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Six Flags America (SFA) Discussion Thread


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^^-- they leased all or part of the land for Kentucky Kingdom. The Darien Lake property is worth less. SFA's property increases in value more or less constantly. The value of the company increases, it's just not cash.

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Only the SFA thread can go from "What new coasters do you think we're gonna get" to "They're probably gonna sell this park" in less than 2 pages.

 

 

Legoland NY is being blocked because they can't cut down trees. SF can sell SFA and turn it into the northeast Legoland. There is a synergy when it comes to trees.

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^^-- I wasn't thinking it would necessarily end up being a Six Flags with my combination idea -- I really don't know how it would work. It just seemed odd to be talking about putting in bars and other entertainments in place of an amusement park when there's malls with coasters in them. Screwed up priorities! But, money.

 

I started talking about sale of the property in trying to explain what could be going on. Of course there's even some possibility they don't put much in SFA because they know the park inherently becomes unpleasant when crowded and it just increases the "reputation" issues. Or maybe Six Flags is trying different ways to run parks, it's even starting to work.... I don't think Six Flags is in a hurry to sell the place even if they see it in the future. I just think it could be a factor in their decisions that the land it is on is more valuable than usual (and relatively unspectacular as well).

 

But if you think about it, the way to curtail the "reputation" issue is to make the park more upscale, and a better destination park, so that you can charge a lot more. Really, what kills SFA is how cheap the season passes are. The sticker price for a single day admission isn't that low. Then after discounts, the price comes to within a range that it's expected and reasonable. But when you have a season pass that's $10 more than the sticker price of a single admission ticket, it just gives lower income families a cheap babysitting option for the summer. And those kids just cause trouble and don't spend money at the park. The business reason for why they give away the season passes is to get people into the park more so they'll buy food, pay for the parking, and pay for the games, etc. But obviously you're not getting that with that customer base.

 

The best way for SFA to be more solvent, would be to either do away with the season passes, or price them at 4-5 times the price of a single day ticket, and maybe throw in a coupon book to make it a little more appealing.

 

And not that I've seen any park do this, but I think it would also be a cool idea if they required any kid under the age of 18 to be accompanied by an adult. It would help save the park from liability, and help curtail the mischief and misbehavior. Also encourage a customer base that has disposable money to spend.

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^^-- I wasn't thinking it would necessarily end up being a Six Flags with my combination idea -- I really don't know how it would work. It just seemed odd to be talking about putting in bars and other entertainments in place of an amusement park when there's malls with coasters in them. Screwed up priorities! But, money.

 

I started talking about sale of the property in trying to explain what could be going on. Of course there's even some possibility they don't put much in SFA because they know the park inherently becomes unpleasant when crowded and it just increases the "reputation" issues. Or maybe Six Flags is trying different ways to run parks, it's even starting to work.... I don't think Six Flags is in a hurry to sell the place even if they see it in the future. I just think it could be a factor in their decisions that the land it is on is more valuable than usual (and relatively unspectacular as well).

 

I wouldn't assume it has much to do anything within the box that you're thinking of. A lot of it probably has to do with zoning and clauses buried within the contracts that SFI has. If they rent the space from a real estate holding company, they have to fulfill their leasing agreement. If they own the land, they have to use the land for what it is zoned for unless they get a board to approve the re-zoning of the area. They could probably sell the park to another company to run it as an amusement park, and would probably take less approval from the city government, but then you're back to square one: if you don't want it, why would somebody else?

 

As I was saying, SFI had an agreement in their contract when they owned Six Flags New Orleans that they would keep the park up and running in exchange for the rights to owning the land. Obviously Katrina, and SFI saw that as their excuse to abandon an underperforming park. New Orleans disagreed and tried to get them to honor their agreement and rebuild the park, but SFI has ignored that since then. It seems like for now New Orleans declined to go through litigation for now.

