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Corporate Park News
---- THE LATEST INDUSTRY NEWS ----
(5/14/2025) More Thoughts and Clues About Disney's Abu Dhabi Theme Park Project
(5/13/2025) Herschend Is Moving Forward With The Purchase of the Palace Entertainment Properties
(5/13/2025) United Parks & Resorts Reports Q1 2025 Earnings Results
(5/10/2025) Six Flags CEO Says No More Parks Are Closing and Corporate Re-Structuring Has Begun
(5/7/2025) BREAKING - Disney's New Abu Dhabi Resort Officially Confirmed
(5/6/2025) Is Iger Planning One Last Major Deal For Disney?
(5/3/2025) Disney Planning Mystery UAE Announcement w/ Q2 2025 Earnings Release
 Disney - (5/14/2025) A great follow up piece on Forbes about the new Disney park announced for Abu Dhabi has a confirmed comment from Miral’s Chief Exec, Mohamed Al Zaabi, that “Disney will be an indoor park. We will make it easy for then to arrive, convenient experience on arrival, getting in and enjoying as many rides as possible.”
Comparisons are made to Miral’s other parks in Abu Dhabi that are mostly indoor experience as well, though often the big roller coasters do venture outside of course. This also fits with clues Screamscape sources also delivered to me, claiming that while this will be a Disney theme park, it will not be quite what anyone was expecting. In other words, don’t expect this to be another partial clone of Disneyland or the Magic Kingdom. In fact, the Forbes article goes on to wonder if we might even see some sections of the Disney park built under giant environmentally controlled domes.
I’m not sure about Domes, though the Circus Circus’s Adventuredome in Las Vegas could certainly serve as an early example of just such a concept on a smaller scale. However, there will be a focus on keeping guests comfortable and out of the harsh outdoor heat during the warmer months of the year. I also I believe this new park will likely feature a number of innovative and never-before seen attraction concepts featuring Disney’s extensive catalog of IPs.
Strangely though… I have also heard rumors that even Disney may not be free to use “anything” they want from their IP vault, as there may be some other previous agreements in play within the region that could restrict them from using select properties in this new Disney resort.
(5/7/2025) As we had heard rumored over the past week, Disney has confirmed that they are planning to bring a theme park and resort to the UAE in Abu Dhabi. The location makes sense, as while Dubai was the hot ticket for a time for large scale developments, Dubai’s push to create major theme park projects like the massive Dubailand, Six Flags Dubai and even a Universal Studios resort failed to move forward, though smaller theme parks like Legoland and MotionGate have opened and survived.
Abu Dhabi on the other hand has proven itself as being a successful site for several major theme park projects starting with Ferrari World, Yas Waterworld, Warner Bros. World and SeaWorld Abu Dhabi. Just like those other successful ventures, Disney too will be coming to Yas Island, in a partnership with Miral.
I don’t have all the details, but the deal to build here sounds more akin to how the Oriental Land Company owns and operates the Tokyo Disney Resort as a sort of almost “franchise” operation, with OLC running everything according to Disney’s standards, while hiring out all design work to Disney’s Imagineering department. Disney’s advantage here is that while they’re essentially getting paid to design this park, they won’t be paying a dime to build it, which is sure to make the stockholders very happy. The entire cost of the Abu Dhabi project will be funded by Miral, which is essentially how Miral also created the other parks on Abu Dhabi with their other partners.
Of course, like most of Disney’s big announcements these days, this one is all about the presentation, with no hard dates or timelines able to be shared, so don’t start to plan your trip just yet. Similar to how he set up the creation of Shanghai Disneyland, Bob Iger has described their plans for the UAE as being “authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati” This will be Disney’s 7th resort destination in the world and as their newest, the plan is to make it very high tech as they are building everything from the ground up, but they aren’t ready to even talk about what kind of themes or IP’s will be included in this newest resort.
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(5/6/2025) Forbes has posted a great article about “The Biggest Deal Bob Iger Has Yet To Do At Disney”, which drops many more hints about the rumored announcement for a Disney project in the UAE.
Give the article a read yourself to see what you think about what may be in the works. One thought is that this could be some kind of hybrid project, that might involve a resort, or may involve Disney building some kind of stand-alone experiences at a resort project. They’ve been pushing a lot of Star Wars themed posts on their Social Media this week as well, (it was just May the 4th after all), but it does make me wonder if they might try to build some kind of indoor Star Wars themed attraction space that could offer shopping, themed dining and maybe an attraction or two. It wouldn’t be difficult to perhaps create a scaled down version of Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run for example… especially since that attraction can be updated and re-programmed over time to offer new missions and experiences. Something very re-rideable, like a Star Tours attraction could also work, as there are hundreds of possible combinations to experience that would keep the experience fresh.
(5/3/2025) While we still don’t know exactly what it is, word has it that Disney will be making some kind of big announcement on Wednesday, likely involving some kind of project in the UAE. Look for this to get released first thing Wednesday morning on the East Coast, which also happens to be the day that Disney will release their Q2 2025 earning results that same morning.
Perhaps by coincidence, the official Yas Island IG page is promising that they will be holding their biggest fireworks show EVER that same night. Seems like they will have something big to celebrate, but they’re not saying what just yet…
(5/2/2025) Is Disney planning on announcing something for the UAE? According to a Tweet from Movieconomics, Disney may be working on something for Abu Dhabi that could be announced very soon, possibly next week. Anyone know more?
Given the high profile projects that we’ve seen so far in Abu Dhabi such as Ferrari World, Warner Bros World and the all new SeaWorld Abu Dhabi parks… could it be time for some kind of indoor Disney park or attraction to make an appearance in the UAE?
(2/25/2025) While The Walt Disney Company's growth seems completely unstoppable, the cost of this also seems to be a never-ending series of price increases across the board. It's easy to blame Disney itself for this… but instead, I do wonder if we are all instead to blame for continuing to pay the ever rising prices. Follow the link to read more about Disney’s new growth plan for the theme park and experience empire, and where things actually did seem to go a little too far.
(3/14/2025) Just a heads up, but the annual meeting of Shareholders for The Walt Disney Company will be webcast live on March 20th at 10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern. You can watch through the Disney.com/investors website.
(3/4/2025) Despite numerous reports claiming that The Walt Disney Company has announced the intention to bring the new dynamic or “surge pricing” concept to their US theme parks, it was pointed out to Screamscape that Disney has not officially announced any such action. Yet…
It has been confirmed that it did go into effect at the Disneyland Paris theme parks in November, where they are working out the kinks in the concept, so I do feel that it is likely that it may still come to the US parks eventually. But…for now… it is worth stating that nothing has been officially announced by The Walt Disney Company at this time.
I discuss this concept further in my latest article posted to Blooloop this week, so please do follow the link over to find out the latest on this new pricing concept. Spoiler Alert… I’m not a fan, but there are some ways it could be used for good.
(2/23/2025) Imagine a world where you wouldn’t know the price of a ticket into a Disney theme park until the moment you try to buy one? Disney’s theme park pricing strategy has gone beyond all expectations to evolve into the complicated beast it currently is, featuring a number of different price tiers based on expected crowd levels on any given day, in addition to the insanity of still requiring reservations to visit the California parks still being in effect.
Now a new expected kink is expected to come to the system in which the actual final ticket price for admission into the Disneyland and Walt Disney World parks this year that would actually fluctuate even further under a “surge pricing” strategy. This surge pricing is expected to be similar to what you might experience when buying seats on an airline… as the more crowded it gets onboard, the higher the ticket prices will climb, and guests buying at the last second will pay the highest prices.
There is a world of difference between airline surge pricing and a Disney park trying to copy the same concept. Seating is LIMITED on an airline… while it takes a major event like a holiday to generate the kind of crowd where Disney would actually close their gates due to capacity. On an airline, adding more passengers also comes with some actual increased expenses for the flight, notably added fuel to compensate for the added weight or passengers and luggage on fully loaded flight compared to a half-empty flight.
Disney parks on the other hand are typically fully staffed with all rides open on a daily basis regardless of crowd levels (though they can bring in more staff or extend hours on more crowded days as needed). But otherwise, the only reason to raise ticket prices on more crowded days is to serve as an incentive to get a percentage of potential guests to simply stay home, to either avoid the crowd or to wait for a more price-friendly day to visit.
Otherwise the concept of never knowing what to expect for your ticket price to visit a Disney theme park, until the actual moment that you try to buy it, is kind of insane. It also would allow for the very disturbing trend of Disney being able to simply raise their ticket prices any day, any time of the day, they want… forever masking away from view such as annual price increases under the concept of the chaotic ongoing surge pricing.
I’m not familiar with the pricing in effect at Disneyland Paris, but it was stated that the Paris parks have already put a similar pricing plan into place in November. If anyone has more information on how that has affected their plans to visit the Paris resort, I’d love to hear more about it.
(2/9/2025) The Walt Disney Company appears to be back on track based on their Q1 2025 earnings report, which covers the months from the start of October 2024 through to the end of December 2024.
The main bullet points mention that Revenue rose 5% that quarter compared to the Q1 the previous year, with pre-tax income increasing 27% in Q1 to $3.7 billion over the year prior. Most company divisions reported gains including Entertainment, Direct-to-Consumer Advertising, combined subscriptions to Disney+ and HULU are up from Q4 2024 (though Disney+ only numbers saw a decline), and the performance of Moana 2 brought in strong numbers.
Theme Parks are an interesting point however, as the company’s domestic parks saw a 5% drop in operating income (some of which they are blaming on hurricanes), Disney’s International parks saw huge growth, with a reported 28% increase in income compared to Q1 2024.
(12/31/2024) It has been rumored for some time that Universal may be preparing to let their contract to use The Simpsons IP expire when it ends. While Universal has not confirmed anything, the attractions that replaced the former Back To The Future: The Ride in both Orlando and Hollywood parks opened in 2008. Generally I’ve found that IP contracts for this kind of thing usually come in 10-year renewable terms, if so, the second 10 year term would be coming to an end in early 2028. This would make it likely that Universal would seek to shut down the attractions (along with rethemeing nearby restaurants and gift shops) no later than the end of 2027.
Adding a little fuel to the fire, just as we are on the verge of kicking off 2025, Disney apparently sent out a guest survey this past week to judge how Disney theme park guests would feel about the idea of including new brands and experiences in the parks, which included a section on The Simpsons. They survey asked if guests felt adding lands, attractions, or character “meet & greet” experiences to the parks would be a valuable addition. Other options includes just using them for merchandise, video game, other animated formats (movie, shorts, tv) or even live action… (and we know Disney loves getting the chance to make a Live-Action version of just about every animated IP they own). There was also an option to create an “Immersive Experience” that could exist outside of a Disney theme park. (Who’s up for turning the former Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser into the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant?)
(12/16/2024) Just in case you might have had some hope about Disney theme parks ever lowering their prices, they are not going to. Some may have expected at least a price hold perhaps, especially when even Bob Iger mentioned that the theme park price increases had gotten a little aggressive in his absence.
