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Corporate Park News
---- THE LATEST INDUSTRY NEWS ----
(11/27/2024) Merlin Entertainment CEO To Depart Company At The End Of The Year
(11/22/2024) Merlin Entertainment To Build Two Minecraft Themed Attractions
(11/9/2024) Six Flags Says They Are Not Planning To Close Any Parks
(11/8/2024) United Parks & Resorts Reports Q3 2024 Earnings
(11/7/2024) Six Flags Posts Q3 2024 Performance Results
(11/5/2024) Universal Signs Deal With The LEGO Group?
Disney - (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 - (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.
 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 - (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 - (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 - (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) - (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 - (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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