I have a fear for the wildlife side of some of the Six Flags properties. The old Cedar Fair didn't ever seem to have any interest in animal based attraction.
News Cedar Fair Merges with Six Flags
- Thread starter horsesboy
- Start date
I am unsure about SFDK's animal situation but Great Adventure's doing fine since they swapped back to the drive-thru Safari setup. The animals inside the park I am unsure about due to the situation w/ Ka and the Golden Kingdom as a whole but it'd be fairly easy to move them somewhere else in the park or back into the Safari without much issue.
CP has a pretty extensive animal area. KI also added (though later removed) a petting zoo under CF, and Knott’s has live horses and livestock.
Nothing quite as robust as some of the safari stuff at some of the legacy SF parks, but we do know that CF management is not completely averse to animal attractions.
paintervision
Coasters: 653 🎢
Long-term outlook is important. If they don't want to keep breeding programs/swapping animals with other zoos, that is a lot different than keeping farm animals and petting zoos around.
SFA is a big piece of valuable land— a housing developer would probably pay a lot of money for it.
Locally I will only support it if it's mixed use development that includes affordable units, is walkable, and prioritizes small business through affordable commercial rent.
Abandoning their newly purchased monopoly in NorCal seems insane. I can't fathom that happening. Neither major NorCal park needed a bunch of investment before to compete with one another and now that the competition between them is set to evaporate, the new Six Flags stands to gain a ton of value and they'll need to invest next to nothing in the years ahead to maintain the park's status.
I continue to believe that selling SFA to another park operator would be a highly unlikely choice. SFA's options, in my opinion, are to either reformat the park entirely into a premium family park, massively invest into the park to make it a high-end amusement park in the next decade or two, or gut and shutter the park and sell the land to a developer for housing.
Selling the property to another park operator would provide the opportunity to said operator to heavily invest in the property and, in turn, severely harm the likes of Kings Dominion and, arguably, Dorney and even Great Adventure. The potential ceiling for a park on SFA's property is nearly unrivaled—it is an ENORMOUS plot of land, it is very close to the gigantic DC metro area, and is easy to access from the Baltimore metro area as well. If the property ever received investment to notably improve the park experience and attraction offerings, the park could quickly become a devastating force to be reckoned with in the entire region. I can't imagine Six Flags willingly opening themselves up to that level of potential competition.
Sorry I meant I'll only support the use of the land for housing if it is that. But a close to 230 acre area you could produce:
300 Apartments (assuming 1+4 building)
200 condos (again assuming 1+4 building but more sqft than apartments)
200 town homes
400 homes on 1/4 acre lots
~ 4 miles of trails
~20-30 retail spaces
And that's just using the land the park sits on currently. If they have more land you could make even more units like that. You'd be talking about 1100 units in that format able to house 5,000+ people. What the area doesn't need is more 1/2 acre lots with single family homes with no in-law rentable suite bylaws.
Not as much as you'd think. Most the opportunities for development closer to that metro haven't really panned out, and this is 3 miles further east.
At best you'd be looking at single family homes and townhouses which is likely a significant property value drop off from the current zoned use.
paintervision
Coasters: 653 🎢
Keep in mind, the
I was going off some older figures for attendance showing around 1.6 million visitors in 2019 (around 5% of attendance in the chain). Again, that's an old figure, but I have to think this is probably less profitable given the animal care aspect of the park versus a pure rides-only park - SFNE was also 5% despite operating in a colder climate/less good-weather days (or maybe fewer operating days total), and they don't have animals, so I have to think they likely spend less on operating costs. That's purely a guess on my part.
I don't know if closing CGA will impact their attendance, since they only seem to lightly compete with each other. However, if the goal is better revenue and attendance, I have to think a part of that strategy starts with expanding the parks. SFDK is small and has limitations for thrill ride heights. If they'd pivot away from thrills and more to a family audience, I'm not sure what that shakes out for attendance. I don't want to see more parks closed, but this park doesn't neatly fit into a the strategy they are looking at.
I cannot be optimistic here - if it were me, I'd try to keep CGA open and close SFDK. CGA seems like the better park, and at least we know CGA could've gotten a Hyper. Selling the land under CGA may have been a huge mistake in hindsight, but I don't see them buying it back or doing some kind of land swap anytime soon. They're stuck with it - it's an albatross.
Selling it off - for housing, or as warehouses, or some other operator, whatever - gets it off their books. Of course that is short-sighted (see also: selling off land under CGA); the other option is treading water. SFA's in a big metro area but attendance has never been huge here, even in eras when it was getting regular investment. I can't see them spending big money improving SFA for meager attendance gains, when they could be focusing on larger parks that have more room to grow.
