Kings Dominion Kills WinterFest
- Thread starter Celticdog
- Start date
I assume rapterra will be open that preview night? Why is it at night anyway. Have it the whole day and rapterra be open in the daylight
I had been looking and hadn't seen any posts from KD for 2024. KI and Carowinds yes, but not KD. Maybe I missed it though.
This appears to be a different response than people were getting earlier this morning, so perhaps they are doing unexpected damage control right now. All signs point to corporate making these calls and not KD leadership, but perhaps with enough voiced concerns, maybe corporate will reconsider some of these recent choices!
Will there be a Winterfest tombstone at Haunt?
Ha, you think there’ll be enough budget for a new Haunt prop?
I am becoming more and more convinced that the merger that took place was a means of Six Flags to manage its own debt and nothing else. On the CF side, it looks like a win with a larger footprint in North America (maybe that’s what they thought at least), but the reality is that this comes across like a phony merger simply for Six Flags to cut costs by cutting valuable assets and experiences within the CF chain. Nothing in the leadership within Six Flags over the past 5-10 years inspired confidence of competence, and now the same decision making that doomed their brand is spreading to other parks now within their purview and control.
Except all the SF execs were let go. That's what boggles my mind. Why are the CF execs moving from what worked to what so obviously did not?
I still think that the Cedar Fair execs didn’t realize just how bad Six Flags had become. The removals, layoffs, cutbacks, etc. are all signs of desperation to “right the ship” which was on the verge of sinking.
Cedar Fair probably should have taken SeaWorld up on their offer…
Cedar Fair probably should have taken SeaWorld up on their offer…
Amen. I've been saying this from the very beginning. I sincerely don't believe Cedar Fair knew what they were getting the company into with this merger.
Cedar Fair is like a homeowner who did some small renovations to their home over the years and then, inspired by a lot of HGTV consumption, decided they could make some quick cash by buying an actually rough property and flipping it.
Cedar Fair had onboarded external parks previously (Paramount for example), but none of those examples were anywhere near the rotting state of the vast majority of the Six Flags chain. There's a good argument to be made that Paramount was letting parks with good bones fall into disrepair and disrepute under their ownership, but I'd say that the condition, collections, and reputations of the current crop of Six Flags properties is far, far worse on average.
It took Cedar Fair nearly TWO DECADES to get the Paramount Parks to their current states, yet they sold this insane idea to shareholders that the merger would result in huge returns nearly immediately. It seems obvious to me that these slapdash cuts chainwide are the result of the new Six Flags realizing that they massively overestimated their ability to right the Six Flags parks in the window of time promised to justify this merger. Many of these cuts don't even feel all that calculated—it seems like many are just an attempt to slash immediate operating expenses with little to no regard for the long-term value of these offerings.
Cedar Fair always seemed incredibly comfortable playing the long game. They never moved fast—they were a "slow and steady wins the race"-type business and, over the last decade, I'd say that it has been abundantly obvious that their calculated, deliberate approach to the management of their portfolio has been incredibly good for their parks and their business as a whole. Since the merger that methodical approach seems to have been thrown out the window in favor of what looks to be erratic, rash, short-term, reactionary moves—seemingly part of a desperate attempt to salvage the balance sheet of what is looking more and more like a severely ill-advised merger.
If this is true, then the removal of Winterfest is upsetting indeed. Removing an event that brings in more cash in the name of "cutting costs" seems to be shooting yourself in the foot.
Not sure what corporate is doing, unless they're trying to bring all the parks into some sort of uniformity. But that's clearly not happening, as KI and GAdv both have their own winter celebration.
Also probably doesn't help that they rigged the merger in such a way that existing CF shareholders had NO vote. We know that there was at least one very vocal group that was against it and went so far as to explore legal action to stop it. I have to imagine that puts even more pressure on them to lastly right the situation.
In other news my understanding is the reception of today's news went extremely bad to say the least. My understanding is even park leadership that were predicting a bad recipiention were caught off guard by just how bad. My understanding is the response I an others got about free bring a friend tickets and other perks was an unplanned rush bandaid with the hermitage still happening around it. For example it's not easy to crash a major phone system today but I am told KD's overloaded and went day more then once today.
I think this is true and extremely well-put. I don’t think this is necessarily indicative of the state of theme parks being a shining example of late stage capitalism. I know it’ll take some time but I still have a lot of hope (new) Six Flags can do for their legacy parks what CF did for the Paramount parks. It’s gonna suck in the short term and there’s gonna be much tighter purse strings while they right the ship.
I think this is gonna be a tumultuous few years for the industry, but I don’t think the industry is dying or killing off everything we cared about as fans.
I agree with your whole post, and especially this, which makes no sense considering the merger took almost a year, and with all the information and data they should have combed through, they could have backed out at any time. Surely if things were more sour than anticipated, it should have taken a few years to realize, and not makes such drastic decisions just months after completion. It’s not like becoming President and think you know everything until you find that dreaded Oval Office letter telling you how it really is.
Cedar fair’s behavior truly is erratic and desperate, a far cry from their former selves. So much for the Cedar fair God’s that most praised of yesteryear. Worse still they strong armed investors along for the ride too.
In an alternate reality where CF doesn't merge with SF, doesn't a better capitalized SEAS come in and buy up SF. That would put a huge squeeze on legacy CF in a lot of markets (KD, Dorney, Knotts, even CP to an extent), probably to the point that CF felt they had to take a chance with SF.
Now this combined company is likely a financial mess desperate for cash flow anywhere and having to make rash decisions to get to a viable model. The new SF is almost surely going to get worse and have to get rid of more dead weight before a turnaround is even possible. For one thing, I'm still amazed how low price passes are, so basically they have gained no pricing power from the merger, which is a really bad sign.
Do not stop emailing the park. Let your voices be heard. Let. Them. Be. Heard.
And Six Flags Corporate! If the hot stove doesn’t burn them, they’re just gonna keep touching it…
Which sounds exactly like moves from the Selim Bassoul playbook when he was running Six Flags. He remains their executive chairman today.
They can take the revenue from this year and invest it somewhere else instead of reinvesting it back into Winterfest
Does this mean Christmastown gets the 'Biggest Xmas event in VA" title again?