 

I'm not sure if that's a standard practice in these operating agreements, but I wouldn't be surprised. Housing and hotels and office buildings tend to be an easier and more profitable business venture in tourist areas or major cities, but you could argue that they can't profit as easily without nearby attractions. So a city has a vested interest in keeping attractive attractions up and running. They'd rather keep the housing stock more competitive and lure in businesses and attractions. Businesses usually pay more in taxes and use fewer city resources.

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But if you think about it, the way to curtail the "reputation" issue is to make the park more upscale, and a better destination park, so that you can charge a lot more. Really, what kills SFA is how cheap the season passes are. The sticker price for a single day admission isn't that low. Then after discounts, the price comes to within a range that it's expected and reasonable. But when you have a season pass that's $10 more than the sticker price of a single admission ticket, it just gives lower income families a cheap babysitting option for the summer. And those kids just cause trouble and don't spend money at the park. The business reason for why they give away the season passes is to get people into the park more so they'll buy food, pay for the parking, and pay for the games, etc. But obviously you're not getting that with that customer base.

 

The best way for SFA to be more solvent, would be to either do away with the season passes, or price them at 4-5 times the price of a single day ticket, and maybe throw in a coupon book to make it a little more appealing.

 

And not that I've seen any park do this, but I think it would also be a cool idea if they required any kid under the age of 18 to be accompanied by an adult. It would help save the park from liability, and help curtail the mischief and misbehavior. Also encourage a customer base that has disposable money to spend.

 

If they did anything close to this stupidity, it's definitely goodbye SFA.

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But if you think about it, the way to curtail the "reputation" issue is to make the park more upscale, and a better destination park, so that you can charge a lot more. Really, what kills SFA is how cheap the season passes are. The sticker price for a single day admission isn't that low. Then after discounts, the price comes to within a range that it's expected and reasonable. But when you have a season pass that's $10 more than the sticker price of a single admission ticket, it just gives lower income families a cheap babysitting option for the summer. And those kids just cause trouble and don't spend money at the park. The business reason for why they give away the season passes is to get people into the park more so they'll buy food, pay for the parking, and pay for the games, etc. But obviously you're not getting that with that customer base.

 

The best way for SFA to be more solvent, would be to either do away with the season passes, or price them at 4-5 times the price of a single day ticket, and maybe throw in a coupon book to make it a little more appealing.

 

And not that I've seen any park do this, but I think it would also be a cool idea if they required any kid under the age of 18 to be accompanied by an adult. It would help save the park from liability, and help curtail the mischief and misbehavior. Also encourage a customer base that has disposable money to spend.

 

If they did anything close to this stupidity, it's definitely goodbye SFA.

 

Well thanks for calling my idea stupid without even providing justifications for it. I postsed a well thought out multi-paragraph business plan while you spouted out a sentence of vulgarity. Way to go.

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^ You're saying that Six Flags should raise the price of a season pass by 4-5 times what it currently is. It's stupid because six flags would go from selling passes to an absurd amount of people to selling them to a much lower amount of people. The current pass price is about 70-80 bucks and your saying that they should raise that price to around 400 dollars. At that price point you'd pretty much only have enthusiasts willing to put that type of money up.

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The current pass price is about 70-80 bucks and your saying that they should raise that price to around 400 dollars. At that price point you'd pretty much only have enthusiasts willing to put that type of money up.

 

LMAO speak for yourself.

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But if you think about it, the way to curtail the "reputation" issue is to make the park more upscale, and a better destination park, so that you can charge a lot more. Really, what kills SFA is how cheap the season passes are. The sticker price for a single day admission isn't that low. Then after discounts, the price comes to within a range that it's expected and reasonable. But when you have a season pass that's $10 more than the sticker price of a single admission ticket, it just gives lower income families a cheap babysitting option for the summer. And those kids just cause trouble and don't spend money at the park. The business reason for why they give away the season passes is to get people into the park more so they'll buy food, pay for the parking, and pay for the games, etc. But obviously you're not getting that with that customer base.

