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Six Flags [FUN] Corporate Discussion Thread

p. 91: Six Flags and Cedar Fair to enter "merger of equals" agreement, company will still be called "Six Flags"

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So I’ve read somewhere (on this site actually) that apparently, if you try to cancel your membership after 12 months, Six Flags will reduce the price twice before actually letting you cancel. Is this true?

 

Also, aside from discounts, ERT, and the rewards program, what are the benefits of a Gold+ membership over a gold Season pass? Is it worth the extra $18 (at SFA)? Also, does Gold Season pass (not membership) give free parking for all Six Flags or just your home park?

 

Sorry if any of these things have already been answered before.

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So to add to my post above in regards to my visit to membership perks / skip the line at Great Escape:

 

The 2 free skip-the-lines worked a little different at Great Escape compared to the other two Six Flags parks I visited:

1) Each one I received was good for up to 4 people

2) I didn't need to specify what ride I wanted to use it on beforehand, I could just walk up the exit to any ride of my choosing

3) The expiration date was the end of the season, not that day

 

So it does seem there is some variations, although it's important to note Great Escape doesn't have a Flash Pass / qbot system, they have their own thing.

 

I ended up giving our second one away to another family at the log flume. Made their day.

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Also, aside from discounts, ERT, and the rewards program, what are the benefits of a Gold+ membership over a gold Season pass? Is it worth the extra $18 (at SFA)? Also, does Gold Season pass (not membership) give free parking for all Six Flags or just your home park?

I've been considering picking up a membership myself, I guess the functional difference between the Gold Season Pass and the Gold Plus membership is that the benefits of the membership extend to all of the parks in the chain. The Gold Season Pass is just for the park you bought it from.

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I'm thankful they extended it, I forgot to get my membership over the Labor Day weekend.

 

Also, aside from discounts, ERT, and the rewards program, what are the benefits of a Gold+ membership over a gold Season pass? Is it worth the extra $18 (at SFA)? Also, does Gold Season pass (not membership) give free parking for all Six Flags or just your home park?

I've been considering picking up a membership myself, I guess the functional difference between the Gold Season Pass and the Gold Plus membership is that the benefits of the membership extend to all of the parks in the chain. The Gold Season Pass is just for the park you bought it from.

Hoping this means the Platinum "unlimited soft drinks" is chain-wide and not just home park only. Looking forward to using it at GAm and OG next year as well as SFA.

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I'm thankful they extended it, I forgot to get my membership over the Labor Day weekend.

 

Also, aside from discounts, ERT, and the rewards program, what are the benefits of a Gold+ membership over a gold Season pass? Is it worth the extra $18 (at SFA)? Also, does Gold Season pass (not membership) give free parking for all Six Flags or just your home park?

I've been considering picking up a membership myself, I guess the functional difference between the Gold Season Pass and the Gold Plus membership is that the benefits of the membership extend to all of the parks in the chain. The Gold Season Pass is just for the park you bought it from.

Hoping this means the Platinum "unlimited soft drinks" is chain-wide and not just home park only. Looking forward to using it at GAm and OG next year as well as SFA.

 

Yes, the Platinum free soft drinks perk is good chain-wide. You get a special membership sports bottle each year and they are good for free refills at all Six Flags parks.

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So to add to my post above in regards to my visit to membership perks / skip the line at Great Escape:

 

The 2 free skip-the-lines worked a little different at Great Escape compared to the other two Six Flags parks I visited:

1) Each one I received was good for up to 4 people

2) I didn't need to specify what ride I wanted to use it on beforehand, I could just walk up the exit to any ride of my choosing

3) The expiration date was the end of the season, not that day

 

So it does seem there is some variations, although it's important to note Great Escape doesn't have a Flash Pass / qbot system, they have their own thing.

 

I ended up giving our second one away to another family at the log flume. Made their day.

 

Its definitely because Great Escape doesn't have a FP system......has to be:

 

So our home park is SFNE and we went with the DE membership this year - well we upgraded shortly after the season started.....during some sale....anyway - usually we get our STL passes at the FP office and they actually scan your membership card and then the system prints the two passes which you declare your ride and they write it on the pass and initial it......