Instead, Disney’s Chief Financial Officer spoke last week and confirmed that the the plan is to continue doing what they’ve been doing… keeping the base “value” level tier the same, and increasing the prices on all the rest. This move always seems to come with there being less and less of those “value” tier days on the calendar each year. Then add in all the extra cash that Disney parks are raking in from guests willing to not only pay for high priced admission, but then pay again once in the parks for the various Lightning Lane style attraction passes.
Interestingly enough, Disney’s theme park division actually reported a 6% drop in profits during the April/May/June quarterly report earlier this year, though things had righted themselves by the following quarter. Still, this does seem to indicate some potential weakness is out there over the price of spending a day at a Disney theme park. This idea will be challenged even further in 2025, once Universal Orlando opens their newest theme park, Epic Universe, which features a number of lands and attractions themed to popular kid-friendly IPs like Nintendo, How to Train Your Dragon and Harry Potter, that will surely appear to many potential Disney park guests.
(9/6/2024) An interesting “leak” of data from Disney was released on out onto the web by a hacker group that contains some interesting and details financial numbers that tell us far more than Disney’s quarterly earnings report do. For example, according to the write-up at Investopedia, Walt Disney World’s version of Gene+ was responsible for generating $724 million for the Florida theme park resort alone between the launch in October 2021 and June 2024.
The leak was said to contain other iinformation, such as details about staff and guests on Disney Cruises, messages between Disney employees discussing a number of topics, and an interesting breakdown of how Disney+ subscriptions rank into Disney’s overall streaming empire. The public quarterly data only combines all the numbers from Hulu, ESPN+ and Disney+ into one lump sum, but according to the leak, Disney+ itself is now responsible for 43% of Disney’s overall streaming revenue.
(8/8/2024) Disney posted their Q3 2024 Earnings Call report on their investor site, which you can listen in to by clicking here. For those who enjoy going over the numbers from each of the company’s departments, you can read through the financial report details by clicking here.
(5/11/2024) The Walt Disney Company posted their Q2 2024 / 6-Months earning report this week, for the time period ending March 30, 2024. Focusing on just the company's parks & experiences results, they reported a 10% increase in revenue for the latest quarter, compared to the same time period in 2023, with the biggest increase coming from the International parks division that saw a 29% increase in revenue compared to Domestic parks that only saw a 7% increase.
Higher results for the quarter domestically were attributed to increase guest spending at Walt Disney World due to higher ticket prices, as well as growth from the Disney Cruise Line, also due to “an increase in average ticket prices”. However, the Disneyland Resort saw less growth due to higher operational costs driven by inflation, and increases in guest spending (due to higher ticket costs once again) were also offset by hotels with “lower occupied room nights.”
On the international front, the company saw huge growth in guest spending from rising ticket, food, and merchandise pricing, as well as increased attendance at the parks, as well as high occupancy rates at the hotels, all of which was aided by the opening of the new World of Frozen land in November 2023.
So with all this in mind, the sudden launch of a discounted ticket offer at the Disneyland Resort parks now makes a lot more sense, though it’s clear that they have opted to keep the reservation system in place to help keep things in check somewhat.
(2/8/2024) According to comments made by Disney CEO, Bob Iger, the company is now planning to invest $60 Billion into their experiences, theme parks and cruise line businesses over the next decade, with about 70% of that sum slated towards projects that will go towards growth and increased capacity options across all of their locations, as well as the already planned addition of three new ships to the Disney Cruise Line: Disney Treasure, Disney Adventure and the final Triton class vessel that has yet to be named.
(12/2/2023) After countless extensions, as well as leaving and coming back, it may be hard to believe this date will hold, but Disney CEO, Bob Iger, has confirmed that he will retire once again at the end of 2026. According to an interview with the New York Times, Iger says he will definitely be leaving at the end of his current contract.
A major part of this, and one of the main reasons he returned in the first place in 2022, was to select a true successor to lead The Walt Disney Company in his wake. Of course, the last time this all went down was when Iger and the company selected Bob Chapek to lead the company, and that didn’t go well.
Five Star Parks & Attractions - (5/26/2023) Five Star Parks & Attractions is growing again. According to this update the company who is one of the nation’s leading operators of family entertainment centers has now purchased two “Fun Land” locations in Virginia (Fredericksburg & Fairfax) following the purchase of Scene75 Entertainment earlier this month. With the addition of the two Fun Land properties, Five Star Parks & Attractions portfolio has grown to feature 27 different attractions across 13 different states. Other highlight attractions from Five Star includes Malibu Jack’s, Celebration Station, LaserPort, SpeedZone, The Track, Xtreme Racing centers and more.
Herschend Family Entertainment - (5/13/2025) Herschend is moving forward with their planned acquisition of the Palace Entertainment theme parks and attraction properties, and has launched a “$1.1 billion leveraged loan” to help fund the deal according to Blooloop.
The huge deal will add more than 20 new properties to the Herschend’s portfolio of family attractions, aquariums and theme parks.
(3/20/2025) While the actual sale price that Herschend is paying Parques Reunidos to obtain Palace Entertainment’s US parks was not released, industry expert Dennis Speigel (CEO of ITPS) says that it was likely more than $500 million.
(3/19/2025) Back in August it was revealed that EQT, the Swedish private investment firm who essentially sits at the head of the table over at Parques Reunidos, had hired JP Morgan to conduct a review of the possible sale of their Palace Entertainment division, who oversees all their US parks and properties.
Jump ahead to the present day and it looks like those efforts have worked out as Herschend has announced that they have signed a definitive agreement with Parques Reunidos to acquire all of Palace Entertainment’s US properties. This deal marks a huge period of expansion for Herschend, as well as a great way for Parques Reunidos to exit from the US market, while gaining a good sum of cash in the process in which to refocus themselves on the their core European market.
You may be aware of Hershend’s primary properties (Dollywood, Silver Dollar City, Kentucky Kingdom and Wild Adventures) as well as several aquariums, a few water parks, the Callaway Resort & Cardens and Pink Adventure Tour. However, you may not be quite as familiar with the over 20 Palace Entertainment properties that will fall under Herschend’s control once the deal is finalized. The list of Palace Entertainment properties includes:
7 Amusement Parks - Adventureland, Castle Park, Dutch Wonderland, Idlewild, Kennywood, Lake Compounce and Story Land
6 Water Parks - Sandcastle, Wet ‘n Wild Emerald Pointe, Raging Waters, Noah’s Ark, Water Country and Splish Splash.
2 Aquariums - Living Shores Aquarium and Sea Life Park
4 FEC’s - Boomers Vista, Boomers Palm Springs, Mountasia Marietta and Malibu Norcross
Along with the Cartoon Network Hotel, Old Mill Stream Campground, Lake Compounce Campground and Adventureland Campground.
Keeping these all in mind, I’m not really seeing any areas where the two chains were in competition within the same market, so overall the expansion should be well received. That’s if Herschend opts to see all of the properties.
While it is far too early to tell what will happen, I’m not entirely convinced that Herschend will keep them all. I think most of the amusement parks are safe of course, but I could see them looking to shed some of the smaller FEC attractions and maybe Castle Park off to someone else who is more specialized in those kinds of attractions. On the flip side, I think some of the Palace parks will fit in rather nicely and even thrive very quickly under Herschend’s ownership, especially parks like Kennywood, Adventureland and Lake Compounce.
(12/18/2023) In an interesting development, the local news reports that Dolly Parton and her partners at Herschend Family Entertainment has purchased a piece of property in downtown Nashville, TN. Unfortunately all the details about what is planned for the site are being kept under wraps, though one article has confirmed that the property in question is actually an 11-story office tower, located at 211 Commerce Street, purchased for $75 million.
This isn’t an empty building either, as the office space is home to various tenants who have leased space in the building and is located half a block away from busy tourist destinations like Blake Shelton’s Ole Red, Jason Albean’s Kitchen and Kid Rock’s Rock & Roll Steakhouse. Given the eclectic nature of how this area of Nashville has been developed, there really is no telling if Dolly and company are planning to use the building as a future office for their own projects, or as some kind of attraction.
This also wouldn’t be the first time that Dolly and Herschend have tried to get an attraction in the Nashville area. Long time readers may remember when Dolly announced a plan to build a combo water and snow park attraction attached to the Gaylord Opryland Resort about ten years ago. That project fell apart when Gaylord agreed to sell off their hotel properties and management to Marriott International just months after the project with Dolly was announced, resulting in Dolly and her team pulling out. Dolly has always seemed to want to expand her presence into an attraction of some kind in the Nashville area, so perhaps the purchase of the office building is simply a way to get a firm foothold in the area ahead of some other kind of project endeavor.
IB Parks & Entertainment - (12/21/2024) IB Parks & Entertainment, the official company name of the organization set up by Gene Staples to purchase and save Indiana Beach, Clementon Park and Niagara Amusement Park, surprised this week with the announcement of a purchase to add a 4th park to the chain’s collection.
Big Kahuna’s Water Park in West Berlin, NJ (formerly known as Sahara Sam’s) has now joined IB Parks & Entertainment. Big Kahuna’s is a rarity in the US as it operates as an indoor waterpark and arcade, without featuring an attached resort. The location also features an outdoor section that is open for the Summer season that adds on a wave pool, a regular swimming pool and a kiddie lagoon play area.
The former Sahara Sam’s was first purchased by Apex Parks Group back in 2015, with Apex itself having been formed the year before with the purchase of 15 small park and FEC style properties from Palace Entertainment, which included the original Big Kahuna’s waterpark location Destin, Florida. Apex grew and later bought a couple of parks of note… namely Indiana Beach and the former Fantasy Island, which they later shut down in 2020 and then sold to Gene Staples, causing the formation of the new IP Parks & Entertainment company.
Apex Parks Group itself filed for bankruptcy, shutting down several Boomers properties in the process, and then shut down themselves. Kinda… a new company named APX Operating Company, LLC purchased a number of the former properties including Sahara Sam’s and Big Kahuna. The history gets a little murky here, as somehow it sounds like Palace Entertainment may have gotten involved and with APX, created a private spin-off company known as Boomers Parks to continue to operate these properties, with the exception of two surviving Boomers locations in California (Vista & Palm Springs) that are now completely owned by Palace Entertainment.
Boomers Parks opted to makeover and rebrand the Sahara Sam’s location under the Big Kahuna’s name when it reopened in May of 2022, further labeling it as a Boomers Park location. Now 2.5 years later, the New Jersey location has been sold to IP Parks & Entertainment, while Boomers Parks is retaining ownership of the original Big Kahuna’s in Florida. The interesting thing is that the official BigKahunas.com website not only features information about the Florida location, while all the information for the New Jersey location is now online only at the former SaharaSams.com website URL, which features a slightly modified version of their former website, along with an copyright ownership at the bottom as “Sahara Sams Oasis LLC”. Based on this, I wouldn’t be surprised if IB Parks is allowed to keep the Big Kahuna’s brandname for 2025 while they plan a potential rebranding of the park into something new afterwards.