 

The best way for SFA to be more solvent, would be to either do away with the season passes, or price them at 4-5 times the price of a single day ticket, and maybe throw in a coupon book to make it a little more appealing.

 

And not that I've seen any park do this, but I think it would also be a cool idea if they required any kid under the age of 18 to be accompanied by an adult. It would help save the park from liability, and help curtail the mischief and misbehavior. Also encourage a customer base that has disposable money to spend.

 

If they did anything close to this stupidity, it's definitely goodbye SFA.

 

Well thanks for calling my idea stupid without even providing justifications for it. I postsed a well thought out multi-paragraph business plan while you spouted out a sentence of vulgarity. Way to go.

 

The word, "stupid" is "vulgar"? I learned something new today.

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Does anyone know why joker’s jinx launches at a slower speed than poltergeist at SFFT? JJ would be even better if it went through the layout faster and it would prevent valleying.

I don't know for sure why it launches slower than it's texas counterpart but I would speculate that us has something to do with the amount of power it draws to launch.

 

To my knowledge JJ never fully valleyed. When JJ valleyed it was an e-stop which happens to Poltergeist as well.

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But if you think about it, the way to curtail the "reputation" issue is to make the park more upscale, and a better destination park, so that you can charge a lot more. Really, what kills SFA is how cheap the season passes are. The sticker price for a single day admission isn't that low. Then after discounts, the price comes to within a range that it's expected and reasonable. But when you have a season pass that's $10 more than the sticker price of a single admission ticket, it just gives lower income families a cheap babysitting option for the summer. And those kids just cause trouble and don't spend money at the park. The business reason for why they give away the season passes is to get people into the park more so they'll buy food, pay for the parking, and pay for the games, etc. But obviously you're not getting that with that customer base.

 

The best way for SFA to be more solvent, would be to either do away with the season passes, or price them at 4-5 times the price of a single day ticket, and maybe throw in a coupon book to make it a little more appealing.

 

And not that I've seen any park do this, but I think it would also be a cool idea if they required any kid under the age of 18 to be accompanied by an adult. It would help save the park from liability, and help curtail the mischief and misbehavior. Also encourage a customer base that has disposable money to spend.

 

If they did anything close to this stupidity, it's definitely goodbye SFA.

 

Well thanks for calling my idea stupid without even providing justifications for it. I postsed a well thought out multi-paragraph business plan while you spouted out a sentence of vulgarity. Way to go.

 

The word, "stupid" is "vulgar"? I learned something new today.

 

I think that its not logical or right to attack a person's character when you disagree with what they say. It makes more sense to try to look at the argument and try to improve it or create counterpoints. You should probably know that calling somebody "stupid" or saying something is "stupid" without saying why is going to push buttons and is not going to come across well. Just thought that I would help you out there.

 

For example, when I was talking about increasing the price of season passes, people created a counter point where they mentioned that they would not pay $400 for a season pass, so my idea might not be practical for the real world.

 

I appreciate this argument, and appreciate the time they took to write it. However, the argument was fallacious.

 

Primarily, their math was faulty. I was talking about a multiple of 4-5 based on the expected price that somebody would pay at a park after normal discounts. SFA is $70 sticker price at the gate... in name only. You can buy online and get tickets for $45, and probably find even better discounts elsewhere without looking too hard. Maybe somebody can double check the facts on that, but with soda cans, online discounts, etc. only fools really pay for the full stick price. So let's assume $45. Now let's assume a multiplier of 4.5.

 

4.5x42=$202.50.

