News Cedar Fair Merges with Six Flags

[Bigskinny]

Wait, why on either of these?

La Ronde has long felt like it's on shaky ground, but that's due to the particulars of the ownership situation and issues the park faces. Don't know why this merger would impact it beyond, maybe, "it's time to offload some headache-inducing parks." That said, isn't La Ronde profitable? It has a stranglehold on its large metro area too. Seems weird to give it up.

On the Discovery Kingdom front, new Six Flags is heavily incentivized to keep Discovery Kingdom, no? This merger buys them market dominance in NorCal. California's Great America is dead as a doornail. Discovery Kingdom will, 100%, be the NorCal park of choice.

I might be looking at this from the thoosie POV. La Ronde may be profitable; I have no honest idea. My thought was that since it's landlocked at the tip of an island there's not much growth potentially in terms of expansion. They have to work with what they have. I guess the question is "What can we get for this land to get out of the debt?" vs. the profitability of the park. I'm not sure what the answer is of course.

DK you're right. DK should be the new park for them. Thoosie brain again puts it so low on the totem that I just default to cut it. Can they go around the lake there? There's water plants and houses, but maybe it's possible to work CGA's rides into DK to bolster it.

 

[Nicole]

For what it is worth, when I was out there a few years ago, I much preferred SFDK to CGA. Things may have changed in the interim, of course.

 

[Zachary]

The Discovery Kingdom discussion raises a really interesting question that I haven't seen yet: Will this new Six Flags want to move the likes of Discovery Kingdom away from live animals? It's the type of thing Cedar Fair always seemed to want to steer clear of. Maybe an overhauled Discovery Kingdom replacing animals with some CGA ride relocations could be on the table?

 

[YachtyLogs]

I hope they don't close Great Adventure's safari. People travel there just for the animals.

 

[Chorizo]

That back left corner of Kings Dominion with Intimidator and Flight of Fear is gonna become a DC land isn't it...

 

[EdK]

That back left corner of Kings Dominion with Intimidator and Flight of Fear is gonna become a DC land isn't it...

Nooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!! I absolutely can't stand that DC nonsense. How is that even a theme?

 

[Crunchewy]

So, maybe a stupid question, but is there no point in getting a CF all-park pass now? And what do they do for people that have both? I.e. what pass should I buy for next year or do I have to buy both still? They need to clarify what the situation is with passes.

Also if we start getting every ride named after DC characters, that is going to be so gross.

 

[cackylack]

I really liked the way that Cedar Fair was making a solid attempt at theming. I hope that continues without the DC silliness. That would be awful.

 

[I64 Trekker]

Also if we start getting every ride named after DC characters, that is going to be so gross.

At least they don't have to change the paint color for Superman 305. Superman 325 is a different story.

 

[Zachary]

So, maybe a stupid question, but is there no point in getting a CF all-park pass now? And what do they do for people that have both? I.e. what pass should I buy for next year or do I have to buy both still? They need to clarify what the situation is with passes.

I'd be really surprised if there's a unified pass system in place before 2025. Deal isn't expected to close until sometime in the first half of 2024 and I'm sure a lot of work has to be done to get everything integratable—let alone integrated.

 

[cschnizer]

I'd expect the cat temple in Jungle X-Pedition be called Catwoman: Jungle Whip!

 

[SLC Headache]

That back left corner of Kings Dominion with Intimidator and Flight of Fear is gonna become a DC land isn't it...

I see my post about Dominator returning to its original name of Batman Knight Flight went over poorly. I should have made it clearer, I do not want any other slapdash DC rebrands, like the hypothetical scenario this post fears. I just thought Dominator was a special case because of its original identity.

 

[jscll]

Offloading La Ronde would probably hove no financial incentive, as the park is owned by the city of Montreal. Six Flags operates the park under an emphyteutic lease until 2065, so the land and rides are not theirs to sell.
I am too lazy to check if they are capable of selling the lease, but I suspect that is probably not an option. (I don't feel like spending my day studying Quebec's real esate laws and is probably in French anyway.)

