News Cedar Fair Merges with Six Flags

[harry580]

Today has been a massive dumpster fire. Add this to the pile.

Uncertainty Looms Over Future of Peanuts Characters at Legacy Cedar Fair Parks

The Peanuts gang may be nearing their final curtain call at parks like Kings Island, Cedar Point, Carowinds, and Kings Dominion.

themeparksbydon.com

well, if anything, they should keep the peanuts characters only at knotts berry farm, cedar point, Valleyfair & Dorney park, while the kings parks gets hanna barbera ip back

 

[Zachary]

So what does all this financial doom and gloom mean for the parks? We're obv gonna see another mass zimjob at the end of the year, but what else?

I don't know how many ride closures we should expect, though I'm sure there will be a few. I think portfolio downsizing broadly would be the most newsworthy. I would not be shocked to hear of other parks being sold (like SFA), the land under parks being sold with leaseback deals (like CGA), or management contracts being offloaded (like, potentially, Frontier City).

 

[paintervision]

I'm loathe

Today has been a massive dumpster fire. Add this to the pile.

Uncertainty Looms Over Future of Peanuts Characters at Legacy Cedar Fair Parks

The Peanuts gang may be nearing their final curtain call at parks like Kings Island, Cedar Point, Carowinds, and Kings Dominion.

themeparksbydon.com

When Cedar Fair bought the Paramount Parks, they looked at offering both Peanuts over Nickelodeon IP in the parks (Snoopy and Spongebob showed up in that year's annual report). This was at the same time as they were ditching other Paramount IPs. Nickelodeon had an in-house team devoted to attraction development, so costs to keep adding or redeveloping attractions would be much higher than Peanuts. That's what won out the very next year as they started converting more parks to Planet Snoopy.

Same thing could happen here? Although at this point there's more Peanuts rides than Looney Tunes rides out there. Plus some of the Six Flags parks used generic themes for kiddie rides anyway, like Great Escape or Frontier City. Or exist as smaller areas in a park like Great Adventure, where Jr Thrillseekers is clearly the larger land compared to Bugs Bunny National Park.

It's something to watch but I don't want to jump to any conclusions here. Also consider that Wonderland, Knotts, KI, and Carowinds all have relatively new Snoopy rides, and de-themeing those is possible but unlikely. They did extend the license to 2025 so it's also possible they are looking at renewing and updating all the merch for the brand, too.

 

[Thriller]

I don’t really get the criticism about the different priced passes for different parks. Price discrimination is one of the oldest marketing tools in the book.

Also, the passes have to be activated at the park from which they were purchased, and certain benefits are only available at the passholder’s home park. It makes sense that Knott’s — open far more days, located in a far better year-round climate, located in California, and almost certainly a higher quality park — would cost more.

I’m not so sure you physically have to go to the parks to activate the pass. Canada’s Wonderland has a pass activation on their website.

Activate Pass | Activate Your Season Pass | Canada's Wonderland

Activate your Canada's Wonderland Season Pass by visiting our website today!

www.canadaswonderland.com

 

[Thriller]

The loss of Peanuts is no loss IMO. It’s not a good IP for theme. There are a limited number of characters and they all look the same. Except for the dog in the bird.

Look how many rides have to be themed after the same character because of the limited number of characters

 

[Mushroom]

I’d be sad to lose the Peanuts. I think they have a timeless, nostalgic appeal that I don’t get from the Looney Tunes. Maybe it’s just that I didn’t grow up with the Looney Tunes, but I’ve always felt like the characters seemed outdated and a little tacky.

That said, it’s hard to see the company in its current state justifying paying to renew the license when they already have the rights to the Looney Tunes through the 2050s. Which sucks.

 

[mtorange]

Some good news: KD was mentioned as one of 5 parks that are exceeding expectations this season (I believe the rest were Cedar Point, Kings Island, Canadas Wonderland, and Knott’s). They said they’ve seen growth between 8% (KD) and 20% (CW) from these parks. Hopefully this means KD isn’t in any immediate danger.

 

[CoasterBroCam]

Some good news: KD was mentioned as one of 5 parks that are exceeding expectations this season (I believe the rest were Cedar Point, Kings Island, Canadas Wonderland, and Knott’s). They said they’ve seen growth between 8% (KD) and 20% (CW) from these parks. Hopefully this means KD isn’t in any immediate danger.

Oh thank god! I've been worried about KD's future but now it's probably going to be all good!