According to the press release from IB Parks, they are looking forward to a collaboration of Big Kahuna’s with their nearby Clementon Park property, and the opportunity to “provide our guests with options to visit both Big Kahuna’s year-round water attractions and the outdoor fun at Clementon Park.” The two attraction’s are only 4.5 miles away from each other, so I can also see that there are great opportunities for some cost savings between the two locations by merging certain tasks and operations duties. It also makes me wonder if we might eventually see Big Kahuna’s sacrifice their outdoor attractions in order to expand their indoor offerings since Clementon already has the outdoor waterpark attraction’s covered.
Meow Wolf - (10/3/2024) Meow Wolf has now confirmed that the new Houston location, their 5th, will be named, “Radio Tave”. Opening on October 31st, Radio Tave will be themed as a surreal radio station that has been transported to another dimension, one full of portals, hidden doors, a labyrinth of twisted pathways and mysteries to unfold. For those well versed with the Meow Wolf universe’s other locations, don’t be surprised if you encounter a connected theme or character in Houston as well.
In addition to the exhibit space itself, the Meow Wolf Houston location will also feature an in-exhibit bar and restaurant, a gift shop and a special event venue space. Follow the link to see some of the latest images of what Radio Tave looks like inside!
(9/27/2024) Are you allowed to put a copyright on the concept of weird art? We may find out soon, as it seems trippy experience attraction operator, Meow Wolf, has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against a similar sounding concept in the UK called “Wake the Tiger” that opened in 2022.
While I’ve never had the chance to visit Wake the Tiger or any of the current Meow Wolf attractions in the US, I am curious about exactly what Wake the Tiger has built that has earned the wrath of Meow Wolf. Meanwhile, another similar concept to Meow Wolf known as Otherworld also exists in the US with locations now in Columbus, OH and Philadelphia, PA, which has so far not been involved with any legal entanglements with Meow Wolf.
(5/4/2024) According to the OC Register, Meow Wolf is now planning to open another permanent location, this time in Los Angeles. According to the article the new location is expected to open in 2026 and take over a space previously used as a movie theater.
Merlin Entertainment - (4/16/2025) When the entertainment layoffs began at the US Legoland theme parks, it was stated that owner, Merlin Entertainment, would be outsourcing those positions to another company, but was not ready to name them yet as final negotiations were likely still taking place. According to a new post from Amusement Today, it was announced that RWS Global will be taking over the live Entertainment duties at six of Merlin’s theme parks: 3 in the US as well as 3 more in the UK. They named LEGOLAND California, LEGOLAND Florida, LEGOLAND New York, LEGOLAND Windsor, Chessington World of Adventure and Alton Towers.
(4/13/2025) Blooloop has posted a fun article with interviews from their Festival of Innovation 2025 event, featuring Universal’s Lora Sauls (Ast. Director for Creative Development and Show Direction) and John Burton (Senior Creative Lead at Merlin Entertainment). The discussion goes over the idea of maintaining a level of constant innovation in order to drive the creation of new thrills for guests, both in the element of thrill rides (the Hyperia coaster at Merlin’s Thorpe Park for example) as well as the non-stop roll that Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights crew faces to keep each year’s Haunt content both fresh and new, as well as keeping the feelers out to know what their guests want to see next.
This also includes discussions on blending the use of self created content vs IP driven content in the realms of both attractions and Halloween content, such as the creation and ongoing expansion of Merlin’s “Nemesis” storyline, or the ever growing mythos and lore of homegrown characters created just for Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights.
Speaking of which, I know it used to be that planning for the next year’s Halloween Horror Nights at Universal would begin just as this year’s event was launching to the public, but according to Sauls, the current development time on HHN has now stretched out to 18 months ahead of the event, which means that team members are starting on the early creative thought process for HHN 2026 right now, while they’re in the midst of the build process for HHN 2025 that is still four months away from opening to guests, which is a bit insane when you think about it. Nevermind that Universe is also in the midst of the final build-up of their new year-round Universal Horror Unleashed attraction that will open in Las Vegas in August, so I’d say that in addition to being highly innovative and creative, a knack for extreme multi-tasking has got to be in their veins to keep everything straight.
(4/3/2025) Unfortunately more staff cuts have reportedly been made by Merlin Entertainment once again, this time they are preparing to layoff about 31 staff members at their Central Florida “Merlin Magic Making” creative office sometime between the end of May and mid-June.
This follows upon previous reports about job cuts taking place at the Legoland Florida and Legoland California theme parks, which struck those location’s entertainment departments particularly hard.
(2/17/2025) Merlin Entertainment has now named Fiona Eastwood as the chain’s new CEO, replacing the departed Scott O’Neil who only served as CEO for two years. Follow the link to see more details about Fiona’s work history at Merlin over the past decade and what the immediate goals are.
(2/13/2025) InterThemePark has posted an article about a possible new direction for Merlin Entertainment. According to the article Merlin announced today that the company is reviewing a possible sale of their entire Aquarium division, which would include the entire SEA LIFE brand of attractions.
The move is interesting as Merlin had previously sought to grow their SEA LIFE Aquariums rather aggressively by adding them next to other solo experience attractions, such as how the they built a Madame Tussauds and SEA LIFE next to the Orlando Eye observation wheel, as well as building solitary SEA LIFE centers into popular retail locations around the world. A SEA LIFE aquarium was also built next to the entrance of Legoland California with another set to open this year next to Legoland Florida.
So it does seem a bit strange that they are now willing to cut ties with the aquarium division in order to “streaming” their portfolio in order to focus more on full scale theme parks, new mini-theme parks such as the Peppa Pig parks, as well as more standard stand-alone attractions like the London Eye, Orlando Eye, Madame Tussauds, Cadbury World, and LEGO Discovery Centers.
So the real questions to consider may be more along financial lines. While Aquariums may be profitable, they are also costly from a day-to-day expensive point of view, as you can not simply close them down on slow days and cut your costs, as there will always have to be animal caretakers on site, as well as the ongoing operational costs of the various filtration and life support systems. Obviously those elements would be items that would squeeze the profit margins of those particular locations.
Merlin has also made headlines over the past few weeks with some unexpected layoffs and restructuring to their Legoland parks in California and Florida, in particular the expected gutting of those park’s Entertainment and live performer divisions, with the goal being to outsource those needs to a third party in the future as needed.
So perhaps Merlin is just looking to boost profits to look more attraction to shareholders, or perhaps they are looking to pay down some large looming debts. Of course, they could also be looking for a way to boost their cash reserves in order to fund the purchase of some other large assets, such as another theme park, or to fund further expansions of the park chains and brands that they already own. As I recall, PortAventura in Spain was rumored to be looking for a buyer, and Universal has yet to publicly show any interest. Parque Reunidos was also looking into the idea of selling Palace Entertainment, their US parks division.
Of course Merlin could also be taking the opposite course of action, by slimming themselves down in order to appear more attractive to a possible buyer, if they were to put their entire company up for grabs. Divesting of the animal attractions from the portfolio could make Merlin a more attractive purchase to other companies who would normally shy away from such operations.
Either way, it is interesting to see Merlin attempting to reshape themselves… but for what purpose has yet to be determined.
(2/3/2025) From the sound of things, the US Legoland parks are not the only parks under Merlin Entertainment that may be threatened by job cuts in 2025. According to this article it sounds like Merlin is also looking into dropping the axe on certain positions in the UK parks and attractions, such as Alton Towers, Madame Tussauds and The London Eye. According to reports the company headquarters is looking into job redundancies across their properties where positions could be consolidated, with positions in Marketing, Finance, Human Resources and Entertainment divisions most likely being the biggest areas to go under the knife.
(11/27/2024) In a bit of a sudden career change moment, Merlin’s CEO, Scott O’Neil is said to be leaving the company at the end of this year after accepting a new position somewhere else. O’Neil’s stint as the CEO was only for two short years, starting in Nov. 2022 as the replacement for departing CEO, Nick Varney. Until a new CEO can be found, Fiona Eastwood (Merlin’s current COO) will be filling in as interim CEO of Merlin Entertainment.
(11/22/2024) According to ChallChats, Merlin Entertainment has signed a deal with Microsoft’s Mojang Studios, the creator of the hit Minecraft video game, to create “Adventures Made Real”. This will result in an investment of $110 million to create two Minecraft themed attractions, one in the US and one in the UK that will open in 2026 and 2027. More information as it gets released.
(10/21/2024) Blooloop reports that Merlin Entertainment has put two small attractions they own in Australia up for sale: Otway Fly in Victoria and Illawarra Fly in New South Wales. According to the article, the move is part of Merlin’s new global strategy to focus more on developing clusters of attractions in specific key cities, and these two attractions fall outside of their current focus clusters in Sydney and Melbourne.
Palace Entertainment - (10/3/2024) Palace Entertainment has announced that they’ve signed a new licensing agreement with Fred Rogers Productions, the producer of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and more. This is a multi-year licensing agreement that will enable six of the US Palace Entertainment theme parks to add themeing and IP based on properties like Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Alma’s Way, Donkey Hodie and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
New immersive experiences and character interactions with Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood characters will be added to Dutch Wonderland (PA), Adventureland (IA), Castle Park (CA), Lake Compounce (CT), Idlewild & SoakZone (PA) and Story Land (NH).
According to an update posted by Blooloop, character interactions with Daniel Tiger, Katerina Kittycat, Miss Elaina, O the Owl and Prince Wednesday have already begun at Dutch Wonderland and will continue on bi-weekly basis through to the end of the month.
With Palace Entertainment quite possibly about the find itself on the auction block and spun-off from European parent company, Parque Reunidos, the move to double-down on an IP deal than can be sold along with the parks would only serve to boost the purchase price for the chain if they do go that route.
(8/4/2024) The other day when I broke down the potential sell-off of the Palace Entertainment attractions chain in the US by Parques Reunidos, I went on to list my thoughts on if the big US chains might show any interest. Carelessly, I forgot to include any big European theme park chains that might be interested in picking up the US chain from Parques Reunidos as a way to either enter the US market themselves, or to expand their presence within the US.
For starters, there are a number of family owned and private theme park companies across Europe that are already solidly focused on their current properties and will likely not show interest in purchasing parks in the US. The owners of fantastic European parks such as Efteling, Europa-Park, Phantasialand, Liseberg, Tivoli Gardens come to mind as prime examples, so I’m going to skip over them.
There is PortAventura as well, but according to the last reports I read, they owners there were seeking to sell off that particular theme park resort to someone else as well.
So who is left?