 

[PhatPantheon]

I really do not see them closing any of the parks unless they are not profitable, but if they were not profitable they'd probably already have been closed by SF or CF. CF more than doubles the number of parks they own with this move given that they have the controlling interest (1.00 to 0.58), this is a way for them to expand without having to build from the ground up in investments and also bring various parks to a higher level. I'm optimistic, but I think this is going to be a win all around since CF has the controlling interest and I believe they have the better service overall between the two.

 

[Zachary]

I really do not see them closing any of the parks unless they are not profitable

Especially for a publicly traded corporation, it's rarely just about making profit—it's about always increasing and maximizing profit.

If you can save 50% of your expenses in a market by closing a duplicative park while managing to retain 70% of the revenue you were generating before—all while also being able to plunder said duplicative park for used rides and property value, you've come out way ahead. That's the calculation that Cedar Fair made with Geauga Lake and I don't know of any signs that point to an ounce of corporate regret looking back on that choice.

 

[b.mac]

Especially for a publicly traded corporation, it's rarely just about making profit—it's about always increasing and maximizing profit.

If you can save 50% of your expenses in a market by closing a duplicative park while managing to retain 70% of the revenue you were generating before—all while also being able to plunder said duplicative park for used rides and property value, you've come out way ahead. That's the calculation that Cedar Fair made with Geauga Lake and I don't know of any signs that point to an ounce of corporate regret looking back on that choice.

The real estate values on some potential properties for them to sell are astounding as well so while I don't see them doing it immediately selling off a lesser park to either another operator or to commercial / residential developers would give them much needed cash infusions as they come out of this merger.

 

[October13]

How will Haunt be effected by this?

This is the first place my mind went when this was announced lol. Super unimportant in the grand scheme though. However, Six Flags deal with WB allow(s) access to great franchises for haunts like Conjuring, Saw, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Exorcist. Some major Six Flags parks had Saw X and Conjuring mazes this year. Just food for thought.

 

[Mushroom]

I think it’s worth pointing out that, while the corporate name will be Six Flags, this is effectively a single “new” company like we’ve never seen before. It’s effectively a combination of the two companies as equals. On top of that, it seems that most of the company’s upper management will be current Cedar Fair executives. The first instinct of those folks probably won’t be to drop everything they know and adopt Six Flags’ strategy — if anything, they may be biased towards Cedar Fair’s strategy.

So, I think a lot of these posts speculating about DC rethemes taking over the CF parks, “Six Flags” prefixes being added to park names, Haunt being renamed Fright Fest, Winterfest becoming Holiday in the Park, and so forth are off-base.

CF’s parks are all established brands with profitable business models. Unlike Six Flags acquiring a small independent park to put that park on the map by stamping the Six Flags brand on it, and squeezing more profit out of it applying ostensibly more efficient corporate business resources, they are combining with Cedar Fair for completely different reasons. The investor call today made clear that the main reasons for the merger are cost-saving synergies, potential for ticket and pass upselling, and diversification.

I don’t think this new company (truly a 50/50 combo of Six Flags and Cedar Fair, and really just “Six Flags” in name only) is going to make it a priority to break a functioning business model and create customer confusion by re-branding just for the sake of matching the current Six Flags parks. I could be proven wrong in time, but I also don’t expect to be stepping through the gates of “Six Flags Over Virginia” next year.

 

[Zachary]

I completely agree that, short-term, things won't really change all that much. There's no reason for any of the slapdash rebranding or rethemes that are being memed about. Most/all of them are unlikely to ever occur.

I do think there are real, valid questions about how this will effect the long arcs of many of the parks in this new mega portfolio though. Where money goes, how it's spent, what is prioritized, etc will all almost certainly be effected to some degree by this change.

 

[warfelg]

I completely agree that, short-term, things won't really change all that much. There's no reason for any of the slapdash rebranding or rethemes that are being memed about. Most/all of them are unlikely to ever occur.

They are just really fun to joke about though.