Coaster King is a channel for Coaster Enthusiasts interested in talking about predictions for the future of theme parks as well as overall status in the industry. Coaster King is mostly focused on Cedar Fair and Six Flags parks, but often makes predictions about others. We make many 5-year plan videos and are always open to suggestions!
@@coasterking836 you say that with such confidence. The board holds approval over all expenditures. They can also remove a CEO at any point. So, who is in control of that board? Selim is a snake. It's foolish to have such faith in knowing what you think corporate raiders care about.
What 2 tests are you talking about, there is only 1, for the ride you have to read the guide, Congo Rapids is 77 pages, you then work on a few cycles at each position. Each ride is different, Congo Rapids actual operator is last thing you will learn after you are certified. Then you go to the testing center, if you pass that, you become certified. I'm a single operator on 2 rides so far and will get trained as other rides as they open back up..
There is no reason to think there will be any better theming. Cedar Fair certainly isn't known for its theming, and Six Flags got lazy by just slapping some DC cutouts on rides and calling it a day. I really am tired of the Superman and Joker theming. Maybe food quality and options will improve, but Cedar Fair isn't much better when it comes to opened and closed restaurants and kiosks than Six Flags is. And both are outrageously pricing their food. As far as maintenance is concerned, there seems to be very little difference between the two chains when maintenance is budgeted properly. Yes, I know Six Flags' CEO slashed that budget item, resulting in decreased ride availability. At most that budget will be restored, and Six Flags will go back to "normal." As far as operations, Cedar Fair is just as guilty with single-train operations as Six Flags. As much as corporate loves SOPs at their properties, it's easy to forget that most of these parks are still managed "locally", and much of the operational culture is still retained. So while it's easy to blame Six Flags for Great Adventure's poor maintenance or Magic Mountains single-train operation on Saturdays, that is more likely a direct of local management culture. From the guest side of things, I doubt we will notice anything major. I expect to start seeing synergy in merchandising before the end of the season. Season Passes and the Line-skipping passes will be the major changes. Personally, I hope they keep Six Flags' Flash Pass. It's a better system then the wristbands, slightly more fair as it is technically a reservation system, and I love the idea of the one shot uses (Which Cedar Fair advertises, but which I've never seen made available).
Tbh - most of my experience with CF parks comes from the top (mostly cedar point, KI, KD). So they skews my opinions. Because KI ops and food is wayyy better than say, great adventure. Revenue synergy projections are too steep in my opinion
Don`t forget, OKANA Indoor Water Park and Resort over 140 acres (built fully by the Chickasaw Nation at $400 million) and is one of the largest in the nation opening in the spring of 2025, Legends Tower complex should be completed on or before 2028, a billion dollar arena for the Thunder in 2028, American Heartland Theme Park and RV Resort is fixing to restart the construction process later this summer and is still planned to open up in the latter part of 2026, then, LA 2028 Olympics with 2-3 events being held here in OKC. Hope to see you guys here!
Just sucks SF doesn’t own FC. Potential is there of course, but when you don’t own the property it makes less sense to invest in it. Tbh, FC might be better off if it was sold to Herschend or something
@@coasterking836 The company is going to lose attendance in 4 of their properties. Look back at when the Texas Rangers won the World Series, and take a look at the massive parade that the team had (over 500,000 +), and the company was hoping and praying that they would attend SFOT, never happened, all the fans used was the parking lot to SFOT. Richard Zimmerman reminds me of what Gary Story was doing was back in the middle to late 90`s to the early 2000`s, Gary Story knew what rides to place in 36 parks that they had back then to up the attendance. Richard Zimmerman is doing just that. Gary Story retied from the company in 2004 do to health issues Kieren Burke, ran the company into the ground. But, Richard Zimmerman clearly stated in the conference call when this was taking shape, "We ask ourselves this same question all the time, how do you grow by shrinking?" Then he went on to mention, these are irreplaceable parks and when you let something like that leave, you`ll not be able to recover the attendance. So, They`ve got to fully compete with Disney and Universal, the company was doing just fine till COVID hit, even with FC and Darien Lake. We`ve already asked some of the head of SF about this "letting parks go or sell off that everyone talks about." They said this is false information. Just takes that 1 major ride at FC and then you`ll start to see 1.2 million again at the park. We`ve got 3 resorts being built around this park and SFOT.