 

However, twice this year we went when the weather was junk - cloudy and off and on rain - so the crowd was very low.....they closed the FP office and put a sign on the door that said to go to member services to get your STL passes.....so when we went up there they gave us what you're talking about.....a pass for any ride for up to 4 people that expires at the end of the 2018 season....the difference was that member services isn't set up to do flash pass stuff so they just handed out these cards.....it was good inside knowledge into how the STL passes and FP are tied together.....I took advantage of this to drive the 20 min up to the park during rainy periods and secured several more of those passes.....its like gold....didn't stay - just left to save for another day

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So to add to my post above in regards to my visit to membership perks / skip the line at Great Escape:

 

The 2 free skip-the-lines worked a little different at Great Escape compared to the other two Six Flags parks I visited:

1) Each one I received was good for up to 4 people

2) I didn't need to specify what ride I wanted to use it on beforehand, I could just walk up the exit to any ride of my choosing

3) The expiration date was the end of the season, not that day

 

So it does seem there is some variations, although it's important to note Great Escape doesn't have a Flash Pass / qbot system, they have their own thing.

 

I ended up giving our second one away to another family at the log flume. Made their day.

I have also noticed some inconsistency with how membership benefits work at different parks. So far in 2018 we have visited SFoT, SFFT, SFA, SFGadv, and SFoG (our home park). At SFA they gave us the cards for skip-the-line while the other parks gave receipts. Just like your experience at Great Escape, the SFA passes were not ride-specific and required the use of the exit (versus the Flash Pass entrance), making them more like ADA exit passes.

 

And I am not too concerned about negative marks resulting from failure to cancel / not use a reservation for parking, etc. Their system is not this advanced (but may be someday), and furthermore, not all parks actually scan the parking pass. On a couple occasions, the attendant just checked the date on our parking pass and then let us into the reserved area so there was no internal record of whether or not we utilized the reservation.

 

While there is certainly room for improvement to the membership program, I do believe it is a tremendous value.

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So I’ve read somewhere (on this site actually) that apparently, if you try to cancel your membership after 12 months, Six Flags will reduce the price twice before actually letting you cancel. Is this true?

 

Yep, this is true. For the past three seasons, I've had a gold membership for $3.50 a month. Well, two actually for that price. For $7 a month, my wife and I can enjoy six flags anywhere. I wished other parks did this, but Six Flags is the only chain that begs you to stay. For that price, we'll never cancel again.

Edited by The Geek Mojo
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For now I'm sticking with my $5 and change a month gold membership that we signed up for last year before they made all these changes. The main reason I switched to a membership was to avoid having to get to the park by a certain date to get a free upgrade.

 

For me the benefits simply aren't worth all the extra money. We don't travel that much to other six flags parks and only go to great adventure when it's not crowded anyway.

 

When ya look at the featured benefits it's just really hard to justify paying almost $150 more per pass each year when we don't mind walking further to park, don't care about their haunts and don't need 2 skip the line passes.

 

A couple of things that I do like is the 50% off the season dining plan and the 50% off the all season flash pass which you could get the gold all season flash pass for like $100 but that would still have us spending like $320 each for the year and at that point I'd rather just spend that money on a trip to Florida.

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  • 1 month later...

https://www.rockfordparkdistrict.org/news/six-flags-magic-waters

 

Six Flags adds Magic Waters in Rockford, IL to their list of water parks. Six Flags will operate the park starting in Spring 2019...

 

SixFlags_RPD.thumb.png.3dde545bf7debd796de492e5e7ebb54b.png

 

The Rockford Park District Board of Commissioners has approved a lease agreement that allows Six Flags Entertainment Corporation to operate Magic Waters Waterpark starting in the spring of 2019. This lease agreement is expected to be signed in the near future, and allows the largest regional theme park company in the world to bring its unique and innovative brand to the Rockford market.

 

Magic Waters Waterpark, a 43-acre waterpark located in Rockford, Illinois, has been owned and operated by the Rockford Park District since 1988. The park features a wide array of tube slides and body slides; an expansive children’s play area; a 1200 ft. lazy river; and Tsunami Bay, Illinois’ largest wavepool.

 

“We are excited about the prospect of welcoming Magic Waters to the Six Flags family of parks,” said Six Flags Great America Park President Hank Salemi. “This is a fantastic property that complements our theme and waterpark in Gurnee and provides tremendous added value for our Season Passholders and Members. We look forward to bringing our unique and innovative brand of thrills to this important market.”

 

The lease agreement is expected to be finalized in the near future and commence in spring of 2019.

 

"The Rockford Park District has always had a strong culture of collaboration,” said Jay Sandine, Rockford Park District Executive Director. “Partnering with Six Flags means great things for our community and will enhance the experience for local families looking for affordable family fun. By having the Six Flags brand in this market we expect a major increase in tourism which will have significant economic impact for our community. Six Flags will continue to make capital investments in the waterpark, which frees up District resources to invest in our communities’ priorities such as parks, playgrounds, and youth.”

