Six Flags [FUN] Corporate Discussion Thread

[bert425]

TO ADD:

in an example of what a fantastic park SFFT is, and the Management team there, I've already been reached out from the park Mgmt, to thank me for my comments, and noted that:

"we are hopeful that napkins and other guest amenities will return to guest facing soon."

So I really hope that this is just a short term thing! But honestly, I'd be fine if just a few napkins are automatically handed when serving the food.

Regardless. . this is why I LOVE this park!

 

[Lotologist492]

4 hours ago, bert425 said:

was at SFFT yesterday and despite the heat (and the continuing staffing issues that result in ~1/2 the park not opening up until after Noon, despite 10am front gate/10:30 rope drop open), I really did have a fantastic time.

that said, the one thing I really did have an issue with yesterday - and I'm not sure if it's chain wide now, but I *absolutely* suspect it's coming from Six Flags Mgmt, and not the park itself:

NO MORE NAPKINS out on countertops. (no silver or condiments either. . but my big issue was the napkins).

those giant napkin dispensers that used to be on the corners of the Quickserve places, or on the countertops at indoor/seating restaurants? Now have all been moved behind the serving counters.

you have to *ask* for a napkin, and when you get to your chosen spot to eat, and realize you've forgotten to get a napkin (which happened to us *multiple* times yesterday, you have to go back and cut in the line to ask the one person (in most cases) working the register to please give you some napkins.

not good at the Ice Cream places, the messy nacho place, or the funnel cake stand where you're going to need multiple napkins.

after the 3rd place that had the napkins behind the counter (there were a few of us, and got snacks at different places), I asked what was going on. . . and was told that "people waste the napkins, so they were told to remove them from the front of the food service places"

yeah. . . that's treating your customers badly, and I feel awful for Park Mgmt that's going to have to deal with the poor impression fallout that seems to be clearly coming from a level above the parks (and I know they're already dealing with many complaints from so many "Meal" and "Snack" options being removed from the meal plans - again, not an individual park decision.

so. . . just a heads up on this sudden change, and I'd love to know if it's happening at other Six Flags parks. . . I strongly suspect it is.

Same issue here at SFoG.  Same reason given too: customers were taking too much (condiments or napkins).  Geez...its not like the park is not making money off the food at the park prices.  (I have a dining pass for the remainder of 2022 so it is just an annoyance for me.)  I even remarked "all guests are being punished because of the actions of a few".  I do hope this is temporary.

[tndank]

St Louis still had napkins and utensils out for customers yesterday. 

[AmyUD06]

Maybe it's a California thing?  Like in NJ, how restaurants aren't allowed to give people straws unless the customer asks for one.

[coasterbill]

Six Flags has replaced Season Passes with Annual Passes chain-wide.

This is a good move since it makes no sense to sell calendar-year passes in markets that operate year-round.

[tndank]

That makes sense. Which also makes it surprising under the new regime. 

Do they require activation at home park? Didn't look far enough to find out. 

[joelwee]

9 hours ago, Mike240SX said:

Maybe it's a California thing?  Like in NJ, how restaurants aren't allowed to give people straws unless the customer asks for one.

SFMM still had utensils, napkins, and condiments out for customers to grab a couple of weeks ago, but it may be different now. Some local cities now require restaurants to only give out plastic utensils and condiments if the customer asks for them. A statewide law has also been passed, but I'm not sure if it's taken effect yet.

[KBrylczyk]

11 hours ago, Mike240SX said:

Maybe it's a California thing?  Like in NJ, how restaurants aren't allowed to give people straws unless the customer asks for one.

Fiesta Texas is in California?  News to me.

[CP_RULES]

12 hours ago, tndank said:

St Louis still had napkins and utensils out for customers yesterday. 

Don't be silly SFStL management is surely not to see anything posted here. No use in complementing them 

[joelwee]

Now that Six Flags switched to the annual pass model, I'm curious to see whether the passes sold during the September sale will still include a few extra months like in the past - or whether they will only be valid until the following September.

[tndank]

Rumors say park presidents at SFNE, SFGAdv, SFA, SFOG, and SFSTL were all let go last week.  SFGAdv's pres has announced his 'retirement'. Appears this may all be true.

Earnings call Thursday. Could be interesting to hear more about this disaster of a chain right now.

