News Cedar Fair Merges with Six Flags

[AlpenChariot]

So far I'm noticing that the app doesn't let me view my Gold Pass under any park except for the one I bought it from. Can't wait for a second front gate employee at a park that's not Six Flags Great America to tell me "That pass isn't for our park". Great.

 

[Mushroom]

I hate, hate, HATE how they’ve phased out the Cedar Fair parks’ individual web domains, and now apps, in favor of Six Flags-branded ones. It instantly makes each park feel commoditized and generic. Cedar Fair had done a great job of making each park feel unique and individualized to their market, and now they’ve gone and made each of them seem like just another arm of a soulless corporate franchise.

Worse yet, I don’t think the folks at corporate realize just how terrible the perception of the Six Flags brand is. Maybe it’s different in areas with better SF parks, but here in Virginia everyone I know associates Six Flags with being cheap and trashy — the bottom of the theme park barrel. In the case of KD, CF spent the past 15+ years digging themselves out of its Paramount-era reputation of being a dirty coaster park for teenagers, and I think they had finally successfully rehabbed the Kings Dominion brand as standing for some level of quality and uniqueness. Now they’ve gone and hitched their wagon to the worst-reputation brand in the industry.

For someone in Virginia deciding which theme park to visit, that reshapes the calculus. If you’re checking out their websites, now the question isn’t really whether to visit Busch Gardens or Kings Dominion. The question is now whether to visit Busch Gardens or Six Flags. Someone may or may not know the reputation of BGW or KD, but they likely know the reputation of Six Flags. If I didn’t know any better, that would immediately tip the scales away from KD in my decision-making.

It’s even worse when you look at parks like Knott’s. Imagine you’re planning a trip to Disneyland and you’re thinking about adding a day at Knott’s, because you’ve heard about it and think it might be a nice complement to your Disney trip. So you go to their website and see it’s the Six Flags website. You think to yourself, you already have a Six Flags at home, and you’re not wasting a precious day of your Disney vacation going to a trashy old Six Flags. So you don’t go. And as a result, you miss out on what’s actually one of the most charming and unique theme parks in the country.

This merger sucked enough because of the unavoidable realities of things like the companies’ collective debt and the need to funnel money into the decaying legacy SF parks. But unforced errors like this, where they voluntarily went out of their way to make things worse, make my head spin.

 

[Great Adventurer]

I concede that I have an old codger mentality when it comes to electronic device usage. I'm all about paper tickets, paper maps, plastic passes, printed fast lane receipts, etc. when the option exists. I often think that I should start to embrace technological advances more, but then stuff like this happens....



And I feel vindicated in holding onto some of my outdated views.

 

[Mike541x]

Glad I'm not the only one having issues with the app. For me, I put my email in and then after I put my password, it just sits there then says the user already logged in, but none of my information or pass shows up.

 

[AlpenChariot]

I concede that I have an old codger mentality when it comes to electronic device usage. I'm all about paper tickets, paper maps, plastic passes, printed fast lane receipts, etc. when the option exists. I often think that I should start to embrace technological advances more, but then stuff like this happens....

View attachment 40557

And I feel vindicated in holding onto some of my outdated views.

Woah you found a future update of the app

 

[SweetBabyJames]

I hate, hate, HATE how they’ve phased out the Cedar Fair parks’ individual web domains, and now apps, in favor of Six Flags-branded ones. It instantly makes each park feel commoditized and generic. Cedar Fair had done a great job of making each park feel unique and individualized to their market, and now they’ve gone and made each of them seem like just another arm of a soulless corporate franchise.

Worse yet, I don’t think the folks at corporate realize just how terrible the perception of the Six Flags brand is. Maybe it’s different in areas with better SF parks, but here in Virginia everyone I know associates Six Flags with being cheap and trashy — the bottom of the theme park barrel. In the case of KD, CF spent the past 15+ years digging themselves out of its Paramount-era reputation of being a dirty coaster park for teenagers, and I think they had finally successfully rehabbed the Kings Dominion brand as standing for some level of quality and uniqueness. Now they’ve gone and hitched their wagon to the worst-reputation brand in the industry.

For someone in Virginia deciding which theme park to visit, that reshapes the calculus. If you’re checking out their websites, now the question isn’t really whether to visit Busch Gardens or Kings Dominion. The question is now whether to visit Busch Gardens or Six Flags. Someone may or may not know the reputation of BGW or KD, but they likely know the reputation of Six Flags. If I didn’t know any better, that would immediately tip the scales away from KD in my decision-making.

It’s even worse when you look at parks like Knott’s. Imagine you’re planning a trip to Disneyland and you’re thinking about adding a day at Knott’s, because you’ve heard about it and think it might be a nice complement to your Disney trip. So you go to their website and see it’s the Six Flags website. You think to yourself, you already have a Six Flags at home, and you’re not wasting a precious day of your Disney vacation going to a trashy old Six Flags. So you don’t go. And as a result, you miss out on what’s actually one of the most charming and unique theme parks in the country.

This merger sucked enough because of the unavoidable realities of things like the companies’ collective debt and the need to funnel money into the decaying legacy SF parks. But unforced errors like this, where they voluntarily went out of their way to make things worse, make my head spin.

THIS! This sums up my thoughts on the merger perfectly! Thank you so much for taking precious time to write this @Mushroom so I did not have to!!

 

[SixFlagsIssues]

THIS! This sums up my thoughts on the merger perfectly! Thank you so much for taking precious time to write this @Mushroom so I did not have to!!

