Six Flags Great America attendance is not what it used to be. It has not even come close to recovering from what it was pre pandemic. Before the park would be pretty packed every weekday and swamped on weekends, not the case anymore.
Wonderland has become the 4th biggest revenue producer of the Cedar Fair legacy parks. It's capital investment will continue to be significant. The new 2025 coaster is suppose to be a Premier rides multi launch that interacts with the mountain. Significant work already done with footings and tunnels into the mountain. The hotel project that was scheduled and put on hold b/c of the pandemic is also being revived, permits reactivated. Wonderland has all the bad coasters put in under Paramount. The parks since Cedar Fair bought it in 2006 has gotten a bunch of good coasters. Also, everyone talks about Kings Island's kids area, but Wonderland's is really good and overlooked.
Cedar Fair to get into all parks is only $250 is you were buying now. If you bought in the fall it was as low as $99 for Gold pass at major parks like Cedar Point and $100 for the passport..total $199. CF management runs their best price in August thru September, After that they will continue to increase after their Halloween stuff ends, New Year, Early spring, when parks open for the year(varies), Memorial Day. In contrast SF management will have a sale for every holiday or Labor Day, Columbus, Day, black Friday, Xmas, President's Day, Spring Break, Memorial Day, etc... My friend bought a new Diamond pass in May for $105(Gets you into all parks, and comes with season drink bottle). SF off and on all off season and early season runs free upgrade of a pass to the higher level. One of things that will assuredly go away with CF management in control is the SF legacy parks constant sales, major discounts. CF management pricing style explained above. Also, most of the general public doesn't go to more than their home park and maybe another if it's a few hours a way. Any all merged park pass would be geared for enthusiasts willing to pay $450 or $500. I could see them offering more regional passes..ie... a California pass, Northeast pass, Midwest pass, etc... that gets you into those parks in the $250 range and the all parks the higher cost pass for all parks, just for enthusiast types. You could even see SF legacy parks stay under their current passes, CF legacy parks under their current system and a $100 or $125 passport add on if you want to cross between the legacy SF or CF parks not part of your pass in that system,
1)They already came out with a new corporate logo it's very Cedar Fair-ish 2)DC merchandise is horrible and a tired IP. Cedar Fair parks have way better merchandise, coaster t shirts, etc.. Hopefully will not see any of the DC stuff in Legacy CF parks. 3)Not only is Fast Lane simpler, it doesn't involve a 3rd party which takes a big cut. flash pass on average is much more expensive than Fast Lane b/c SF is giving by some reports 25 to 30% to the 3rd party operator.
Frontier City and Darien Lake are owned by EPR and SF has operating leases. They can't sell them as they don't won them. They might be able to get someone to take over the 5 leases. The lease end dates vary from 2033 to 2037 SF has operating leases deals with EPR on Frontier City, Darien Lake and 3 water parks (Ok City, Houston & Phoenix). They CF management surely will try to get out of these leases early if they can, if it's not cost prohibitive with penalty clauses. Frontier City is doing poorly. FY 2023 SF took 16M in impairment on Frontier City and 7M on the OK city water park. Frontier City is running even more limited hours than 2023 this year, to try to reduce the impairment. Though they state in the financial report they see future impairments related to the park. They are open just 11 am to 6pm weekdays(closed completely tuesday and wednesdays) and 11am to 7pm weekends. The Houston waterpark took a 16.9M impairment in 2022. The lease parks were not good deals. None of the parks are really producing. SF stated previously the lease parks have significantly lower total per caps and EBIDTA margin than the other legacy SF parks.