 

When the lease begins, Six Flags Gold Season Passes and Memberships will offer admission to Six Flags Great America, Six Flags Hurricane Harbor, Magic Waters and any other Six Flags theme park, as well as free parking and special admission offers for friends.

Edited by jedimaster1227
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https://www.rockfordparkdistrict.org/news/six-flags-magic-waters

 

Six Flags adds Magic Waters in Rockford, IL to their list of water parks. Six Flags will operate the park starting in Spring 2019...

 

This is great! My Dad and I visit Rockford once a year, and this will give us a reason to use our passes there next year!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Anyone else here having difficulty accessing the Pass Holder Portal? I have been unable to navigate to that page and have tried on a smartphone and a desktop PC. This means preferred parking for Diamond/Elite members cannot be reserved. (This feature is not available on the app yet)

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Anyone else here having difficulty accessing the Pass Holder Portal? I have been unable to navigate to that page and have tried on a smartphone and a desktop PC. This means preferred parking for Diamond/Elite members cannot be reserved. (This feature is not available on the app yet)

 

Yes.

I am having the same issue.

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So, this was in the Orlando Sentinel a few hours ago:

 

Orlando-Based SeaWorld could be sold to Six Flags, report says

Orlando-based SeaWorld would not comment this week on a report that Six Flags is looking to buy it.

 

Blogger Themed Reality has reported Six Flags Entertainment is in talks to buy all or some of SeaWorld Entertainment’s parks — a portfolio that includes the marquee SeaWorld Orlando, the Aquatica Orlando water park and Busch Gardens Tampa Bay.

 

The report emerges after SeaWorld posted strong financials for the third quarter in a row Monday. A Six Flags spokeswoman did not return messages for comment Tuesday.

 

Attendance is up at SeaWorld parks and the $2.2 billion company has said it is investing in new attractions, including Sesame Street land in Orlando.

 

Meanwhile for Six Flags, the $4.89 billion company released disappointing quarterly earnings in October, Bloomberg reported.

 

Six Flags was the seventh largest theme park operator in the world with nearly 31 million attendance in 2017, according to the Themed Entertainment Association/AECOM report.

 

SeaWorld, the ninth, had nearly 21 million in 2017, the report said.

 

It’s not the first time sale rumors have swirled around SeaWorld.

 

In October 2017, Bloomberg reported that Merlin Entertainment — which owns Legoland theme parks — was interested in buying SeaWorld.

 

More than a year later, that sale hasn’t happened.

 

SeaWorld is in the midst of turnaround after years of declining attendance as it dealt with the “Blackfish” anti-whale captivity documentary while Disney World and Universal also separated themselves further from SeaWorld in the competition.

 

SeaWorld is still without a permanent CEO. John Reilly was promoted to the interim CEO position since the previous leader Joel Manby left in February.

 

The company board is still searching and has not made a decision yet, Reilly told analysts Monday during an earnings call which did not have any mention of a possible sale.

 

The company is also in cost-cutting mode and trying to run more efficiently, Reilly also said. SeaWorld is looking at each vendor in its corporate office and theme parks to eliminate redundant costs.

 

The company cut 125 positions in August as part of an effort to save $50 million in expenses.

 

 

Source: https://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/tourism/os-bz-seaworld-sale-20181107-story.html

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One thing that we need to make sure we don't lose sight of is that just because the Orlando Sentinel name gives this story some credibility it still cites some blog with less than 1,000 Facebook likes and Twitter followers as the source. One frustrating and semi-new media phenomenon is that a source like that can routinely be picked up by larger and larger sources who report on it and cite the original source but people see larger sources (like Attractions Magazine) "reporting" it and it gives it more and more credibility until people like the The Motley Fool and the Orlando Sentinel pick it up. Once people see a source like that it spreads like wildfire. For example: now CBS has picked it up citing the Orlando sentinel even though all that the Orlando Sentinel did was cite this f*cking blog.

 

The source is no more credible than it was yesterday and there are no additional sources. None of these people did any reporting on this, they let someone else do it for them and posted it knowing that it would get clicks and that if it turned about to be totally wrong they could just defer down the line until it got back to this blog that's already posting panicked follow up disclaimers in the wake of the firestorm that they created like this and this. It's even impacted the stock price (though to be fair, the market is up big today anyway).

 

I'm not saying that Six Flags entering into some kind of licensing situation is out of the question (buying it outright is since if anyone wanted to do that they would have probably jumped when the share price was hovering around $10) but PLEASE keep in mind that smoke in this case doesn't indicate fire... it indicates sh*tty, lazy "journalism".