Merlin Entertainment comes to mind, as a huge attraction chain that does not shy away from owning smaller attractions such as Madame Tussauds, The Dungeons, Peppa Pig Theme Parks or the London Eye. At the same time the group owns the UK’s best known theme parks (Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Chessington) as well as a small collection of big European parks like Gardaland in Italy and Heide Park in Germany, as well as associated water parks. Merlin also had experience in the US market, through their ownership of the Legoland theme parks, as well as smaller attractions in the US like the Sea Life Aquarium centers, the US Madame Tussauds wax museums and now micro-sized Peppa Pig Theme Parks, with the second one under construction right now in Texas. Merlin has been rumored to have looked at making a purchase like this before, and was rumored to be eyeballing a potential purchase of a SeaWorld Entertainment chain once upon a time. All things considered, Merlin might make a better partner for Palace Entertainment than Parque Reunidos ever was.
Another potential European chain would be CDA (Compagnie des Alpes) who owns Parc Asterix, Futuroscope, Bellewaerde and the chain of Walibi branded theme parks. To my knowledge, I don’t believe they have ever considered entering the competitive US marketplace before, and I’m not quite sure they would be interested anyway, but I’m due they will at least investigate the possibility.
Off the top of my head, one other group who might show some interest may be a bit of a surprise, but ride manufacturer, Zamperla, could also take a look at what Palace Entertainment has to offer. Zamperla isn’t a stranger to the US market either, as they currently run Luna Park at Coney Island, New York under their Central Amusement International brand, as well as operate Playland Park in Rye, New York under the Standard Amusements company brand. Like many of the US chains, I think they might be more interested in purchasing one or two of the bigger parks, and not the entire chain, but you never know. Much like what we’ve seen take place in Coney Island’s Luna Park, Zamperla has used their ownership of the park as a way to introduce new products from their own line of amusement rides into the marketplace with great success.
There are also other companies abroad that might show some interest, such as a couple of the bigger attraction chains in China, but I’m not so sure a deal like that would be finalized.
Just something else to think about…
(8/2/2024) According to an article at Finimize, “EQT is rethinking the future of Parques Reunidos’ US leisure centers”. In other words, they are putting Palace Entertainment and all their various properties officially under the microscope.
I’ve never really discussed EQT before here at Screamscape, but EQT is a Swedish private investment firm that gets deeply involved in the ownweahip and management of other companies, putting them in the same category of American investment firms like The Blackstone Group or Apollo Global Management. Much like their American counterparts, one sector that they’ve found success in investing in would be the leisure sector, including amusement parks. It’s my understanding that EQT, through their ownership of Piolin BidCo, is now the owner of Parque Reunidos as of 2019, and Parque Reunidos owns a controlling 51% of the American amusement park chain, Palace Entertainment.
According to the initial article, EQT has hired JP Morgan to conduct a strategic review of Palace Entertainment that could result in the possible sale of all 15 of the locations owned in the US. Of course, other options that could come into play could be the possible sale of individual properties, or I would assume they might be interested in a merger deal if the right partner were to come along.
While Palace Entertainment’s main bread and butter comes through the ownership of a large number of waterpark and a small collection of FEC style properties, they do own a few well known “classic” American amusement parks like Adventureland, Kennywood, Idlewild, Lake Compounce and Dutch Wonderland. So the question is, who out there in the American landscape would be the right partner to get involved?
I think it’s safe to say that the new mega Six Flags (post Cedar Fair merger) is out of the running as they are busy dealing with their own brand new merger at the moment. I’m going to rightly assume that DIsney and Universal aren’t going to be interested at all, so that leaves smaller groups like United Parks and Resorts (formerly SeaWorld Entertainment), Herschend Family Entertainment, Premier Parks, Ripley’s and IB Parks & Entertainment (aka: Gene Staples).
In my honest opinion, I don’t really see any of these groups willing to take over all of the Palace Entertainment properties, but I definitely could see many of these groups willing to make an offer to grab a few specific properties if Palace were willing to break things up due to the rather eclectic nature of the chain’s properties.
While Herschend is known mostly for their theme parks (Dollywood, Silver Dollar City, Kentucky Kingdom and Wild Adventures) they also run a number of well known aquariums. With that in mind, I could see Herschend possibly looking into Palace’s Sea Life Park and Living Shores, as I could see amusement park’s like Kennywood and Adventureland thriving under the HFE banner.
Ripley’s is another group who I think might show some great interest in Palace’s smaller attractions, especially the aquariums and FEC style properties, but thus far Ripley’s has not tried to enter the amusement park space with bigger all-day attractions.
IB Parks & Entertainment is a new kid on the block, created when industry newcomer, Gene Staples, purchased three freshly closed parks (Indiana Beach, Clementon Park & Niagara Amusement Park) in order to restore and save them. Little is known about the financial reserves of this new group, and while Indiana Beach and Clementon were mostly active and intact purchases, the act of building the former Fantasy Island park into the new Niagara Amusement Park is still very much an ongoing project, and I’m not sure they would be willing to take on anything else at this point in time. It’s worth mentioning that they took on these three parks after they had been shut-down entirely by the previous owners, while the Palace Entertainment parks are all very much alive and well right now and come at a much higher price point.
Premier Parks is still very much around, but they are focused almost entirely on a group of water parks they own or manage, as well as take on the management duties for the Magic Springs, Wild Waves and Elitch Gardens amusement parks. While I could see Premier showing interest in some waterparks or a small amusement park or two from Palace’s lineup, the more interesting prospect might be the potential merger of Premier and Palace.
As for United Parks, I just don’t see the former SeaWorld Entertainment group being a good fit with any of the Palace Entertainment properties.
Puy du Fou - (2/4/2025) While we’ve been talking about a proposed Puy du Fou park for the UK, it seems the group has now signed some kind of letter of intent to develop another park in Brazil that could see another park built in the Marica area.
Of course, I’m still waiting to see any sign of construction on the attraction Puy du Fou is supposed to be building just outside Pigeon Forge, Tennessee to get a taste of what Puy du Fou has to offer.
(1/28/2025) Puy du Fou has released details from a 10-year masterplan for a proposed UK park that would showcase their brand of historical-based entertainment to Great Britain. You can read up on the breakdown on these plans over at Themeparks-UK this week. From what I’m seeing the plan is to create a seasonal park experience that would be open from about April through October each year, featuring four themed areas, each themed to a different time period in history. The plans also include building three themed resort hotels on the site as well.
A second wave of public consultation meetings about the project have been set to take place in February, and you can read more about the dates and locations for these here.
(1/21/2025) The latest update about the proposed Puy du Fou park planned for the UK describes the experience as a way to take guests back in time to experience historic periods from the past. Exactly what periods Puy du Fou would focus on has yet to be determined, but they claim they will work with a group of British historians to decide where to focus their efforts.
Follow the link to read more about Puy du Fou’s vision for what a park in the UK should be like.
(1/13/2025) A quick correction, it was mentioned that the location Puy du Fou is looking at in the UK is about 60+ miles outside London proper, in the town of Bicester. I believe this is roughly the same basic distance outside of London as the proposed Universal resort property to be located in Bedford. Both attractions will obviously market themselves to the bigger city market to generate guests, but are each located in their own regions outside of the city itself Puy to Fou to the North-West and Universal more directly to the North, with both sort of sitting around the mid-way point between London and Birmingham.
(1/12/2025) MyLondon has posted an update about the proposed plans for Puy du Fou to build an all new attraction in the London area. While there is still a lot of work left to do, it seems Puy du Fou did submit a “scoping document” to the local authorities, ahead of an expected filing of a planning application sometime this Summer.
(9/23/2024) According to a local news article, Puy du Fou has been looking into sites and speaking with local government officials about the idea of building a a new Puy du Fou style theme park in the UK.
(6/1/2024) Triotech is celebrating the official launch of the Puy du Fou’s new “SAGA City of Light” attraction in Shanghai, China. The new immersive attraction officially opened on May 28th and takes guests back to experience what 1930’s Shanghai was like, within a 40,000 square-meter themed complex. The experience is said to take about 2-hours and offers 26 different possible routes that can be taken through the attraction, which can alter your experience each time you visit.
(1/16/2024) The trailer for Pud du Foy’s new “Saga City of Light” attraction experience can be found below, which will take guests back to 1930’s Shanghai. I’m not quite sure what to make of it based on the trailer, but it sure looks like something very unique.
 Six Flags - (5/10/2025) The latest comments from Six Flags CEO, Richard Zimmerman, confirms that currently, “we don’t have any plans to close any additional parks at this time.” However, they will “continue to evaluate all options and consider other potential transactions to enhance shareholder value.”
Translation… the rest of the Six Flags parks are safe for now, but to the rest of the business world, Six Flags would be willing to consider any kind of offers made to them for their other properties.
Elsewhere, Zimmerman also re-confirmed previous comments that they were also looking to sell some excess unused property next to the existing Kings Dominion theme park that is outside of the park’s existing development boundary. He also confirmed something we’ve been hearing some quiet rumors about, which is that the company is now also undergoing some internal corporate “restructuring”, by seeking to reduce their “full-time head count” by about 10%.
A number of “senior executive leadership positions at the corporate level” were already eliminated earlier this month, while other restructuring of the corporate ladder are still underway. Much of this was expected however as the company continues the process of relocating the and consolidating the majority of the executive positions to the new corporate HQ in Charlotte, NC as they approach the one year anniversary of the merger on July 1st.
(5/3/2025) While we’re just now approaching the one year anniversary of the Cedar Fair / Six Flags merger, a lot has been happening across the various parks as new levels of quality as well as new ground rules are being laid for company policy as they work to blend the two cultures.
While we have seen a number of changes to height restrictions on various rides starting to taking place, we thankfully haven’t seen a massive installation of seat-belts onto rides that formerly never had them. Or at least not yet… this particular item was something Cedar Fair parks were known for, and would even see rides open at their parks one season, only to add a seat belt a year or two later. The Cedar Fair Chaperone policy is also on the way to being enforced chain wide across the new Six Flags Entertainment parks as well.
However, one policy that Cedar Fair was particularly well known for in enthusiasts circles that was especially enforced to an extreme level at the Ohio parks (Cedar Point and Kings Island) involved riders taking out their cameras (or phones) to record on the park’s rides, especially the roller coasters. If you google it, I’m sure you can find plenty of clips where the ride ops would stop a coaster in the middle of a climb up the lift hill and walk up the steps to take the items away from the guests before allowing the ride to continue. At the same time, there were also numerous stories of guests filming on rides, only to arrive back in the station to be met by security that would escort them away and out of the park.
While it’s still early in the season, I can confirm hearing a couple of stories from guests visiting legacy Six Flags parks witnessing this kind of thing now happening at their parks. Now, it’s common sense, and signs have always been posted about not doing this kind of thing, but just be warned that the Ban Hammer is out and coming, and you never know where it is going to strike next. If you get ejected from the park for that, as a passholder, you can also guarantee that your annual pass is likely going to be revoked as well.
(5/1/2025) Six Flags dropped a huge bomb of an announcement on Thursday afternoon… you can follow this link to the official announcement, but the gist is this:
2025 is the LAST SEASON for Six Flags America and the attached Hurricane Harbor waterpark. The 2025 season will come to an end, with the final operating day being Nov. 2, 2025.
