News Cedar Fair Merges with Six Flags

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horsesboy

horsesboy

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Hello darkness my old friend...

Seriously though, these occasional news stories of industry merger negotiations haunt my nightmares. I know one of these days a merger between two of the few large chains that remain will end up being announced and then we're going to have to rely on anti-trust authorities to, hopefully, block it. The absolute last thing this industry needs is more consolidation/less competition.
 
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Articles like these pop up every other year or so, no? Is this suddenly more likely because Reuters is reporting on it?
Also, very few SF and CF parks directly compete with each other. I'm curious of the effects something like this would have on the individual parks.
 
Fiender said:
Articles like these pop up every other year or so, no? Is this suddenly more likely because Reuters is reporting on it?
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Articles like these do pop up every other year or so, but that's because there is a lot of desire within the industry to consolidate the regional park market further. I don't think there's anything about this time that looks any more or less likely, but it seems inevitable that, one of these days, the talks won't fall through and a deal will actually be announced. Then we're in for a world of hurt.
 
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If this does go through, I can't imagine SFA survives this with KD right next door. Wouldn't surprise me if multiple other small SF/CF parks don't either.
 
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Bigskinny said:
I’ll be damned if I have to walk into Six Flags: Cedar Point. Just thinking of any rebranding makes me sick before we even get to market consolidation
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What if the OPPOSITE happened, and all the parks became, Cedar Point's Great Adventure? Cedar Point's Darien Lake? Cedar Point Over Georgia (okay that one doesn't work as well)
 
If this one actually happens (it seems from the reporting that it might), I sort of doubt most of the CF parks would be rebranded with the Six Flags name. Unlike the smaller independent parks that Six Flags has historically purchased, CF’s parks are larger and already have their own established brand. Especially as Six Flags increasingly seems to be trying to make themselves a “premium” company, having a slate of parks free from the Six Flags branding might actually be seen as a positive by them.

Also worth noting that this is reportedly a merger, not an acquisition like the reports in previous years about SF or SEAS trying to buy out CF. The differences to consumers might be subtle, but this may be less of a “Six Flags gobbles up CF and turns all the CF parks into Six Flags parks” situation and more the formation of a new, super theme park giant.
 
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Ugh. I hate this in so many ways. I guess the only only only sliver of hope IMO is that they decide they would be WAY too big and Hershand/Merlin comes in and buys some smaller parks (like SFA, VF) and really does a lot to change them.
 
Mushroom said:
If this one actually happens (it seems from the reporting that it might), I sort of doubt most of the CF parks would be rebranded with the Six Flags name. Unlike the smaller independent parks that Six Flags has historically purchased, CF’s parks are larger and already have their own established brand. Especially as Six Flags increasingly seems to be trying to make themselves a “premium” company, having a slate of parks free from the Six Flags branding might actually be seen as a positive by them.

Also worth noting that this is reportedly a merger, not an acquisition like the reports in previous years about SF or SEAS trying to buy out CF. The differences to consumers might be subtle, but this may be less of a “Six Flags gobbles up CF and turns all the CF parks into Six Flags parks” situation and more the formation of a new, super theme park giant.
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yeah that was some slight shock and worry in my post haha. I'd expect like you said for the names to remain the same to avoid the headache and the immense costs it would take to change everything.
 
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This would be a disaster. Cedar Fair management has declined a lot over the last few years. Six Flags is already in the gutter. Merging with Six Flags would just totally take both of them to the Six Flags gutter in my opinion.

Very seldom does a bigger corp offer a better customer experience and this is all about experience
 
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