I did feel the same way about Geuaga Lake - that was closed at a time they were trying to reshape the company after the Paramount Parks purchase, and keeping GL around in a reduced capacity (or as a Holiday World-style wooden-coaster-forward family park) was not an option. Again, I don't want parks to close - but they have to fit within the company's strategy.
Maybe. Let me preface: I have never been to this park, but I have read a lot of TR's where people complain about closed rides and poor ops -it does not sound like it has a good reputation to begin with (it has 2.3/5 rating on Yelp, for example).
I was going off some older figures for attendance showing around 1.6 million visitors in 2019 (around 5% of attendance in the chain). Again, that's an old figure, but I have to think this is probably less profitable given the animal care aspect of the park versus a pure rides-only park - SFNE was also 5% despite operating in a colder climate/less good-weather days (or maybe fewer operating days total), and they don't have animals, so I have to think they likely spend less on operating costs. That's purely a guess on my part.
I don't know if closing CGA will impact their attendance, since they only seem to lightly compete with each other. However, if the goal is better revenue and attendance, I have to think a part of that strategy starts with expanding the parks. SFDK is small and has limitations for thrill ride heights. If they'd pivot away from thrills and more to a family audience, I'm not sure what that shakes out for attendance. I don't want to see more parks closed, but this park doesn't neatly fit into a the strategy they are looking at.
I cannot be optimistic here - if it were me, I'd try to keep CGA open and close SFDK. CGA seems like the better park, and at least we know CGA could've gotten a Hyper. Selling the land under CGA may have been a huge mistake in hindsight, but I don't see them buying it back or doing some kind of land swap anytime soon. They're stuck with it - it's an albatross.
Selling it off - for housing, or as warehouses, or some other operator, whatever - gets it off their books. Of course that is short-sighted (see also: selling off land under CGA); the other option is treading water. SFA's in a big metro area but attendance has never been huge here, even in eras when it was getting regular investment. I can't see them spending big money improving SFA for meager attendance gains, when they could be focusing on larger parks that have more room to grow.
I did feel the same way about Geuaga Lake - that was closed at a time they were trying to reshape the company after the Paramount Parks purchase, and keeping GL around in a reduced capacity (or as a Holiday World-style wooden-coaster-forward family park) was not an option. Again, I don't want parks to close - but they have to fit within the company's strategy.
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My questions...
1) Is there a chance the Universal strikes and buys some of the parks and slowly convert them to regional studios parks that they are doing in TX, just directly for kids.
2) If Six Flags picks one are they keeping Knotts or Magic Mountain, is there a benefit to keeping both?
Also, if SFA is not gone, I could totally see it selling a lot of the dry park land and being just a Water Country type water park, because that's the only part that gets crowded.
1) Is there a chance the Universal strikes and buys some of the parks and slowly convert them to regional studios parks that they are doing in TX, just directly for kids.
2) If Six Flags picks one are they keeping Knotts or Magic Mountain, is there a benefit to keeping both?
Also, if SFA is not gone, I could totally see it selling a lot of the dry park land and being just a Water Country type water park, because that's the only part that gets crowded.
I have friends out there and yes they will keep it. People from Anaheim rarely go north of Hollywood and people in the San Fernando Valley rarely go south. Especially with traffic you could be talking about 2 hours apart there.
I think that it's doubtful that Six Flags would be willing to sale to Universal and bring that strong of a competitor into the area. The only two real players that I could see for a operating park purchase are United Parks or Herschen and only because the two are heavily burdened elsewhere and likely wouldn't be in a position to fully capitalize on a purchase.
If SFA is on the way out, I need to go again. I like the park and *love* Wild One and Batwing. Maybe I've missed my last chance? If they are going to demolish it, I hope that at least Wild One gets relocated to another park. I'd really like Batwing to be saved to, but I guess realistically speaking that's unlikely.
paintervision
Coasters: 653 🎢
It's just speculation. Nothing is confirmed but I would not wait to visit any of the smaller parks in the chain - especially if you get the pass that lets you into all parks for 2025. Pretty clear that some of them won't make it.
United Parks would absolutely put the squeeze on KD if they got their hands on SFA. That's a roughly 0% chance of happening outside a bankruptcy sale.
paintervision
Coasters: 653 🎢
I think that person is reading WAY too much into that question. I don't believe they're looking to dump DC based on that question alone, they mentioned Peanuts also.