[SharkTums]

Ouch, that's pretty crazy. 

[Rai Fox]

I don't particularly like the sound of that.  I know SFNE hasn't had a great summer but I don't think the park has done anything wrong at all, it's just been.. *gestures at the entire country/summer/year/etc*  If they go and pin the blame on someone who was doing fine, what kind of changes are we going to see to "fix" things that aren't really broken in the parks?

I guess it's too soon to go guessing at what comes next, but I'm not getting a great feeling about this.

[DirkFunk]

There's an open letter from someone who claims to be in a position of management at Six Flags making the rounds on Reddit, and having read it and heard plenty of other things this year from People I Trust ™, I'm here to say that the company is screwed and has extremely poor leadership. I've even been told specific parks that could ultimately face an untimely demise and/or be sold to competitors (of which there are zero with the capital to make such an acquisition). Changes like having "regional" group sales managers because they have cut their executive management teams to the bone are just totally self defeating moves and their CEO is completely sold on it. Short of bankruptcy and reorganization, I dunno what changes in the immediate future.

[jarmor]

Maybe while they were being praised for being fully opened and extended hours during the pandemic, they should have been mimicking the operating procedures of the Cedar Fair parks, that many criticized and mocked.  Sucks so many are losing their jobs, heard the PR folks lost theirs as well.  I am just confused as to why no one is visiting the parks when they are so accessible and affordable?

[mikeykaise]

lots more Kentucky Kingdom Six Flags treatment on the way!

[coasterbill]

47 minutes ago, jarmor said:

Maybe while they were being praised for being fully opened and extended hours during the pandemic, they should have been mimicking the operating procedures of the Cedar Fair parks, that many criticized and mocked.  Sucks so many are losing their jobs, heard the PR folks lost theirs as well.  I am just confused as to why no one is visiting the parks when they are so accessible and affordable?

Honestly, last year they had a great year and did  lots of things right. This year, it’s like the chains entirely switched places. I really think the issue was the price hikes, not anything they did last year.

[ryder]

I also noticed just today that, without any notification whatsoever, SF added $4 to my membership monthly rate.  And according to their own terms, price increases are supposed to be given an email notification in advance.

While an extra $4 a month isn't going to break me, it's more about the underhanded way they did it that's worrisome.

[bert425]

seeing that reported several places and from friends.

people are PISSED.

 

(and I'm glad that I do a one time Season Pass payment so they couldn't pull this crap with me. . tho I might not get a new pass next year)

[Zand]

They just billed me yesterday...same rate as last month. We'll see next month I guess.

Like I said last year when they ended memberships...getting grandfathered in will eventually be moot because at some point they'll just keep jacking the price. Seems we've started that process.

[Satans Hockey]

18 minutes ago, Zand said:

They just billed me yesterday...same rate as last month. We'll see next month I guess.

Like I said last year when they ended memberships...getting grandfathered in will eventually be moot because at some point they'll just keep jacking the price. Seems we've started that process.

I've been getting billed the same price too, I only have a ticket membership not a dining membership if that makes any difference. Seems like a lot of the complaints I have seen were about dining being changed. 

[DirkFunk]

2 hours ago, jarmor said:

Maybe while they were being praised for being fully opened and extended hours during the pandemic, they should have been mimicking the operating procedures of the Cedar Fair parks, that many criticized and mocked.  Sucks so many are losing their jobs, heard the PR folks lost theirs as well.  I am just confused as to why no one is visiting the parks when they are so accessible and affordable?

Their CEO came in and decided that he would do the Mark Shapiro thing of "cut costs, increase prices" which would in turn generate bigger revenue numbers. The open letter brings up the Mark Shapiro reign as a comparison point, and Mark ran up prices to the point at which the offset of lost attendance actually made things worse. That's the scenario here, with the (rumored) claims that the current CEO has not and will not read any reports from any individual parks about how their capital expenditures are being spent and is openly critical of using money to maintain existing infrastructure. In short: He has no idea what he's doing. And he's going to fail miserably.