It is a good thing that Cedar Fair is in control. Six Flags has 20 years of very bad leadership and unkept parks. It is good. Cedar Fair was the better company. they legit saved Six Flags.
I only paid about $100-something for my diamond pass from the memorial day sale. I've never even been to a six flags park until this year. But free admission, parking, water park entry AND drinks? Can't beat that...except like all good things it must only be true for a hot second, if what you're saying is true. Not much an improvement in my book if I can't get that same deal ever again. I'd hardly call that an improvement to anything if no one can afford things. I guess this will be the only year that I'm a Six Flags customer.
Six flags had too many parks to manage, tgats why some were neglected, now they more. Im sure alot of people were canned. Its not.like they have twice the (internal) management
I honestly think ranking Nitro higher than Goliath feels like an unpopular opinion in my perspective because it typically one of the weaker B&M hypers or is considered the "worst" out of all that exist. Goliath on the other hand gets a lot of praise for its intensity, mainting its pacing, and have nonstop floater and ejector airtime. It's also very unique because its second drop is actually more taller than the first drop at 175 ft.
You mean getting BACK to in-park made quality food like they USED to? I worked at Six Flags in the 80s and the food was GOOD then. I think the Aquaman/Georgia Surfer watercoasters will be replacing shoot-the-chute style rides at a few parks that have removed them over the last few years. The parks get a coaster/water ride combo. I'm hoping StL and GrAm both get one of these. As far as not having new rides ready opening-day - it feels like Six Flags gambles that the new ride will NOT increase ticket sales at the beginning of the season, so they don't push construction until peak summer popularity, when most families are going, instead of spring when the parks open. I think that's why they also don't care about having full seasonal staff early in the season - leading to rides, food service locations, and retail store locations to be closed or have reduced operations. It seems like they feel inconveniencing customers early in the season is worth the labor savings. We'll just have to wait and see if the new Six Flags is more concerned with customer service, and, if they make an effort to have most if not all rides, restaurants, and stores open early in the season, the public notice and attendance increases.
Yes, the SF strategy is to not care about opening rides in a timely manner for early part of the season. The fact is that it often gets so delayed that they miss most or all of the prime summer season. Look at SFFT with Dr. Diabolical, it opened July 30th 2022. Fiesta Texas stops week day ops every year at the end of the 2nd week of August. That meant the ride was open 2 weeks of the main season. The SFOG coaster is on that sane track. The ride is not even close to opening and they stop weekday operations the last week of July. Cedar Fair management is in control, 10 of 11 executive team spots, Cedar Fair works hard to get things open early in the season. All of their 2024 coasters opened with first day of the park's season. When they got major coasters like their gigas, Steel Vengeance, etc... they opened with the park They make that their goal and succeed on it like 75 to 80% of the time.
Agreed. Even dorney is ready to go. The fact that great adventure is running like this is just ridiculous. The food at cedar fair parks is marginally better than Six Flags. They all have some great places to eat, some not so much. The Six Flags meal plan is actually worth it though.
Six Flags legacy parks Capex will increase more than 15%, from their historical average which was 130 to 140M in the last 5 full seasons, excluding Covid. SF spent 171M last year, a significant increase. However, more than half of that was post merger talks. Selim suddenly started talking about massive Capex increases in future years in late August, soon after the first merger talks took place according to the S-4, while it was not public. The Capex increases statements seemed geared for making moves towards a merger and were surprising when Selim was talking about 250M Capex projections in future years. Now, we know why,,the prelim deal was set for the merger. SF projected Capex for 2024 in filings is 196M and 250M in 2025. Cedar Fair is 200 to 220M in 2024 and 240M in 2025. 2026 completely merged projected at 458M Capex. The projections thru 2028 are Capex 450M range.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see 400mm this year. Are you also a little skeptical about their plans to hit under 4x leverage. Revenue synergy expectations seem aggressive and in order to get there they might have to lower CapEx to 400 this yr and pay off some of those loans. Also interesting that they’re all floating. Also interesting they decided on floating loans. until fed cuts they’ll take some serious hits on the bottom line but EBITDA won’t show it
@@coasterking836 The SEC filing in March with Goldman Sachs projections, had combined Capex at just over 400M for 2024, it had a whopping 540M in 2025. That 540M seems high, but there are a bunch of coaster projects at CF legacy parks that are known and they may want to go hard right from the beginning improving SF legacy parks with infrastructure, food/beverage upgrades, etc... SFMM is getting a coaster and they have cleared another spot with marking that look like a possible restaurant. they might get a sorely needed high capacity restaurant that have been added at many CF legacy parks. They are going to improve things and need to get SF core patrons to "pay more", to make the SF legacy parks like CF parks. In a SEC filing they stated the combined financials over the last 12 months, the net leverage was 3.7x and the goal is 3x. After the recent refinancing by both this spring, there are no debts maturing till 2027. SF took out a 800M secured note. CF took out a 1B term maturing in 7 years and 300M revolver increase. With no maturities due in the next few years, they should be able to keep the 400M plus Capex. They are also projecting unlevered free cash flow of 500M in 2025 and 724M in 2026. In 2027 and 2028 they are projecting the cost of buying the partners out at SFOG & SFOT. That's a cost of about 370M for each. They are currently paying around 130M per year in distributions to the partners. Getting full ownership long term makes sense.