I would've rather seen Six Flags parks phase out the Six Flags part of the name. Wasn't a part of the merger because of the reputation of Cedar Fair? Also I feel now it is way easier for one incident to change the perception of all these parks. Like for example lets say some incident occurs at Worlds of Fun, most people wouldn't associate that with Kings Dominion. Whereas if something happens at somewhere like Six Flags Great Escape, it would be way easier for the average person to associate that with Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.

 

[SweetBabyJames]

I would've rather seen Six Flags parks phase out the Six Flags part of the name. Wasn't a part of the merger because of the reputation of Cedar Fair? Also I feel now it is way easier for one incident to change the perception of all these parks. Like for example lets say some incident occurs at Worlds of Fun, most people wouldn't associate that with Kings Dominion. Whereas if something happens at somewhere like Six Flags Great Escape, it would be way easier for the average person to associate that with Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.

I was hoping the Six Flags name would be phased out with the merger too. While "Six Flags" is a well known name, Cedar Fair was the better brand.

 

[Zachary]

I think a market by market analysis was needed. There are almost certainly legacy Six Flags parks that benefit from the Six Flags name and it's conceivable to me that even a legacy Cedar Fair park or two could have as benefited from being flagged as well. That said, in the vast majority of cases, I believe the legacy Cedar Fair parks had better local brand recognition and FAR better local brand perception than Six Flags. Furthermore, I believe there would have been real benefits associated with deflagging a handful of legacy Six Flags parks as well—particularly ones with strong legacies pre-Six Flags ownership or strong, independent identities.

They could have still added "A Six Flags Destination" subtitles to the brand names, used Six Flags-branded stuff in-park, etc, but doing things like abolishing independent websites, merging every app, etc is a completely different issue.

This all goes back to the combined chain's apparent obsession with one-size-fits-all thinking. Their portfolio is incredibly diverse and, similarly, the markets they operate in are incredibly varied. There is no one size that fits all—I doubt there's even one size that sorta, kinda fits most well enough. I sincerely believe that if someone doesn't right this course, management's sudden desire to run every park the same way will lead to disaster for many properties in the chain.

 

[jwranson]

Worse yet, I don’t think the folks at corporate realize just how terrible the perception of the Six Flags brand is

This. 100%. From the beginning, I thought keeping the 'Six Flags' name and branding was a huge mistake.

 

[SixFlagsIssues]

This. 100%. From the beginning, I thought keeping the 'Six Flags' name and branding was a huge mistake.

Including the confusion after Six Flags America closed, with people thinking it was Six Flags Great America or all Six Flags parks in the US.

 

[GAcoaster]

This is much like the pre-Time Warner era. People know their park by its name, the Six Flags is an afterthought unless your park was already Six Flags branded pre-merger. For many years Great Adventure, Magic Mountain, Astroworld, and Great America simply went by those names with the Six Flags branding being an afterthought. I see this playing out the same way— it’s not Six Flags Cedar Point, Kings Island, etc, but over time people will understand that they are “ part of the Six Flags Family”. Then one day people will only know them as Six Flags parks because that’s what they’ll have grown up with.

It’s like now anyone born after about 1990 calls Great Adventure “Six Flags” because that’s what they know, while all of us Gen-X and older still call it Great Adventure.

 

[bill s]

I haven't tried the new app, but it's always seemed to me they are all the same whether Six Flags, KD or BGW. Same template, no zoom, useless with bad eyesight without glasses.

 

[CarolinaDog]

Carowinds' "AirTime" Blog has been consolidated into a greater Six Flags blog, which can be filtered by park.

Hilariously, it advertises the successful Christmas events in the chain that didn't receive budget cuts to promote Carowinds' gutted event.



Even more hilarious is them advertising 2024's opening day in November of 2025.



Lookin' good, Six Flags!

 

[Mushroom]

Geez, it’s one unforced error after the next with this company.

 

[jscll]

Even more hilarious is them advertising 2024's opening day in November of 2025.

You will notice a bunch of November 2025 dates, whoever imported the blogs onto the new site failed to backdate (assuming their software even supports backdating).
At least they did not delete everything.

 

[warfelg]

Geez, it’s one unforced error after the next with this company.

 

[netdvn]

This is why I like having a physical card. If the app is too buggy/glitchy, you can still scan your card without any problems. I always have a physical card and a screenshot of my pass stored on my phone just in case the app doesn't work. Also a physical card on a lanyard or wallet is easier than trying to fumble around with a buggy app.

As for the whole Six Flags branding, people recognize the Six Flags name. That's why they kept the Six Flags side of the branding. Most people around the country recognize what a Six Flags is. You ask a random person in New Mexico or Utah what Cedar Point or Valleyfair is and they'll look at you funny.

As for visitors, most people visiting a SF/CF park are gonna be locals, but if they're leaving town and they find out there's a SF park nearby that they can get free admission to, they'd probably be more likely to go. Sure some people would be like "we have these at home", but I'm pretty sure if people knew they got into the other parks for free, they wouldn't pass on visiting.

Also the old CF app sucked. I took this screenshot of the Cedar Point app in August. Why the hell doesn't it recognize Steel Vengeance as a ride in the park?

 

[AmyUD06]

The old CF apps may have needed work, but they were worlds ahead of the old SF app, which wouldn't remember what park you were at, was horribly unreliable for wait times, and showed icons on the map for things that had been closed for years and looked abandoned.

And yeah, I will keep my physical Gold Pass (originally issued at Dorney Park and renewed several times through Kings Dominion) as long as possible.

 

[netdvn]

The only downside to the SF app was not saving favorite parks. It would always default to the park you bought your pass at and it was clunky to switch to another park. Everything else I found to be passable. You could generally get wait times for each park by opening up the Flash Pass page. Wait times would always be a bit more accurate there.

I've never really had any issues using it otherwise. You didn't really need the app most of the time.