 

Yes, its a high cost, but not anywhere near 400. And if you don't want to pay that, that's a good thing. As I was saying, a main problem for the lack of profitability at parks like SFA is the cheap season pass cost. You can buy an SFA season pass for $62, plus this comes with perks, coupons, exlusive stuff, etc. So maybe the raw component of the entry to the parks is something like $52. Let's say that they go 8x a year. The park is making $6.50 a visit off of you. Not very good. Those are rookie numbers. You have to pump those numbers up if you want to make money, and put it back into the park. I think that to make the kind of margins that they want, they need to think in terms of revenue earned per visit per guest. There is a limited capacity at the park, and they need to maximize their earnings per visit, while managing costs. If fewer guests who are cheapskates choose to not get season passes, great! If they choose to not buy individual tickets, great! If they choose not to go, you probably weren't going to be making much money off of them anyways.

 

 

 

Sources:

 

https://www.sixflags.com/america/store/season-passes

https://www.sixflags.com/america/store/tickets

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^^-- If they did that, I'm sure a lot of people would call Six Flags "stupid" for a year or 2. Sure, Highridin calling your plan "stupid" also calls you stupid, but as to your multi-paragraph business plan, it boils down to "raise season's pass prices". You either agree with it or not. I did catch the math error already.

 

With other parks creeping up in price, Six Flags has definitely taken a different approach. The SFA pass gets you SF parks all over the country, as well as being cheap. The only way it makes sense is if they figure on making it up on Flash Pass sales. With many of their more crowded parks, they probably do. I agree that the admission price going up would make for a better experience. I'd also expect the parks to seem more upscale, without ads everywhere, though. I could see SF going to a seperate $200 pass for that gets you into other SF parks, but $200 *is* too much for SFA alone without major changes. If that was the only level and $200 still got you in other parks, it would only sell to those planning to do that.

 

They would lose me as a passholder at that price, because I have 2 better parks closer to me. I might be willing to pay for a single day at SFGAdv, but it would be at least 5 years before I'd go back to SFA. Last year, I made 3 trips (split over evening-morning at one) to SF parks and increased the wait time for rides with substantial lines only 5 times (Sunday evening as SFNE). I spent some money in the parks except SFA, since my visit there was cut so short by traffic and cold. I wouldn't have made the long trip to SFNE if admission wasn't already paid for. So they did make money off me they otherwise wouldn't, with no significant cost to them. I'm more likely to be there when the park looks too empty than when it's too full.

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Let's say that they go 8x a year. The park is making $6.50 a visit off of you. Not very good. Those are rookie numbers. You have to pump those numbers up if you want to make money, and put it back into the park.

 

Look at this. Six flags makes nearly as much money from in park stuff as they do from admissions. I think part of the strategy is to get people into the park, and then sell them more stuff while they're there.

 

1810488080_Screenshot-2018-2-20six-flags-ar-2016pdf.thumb.png.cffc13deb79882cd4269ada698ae49bc.png

 

You can buy online and get tickets for $45, and probably find even better discounts elsewhere without looking too hard. Maybe somebody can double check the facts on that, but with soda cans, online discounts, etc. only fools really pay for the full stick price.

 

I'm genuinely curious how much the average season pass is sold for at SFA. Obviously the price increases closer to the start of the season, when buying a pass is in more demand. Technically, the "full price" on a gold pass right now is $175, but it's discounted automatically to $107, or $72, when you buy 4 or more. I got a gold pass last November for this season. I think it was $52, when I got 4 or more - which is cheap af.

 

All that being said, I think SFA could afford to up their prices a little bit, and people would still buy passes at the rates they are now. But SFA isn't even trying to compete with KD or HP, its closest competition. They'll have to, if they want to increase prices past a point.

 

Overall though, Six Flags has been increasing ticket prices, and they've now posted 8 consecutive years of record revenue and net income. And as tacky and tasteless as Six Flags can be, I'm really, really happy about that.