@@edt-ze3ke I wouldn’t consider fun spot competition, not yet anyway. Even with a roller coaster that’s miles better than anything at SFOG, that park was completely dead on a Saturday night when we were there. It’s going to take some time for that park to steal crowds from six flags. Also, 4 hours is quite the trek lol
So based on what your list here is probably the actual list of parks that are in good standing or are losers in my opinion: Good would be great adventure, fiesta Texas, kd, ki, unfortunately for your opinion Darien lake is going to be in good standing due to having an entire complex which includes a concert venue and hotel and campgrounds plus still having close to 300 acres of undeveloped land, carowinds, and cw. As normal: Cp, WoF, Og, Ot, great escape, Dorny, la ronde, Mexico, valley fair, and a few others, California risk aka LA housing: MM either the housing development behind it will kill it either by noise issues or the by development but can be also in good standing if they can coexist, Losers and endangered: frontier city, knotts, America, cga, mi, New England, and the biggest loser and endangered park is St. Louis, they didn’t even have the park on the map by name just six flags and nothing else
Six Flags Magic Mountain is run horribly(it's not a 365 park, they tried it for 1 yr and it was a ghost town too many days.). The place is completely understaffed & almost all the workers have a look like they are miserable. Every coaster has 5 minute dispatches, except Wonder Woman since it's a moving platform. They were running 1 train ops constantly. The park wasn't really that busy, but with 1 train ops regular line was 1 hour or more on many rides, X2 even longer. I had Ultimate all park flash pass so got on everything immediately, save the 5 minute dispatches. The food options are poor. Just 2 decent places to eat Food Etc(fresh made tacos and quesedilla place ) and the Ace o Clubs(BBQ Sandwich) , the latter was closed frequently. The park also has a problem with patrons and workers. I was in the X2 line, lady with her kids complains to worker that guy is smoking pot in line. The park is no smoking of any kind. She asks him to tell the guy the policy and/or call security. The worker tells her there's nothing he can do and laughs her off. Don't know if she went to guest service at the end of the day, but I did write them an email about the incident
@@grobble8954 Your experience seems to be on par with what most people tell us. The fact that it’s not a 365 park (sorry about that) in that location is a tragedy in itself. Hopefully the new company can really clean this place up. Sad that all these amazing coasters reside in a place like that.
@@Lanie_619 Is it a competition as well? I heard something like that at some point but wasn’t sure. Makes sense as to why they are so extravagant and long
Haha okay downstaters 😂 you do realize that during the summer it’s not cold in Buffalo.. so based on what you said that parks that are cold and snows then and a cold climate would be, cedar point, Canada’s wonderland, sfga, Michigans adventure, great escape.
It depends. Six Flags might have gone bankrupt and be purchased by Cedar Fair anyways. So a merger might prevent the worst from happening. The main issue with mergers is when it negatively affects competition. But with many theme park locations still around, it should be fine.
Not happening. Prologis bought the land for 310M. Cedar Fair still owns the assets of the park which are valued at min 125M. They aren't spending the $435M+(Prologis would surely want a profit on the sale of the land over what they paid) to buy a park/land that literally turned a high single digit to low double digit net profit. The low profit and high operating costs is why Cedar Fair never wanted the park. They tried to get it out of the Paramount deal. They tried to sell it in the early 2010's, fell thru at the last minute. Cf made more on the land purchase from the city in 2019 and resale in 2022 than they would make in decades running the park.
The only thing im worried about is maintenance and historical rides. Six flags isnt really know for maintenance so if that takes into affect in the cedar fair parks then that could be bad. Another one is historic rides. Sure some six dlags keep a historic woodie or looper. But for the most part they tear then down. Im not saying keep those coasters well past their lifespan but im worried that some like magnum or the bat or any arrows in particular are going to be considered "waste of space" with the merger. Im sure that won't happen. But it is six flags we are talking here
@@AdventureBarkz hopefully. As long as they don't tear down my favorite ride at carowinds which is the Carolina cyclone I'll be fine. That's a historical ride with the first one to have 4 inversions. But it's from 1980 so I'm sure they've been planning on removing it for a while
@@CarolinaCycloneJames oh wow, did not know that, that’s awesome! We got on it last year and it’s definitely not the smoothest experience but at least it’s reliable unlike Nighthawk haha. I think it’ll be safe for now. Their main priorities with coasters should be trying to figure out what to do with Hurler and Vortex
@@AdventureBarkz it's not the smoothest. But for an arrow it's pretty smooth. I've learned that the less transitions the better they are. Hurler still gets insane lines at the park. Though I believe a little kid got stabbed by a bolt that attached the seat in front of her and it looked pretty bad so maybe that'll realize it's a bad ride. But 2024 has been good for hurler. They basically turned off the trims. At least when I ride it so I actually get airtime so I can see how it was enjoyable when it first opened. Vortex also is very popular at the park and they just did a refurb on it so I don't see it getting removed sadly. I'm surprised that Carowinds never got floorless trains when literally every other small B&M standups at the other cedar fair parks got them. Maybe they just forgot that vortex exists when they did that change 😆
7:48 probably won't happen since these are family parks and they wouldn't want kids to think it would be okay to start wrestling with random people and possibly getting hurt. I think dumb adults that decide to climb over fences getting kill because they are stupid. (No offense to the families but well yeah...) I don't think they need violence even staged violence since children in certain impressionable age groups wouldn't really know it is fake and that you shouldn't try a back breaker on your younger sibling or friend. (I think several years back I seen something like that on the news and it ended in the death of a small child.) Also Cedar Point doesn't just break up with companies for that reason only. They take a good look at the company's track record and have to decide what is best for all. So cedar point not a loser it a big winner like you said and will always be. :P Anyways thank you for the upload. Very informative and just so long as they don't change my number one fave park to some weird name like I don't know .... Six Points over Ohio then I'll be fine. Also so long as they don't remove my two number one fave rides (Had three number ones but they took away wildcat.) Iron Dragon and Gemini then I won't complain to much.