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This entire idea is nonsense. This "news" was posted by a blogger with no cited sources or facts, blindly picked up and run with by the Orlando Sentinel, and then regurgitated to a wider audience by a CBS reporter who seemingly exists solely to churn out as many stories a day as possible (that are all just aggregated from other sites). And then the original blog post was apparently deleted (because you can't find any record of it on their blog). [edit: apparently he posted it on Facebook, which is still there. But seriously, Orlando Sentinel, you can't run a story based on some yahoo's unsubstantiated Facebook post.]

 

This is an unfortunate example of the sad state of journalism in this country today showing how quickly "journalists" will run with baseless stories without any kind of investigation or vettting of the original source. And as soon as one news organization runs with a story, everybody else just cites that organization and runs it themselves, regardless of whether or not the story had any factual basis. This quest to be 'FIRST' without regard for being accurate is completely destroying journalism (and people's trust in it), and that makes me sad.

 

 

 

 

But in other news, I got a survey a couple days ago from Six Flags asking about all kinds of stuff related to the Flash Pass program. It sounds like they're considering different options for season Flash Passes, but with various restrictions like what day it can/can't be used (any day, no weekends, no Tuesday), or what time of day it can be used (any time, after 2PM, after 4PM), or whether or not you'd need to get an advance reservation and how far in advance that might be (none, 24hrs, 3 days), or how many rides are available (5-30, but no mention of which rides those could be or if it was the number of line skips you get independent of which attractions you can ride).

 

Not sure if this new Season FP would be an option in addition to what they currently have or in place of those. The feature sets and price points were all over the map, with a lot of feature/price combinations that just made no sense at all and couldn't possibly be economically viable (like a minimally-restricted Platinum FP for $50, or a really-locked down Regular FP for like $250)

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I'm not saying that Six Flags entering into some kind of licensing situation is out of the question (buying it outright is since if anyone wanted to do that they would have probably jumped when the share price was hovering around $10) but PLEASE keep in mind that smoke in this case doesn't indicate fire... it indicates sh*tty, lazy "journalism".

 

But that's exactly the point, there is more smoke than just the FB post by a blogger. Not saying the smoke is exactly for a sale but rather something is brewing. Zhonghong is broke, in trouble with the govt, leadership has assets frozen, and company about to get delisted. Then this comes out.... and shares go up. Zhonghong made some nice money off today's news. But time is up for Zhonghong.

 

Don't disagree with anything you said (but hey the Sentinel quoted me so it isn't a waste of an article ) but I think there is a larger story brewing here. Maybe it isn't a sale, but with Zhonghong's position things are about to get interesting.

 

You're spot on about someone would've bought them around $10 bucks - Zhonghong bought at a premium of ~22 a share. Unless it was a very strong hostile takeover, between Zhonghong at 22 and Hill Path in the high teens, a majority of the company ownership would be against selling for that low of a price. That in of itself caused analysts to question the company for conflict of interests accusing SeaWorld of not selling when low because their board is made up of Zhonghong folks who would lose big. I always thought once shares hit the $22 dollar threshold something might happen so no one in a majority ownership would lose money. We have passed that for a month or two now and Zhonghong situation back home continues to worsen. Selling to Six Flags or whoever to have Six Flags manage might sound crazy, but I think something will be happening in coming weeks and Zhonghong is at the end of the line.

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I think we’re pretty much on the same page. Like I said in that portion of my post that you quoted it’s not out of the question at all that Six Flags (or someone else) could step in at all. Something has to give. It’s reaosnable to assume that someone is going to step in and Six Flags is a perfectly reasonable option.

 

The main focus of my post is that the way this is being reported is bullshit and that there’s only one highly-questionable source that seems to be panicking over how much traction their blog post actually got. The amount of lazy journalism that led to this being a major story today with Six Flags specifically named with any amount of confidence is honestly embarrassing.

 

That said: It’s a scenario that (for reasons you outlined far better than I would have) totally COULD happen, there’s just no reason to believe with any confidence that these people have sources confirming it.

 

This entire idea is nonsense. This "news" was posted by a blogger with no cited sources or facts, blindly picked up and run with by the Orlando Sentinel, and then regurgitated to a wider audience by a CBS reporter who seemingly exists solely to churn out as many stories a day as possible (that are all just aggregated from other sites).

 

Excellent post. It looks like we were basically typing similar things at the same time and I agree 100%.

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