 

[SweetBabyJames]

I’d be sad to lose the Peanuts. I think they have a timeless, nostalgic appeal that I don’t get from the Looney Tunes. Maybe it’s just that I didn’t grow up with the Looney Tunes, but I’ve always felt like the characters seemed outdated and a little tacky.

That said, it’s hard to see the company in its current state justifying paying to renew the license when they already have the rights to the Looney Tunes through the 2050s. Which sucks.

While I like Looney Tunes, I couldn't agree more.

 

[MaxxForceFan]

Some good news: KD was mentioned as one of 5 parks that are exceeding expectations this season (I believe the rest were Cedar Point, Kings Island, Canadas Wonderland, and Knott’s). They said they’ve seen growth between 8% (KD) and 20% (CW) from these parks. Hopefully this means KD isn’t in any immediate danger.

On the legacy Six Flags parks:
"We are seeing similar success at the legacy Six Flags parks where we concentrated our efforts and our capital investments in 2025, including Magic Mountain, Fiesta Texas, Six Flags Great America and Six Flags Over Georgia.

Attendance at those four parks was up approximately 76,000 visits or 6% over the last four weeks of July."

 

[mtorange]

I just realized that KD had that one weekend off during the water main break issue, and they still performed in the Top 9 parks in the chain?

Crazy. Didn’t see that coming. I’m pleasantly surprised. I also wonder what this means for parks like Carowinds.

 

[qdeathstar's MAGA friend]

And with no Pantherian...

 

[Thriller]

If Kings Dominion is one of the top nine parks that’s not saying much for their attendance overall unfortunately.

 

[ControlsEE]

And with no Pantherian...

See...

 

[CoasterAuditor]

It’s almost like KD is a large robust park with a significant number and variety of attractions…..

 

[Mike541x]

I'm not surprised. I've been to KD six times this year and only two of those visits, the park was quiet or had very low crowds. Every other time it's had some decent crowds. Nothing slammed packed, but a lot more people than I would usually see in the past and none of my visits were on Saturdays either. I'm glad to see the park performing well. I wonder if this would be enough to convince the chain to bring back Winterfest. It would be nice.

I also did convince like eight of my co-workers into getting season passes this year too, so I might be a small contributing factor in increased attendance.

 

[harry580]

I don't want to make this sounds like a spam post but what is going to happen to the company giving the bad earning call

 

[warfelg]

Likely nothing. They are in year 1 of the merger so the business is still being figured out. And most businesses work on a trailing year basis so they don’t let one quarter change everything.

 

[guy305]

At worst they’ll have a harder time justifying capex investments. It could get to the point where we only see one or two big new coasters for the chain per year like we were seeing with legacy CF before the merger. It’s going to get harder and harder to justify spending $30-50 million on a big new coaster. Any creditor will (justifiably) raise their eyebrows at it and the results need to be explained to them in tangible points. How long does it take for a park to return that investment?

They can quantify it with increases in attendance, pass sales, in-park spending, passholder per capita spending. But does a 10% increase in all those things get you anywhere close to $30 million? Especially since returns diminish and more capex investments may be needed to retain the new attendance levels, let alone sustain the growth.

Long-term growth is good for the shareholders, but maybe they just need to limit new capex, run the profitable parks as is, and focus on repaying their debts for a couple years. If they get their liabilities down enough then they’ll have more freedom to do what they want.

 

[bill s]

At worst they’ll have a harder time justifying capex investments. It could get to the point where we only see one or two big new coasters for the chain per year like we were seeing with legacy CF before the merger. It’s going to get harder and harder to justify spending $30-50 million on a big new coaster. Any creditor will (justifiably) raise their eyebrows at it and the results need to be explained to them in tangible points. How long does it take for a park to return that investment?

They can quantify it with increases in attendance, pass sales, in-park spending, passholder per capita spending. But does a 10% increase in all those things get you anywhere close to $30 million? Especially since returns diminish and more capex investments may be needed to retain the new attendance levels, let alone sustain the growth.

Long-term growth is good for the shareholders, but maybe they just need to limit new capex, run the profitable parks as is, and focus on repaying their debts for a couple years. If they get their liabilities down enough then they’ll have more freedom to do what they want.

I believe "Project Accelerate" is in part a response to an upcoming crisis of aging rides from the Coaster Wars era, and they just can't sit back like in previous years. Included in this is closing coasters that simply have no chance of still being around in 10 years without new-ride-level investment and increasing maintenance costs.

FWIW, I noticed parks have been slammed the last week with the cooler weather (e.g. Rapterra 105 minutes, also Kennywood). Not sure how much that helps but people do still want to go when the temps, humidity and chance of storms isn't cranked to the max for a month solid.