Believe that filing and the presentation with the 3.7x included 200mm in synergies. My thought is that a lot of those won’t materialize unless a majority are from the cost side, so they’ll have to pay down some debt. What are your thoughts on them getting rid of Darien Lake because they’re only leasing it? Seems to be less upside there. I’m certain they’d like to refrain from drawing down on those floating rates of Sofr + 200. Just my thoughts though. I’m generally skeptical on revenue synergies materializing as much as corporates proejct them to.
Also about SFOT and SFOG. I was about to make a video about that because nobody knows about it. My points are that they have to notify SFOG atleast that they are exercising the end of term option by the end of the year, and that if they want to tender shares they are better off keeping EBITDA lower so they get a lower price. Any thoughts on implications
@coasterking836 The cost to buy the options out in 2027 and 2028 are not based on Ebidta. The buyout price is based on the agreed upon value at inception 250M for SFOG and 374.8M for SFOT multiplied by the change in the Consumer Price Index from the start of the agreement. The buyout price is that adjusted value with the CPI multiple as the % they need to buy. SF owns 31.5% of SFOG and 54.1% of SFOT.
FINALLY SOMEONE THAT ALSO UNDERSTANDS THE MERGER. The apoplectic posts were hilarious on social media. While they call it a merger of equals, it's not! Cedar Fair have 51% stake, but have 10 of the 11 Executive Team. CEDAR FAIR IS ESSENTIALLY COMPLETELY RUNNING THE SHOW! The only position of SF is Chief Integration Officer, which is a made up position during the merger that will surely go away within a few years as the "integration" of the 2 companies will be completed in all aspects. The CEO and the executive team run the parks, which are all CF. This is a complete management takeover by Cedar Fair people, while the Six Flags name is being retained for corporate. Hence, since it's all Cedar Execs retaining their roles CEO, CFO, COO, down to Head of Procurement . HR, etc,,, things at legacy Cedar Fair parks aren't going to change. They are going to keep doing what has made them successful. The changes will come ideally at SF legacy parks. The fact that the Exec team is 10 of 11 Cedar Fair people means Selim Bassoul nor his Board thought much of his Execs and wanted the Cedar Fair management team to do a massive takeover and/or this was a demand by Cedar Fair. You don't see a merger executive teams this lopsided in "merger of equals", this is the level of lopsidedness of an acquisition of a company in financial/managerial trouble.
Six Flags Great Adventure customer here. Until they improve the reliability of rides, increase the amount of trains being run on coasters, decrease lines for food, drinks, and rides, they will not be able to increase their pricing.
Last time I was there was 1.5 years ago. Saw no lines but some poor ops. Idk what’s up with Great Adventure this season. It’s been really awful, especially for such a big year for them. Like seriously, what’s up with the Big Wheel and Skyride? Anyways, the Selim Bassoul plan was to decrease crowds by raising the price. It never really worked. Sadly, CF parks in my experience always have longer lines. Hopefully the lines should get better with Toro Ka JDC all open
My favorite Six Flags park is Six Flags Magic Mountain, followed by Six Flags Great America, Six Flags Fiesta Texas, Six Flags Over Texas, Six Flags Over Georgia, Six Flags New England, and Six Flags America.
