this point we don't know whether this will be the last of park sales or the beginning. Some people thought that another article definitely meant that Six Flags will sell just two parks. However, that's just what an analyst suggested and anything goes.

May is different from saying they're going to definitely sell exactly two parks. The two park thing was just what an analyst said. Don't really know how the selling park deal will really end. There could be more or this could be the last.

I guess the only way it can be saved is if they find out what kind of federal help they can get. Even then it's pretty bleak. BTW, before this [Edit- this meaning before the two recent articles] they never said they'd sell any parks. An analyst said they could sell two parks to help the debt out. But Frontier City aint gonna make a dent.

Hopefully they divest this park in tact though. I think there's more money to be made by selling it in one piece. The problem is finding a buyer.

Apparently some analysts fail to see that while unloading parks sounds ideal, it's not going to solve the debt issue. I think it's pretty clear that the Astroworld sale is not going very well and will do very little in the long run for paying off the debt. Even when Six Flags sold a park in tact, SFWoA, the amount of money proved to do fairly little for the debt since the park had to be sold relatively cheaply for a buyer to be interested. The same would go for just about the rest of the parks in the chain. I don't see how they could get a buyer interested in purchasing a park for what they're really worth. And when you talk about selling the smaller parks, they're worth even less than a park the size of SFWoA. The current management obviously sees potential in every single park to maximize profit. Six Flags needs to turn in a real profit, and that is how they're going to do it.

I don't think that's true at all. From a description of North American SF Parks:

Uhh... everyone saying how SFAW was sold and was a "done deal." The park was closed... parts of it auctioned off. To me, selling a park is dumping all of its contents and land to someone for a nice lump sum of money. Not picking it apart, keeping some things and auctioning off others for very small amounts of money. Hell, the land still hasn't been sold yet. Who is this Reid anyway? He is an analyst who has nothing to do with Six Flags Inc. I think this is just like that San Antonio article where a complete outsider who has NOTHING to do with Six Flags gives their opinion, which amounts to a pile of crap. Don't read much into it. This is complete deja vu of the San Antonio article referring to SFFT. Everyone was like "oh noez they're going to sell SFFT next and give its rides to SFGAdv!11111!!!!" It's obvious that they don't intend on selling parks but rather maximizing the profits in each one they have. They see the potential in all of them.

We know from the official word that Six Flags New Orleans made around 2 million EBIDAT. Attendance was around or greater than SFKK's. It had real potential considering what a water park could do for it. Unfortunately mother nature decided on another kind of water park. There was also a memo a SFAW employee released with the performance of SF parks in 2005 from January up to September. Surprisingly, SFNO was ahead of SFEG :shock:

Yeah I totally agree with Ernie. And now here's my uber nerdy census report pre-Katrina. Metro New Orleans Parishes around 2004: Orleans - 462,269 Jefferson - 453,590 St. Tammany - 213,553 Tangipahoa - 105,158 St. Bernard - 65,554 St. Charles - 50,073 St. John - 45,581 Washington - 44,161 Plaquemines - 28,969 And these weren't the only areas that SFNO drew from either. Orleans, St. Bernard, and Plaquemines Parishes were the ones drastically affected by the storm. In comparison, the other parishes listed were minimally affected. In fact, their populations have probably grown because many displaced people from the affected areas have found housing there.

I think it's safe to say the customer base will come back quickly. I don't think I've seen traffic this bad in Jefferson Parish ever, though a lot of that is workers. The Parishes around New Orleans house the people who have the disposable income to spend on going to the park. Probably a very low percentage of the park's customers were even from Orleans Parish. I'm almost tempted to say people from Mississippi make the largest percentage of SFNO's attendance. They sure do haul them in with church groups in buses. It pains me to say this, but Orleans Parish was crime filled with a murder rate several times above the national average. Much of its population was at or below the poverty threshold. Many developers would like to use this opportunity to make New Orleans much better, but some opponents favor the same old expansive ghettos instead of progress (see those fighting against bulldozing red-tagged houses, more like rubble, in the ninth ward). The biggest problem will be staffing a park since the immediate region (New Orleans East and St Bernard Parish) will probably have little population. I know a lot of employees do commute quite a ways to work at the park, but I doubt the majority of employees, especially the seasonal ones, will want to travel a large distance. I do think that by 2007 many repairs to homes will have been completed far before the park can even reopen. Gutting out and fixing homes will obviously take much less effort than fixing an amusement park with complex and expensive rides. 85 businesses have reopened in New Orleans East, where Six Flags New Orleans is located. Basically all say they feel obligated to rebuild and reopen for the good of their city. They know offering employement to people and tax dollars for the broke city is something that just has to happen if we ever want to see New Orleans come back. I see no reason why Six Flags should think any different as they are a major employer in the region and the local economy has depended on them quite a bit. I would imagine that many of the hotels that grew up in New Orleans East over Jazzland would have to shut down over time after the workers leave if the park closed.