This latest move with the season passes? Let me explain something - that agreement that Six Flags has with you about the membership lays out that they are to inform you in advance of price hikes. They didn't. Ergo, they're in breach of the contract they set out with you and you can sue them. They know this. I guarantee it. They don't care and almost certainly are taking the tact that literally stealing money from people through the membership increases will be more profitable after losing a class action lawsuit than not stealing money from guests would be. That's the kind of leadership in charge. 

I used to post a lot more here, but this hobby sucks right now in the US. Aside from Universal Orlando, basically every single park in the entirety of the US is worse off in every way than it was pre-COVID. I don't think it's fun anymore, and the people in charge clearly don't care about me as a customer because they believe they are entitled to my money. They're entitled to nothing and most of them will probably watch their businesses circle the drain while they figure out how they can spin it during the countless TEDx talks they'll give about how their failure wasn't really their fault and they'd be a great consultant.

[Zand]

30 minutes ago, DirkFunk said:

Aside from Universal Orlando, basically every single park in the entirety of the US is worse off in every way than it was pre-COVID.

There's been several times that I've wanted to post exactly this post in other threads, but I didn't want to across as "ungrateful or pessimistic". But this is 100% true aside from maybe Kings Island.

Also I do have the dining pass for my wife and I but still didn't get the increase. But I'm sure it's coming next month.

[michaellynn4]

1 hour ago, DirkFunk said:

I used to post a lot more here, but this hobby sucks right now in the US. Aside from Universal Orlando, basically every single park in the entirety of the US is worse off in every way than it was pre-COVID. I don't think it's fun anymore, and the people in charge clearly don't care about me as a customer because they believe they are entitled to my money. They're entitled to nothing and most of them will probably watch their businesses circle the drain while they figure out how they can spin it during the countless TEDx talks they'll give about how their failure wasn't really their fault and they'd be a great consultant.

Yea, I'm sort of in this boat, too. I've been much less active; I haven't been to any amusement park since pre-COVID and haven't really been clamoring to make it back any time soon. It started off because of social distancing, then it was because I needed to get my weight back under control, then it was because I had a daughter last year. All this time, though, I've been following everyone's experiences at nearly every park (save the ones already mentioned) and seeing the negative directions many parks have taken, and I've decided that it's just not worth the hassle. There are other things I'd much rather spend my money on at this point.

I know the pandemic was rough on the industry, but a lot of these cuts and changes go beyond just trying to keep themselves afloat during hard times. Not mad about it, not gonna spam some customer service mailbox - just going to stay away for now. Maybe I'll reassess in a year or so as my kid gets older.

[DirkFunk]

10 minutes ago, michaellynn4 said:

Yea, I'm sort of in this boat, too. I've been much less active; I haven't been to any amusement park since pre-COVID and haven't really been clamoring to make it back any time soon. It started off because of social distancing, then it was because I needed to get my weight back under control, then it was because I had a daughter last year. All this time, though, I've been following everyone's experiences at nearly every park (save the ones already mentioned) and seeing the negative directions many parks have taken, and I've decided that it's just not worth the hassle. There are other things I'd much rather spend my money on at this point.

I know the pandemic was rough on the industry, but a lot of these cuts and changes go beyond just trying to keep themselves afloat during hard times. Not mad about it, not gonna spam some customer service mailbox - just going to stay away for now. Maybe I'll reassess in a year or so as my kid gets older.

I went to multiple parks in 2020 and 2021. I would actually go so far as to say that I enjoyed the park visits I had in 2020 to a degree I rarely had before, in part because the few parks that were open were well staffed. 2021 was a different story: Everything was a disaster. I've been to one park in 2022, and that's probably all I need to do. It's just shortsightedness all the way down from people who have no creativity left in them. Here's an example I've heard about: the major operators opted to cut costs by reducing the number of menu items to the basics. Except now, of course, everyone operating a seasonal park is just selling the same exact stuff. So the already stretched supply chain on certain items gets even tighter and prices increase even more. Completely predictable except to everyone but the people in charge because the people in charge are not very good at this industry (especially at Six Flags).

I also don't feel any need to be mad online about it by and large. Six Flags thinks they have a product worthy of the kind of cash outlay I had at Universal 5-6 years ago. They can believe that all they want, because I don't owe them my business for an inferior service that costs significantly more than it used to while not being any better. If parks start to close, well, you know what, the fun was wrung out of them for me and I guess that's how it ends - with a whimper, and not a bang.