The royal rumble thing was a complete joke btw, totally kidding there haha. We’ll have to get on iron dragon and Gemini next time at the point. We were unable to get to them on our first visit earlier this year. Heading back soon though!
I thinm Six Flags America is on yhe chopping block. Its completely redundant and the land it sits on it probably more valuable than the park itself. Its right in the middle of Great Adventure, Dorney, and Kings Dominion and awful compared to all 3. Sell that park, take Superman and put it over the lake at Kings Dominion as it was intended to be like its clone at Darien Lake and remove Anaconda and everyone wins. They were soil testing the Goliath plot at SFNE so I think something is indeed finally going there. Darien Lake and Frotier City arent 'owned" by six flags but they do operate them and incorporate them as their own...but thats why theres no DC theming at those parks. Roller Coaster Rodeo is incredible. I 10000% say you should get to it next year. We had free flash passes all 3 days plus ERT for 2 nights....one being a 3 hours full park ERT. Not to mention free drinks and a free meal and all sorts of other stuff. Incredible event.
@@Posirep yeah I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone ever say something nice about Six Flags America lol, seems to have quite the reputation. That being said, we’d still like to visit. I believe Great Escape is also not operated by six flags as when we visited, no looney tunes or DC. They had these forest animal characters, which were honestly better and fit the atmosphere of that park. And yes, we will definitely try to get out there next year for that event, looks WILD!
Darien Lake is actually getting major investments right now. They are completely rebuilding the park as we speak. Mind eraser currently off-line this year. getting a complete rebuild predator and boomerang just got rebuilds and there’s some major plans in the works for the off-season
I think they will end up shutting a couple parks and shifting the rides around to other more successful parks and marketing them as 'new' rides. Despite SFOG being historically important to 6F, it's in rough shape. I'm also worried about things like the company trying to bring DC characters and bugs bunny and 6F type stuff to Knotts, a park I adore.
Yeah the practice of taking old rides and marketing them as "New" certainly isn't going anywhere haha. And yeah, we consider Knotts to be the only "Theme Park" in the entire chain so hopefully they dont taint it with the likes of the Six Flags characters. Really hoping we're right and they begin to invest heavily in amazing dark rides here. As far as Georgia goes, yeah I think they really need to focus on management. Appears to be one of the worst operated ones in the chain...which is unfortunate because the ride lineup is stellar!
I don't think any changes will be made to Knott's Berry farm. At least cedar fair said that before the merger cause people were worried about that. Now it could change now that the merger has happened but it looks like cedar fair is slightly more in charge and I'm sure even if not that they would try to reason with six flags to keep it that way
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Six Flags Great America attendance is not what it used to be. It has not even come close to recovering from what it was pre pandemic. Before the park would be pretty packed every weekday and swamped on weekends, not the case anymore.
Wonderland has become the 4th biggest revenue producer of the Cedar Fair legacy parks. It's capital investment will continue to be significant. The new 2025 coaster is suppose to be a Premier rides multi launch that interacts with the mountain. Significant work already done with footings and tunnels into the mountain. The hotel project that was scheduled and put on hold b/c of the pandemic is also being revived, permits reactivated. Wonderland has all the bad coasters put in under Paramount. The parks since Cedar Fair bought it in 2006 has gotten a bunch of good coasters. Also, everyone talks about Kings Island's kids area, but Wonderland's is really good and overlooked.