The property that Six Flags America sits on is about 500 acres in size (far more than the park as developed today) “will be marketed for redevelopment as part of Six Flags’ ongoing portfolio optimization program. The company has engaged CBRE, a global leader in commercial real estate service and investments, to market the property for sale.”
Now pay attention, because this next statement is MINE ONLY… and not part of the Six Flags announcement. Screamscape sources tell us that this will not be the only surprise announcement of this magnitude made by Six Flags. I’m told that a few more big announcements will be made and soon. Possibly Friday… possibly on Monday… maybe the following week, but more big changes are coming, and it sounds like they will be from both sides of the fence… Six Flags and Cedar Fair.
These other announcements may not all be closure announcements however, some may involve a deal to sell a particular park or two. There is also a good chance we may see Six Flags change the status of some of those management contracts they have at the moment with parks like Darien Lake or Frontier City.
As far as predicting the future, if you go back to a November 2023 article I wrote for Blooloop about the merger, when discussing the idea of “potential closures” post-merge, the first park I mentioned was indeed Six Flags America. I also had some concerns over the long-term survival of Six Flags Discovery Kingdom and some of those stand-alone waterparks, owner or operated by Six Flags, especially Splashtown near Houston.
As for Six Flags America itself… post-closure… I don’t see alot of items to be saved from the park in terms of rides. Sure, the new RipQurl Blaster watercoaster will find a new home as well as Harley Quinn Spinsanity, but the rest? Maybe Superman: Ride of Steel can be saved, but they may opt to just scrap it and sent the trains to Darien Lake… assuming it is kept open. Firebird has some nice Floorless trains that could be sent to another ride, or perhaps they could convert Georgia Scorcher from a Stand-Up into a Floorless with that hardware. The Joker’s Jinx is probably history, and they can source out the trains and LIMs for parts to the two Mr. Freeze coasters or Poltergeist at Fiesta Texas.
I feel bad that the park just opened SteamTown last season too… there are new comfy trains on the former Mind Eraser (now Prof. Screamore’s SkyWinder) that will likely end up at La Ronde, Six Flags Mexico or Discovery Kingdom. There is a 1-year old Zamperla NebulaZ with a Steampunk that will be in need of a new home somewhere (I suggest Magic Mountain, somewhere near Twisted Colossus). Then all those dinosaur animatronics added to the QuantumCanyon Rapids will need to find a new home somewhere…
Otherwise, I’m thinking most of the rest of the park attractions could be scrapped or sold outside of the chain on the used ride market to smaller parks.
(4/13/2025) Six Flags has announced that they will release their Q1 2025 earning reports on May 8, 2025. This will be followed by a conference call at 10am that day featuring CEO Richard Zimmerman and CFO Brian Witherow to discuss the report in more detail and answer some questions. You can listen in through the Six Flags investor website.
(3/19/2025) As we approach the start of of 2025 season at the newly merged Six Flags chain of parks, we’re hearing reports that the previous height requirements to ride select attractions at the parks may have changed from what they were before. The big changes I’ve been hearing about mostly involve an increase of the height limits for a number of Six Flags family coasters that are moving up from a previous 42” requirement to 48”.
The most common amongst these reports are the old Arrow Mine Train coasters at several parks along with a few other coasters. This includes the Road Runner Express at Six Flags Fiesta Texas, Dohlonoga Mine Train and Great American Scream Machine at Six Flags over Georgia and the Runaway Mine Train at Six Flags over Texas. As these are all parks in the South end of the country, most of which are just spinning up for the 2025 season, I’d expect to hear about more changes as the other Six Flags parks get closer to opening for the season.
(3/1/2025) An interesting note came up during the Six Flags investor call when a question arised about a comment made many months ago about the internal evaluation of the chain’s 42 parks. According to Richarcd Zimmerman (CEO), they have completed their review of the chain’s properties and have indeed picked out internally which parks they might “consider divesting under the right circumstances”.
In other words… if someone were to make a good enough offer to purchase the right park from Six Flags, they would indeed consider the offer. While this could be an offer from another theme park chain looking to perhaps boost their own portfolio and grow in a select market, or this could potentially mean another deal like the one that took place with California’s Great America, where a developer is seeking to obtain the property for an entirely other use.
Six Flags gave no hints about what parks made the list, though I think many of us can made some fairly educated guesses about a few of the chain’s smaller properties that are likely to get lost in the shuffle going forward that could be cut loose.
Currently no parks are for sale… though it was confirmed that they were looking to sell off some unused land they own next to Kings Dominion over the next 18 months. So where is this property? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that the park does own a good bit of the woods south of waterpark, some of which is used for power lines. There is also a lot of undeveloped property to the east of the park and parking lot, across Doswell Road, but I don’t know how much, if any, of this property that the park actually owns. Given that some of the park’s biggest rides, and loudest venues (like the concert arena) are built alongside this road, I’m guessing they likely own a good bit of this mostly undeveloped property.
(2/27/2025) Six Flags Entertainment announced their 2024 Q4 and Year-End Earnings Results earlier today. The Q4 results posted are from Sept. 30, 2024 through to Dec. 31st, 2024. However the year-end results only reflect the merged results of Cedar Fair and Six Flags from July 1st through to Dec. 31st, and period to that only legacy Cedar Fair results were used for the pre-merger months. So as you might guess… some of the results are a little odd. For example, there are 878 total operating days reported for Q4 2024, 538 of them were contributed by the legacy Six Flags operations added in by the merger. There were net revenue reported for Q4 of $687 million… $324 million of which comes from the Six Flags operations added in the merger.
You get the basic idea… this deciphering this report is going to take a bit of extra work, so if you want to view all the numbers yourself, feel free to read the press release here. Richard Zimmerman, the combined company CEO, reports that they ended the year “on a high note, delivering on our goal of improving demand and increasing in-park guest spending levels, while operating our parks more efficiently. We successfully achieved more than $50 million in gross cost synergies and drove meaningful improvement in guest satisfaction scores and higher guest demand.“
“In 2025, we are building on the momentum we established over the second half of 2024 on both the revenue and cost fronts. We are making progress toward realizing the remaining $70 million in anticipated cost synergies from the merger, representing a targeted 4% reduction in operating costs and expenses, while advancing strategic initiatives to drive attendance and guest spending levels higher. We are seeing solid early demand trends, as evidenced by a 2% increase in attendance over the first two fiscal months of 2025 compared to combined attendance of the two legacy companies in the prior year period, as well as a 3% increase in combined season pass unit sales over that same period. We are focused on continuing to drive guest demand as we reopen the remainder of our parks and are thrilled to be introducing an exciting lineup of new rides and attractions, including compelling new marketable products at 11 of our 14 largest locations. Our investments in new thrills and experience-enhancing initiatives demonstrate our commitment to delivering world-class entertainment for guests and meaningful growth and value creation for shareholders.”
Despite all that, it seems Six Flags did miss the mark from what investors were estimating their performance numbers to be.
(1/17/2025) Six Flags has announced that they will release their 2024 Q4 and Year-End performance results on the morning of Thursday, Feb. 27th. This will be followed by an earnings call at 10am EST, which you can listed into live over at the Six Flags investor website.
(12/23/2024) According to a new SEC filing (Form 8-K) by Six Flags Entertainment Corporation that was posted to their investor website today, the company has entered into a “Material Definitive Agreement” that they will be exercise their option to fully purchase the Six Flags over Georgia and Six Flags White Water Atlanta park properties from the limited partnership who co-owns those properties.
As I’ve mentioned previously about this, a similarly setup group also co-owns the original Six Flags over Texas park in a business arrangement that goes all the way back to when the parks were first created and Six Flags was just starting out, and sought out the financial aid of investors to get the first park’s built. The details for the deal for each park is typically listed in Six Flags’ annual year-end reports, where it details that the main Six Flags corporation will have a window of opportunity to purchase al the remaining ownership shares of the properties at a future date. The window to purchase the Georgia properties is 2027 and a similar purchase window opens for the Six Flags over Texas property in 2028. As I’ve stated a few times, I always felt that the Six Flags corporate office would not pass up this rare opportunity to finally purchase these properties once and for all when the time comes.
According to this new filing:
“The end-of-term option notice relates to Six Flags Over Georgia, including Six Flags White Water Atlanta (“SFOG”), and instructs the Georgia Purchaser to exercise its right to require Fund to redeem all the limited partnership units of the Fund that certain affiliates of the Company do not own as of January 12, 2027, and to acquire certain related entity general partnership and managing member interests, pursuant to and in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Governing Agreements.”
“Under the Governing Agreements, the price offered, and required to be accepted by the holders of the limited partnership units that the Company does not then own, is based on the agreed upon value of the partnership included in the original agreement, multiplied by the change in the Consumer Price Index (“CPI”) during the term of the agreement. The agreed-upon value for the partnership when the agreement was executed was $250.0 million. As of December 31, 2023, the agreed-upon value, as adjusted for CPI, would have been $483.5 million, and such amount multiplied by the 68.5% of units held by the limited partner for SFOG represented $332.6 million that would have been required to be paid to the limited partner of SFOG in connection with the end-of-term option in addition to the payments to be made to acquire the related entity general partnership and managing member interests. The actual agreed upon value of the end-of-term option will be further adjusted by the CPI until the Company acquires the units. See Note 7 to the Company’s financial statements included in its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 29, 2024, filed on November 6, 2024 for additional information.”
So in short, Six Flags is putting everyone on notice, including their investors, that they are planning to make a major capital investment at the start of 2027, and if they follow suit with the Six Flags over Texas property the following year, we will probably see another similar announcement made sometime late next year as well.
(11/9/2024) Following the Q3 2024 earnings conference call, media outlets across the country have been pondering if their local Six Flags theme park might possibly be under consideration for a future sale or even closure. However, a new update from Live5News spoke with Six Flags Director of Communications, Gary Rhodes, who confirmed “We have no plans to close parks.”
Or at least not at this time anyway.
The quote from the earnings call that got everyone worked into a tizzy was when Six Flags said they would “review the park portfolio over time, to optimize the asset base, narrow management’s focus, and help reduce net leverage.” While this has been interpreted by some that Six Flags may be preparing to shed some dead weight, Rhodes statement says otherwise. In fact, while the merged Six Flags did see some small attendance loss in Q3, they also confirmed that the last 5 weeks of Q3 things really turned around in time for the start of the Halloween / Fright Fest season, when attendance suddenly jumped up by 1 million over the same 5-weeks during the previous year.
(11/7/2024) The freshly merged Six Flags Entertainment Corp. posted their Q3 2024 earnings results on Wednesday morning but unfortunately fell short of how the market felt their should have performed, reporting earnings of $2.10 a share instead of the anticipated $3.39 per share. This reflected how things performed during most of July, August and September for the two merged theme park chains.
However, this was also only the first quarter together, where many of the strategies and cost savings measures of the merger had not yet had time to be put into effect. For example, Six Flags stated that they expected to realize $50 million in cost savings by the end of 2024 and another $70 million by the end of 2025 through further synergies.