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But if you think about it, the way to curtail the "reputation" issue is to make the park more upscale, and a better destination park, so that you can charge a lot more. Really, what kills SFA is how cheap the season passes are. The sticker price for a single day admission isn't that low. Then after discounts, the price comes to within a range that it's expected and reasonable. But when you have a season pass that's $10 more than the sticker price of a single admission ticket, it just gives lower income families a cheap babysitting option for the summer. And those kids just cause trouble and don't spend money at the park. The business reason for why they give away the season passes is to get people into the park more so they'll buy food, pay for the parking, and pay for the games, etc. But obviously you're not getting that with that customer base.

 

The best way for SFA to be more solvent, would be to either do away with the season passes, or price them at 4-5 times the price of a single day ticket, and maybe throw in a coupon book to make it a little more appealing.

 

And not that I've seen any park do this, but I think it would also be a cool idea if they required any kid under the age of 18 to be accompanied by an adult. It would help save the park from liability, and help curtail the mischief and misbehavior. Also encourage a customer base that has disposable money to spend.

 

If they did anything close to this stupidity, it's definitely goodbye SFA.

 

Well thanks for calling my idea stupid without even providing justifications for it. I postsed a well thought out multi-paragraph business plan while you spouted out a sentence of vulgarity. Way to go.

 

The word, "stupid" is "vulgar"? I learned something new today.

 

I think that its not logical or right to attack a person's character when you disagree with what they say. It makes more sense to try to look at the argument and try to improve it or create counterpoints. You should probably know that calling somebody "stupid" or saying something is "stupid" without saying why is going to push buttons and is not going to come across well. Just thought that I would help you out there.

 

For example, when I was talking about increasing the price of season passes, people created a counter point where they mentioned that they would not pay $400 for a season pass, so my idea might not be practical for the real world.

 

I appreciate this argument, and appreciate the time they took to write it. However, the argument was fallacious.

 

Primarily, their math was faulty. I was talking about a multiple of 4-5 based on the expected price that somebody would pay at a park after normal discounts. SFA is $70 sticker price at the gate... in name only. You can buy online and get tickets for $45, and probably find even better discounts elsewhere without looking too hard. Maybe somebody can double check the facts on that, but with soda cans, online discounts, etc. only fools really pay for the full stick price. So let's assume $45. Now let's assume a multiplier of 4.5.

 

4.5x42=$202.50.

 

Yes, its a high cost, but not anywhere near 400. And if you don't want to pay that, that's a good thing. As I was saying, a main problem for the lack of profitability at parks like SFA is the cheap season pass cost. You can buy an SFA season pass for $62, plus this comes with perks, coupons, exlusive stuff, etc. So maybe the raw component of the entry to the parks is something like $52. Let's say that they go 8x a year. The park is making $6.50 a visit off of you. Not very good. Those are rookie numbers. You have to pump those numbers up if you want to make money, and put it back into the park. I think that to make the kind of margins that they want, they need to think in terms of revenue earned per visit per guest. There is a limited capacity at the park, and they need to maximize their earnings per visit, while managing costs. If fewer guests who are cheapskates choose to not get season passes, great! If they choose to not buy individual tickets, great! If they choose not to go, you probably weren't going to be making much money off of them anyways.

 

 

 

Sources:

 

https://www.sixflags.com/america/store/season-passes

https://www.sixflags.com/america/store/tickets

 

SMH, not a big deal whatsoever. Took what I said out of context, but not uncommon here.

 

Taking feelings into account, I'll say this. Walmart makes a lot of money, because they sell a lot of stuff cheap. SF is a business. Someone, somewhere with a ton of education (or maybe not) put the math together.

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But if you think about it, the way to curtail the "reputation" issue is to make the park more upscale, and a better destination park, so that you can charge a lot more. Really, what kills SFA is how cheap the season passes are. The sticker price for a single day admission isn't that low. Then after discounts, the price comes to within a range that it's expected and reasonable. But when you have a season pass that's $10 more than the sticker price of a single admission ticket, it just gives lower income families a cheap babysitting option for the summer. And those kids just cause trouble and don't spend money at the park. The business reason for why they give away the season passes is to get people into the park more so they'll buy food, pay for the parking, and pay for the games, etc. But obviously you're not getting that with that customer base.