Cedar Fair to get into all parks is only $250 is you were buying now. If you bought in the fall it was as low as $99 for Gold pass at major parks like Cedar Point and $100 for the passport..total $199. CF management runs their best price in August thru September, After that they will continue to increase after their Halloween stuff ends, New Year, Early spring, when parks open for the year(varies), Memorial Day. In contrast SF management will have a sale for every holiday or Labor Day, Columbus, Day, black Friday, Xmas, President's Day, Spring Break, Memorial Day, etc... My friend bought a new Diamond pass in May for $105(Gets you into all parks, and comes with season drink bottle). SF off and on all off season and early season runs free upgrade of a pass to the higher level. One of things that will assuredly go away with CF management in control is the SF legacy parks constant sales, major discounts. CF management pricing style explained above. Also, most of the general public doesn't go to more than their home park and maybe another if it's a few hours a way. Any all merged park pass would be geared for enthusiasts willing to pay $450 or $500. I could see them offering more regional passes..ie... a California pass, Northeast pass, Midwest pass, etc... that gets you into those parks in the $250 range and the all parks the higher cost pass for all parks, just for enthusiast types. You could even see SF legacy parks stay under their current passes, CF legacy parks under their current system and a $100 or $125 passport add on if you want to cross between the legacy SF or CF parks not part of your pass in that system,
1)They already came out with a new corporate logo it's very Cedar Fair-ish
2)DC merchandise is horrible and a tired IP. Cedar Fair parks have way better merchandise, coaster t shirts, etc.. Hopefully will not see any of the DC stuff in Legacy CF parks.
3)Not only is Fast Lane simpler, it doesn't involve a 3rd party which takes a big cut. flash pass on average is much more expensive than Fast Lane b/c SF is giving by some reports 25 to 30% to the 3rd party operator.
Frontier City and Darien Lake are owned by EPR and SF has operating leases. They can't sell them as they don't won them. They might be able to get someone to take over the 5 leases. The lease end dates vary from 2033 to 2037 SF has operating leases deals with EPR on Frontier City, Darien Lake and 3 water parks (Ok City, Houston & Phoenix). They CF management surely will try to get out of these leases early if they can, if it's not cost prohibitive with penalty clauses. Frontier City is doing poorly. FY 2023 SF took 16M in impairment on Frontier City and 7M on the OK city water park. Frontier City is running even more limited hours than 2023 this year, to try to reduce the impairment. Though they state in the financial report they see future impairments related to the park. They are open just 11 am to 6pm weekdays(closed completely tuesday and wednesdays) and 11am to 7pm weekends. The Houston waterpark took a 16.9M impairment in 2022. The lease parks were not good deals. None of the parks are really producing. SF stated previously the lease parks have significantly lower total per caps and EBIDTA margin than the other legacy SF parks.
SFOG has competion because there is Fun Spot 35 minutes away from them and then Carrowinds 4 hours away
@@edt-ze3ke I wouldn’t consider fun spot competition, not yet anyway. Even with a roller coaster that’s miles better than anything at SFOG, that park was completely dead on a Saturday night when we were there. It’s going to take some time for that park to steal crowds from six flags. Also, 4 hours is quite the trek lol
So based on what your list here is probably the actual list of parks that are in good standing or are losers in my opinion: Good would be great adventure, fiesta Texas, kd, ki, unfortunately for your opinion Darien lake is going to be in good standing due to having an entire complex which includes a concert venue and hotel and campgrounds plus still having close to 300 acres of undeveloped land, carowinds, and cw. As normal: Cp, WoF, Og, Ot, great escape, Dorny, la ronde, Mexico, valley fair, and a few others, California risk aka LA housing: MM either the housing development behind it will kill it either by noise issues or the by development but can be also in good standing if they can coexist, Losers and endangered: frontier city, knotts, America, cga, mi, New England, and the biggest loser and endangered park is St. Louis, they didn’t even have the park on the map by name just six flags and nothing else
Six Flags Magic Mountain is run horribly(it's not a 365 park, they tried it for 1 yr and it was a ghost town too many days.). The place is completely understaffed & almost all the workers have a look like they are miserable. Every coaster has 5 minute dispatches, except Wonder Woman since it's a moving platform. They were running 1 train ops constantly. The park wasn't really that busy, but with 1 train ops regular line was 1 hour or more on many rides, X2 even longer. I had Ultimate all park flash pass so got on everything immediately, save the 5 minute dispatches. The food options are poor. Just 2 decent places to eat Food Etc(fresh made tacos and quesedilla place ) and the Ace o Clubs(BBQ Sandwich) , the latter was closed frequently. The park also has a problem with patrons and workers. I was in the X2 line, lady with her kids complains to worker that guy is smoking pot in line. The park is no smoking of any kind. She asks him to tell the guy the policy and/or call security. The worker tells her there's nothing he can do and laughs her off. Don't know if she went to guest service at the end of the day, but I did write them an email about the incident
@@grobble8954 Your experience seems to be on par with what most people tell us. The fact that it’s not a 365 park (sorry about that) in that location is a tragedy in itself. Hopefully the new company can really clean this place up. Sad that all these amazing coasters reside in a place like that.