Six Flags also talked about something called Project Accelerate, an internal initiative meant to “unlock the full potential of the new Six Flags”. The goal is to improve the parks in smart ways in order to drive up attendance, especially in the legacy Six Flags parks. If they are able to return those parks to the attendance levels they had in 2019, that would be a 48% increase over how those same parks performed in 2023. So attendance growth for the new Six Flags is now a key factor for their future success plan, a goal that will be aided by a ‘compelling capital program’ to grow attendance back to levels that are, ‘comfortably crowded’.
Over the next two years, Six Flags plans to invest $500 to $525 million in capital improvements across the chain, with $325 to $350 million of that being directly invested in new attractions and other ‘revenue centers’, while the rest would be aimed as much needed infrastructure improvements. As such, look for the more marketable capital projects to be focused in the park’s that will be able to “generate the highest levels of potential cash flow” to ensure the highest ROI. So in other words, look for new attractions to arrive at parks where they think they will result in the highest growth levels.
Another interesting item to keep an eye on is that Six Flags announced that they are in the midst of a comprehensive review of the park portfolio, including noting which properties have excess and undeveloped land. In fact, the subject of selling off assets was brought up in the Q&A session. According to President, Richard Zimmerman, the sale of some underperforming assets is not new to the Cedar Fair side of things, looking back to how they sold off a couple of water parks back in 2012 and 2013, followed in recent years by the sale of the land for the California’s Great America park. Currently there is no timeline, but every park has a place in the company and a role to play, but if certain properties are unable to fulfill that role, then they would look into what other options they had open to them. In other words… parks that don’t seem to be able to keep up with the rest would not only be noted as such when it comes time to allocate new capital expenditures, but in fact, they might possibly be considered for being closed or sold off entirely.
I didn’t see any direct mention of the parks that Six Flags are currently running as part of management contracts for other property owners, such as Darien Lake, Frontier City or Hurricane Harbor Rockford, but I know I’ve been wondering myself how the new management team plans to handle those properties, and if they would renew those management contracts as they come up, or if they would prefer to walk-away once their current contracts are up in order to focus on the properties that they do own.
(10/30/2024) While the Halloween season is ALMOST over, Six Flags still seems to be teasing about the potential return of Mr. Six as a theme park mascot. Last we saw, it looked like Mr. Six was hit by a bus and reanimated as a zombie for Fright Fest, but now it looks like he may now be getting better and preparing to rejoin the land of the living.
(10/8/2024) Six Flags has announced that the newly merged company will report their Q3 2024 Earnings results on Wed, Nov. 6th, followed by an investor call at 10am which you can listen-in to online via the investor website.
(8/3/2024) For those wanting a new mega-pass to all of the parks in the new Six Flags system (Legacy Six Flags and Cedar Fair) you might just get your wish after all. And if you live in Texas, you definitely will, provided you are also a passholder at Cedar Fair’s two Schlitterbahn water parks. Schlitterbahn has added something called the “All Park Passport” as an add-on to their Schlitterbahn “2025 Texas 2 Splash” season passes.
I’m not sure of the exact pricing off the add-on it will apparently include all the classic Cedar Fair parks for the remainder of their 2024 seasons, and starting on January 6th, you will also gain access to a list of Six Flags theme parks that has not been fully fleshed out for some reason. They list Six Flags Magic Mountain, Great Adventure, Great America, Over Texas, Fiesta Texas and over Georgia by name, and then simply say, “And More!”
So… right now there is technically some wiggle room if a specific park might not be included in that final list. While it is unlikely that they might not include parks like Six Flags New England or Six Flags St. Louis on that list, there are a few parks under the Six Flags brand that are technically not owned by Six Flags, but are simply being managed by Six Flags by another company that owns them, such as Frontier City or Six Flags Darien Lake. I’ve been very curious to see how the new Six Flags handles those properties going forward, as Cedar Fair was never a company to get involved in management contracts for parks they did not own in full.
For now, the only way to buy this pass is to buy the 2025 Texas 2 Splash pass, though I suspect we may see options for an all-park add-on feature added to 2025 season passes at the Cedar Fair parks next, as they usually begin to sell their 2025 passes sometime during August, ahead of Halloween season.
One more fun Six Flags note to add in here, the company has announced that they will release their 2024 Q2 Pre-Merger performance results thus Thursday, August 8th with an investor conference-call at 10am Eastern Time. You can listen in online at the official Six Flags investor site.
(7/25/2024) A few weeks into the new deal, I took a long look at just what we should expect now that the Six Flags and Cedar Fair merger is complete. This includes a look at where the two companies fall in line with each other, how different they have been in regards to various policies and procedures, the changes that are already taking effect and much more. This includes the immediate dropping of a very non guest friendly policy that many Six Flags visitors have been angered by this year. Follow the link over to Blooloop to read my latest assessment.
(7/7/2024) Robert Niles at Theme Park Insider posted a new article on July 6th saying that the newly combined Six Flags Entertainment Corporation should refrain from giving the fans the one big thing they are asking for. Beyond anything else, the fans are hoping for the new mega-chain to offer a single master pass that would be good for admission to every park in the chain next year… and to do it at a reasonable price.
I mean sure, as a theme park fan, this sounds great on the surface, but after some serious thought on the matter, I have to agree with Robert Niles… this would be a horrible idea. The concept of having “one pass to rule them all” stems from a long time Six Flags tradition that goes way back to the 1980s where the purchase of a “Season Pass” to your local Six Flags park also shockingly included admission to the other Six Flags theme parks.
It was a great marketing idea at the time and aided in boosting season pass sales in the 80’s and 90’s, but the fact to remember is that there were significantly less Six Flags parks back then. Beyond the original three Six Flags parks built by the founders (over Texas, over Georgia and over Mid-America, now known as SF St. Louis) the chain acquired their other parks one at a time, such as Astroworld in Houston in 1975, Great Adventure in 1977, Magic Mountain in 1979 and finally Great America in 1984. The next park (Fiesta Texas) wasn’t add until the late 90s, so prior to that, your benefit of visiting all the Six Flags parks with a season pass only consisted of 7 parks which were significantly spread out across the US. The only exception was Six Flags over Texas in the Dallas, Texas area and Astroworld sitting a four-hour drive away in Houston.
In essence… for the time it was created, the idea of offering free admission to all the Six Flags parks for free with a season pass was something of a sham… they didn’t expect hardly anyone to take advantage of it, so any losses would be minimal. You also have to remember during this same time period Six Flags was essentially giving away admission to their parks. It wasn’t hard to find coupons and discounts to get into your local Six Flags park in the ‘80s for as low as $13, and once you were inside, does anyone else remember the “Twicket” promotion? I know I remember seeing those Elmer Fudd posters when visiting Magic Mountain promoting “One Twicket Is Worth Two Twips”, and for just $2 bucks, I could get a free “Twicket” to come back to the park later that summer.
Over time Six Flags grew to add more parks through the purchase of the chain by Premeir Parks and other deals that followed, and the offer of free admission to the chain’s other parks remained in effect. Meanwhile on the other side of the board you had Cedar Fair and Paramount Parks growing up as separate chains. As I grew up in SoCal myself, I didn’t have as much first contact with those chains in my younger years, but I don’t believe that Cedar Fair offered a chain-wide pass under around the time that they purchased and merged with the Paramount chain of parks. For Cedar Fair however the parks always had individual park passes and the offer for a chain-wide pass was offered as a higher tier item, at a significantly increased price. For Six Flags, it was only in the past few years that we saw the chain drop the free benefit of admission to their other parks in order to offer it as part of a new higher priced season pass or membership plan benefit.
This brings me back to where we stand today, as the past few decades of purchases and mergers have brought us to the era of the Six Flags Entertainment Corporation. The mega theme park chain now consists of 42 parks spread out across the United States, Mexico and Canada, consisting of 26 major parks plus an assortment of 16 smaller waterpark properties. So speaking from a purely business standpoint and not as a roller coaster fan, we want to see this NEW version of Six Flags not only be successful, but thrive to the point that they can begin to fix up and improve the parks that may have been failing.
For this to happen, I think the idea of having “one season pass to rule them all” likely needs to be either retired, or re-formatted into something new. I mean, for those with disposable income and willing to pay any price, then sure, maybe there is room for an extremely priced premium pass, but for everyone else, I think the time will come to look into other ideas.
For example, maybe they can offer some special two, three or four park regional passes at an extra price. This would make sense in areas like Southern California where they would like to cross promote Knott’s Berry Farm and Six Flags Magic Mountain together, or in the Bay Area to offer a pass good for Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, California’s Great America and/or Hurricane Harbor. Other possible groupings could cover the Texas parks, Ohio parks, maybe even try to pair-up smaller regional parks like Dorney Park and Six Flags America or Worlds of Fun and Six Flags St. Louis to see if they can co-benefit from having a shared season pass.
But for the health of the chain, I think the days of having one affordable pass needs to end. This would allow for the individual parks to better assess their local markets in order to perhaps offer more flexible pricing options based on the offering of each park, and in the end… it’s going to make each park responsible for being able to stand on their own two feet (financially). The end result would reveal if certain parks in the chain have reached the point of being unsustainable in their current form, and allow Six Flags to determine how best to fix the park, or if the property should be sold or retired completely.
Just something to think about…
(6/29/2024) Just to reconfirm the status of things, the Cedar Fair and Six Flags merger will close on Monday, July 1st, 2024. All stock trading for the combined chain, which will be renamed as the Six Flags Entertainment Corporate, will begin on July 2nd under the former Cedar Fair stock symbol, “FUN”. It should come as no surprise that FUN’s stock price soared to $54.35 at the close of the market on Friday, reaching a 52-week high just prior to the merger. Six Flags old stock ticker, SIX, ended the week also at a 52-week high of $33.14 per share.
The chains have confirmed that they have successfully completed the review process with the Department of Justice ahead of the merger, and that there no major changes to be required of them in terms of merging the individual park properties. So in other words, there are no requirements that the combined chain must sell-off any individual park in order to keep the marketplace competitive. As I mentioned previously, there are very few places where the combined chain overlapped in a way that might cause a problem. To some, California was thought to be a possible problem spot, as the chain would then own both Six Flags Magic Mountain and Knott’s Berry Farm in the Los Angeles area, as well as Six Flags Discovery Kingdom and California’s Great America in the Bay Area. Between Disney, Universal, SeaWorld and Legoland all operating within Southern California as well, there was not felt to be an issue there. Fans also wondered how they would fare in Texas where the combined company would now put the state’s largest theme parks and water parks all under one owner, but this ended up not being an issue either.
I’m very curious to see how things move forward, as previously announced, the vast number of upper management that will oversee the company, including the President and CEO, will consist of Cedar Fair’s existing management team. This may also bode well for some interesting future growth opportunities for select Six Flags properties, as Cedar Fair has not shied away from having their own resort hotel properties in locations where it would serve them well. This has always been something that Six Flags has, for the most part, stayed away from.