Inverters also suck.

I personally didn't see how the ad campaign could last long anyway. It seemed like it was one of those things that was nice and all for one moment but could easily be played out. I think they should keep Mr. Six for at least one more season due to the amount of merchandise made and possibly because the commercials could have been shot already or are in the process.

I think you are all reading WAY WAY too much into this SFFT thing. If you read it carefully it almost sounds as if they are saying, "They will visit and evaluate all Six Flags parks. This includes Six Flags Fiesta Texas (wow who would have known :? ?!). Oh, and Mr Speigel of a completely separate company that has nothing to do with Snyder says it was not one of the stronger performing parks." I don't think Red Zone has expressed any interest in getting rid of any parks, just trimming off excessive undeveloped property so they don't have to pay property taxes on it. I think the author of the article also read a bit too much into that (about selling parks). The article was obviously slanted at SFFT because it was written by a San Antonio Business Journal. Had it been located in any other market I would bet it would have focused on the park located in that market as well. One thing I find amusing is whether they will visit Six Flags New Orleans. I can only imagine what they would think... "Geez, the previous management sure let this place turn into a dump !"

Here's a NOAA map of the estimated flood depth in New Orleans at its highest. I marked some things in white for points of interest (places and levee breaches). Note that SFNO wasn't in the highest of flood waters. Click here to view the map

Absolutely not true! They fixed the double up and the trains received an awesome rehab for the 2005 season. I would gather to say that Mega Zeph had been running the best since 2000 (assuming you didn't catch it on a bad day). Granted I have caught it on just a couple bad days this season and it's amazing how a ride can run so differently. However, for the most part is has been running really good and I thought the trains were tracking really well this year for Gerstlauers. I am not totally surprised by this finding. However I am skeptical about saying it's damaged BEYOND repair. I think the ride for the most part is ok but the soil around the footers had bad erosion. But certainly in this day and age that can be fixed (see Shockwave at SFoT which had the same problem). I have driven around some of the areas covered by the flood waters and can say from a first hand look that the erosion everywhere is pretty bad. I looked at a storm drain next to a street and thought it looked really strange, very high and odd looking for a drain. Then I realized that all the soil and grass around the drain had been completely swept away. However, that was around where a levee break was and where water was literally rushing through with force. Levees did not break in the New Orleans East area, water simply poured in over the levees. So perhaps the erosion isn't quite as bad. But there will be significant problems with the soil as the water sat so long. Edit: Some important info. The claims that rides were shifted around and were taken off their footers is not true. Actually in some ways SFNO was spared from the absolute worst flooding that was found in the area. It was not as deep and not as forceful as many other areas. I don't believe you'll find any cars on top of buildings and such in New Orleans East.

Kind of resurrecting an old topic but... I hope (and think) everything will move much faster than first expected. Every time you hear a deadline or some sort of date, whether it be draining, bridge repairs, electricity, or what not, has been drastically different than what was first said. For instance, a week ago a major milestone was met in the New Orleans East area as half of the I-10 twinspan bridge that was heavily damaged has been reopened to traffic (completed 17 days early - a bonus of around $65,000 per day early was a bit of an incentive though!). Water draining originally was said to take months but has been completed for the entire area in about 6 weeks after the hurricane. Some officials made comments that citizens in Lakeview, a fairly wealthy area of New Orleans, would not have power for up to 8 months. However, Entergy spokesmen corrected that saying that energy can be restored fairly fast in that region. My dad has one job to make repairs to a car dealership not terribly far from SFNO (just a couple miles down the interstate). They have the full intention of getting up and running as soon as possible no matter what hurdles are in the way and despite what happens to New Orleans East. There is no electricity there yet so workers are using generators to power their tools. A huge influx of workers have come to the city (this is both a blessing and a curse) and the recovery work around the area is simply unimaginable. I think this may be a good sign that the work needed to get done is being done much faster than originally expected. It's still a huge task and hard days lie ahead (especially in some of the poorer areas of New Orleans where repair work is out of the question due to finances or extreme damage), but the citizens who are determined to stay, believe me that there's a lot, are being extremely resilient. I would hope Six Flags New Orleans also has this commitment and gets on its feet again as well. I am fully confident that their market in New Orleans will come back faster than expected, and I really hope the same can be said for Mississippi as well.

Man that's terrible! So much hard work for nothing The hauned house was looking really good, reminds me of some sort of freak show/side show or something.

Mr Six's Extermination

Kinda Dumb