La Ronde doesnt have fireworks everyday. They have them twice per week for a month. So maybe 6 fireworks shows each season.
@@Lanie_619 Is it a competition as well? I heard something like that at some point but wasn’t sure. Makes sense as to why they are so extravagant and long
@@AdventureBarkz yes its a competition!
Yes it is a longstanding international competition. 7 to 10 fireworks per summer. It started last week.
Haha okay downstaters 😂 you do realize that during the summer it’s not cold in Buffalo.. so based on what you said that parks that are cold and snows then and a cold climate would be, cedar point, Canada’s wonderland, sfga, Michigans adventure, great escape.
My Prediction: This is the beginning of the end!! Corporate merger is never for a good reason.
It depends.
Six Flags might have gone bankrupt and be purchased by Cedar Fair anyways. So a merger might prevent the worst from happening. The main issue with mergers is when it negatively affects competition. But with many theme park locations still around, it should be fine.
CGA is my home park. I hope the mayor gets the 49ers to buy it and invest in the park as something people might do to tailgate.
Not happening. Prologis bought the land for 310M. Cedar Fair still owns the assets of the park which are valued at min 125M. They aren't spending the $435M+(Prologis would surely want a profit on the sale of the land over what they paid) to buy a park/land that literally turned a high single digit to low double digit net profit. The low profit and high operating costs is why Cedar Fair never wanted the park. They tried to get it out of the Paramount deal. They tried to sell it in the early 2010's, fell thru at the last minute. Cf made more on the land purchase from the city in 2019 and resale in 2022 than they would make in decades running the park.
The only thing im worried about is maintenance and historical rides. Six flags isnt really know for maintenance so if that takes into affect in the cedar fair parks then that could be bad. Another one is historic rides. Sure some six dlags keep a historic woodie or looper. But for the most part they tear then down. Im not saying keep those coasters well past their lifespan but im worried that some like magnum or the bat or any arrows in particular are going to be considered "waste of space" with the merger. Im sure that won't happen. But it is six flags we are talking here
@@CarolinaCycloneJames Yeah we’re right there with you on this. Hopefully since the majority of leadership came from CF, this won’t happen.
@@AdventureBarkz hopefully. As long as they don't tear down my favorite ride at carowinds which is the Carolina cyclone I'll be fine. That's a historical ride with the first one to have 4 inversions. But it's from 1980 so I'm sure they've been planning on removing it for a while
@@CarolinaCycloneJames oh wow, did not know that, that’s awesome! We got on it last year and it’s definitely not the smoothest experience but at least it’s reliable unlike Nighthawk haha. I think it’ll be safe for now. Their main priorities with coasters should be trying to figure out what to do with Hurler and Vortex
@@AdventureBarkz it's not the smoothest. But for an arrow it's pretty smooth. I've learned that the less transitions the better they are. Hurler still gets insane lines at the park. Though I believe a little kid got stabbed by a bolt that attached the seat in front of her and it looked pretty bad so maybe that'll realize it's a bad ride. But 2024 has been good for hurler. They basically turned off the trims. At least when I ride it so I actually get airtime so I can see how it was enjoyable when it first opened. Vortex also is very popular at the park and they just did a refurb on it so I don't see it getting removed sadly. I'm surprised that Carowinds never got floorless trains when literally every other small B&M standups at the other cedar fair parks got them. Maybe they just forgot that vortex exists when they did that change 😆
@@CarolinaCycloneJames Well glad they at least did something with Hurler. I remember riding that last year thinking it was terribly boring haha
7:48 probably won't happen since these are family parks and they wouldn't want kids to think it would be okay to start wrestling with random people and possibly getting hurt. I think dumb adults that decide to climb over fences getting kill because they are stupid. (No offense to the families but well yeah...) I don't think they need violence even staged violence since children in certain impressionable age groups wouldn't really know it is fake and that you shouldn't try a back breaker on your younger sibling or friend. (I think several years back I seen something like that on the news and it ended in the death of a small child.)