(6/21/2024) An official notification from Six Flags and Cedar Fair note that the merger is expected to be finalized on July 1st, 2024. They also went on to announce the names of the combined leadership team that will be moving the mega-corp into the future. As previously announced Cedar Fair’s Richard Zimmerman will serve as President & CEO of the new Six Flags Entertainment Corporation (Stock: FUN) and Six Flags’ Selim Bassoul will become the Executive Chairman of the combined Board of Directors.
The Leadership team will be made from the following combination:
Tim Fisher, Chief Operating Officer (currently in same position at Cedar Fair)
Brian Witherow, Chief Financial Officer (currently in same position at Cedar Fair)
Brian Nurse, Chief Legal & Compliance Officer, and Corporate Secretary (currently in same position at Cedar Fair)
Christian Dieckmann, Chief Strategy Officer (currently in same position at Cedar Fair)
Gary Mick, Chief Integration Officer (currently Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Six Flags)
(7/24/22) Unlike how most chains essentially own all their respective theme parks, Six Flags has evolved into a different kind of beast. For example, Six Flags began leasing a number of parks from their respective owners under various Management Deals, especially in the past 5 years or so with the additions of properties like Six Flags Darien Lake, Frontier City and various water parks. The status of each property is shown in the chain’s annual report, but it is the ownership situation around of the chain’s first two theme parks that will be coming into focus very quickly.
Six Flags over Texas is actually owned by a Texas Limited Partnership group, and Six Flags Entertainment itself currently owns 54% of that group, with the remainder said to be owned by Six Flags Over Texas Fund, Ltd (a private-equity and asset management firm). On the horizon Six Flags Entertainment Corporation will have a rare option to purchase the remaining 46% ownership stake for the Six Flags over Texas property when the current lease expires in 2028.
Six Flags over Georgia also currently exists in a similar relationship with a set of partners in Georgia for that particular property, and a window to purchase 100% ownership in that park will also open when that lease expires in 2027.
It is hard to think that corporate Six Flags would pass up this opportunity to finally take complete ownership of these two important properties, but they will also have to budget ahead a decent amount of cash to fund these particular transactions as well, which could very well affect the budgets of all things to come over the next several years.
On a related note, it is also mentioned that Six Flags Mexico has a “permit agreement” with the Federal District of Mexico City to operate that particular park which will expire in 2024. Given the success that Six Flags Mexico has seen compared to other parks in the nation, I would be surprised if this deal wasn’t extended when the time comes.
United Parks & Resorts (formerly SeaWorld Entertainment) - (5/13/2025) United Parks & Resorts (owners of the SeaWorld, Aquatica, Busch Gardens and Sesame Place parks) posted their Q1 2025 earnings results this week. Unfortunately, the report confirms that attendance at the chain’s parks is down for the quarter, seeing a 1.7% decline compared to the same quarter in 2024. The good news is that they were also able to confirm that so far attendance in April 2025 is already up 8.1% compared to April 2024’s numbers, so it could just be that the year got off to a slow start. The late positioning of the busy Easter holiday into late April is likely the cause here.
Overall Revenue was also reported to be down 3.5% for the quarter, but they were quick to point out that major new attractions are poised to open at most of their parks in the coming weeks, which should inject a little boost to the park’s attendance numbers.
(3/3/2025) United Parks & Resorts released their Q4 2024 and 2024 Year End results last week. Attendance across the chain’s parks (SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, Aquatica, Sesame Place) saw a small attendance decrease (79,000 guests) in Q4 2024 compared to the same quarter in 2023, and overall for the year 2024 saw a small decrease of 59,000 guests for 21.5 million compared to 2023.
The overall trend was drops all around in Total Revenue and Net Income for both Q4 and 2024 as a whole, though it seems the brunt of the decline was taken in Q4. Overall the places a lot of blame on poor weather over the past year, which included impacts from Hurricane Debby (August), Helene (September) and Milton (October), and estimate that the combined impact of them all likely cost them 432,000 guests over the entire 2024 fiscal year. So in that light, when the park wasn’t being hurt by poor weather, they may have been on track to achieve increases all around rather than declines.
Follow the link to read more direct figures from the press release.
(2/27/2025) United Parks & Resorts has announced that they will add a “globally recognized IP” to their SeaWorld and Busch Gardens theme parks. While they wont say what it is yet, they did confirm that it would be something that could be used for new rides and attractions and “exciting activations”.
I’m not sure if they’ve not quite sealed the deal, because CEO Marc Swanson commented that they were in discussions with various partners to bring globally recognized IPs to their parks going forward.
On a side note, he also mentioned that the chain’s previously announced plans to add hotels next to SeaWorld Orlando are delayed, and the first one will no longer open in 2026 as previously projected.
(2/15/2025) According to guest posts on social media, SeaWorld Orlando has shocked their guests this week with a new “9% service fee” that is being added onto all purchases at the park. I don’t know if this new 9% fee has worked down to the rest of the United Parks system just yet, but this strange game of adding a service fee has been in place at all the United Parks (formerly SeaWorld Entertainment parks) for the past several years, but until this past week it was just a 5% surcharge fee on all purchases of food and merchandise sales within the parks.
Ironically, a lawsuit was filed against the chain over this back in 2024, and I don’t think they have resolved this case yet. Many expected to see the 5% surcharge dropped, as it was added as a sort of excuse for the pandemic that just never went away.
Now, as I understand things, businesses are allowed to charge a surcharge fee for all debit and credit card sales in order to cover processing fees, however the rule is that there has to be a clear notification of this before the actual sale transaction takes place. By putting notices on the credit card processing terminals, that really should cover that aspect from a legal point of view. HOWEVER… keep in mind that this purchase rule allowing for the processing fee was put into play years ago, and way before most theme parks have changed their operations to no longer allow their customers the option to make the purchase with CASH instead, giving them an option to avoid the fee. Since the parks are no longer accepting CASH for any sales, I’m really not sure if the courts will decide that it is legal for them to still charge the extra fee, and I’m expecting this argument to come up when the pending lawsuit does take place.
One other item to consider is that I highly doubt a large company with theme parks located coast-to-coast, is actually being charged a 5% transaction fee by their processing company, and certainly no way they are being hit with a 9% translation fee. Small independent businesses may be subject to a 5% fee, but for a company the size of United Parks, I’d expect that they would have negotiated a much more favorable rate, likely in the 1.5 to 2% range at most.
The big question to ask is why are they charging a random extra surcharge fee at all, rather than just raise the overall price that is posted? My belief is that this may come down to a somewhat shady business practice loophole. If I’m understanding the rule correctly, the surcharges added by a business that are intended to cover the cost of processing credit card / debit transactions are actually NOT included as part of the SALE price of an item when it comes to sales taxes paid to the local, state or federal government.
In other words, since the 5% surcharge is technically exempt from tax fees, the park's are actually able to keep the entire 5% surcharge for themselves. This would explain why they are simply just not adding 5% or 9% onto the overall posted sale price of any given item, because if they did that, then they would have to share the taxable percent, as well as use some of it for the intended purpose of covering the transaction surcharges, leaving very little
left for United to keep for themselves.
The way they are doing it now, the parks are adding and keeping the 5% (now 9% at SeaWorld Orlando) and can still try to strong-arm their credit card processing company to give them the lowest fees possible in order to keep their business account with them, so if they can get it down to 1 to 1.5%, then they are keeping the rest of the surcharge percentage as pure untaxed profit.
Again… this is my interpretation of the rules here, and how this may be benefiting the theme parks. But if I’m wrong, please let me know, because I can see no other reason as to why this practice is happening unless it was somehow benefiting the parks.
(12/15/2024) According to Blooloop, United Parks & Resorts will begin an enhancement of the SeaWorld and Busch Gardens food and beverage options as part of a new collaboration with the C3 culinary brands. They have already been previewing some new offerings at Busch Gardens Tampa with one of C3’s latin flavor brands, Toma, which has a station set up at the park now through to January 5th.
Other C3 food brands include: Soom Soom, Stonie Bowels, Umami Burger, Krispy Rice, Kumu, Sam’s Crispy Chicken, Sa’Moto, El Pollo Verde, Me Tacos, Cicci Di Carne and Cindy Lou’s Cookies.
Given that the United Parks have been gaining a lot of steam over the past few years through their various international food festival themed events at their parks, I’ve got a feeling that we will soon begin to see C3’s influence begin to show with this new limited time offering platforms.
(11/8/2024) United Parks & Resorts has posted their Q3 2024 earnings report this week. The highlights of the report show a very slight drop in attendance (7 million) during the third quarter, down just 1.4% from the same time period the year before. Total Revenue dropped 0.4%, while PerCap spending on admission and in-park spending both saw small increases (0.5% for admission and 1.6% for in-park spending).
Overall attendance for the 9-months of the year thus far comes in at 16.7 million, which is only slightly higher than last year (by 20,000) along with mostly small reasonable financial improvements across the board. Meanwhile the company has continued it’s planned repurchase of shares of the company, acquiring another 4.1 million shares during Q3.
Overall the company looks to be in good shape however, with mentions of having just wrapped up a very busy Halloween season at the parks, despite some minor disruption in Florida by Hurricane Milton. The chain is also looking forward to what they believe will be a successful 2025 season, with new attractions and experiences planned to premier throughout the chain.
(10/6/2024) For whatever reason United Parks & Resorts (formerly SeaWorld Entertainment) has been getting into a few lawsuits as of late. I’ve previously reported about the on-going battle between the chain and the City of San Diego who claims that SeaWorld San Diego owes about $9.7million in unpaid taxes. In SeaWorld’s defense, apparently the taxes owed were also generated in 2020 when the park was forced to shut down by the local government, meanwhile the the park was unable to open or generate any kind of revenue stream while still having to employee staff to work on site to take care of the wildlife on a daily basis. So in that case, I can see how they may feel that some kind of adjustments should be made to any owed taxes in California.
However, I’ve just been made aware of another odd lawsuit between the chain and Sesame Workshop, the owners of the Sesame Street brand. According to this article Sesame Workshop has been in an ongoing dispute with the theme park chain since 2021 over licensing fees involving their characters being used in the various theme parks. A panel of arbitrators ruled in favor of Sesame Workshop in 2023, and yet United Parks have yet to make any kind of payment, so Sesame Workshop escalated to a federal lawsuit last year. Much like the San Diego tax issue, United Parks claimed that they shouldn’t have to pay licensing fees incurred while their parks were kept closed. Of course the fact that the chain was preparing to open a second dedicated Sesame Place theme park in San Diego probably didn’t go unnoticed by the Judge either.
Now the issue appears to have come to a close as the federal judge has now ordered United Parks to pay over $11 million to Sesame Workshop.
(8/8/2024) United Parks released their Q2 2024 and 6-Month 2024 earning report details this week. The report lists the parks as having brought in 6.2 million guests (up 0.8% when compared to Q2 2023), with a $1.6 million revenue increase. Total revenue per-caps were down 0.4% compared to Q2 2023, however the breakdown of this shows a drop of 2.9% from PerCaps from Admission while in-park spending increased 2.5% to a record high.