 

The best way for SFA to be more solvent, would be to either do away with the season passes, or price them at 4-5 times the price of a single day ticket, and maybe throw in a coupon book to make it a little more appealing.

 

And not that I've seen any park do this, but I think it would also be a cool idea if they required any kid under the age of 18 to be accompanied by an adult. It would help save the park from liability, and help curtail the mischief and misbehavior. Also encourage a customer base that has disposable money to spend.

 

If they did anything close to this stupidity, it's definitely goodbye SFA.

 

Well thanks for calling my idea stupid without even providing justifications for it. I postsed a well thought out multi-paragraph business plan while you spouted out a sentence of vulgarity. Way to go.

 

The word, "stupid" is "vulgar"? I learned something new today.

 

I think that its not logical or right to attack a person's character when you disagree with what they say. It makes more sense to try to look at the argument and try to improve it or create counterpoints. You should probably know that calling somebody "stupid" or saying something is "stupid" without saying why is going to push buttons and is not going to come across well. Just thought that I would help you out there.

 

For example, when I was talking about increasing the price of season passes, people created a counter point where they mentioned that they would not pay $400 for a season pass, so my idea might not be practical for the real world.

 

I appreciate this argument, and appreciate the time they took to write it. However, the argument was fallacious.

 

Primarily, their math was faulty. I was talking about a multiple of 4-5 based on the expected price that somebody would pay at a park after normal discounts. SFA is $70 sticker price at the gate... in name only. You can buy online and get tickets for $45, and probably find even better discounts elsewhere without looking too hard. Maybe somebody can double check the facts on that, but with soda cans, online discounts, etc. only fools really pay for the full stick price. So let's assume $45. Now let's assume a multiplier of 4.5.

 

4.5x42=$202.50.

 

Yes, its a high cost, but not anywhere near 400. And if you don't want to pay that, that's a good thing. As I was saying, a main problem for the lack of profitability at parks like SFA is the cheap season pass cost. You can buy an SFA season pass for $62, plus this comes with perks, coupons, exlusive stuff, etc. So maybe the raw component of the entry to the parks is something like $52. Let's say that they go 8x a year. The park is making $6.50 a visit off of you. Not very good. Those are rookie numbers. You have to pump those numbers up if you want to make money, and put it back into the park. I think that to make the kind of margins that they want, they need to think in terms of revenue earned per visit per guest. There is a limited capacity at the park, and they need to maximize their earnings per visit, while managing costs. If fewer guests who are cheapskates choose to not get season passes, great! If they choose to not buy individual tickets, great! If they choose not to go, you probably weren't going to be making much money off of them anyways.

 

 

 

Sources:

 

https://www.sixflags.com/america/store/season-passes

https://www.sixflags.com/america/store/tickets

 

SMH, not a big deal whatsoever. Took what I said out of context, but not uncommon here.

 

Taking feelings into account, I'll say this. Walmart makes a lot of money, because they sell a lot of stuff cheap. SF is a business. Someone, somewhere with a ton of education (or maybe not) put the math together.

 

But Six Flags is not a very solvent firm. They were delisted at one put from the NYSE, with the season pass issue being one of the key problems. They had Dan Snyder from the Washington Re***ns as the head of the board at one point.

 

I think taking an approach where you view the product as a commodity and trying to reduce costs is fine for retail, and maybe for airline flights, but I don't see it being the best approach for the entertainment industry. I think that you make money by attracting upscale customers who are willing to pay more, and cutting out the riff raff.

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^

 

Soooo whose excited for Wahoo River? I definitely think that will be a good upgrade to the water park. I have not been to SFA in 10 years I hope to break that streak this year.

 

What the hell . . . . I think I'll enjoy it. Sometimes, DC area summer days can get way hot/humid . . . so cooling off would be nice

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