Also Cedar Point doesn't just break up with companies for that reason only. They take a good look at the company's track record and have to decide what is best for all. So cedar point not a loser it a big winner like you said and will always be. :P
Anyways thank you for the upload. Very informative and just so long as they don't change my number one fave park to some weird name like I don't know .... Six Points over Ohio then I'll be fine. Also so long as they don't remove my two number one fave rides (Had three number ones but they took away wildcat.) Iron Dragon and Gemini then I won't complain to much.
The royal rumble thing was a complete joke btw, totally kidding there haha. We’ll have to get on iron dragon and Gemini next time at the point. We were unable to get to them on our first visit earlier this year. Heading back soon though!
I thinm Six Flags America is on yhe chopping block.
Its completely redundant and the land it sits on it probably more valuable than the park itself. Its right in the middle of Great Adventure, Dorney, and Kings Dominion and awful compared to all 3. Sell that park, take Superman and put it over the lake at Kings Dominion as it was intended to be like its clone at Darien Lake and remove Anaconda and everyone wins.
They were soil testing the Goliath plot at SFNE so I think something is indeed finally going there.
Darien Lake and Frotier City arent 'owned" by six flags but they do operate them and incorporate them as their own...but thats why theres no DC theming at those parks.
Roller Coaster Rodeo is incredible. I 10000% say you should get to it next year. We had free flash passes all 3 days plus ERT for 2 nights....one being a 3 hours full park ERT. Not to mention free drinks and a free meal and all sorts of other stuff.
Incredible event.
@@Posirep yeah I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone ever say something nice about Six Flags America lol, seems to have quite the reputation. That being said, we’d still like to visit.
I believe Great Escape is also not operated by six flags as when we visited, no looney tunes or DC. They had these forest animal characters, which were honestly better and fit the atmosphere of that park.
And yes, we will definitely try to get out there next year for that event, looks WILD!
Superman is lame. They can keep that garbage.
Darien Lake is actually getting major investments right now. They are completely rebuilding the park as we speak. Mind eraser currently off-line this year. getting a complete rebuild predator and boomerang just got rebuilds and there’s some major plans in the works for the off-season
It's the "caaahuhhunn-caahahunn" laugh for me.🫢😂
@@bobbylindsey hahaha it can’t be helped 😂
I think they will end up shutting a couple parks and shifting the rides around to other more successful parks and marketing them as 'new' rides.
Despite SFOG being historically important to 6F, it's in rough shape.
I'm also worried about things like the company trying to bring DC characters and bugs bunny and 6F type stuff to Knotts, a park I adore.
Yeah the practice of taking old rides and marketing them as "New" certainly isn't going anywhere haha. And yeah, we consider Knotts to be the only "Theme Park" in the entire chain so hopefully they dont taint it with the likes of the Six Flags characters. Really hoping we're right and they begin to invest heavily in amazing dark rides here.
As far as Georgia goes, yeah I think they really need to focus on management. Appears to be one of the worst operated ones in the chain...which is unfortunate because the ride lineup is stellar!
I don't think any changes will be made to Knott's Berry farm. At least cedar fair said that before the merger cause people were worried about that. Now it could change now that the merger has happened but it looks like cedar fair is slightly more in charge and I'm sure even if not that they would try to reason with six flags to keep it that way
@@AdventureBarkz Georgis has improved a lot lately this season
@@edt-ze3ke oh nice, glad to hear that!