In terms of 6-month performance, total attendance for the first 6-months of the year across the chain was 9.6 million, up 0.1 million from the same time-frame in 2023.
Universal Studios - (4/26/2025) As most were expecting, Comcast reported that attendance and revenue was down slightly (5.2%) at their Universal Studios theme parks for Q1 2025, which ended on March 31. As I said, this was entirely expected as the company is only days away from the grand opening of their new Epic Universe theme park in Orlando on May 22nd, which is also reported as seeing very ‘strong demand’. A dip in attendance at the California park was also attributed to several weeks of wildfire issues that affected the region rather severely.
Meanwhile, the other day Universal executives also confirmed that advanced ticket sales and hotel package bookings related to the new Universal Epic Universe park are “a little ahead of our expectations” at this point. All signs point to a rather “epic” comeback once the park opens, and there has been a very strong and positive reaction to the park during preview days that have been rolling across social media. The only downside at the moment is that, in general, there is a little concern over recent price increases (and some flight cutbacks) that have been rolling out amongst US airlines to many destinations, including Orlando.
(4/13/2025) Blooloop has posted a fun article with interviews from their Festival of Innovation 2025 event, featuring Universal’s Lora Sauls (Ast. Director for Creative Development and Show Direction) and John Burton (Senior Creative Lead at Merlin Entertainment). The discussion goes over the idea of maintaining a level of constant innovation in order to drive the creation of new thrills for guests, both in the element of thrill rides (the Hyperia coaster at Merlin’s Thorpe Park for example) as well as the non-stop roll that Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights crew faces to keep each year’s Haunt content both fresh and new, as well as keeping the feelers out to know what their guests want to see next.
This also includes discussions on blending the use of self created content vs IP driven content in the realms of both attractions and Halloween content, such as the creation and ongoing expansion of Merlin’s “Nemesis” storyline, or the ever growing mythos and lore of homegrown characters created just for Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights.
Speaking of which, I know it used to be that planning for the next year’s Halloween Horror Nights at Universal would begin just as this year’s event was launching to the public, but according to Sauls, the current development time on HHN has now stretched out to 18 months ahead of the event, which means that team members are starting on the early creative thought process for HHN 2026 right now, while they’re in the midst of the build process for HHN 2025 that is still four months away from opening to guests, which is a bit insane when you think about it. Nevermind that Universe is also in the midst of the final build-up of their new year-round Universal Horror Unleashed attraction that will open in Las Vegas in August, so I’d say that in addition to being highly innovative and creative, a knack for extreme multi-tasking has got to be in their veins to keep everything straight.
(3/31/2025) (3/31/2025) Universal Orlando is going on a little tour to four select cities to offer a preview of their new Epic Universe theme park. This will include a 30 foot replica of the Chronos portal structure that serves as the entrance to the Epic Universe theme park in Orlando. You will be able to find this Preview Portal to Epic Universe on display in:
April 11-13 in Atlanta at Pemberton Place, near World of Coca-Cola)
April 23-26 in New York City’s Rockefeller Center
May 16-18 in Philadelphia at The Rocky Steps
And June 13-18 in Chicago at Pioneer Court.
(2/22/2025) According to a post in the New York Times about the growth of Universal theme park experiences, they spoke with Mark Woodbury about a number of topics concerning the rapid and global growth of the Universal branded theme park empire. An interesting comment was made at the very end, when questioned about bringing a Wicked themed experience to the parks. Woodbury commented that they have “still-secret plans for significant attractions themed to “Wicked”. When he first saw the film, his first reaction was “This is a theme park waiting to happen,” and as the man responsible for the current direction of the Universal theme parks around the world right now, those very words should speak volumes to the “Wicked” fans out there.
The unspoken truth here is that Universal Creative has had their eye on developing Wicked into a number of forms for the theme parks for quite some time. In fact, Screamscape sources once let us know about a plan that was in the works to create a broadway style theater that would host a special special effects heavy abbreviated stage performance of Wicked. The word was that the park was finally ready to demolish the old Fear Factor show venue at Unviersal Studios Florida and would raze it to the ground in early 2024 in order to build a new state-of-the-art venue for Wicked. While this clearly did not happen, I believe that as the early cuts of the film were being shown internally around the Universal corporate offices, it became clear to the creative forces involved that they suddenly saw the opportunity for so much more. As Woodbury said himself, there was a whole theme park waiting to happen around that Universe, or at least a whole themed land, and a single stage show was not going to be enough to contain it. So on to bigger and better things… let’s see what happens next.
(2/8/2025) If you haven’t seen it yet, the first trailer for a brand new chapter in Universal’s “Jurassic” sage has been released. This 7th installment will keep the Jurassic World branding but feature an entirely new cast, working under the name Jurassic World: Rebirth. The basic gist is that our new featured franchise star and badass, Scarlett Johansson, is being hired to lead a mission team to a secret island (a new one, more on that later) to gather DNA from three different dinosaur species that exist there, that is the key to creating some kind of miracle drug to benefit all mankind.
According to the official breakdown from Universal, the new film take place five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion (the 6th film in the series). During that time period the various dinosaurs that had escaped and spread across the Earth have begun to die off, as Earth’s current ecology has proven to be “largely inhospitable to dinosaurs”. The few that remain are mostly contained to “isolated equatorial environments” that still feature climates that still resemble the prehistoric world.
I’ll let you watch the trailer below to take it all in, but the interesting thing is that it was noted that the island location is actually not Isla Sorna (aka: Site B), which was used as the location for The Lost World: Jurassic Park (aka: Jurassic Park 2), but instead is apparently another research island used in the early days of the InGen’s dinosaur DNA development program, which I’m just going to call “Site C” until we have another name.
From the sound of things, this Site C location was where all the early experimentation was done, which apparently resulted in some bizarre and strange Dinosaur mutations. As you recall from the theme park attraction in the first film featuring Mr. D.N.A., the process of recreating the Dinosaur DNA from the genetic material discovered involved filling any missing gaps in the genetic sequence with DNA from other animals, like a frog, which proved to to be sufficient to bring dinosaurs back to life. But what about the experiments in DNA sequencing that didn’t quite work out? What about the possibility of mutations that may have resulted in the creation of lifeforms that may not have quite looked like the dinosaurs that the public may have expected? In the later Jurassic World films we witnessed how the park scientists were striving to create dinosaurs species that were more exciting with “more teeth” to excite the park guests, which resulted in the disastrous creation of the Indominus Rex in Jurassic World and the arrival of the Indoraptors hybrids in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. According to the new trailer, Site C is home to all the misfit creations that either just didn’t work out as planned, or those who were proven to be too dangerous to be moved on to development at Site B, and were never to set foot in the actual original Jurassic Park grounds.
So why do I bring this up on Screamscape? Because we saw how the creation of the Jurassic World trilogy has had a huge effect on the Universal theme parks. The original Jurassic Park ride in the Hollywood park was reworked and reopened with a new Jurassic World theme (complete with a new finale showdown between the I-Rex and T-Rex), and one of the greatest roller coasters in the world opened in Orlando, the VelociCoaster, themed to taking a coaster ride through the jungle with Jurassic World’s famous Raptor Pack. Then the new Universal Studios park in Beijing was built to open with an exclusive Jurassic World themed dark ride experience that utilizes the same dark ride system as Universal’s ultra-popular Spider-Man and Transformers dark rides. So if this is the start of yet another Jurassic trilogy that will play across theater screens over the next decade, it does stand to reason that Universal would seek to capitalize on these new films in their theme parks wherever possible. While this could take the form of an all new attraction (or even a new land somewhere) it could also serve as inspiration for to potentially retheme the Jurassic Park: River Adventure attractions that still exist in Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Japan, or even the river rapids version in Singapore.
To paraphrase Ian Malcom in the first Jurassic Park film… “Life Finds a Way” and the Jurassic Park IP has indeed found a way to survive and thrive over the decades since the first film was released back in 1993.
(1/31/2025) Comcast reports that revenue and attendance for the Universal parks is currently “flat” in comparison to the same time period last year. This is expected to be the calm before the storm however as the opening of the new Epic Universe park in Orlando is expected to supercharge the park’s division like the DeLorran time-machine being struck by lightning at the end of Back to the Future.
(11/5/2024) While this falls into the realm of entertainment news, it does make me curious about some future possibilities for Universal theme parks. According to the press release Universal Studios and The Lego Group are teaming up to produce a trilogy of LIVE ACTION films that will somehow be connected through a storyline involving the LEGO toy bricks. Previously LEGO worked with WB to produce a series of animated films that take place within the realm of the LEGO toy universe starting in 2014 with The LEGO Movie followed by the The LEGO Batman Movie, The LEGO Ninjago Movie and The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part in 2019 before things tapered off.
Now, while the theme park realm of all things “LEGO” would normally be restricted to Merlin Entertainment’s LEGOLAND theme park chain, I do have to wonder if the live-action nature of this new film deal with Universal Studios might also be a way to allow the Universal theme parks to create their own attractions link to the productions as well, instead of Merlin’s parks.
Just something to ponder, as we’ve seen Universal working their magic with the Nintendo universe right now in both theme parks and on the silver screen, and with Wicked being released into theaters in a few weeks, I think it is only a matter of time before the parks get involved, beyond the temporary gift shop experience they are working on right now. So maybe… LEGO is next?
(4/26/2024) NBCUniverse has posted their Q1 2024 earnings report this week, which showcases the company’s performance for the first three months of the year. According to the data posted, the theme park division reported a 1.5% increase in revenue for the quarter, which climbed to $1.979 billion. However, the adjusted EBITDA figures show a small drop by comparison due to higher operating costs as well as “negative impact of foreign currency”.
Again, this was just the Q1 2024 results, and with new summer offerings and the DreamWorks Land set to open this summer in Florida, and a new Donkey Kong expansion coming to Super Nintendo World in Japan later this year, I can only imagine that we’ll see those earnings numbers rise more significantly. Universal does expect to be working uphill against the flow of things in 2024 however, as there is no new attraction to open in Hollywood this year and many may hold off on visiting Orlando in 2024 to wait for their brand new Epic Universe theme park to open in 2025 instead.
(1/27/2024) In the latest financial performance report, Comcast has reported that their Universal Studios theme park division has generated a whotting $2.3 billion in revenue for the company during the 4th Quarter of 2023. This represents an increase of 12.2% compared to the previous quarter, with a spotlight on the new Super Nintendo World at the Hollywood park being a key revenue driver.
It was interesting to note that there was a small drop in revenue at the Universal Orlando resort. On a personal note, I’d expect to see the trend of reduced numbers from the Orlando resort continue over the next 12-15 months due to the combination of:
1) No new attractions planned to open during 2024 and
2) Potential guests planning a trip to Universal Orlando may wait until 2025 for the opening of the new Epic Universe theme park.
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