I have a six flags membership... do you think that will become obsolete after this year, do you think they will increase the price of membership or do you think it stays the same? I don't plan on going to six flags this year and I'm trying to decide if it's worth holding on.
Seems like Memberships will be changed completely. Do you have an all park pass or just one? The all park pass will certainly be 2x the price now. One park should stay the same
Yeeep! Agree! Long term, however, I do think we may see more IP integration.. but that would only ever be stuff far ahead that the currents plans wouldnt show... just cause in 10 years, if you have the IP licenses, its an option.. even if its not a focus, we may see usage
If Selim Bassoul is such trash, and he is, why the hell is he still there? Why wasn't he dismissed IMMEDIATELY? Why did they even hire him? He had absolutely NO experience whatsoever in the amusement park industry! I've been at Kings Island for 50 years and in my whole life there, this is the worst thing that has ever happened to us! I expect the Cedar Fair Parks to become trash like the Six Flags parks! Zimmerman needs to resign, honestly!
Never was a fan. Although he was so bad that he made the parks (most notably Great Adventure) have 0 crowds so that was fun. He’s on the board now where we’ll have nothing to do with the parks, atleast
I could very well see Six Flags/ Cedar Fair go through the process of "selling off" smaller less profitable parks between both brands. I don't necessarily think the merger is a good idea, because now you have 1 large group that controls ALOT of parks. The competition is maybe Universal and Disney, but during the coaster war era between Six Flags/ Cedar Fair/ Paramount that is when many parks were getting large investments and improvements. To me the manufacturers of rides should be VERY nervous, because now you have to deal with ONE company that controls the majority of the parks and you have to go by their terms. I mean to a manufacturer like RMC, who do you sell a ride to if Six Flags/Cedar Fair baulks at your ride installation price, etc...
Gonna make a video about this soon. Parks I think are gone are Darien Lake, Frontier City. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Valleyfair Michigans Adventure (ew)
For those bringing up TT2. First of all, it just opened. Give them some time. Cant expect perfect on a first of its kind coaster like that. Second, I was talking about 11 month downtime with no explanation (El Toro) shutting down rides without replacing them (Bobsled at Great Escape). Even then. TT2 probably is on the same level as KingDaKa next month in terms of ops. CF takes better care of their rides and I stand by that
I expect there will be a ton of regional 2-4 park passes available. I'd definitely be down for a CP, KI, and SF Great America season pass, even if that pushes $200.
Cedar Fair’s gold pass and all park add on is $200 so that wouldnt be a bad price. Not sure i worked spend 400 for every park since i only can see 3 or 4 parks per good year.
Your delusional. Ive been through 3 mergers. Cedar Fair parks will get less investments. This is about money. They dont care about the patks or the guests. Several parks will be sold and or sold. Im hoping that they sell Cedar Point to Hershend to keep its legacy. What are you talking about? Operations at Cedar Fair parks suck this season. Also the rides at Cedar Point are constantly down. Have you ever heard of TT2? Thats a disaster.
Thanks for the kind words. I agree partially on further analysis - I think less CapEx in ‘24 with $25mm in IB fees, $50mm or so in severance, $25mm in more interest in floating loans. 25% lower CapEx in my eyes, less investments in year one. Also they’re lowering leverage ratio under 4 for lower interest on their loans. So lower CapEx short term, higher long term with a better financial profile. As for ops, give them some time. Cedar Point was running pretty slow. You have to remember they just opened. TT2 is a first of its kind. Have to give them some flexibility and not be so tough on them. My point was not that CF doesn’t have some rides that struggle when opening, it’s that they don’t close for 11 months with no new changes (El Toro). Not sure what mergers you’ve “been through”. But this is raising EBITDA primarily through cutting overhead (mgmt. short term severance cuts into CapEx) and through regional passes. 0% chance CP gets sold to Herschend. It’s not KKR buying them out to shred it to pieces
This video is not going to age well. You mention nothing about debt and how each company was or was not paying it down. Six Flags has already been cleaning up their parks. They have been doing that for a while. Both companies needed each other and you admit that, but you do not mention why Cedar Fair needed Six Flags.
Big thing is the merger doesn’t cause any change of control. So the debt doesn’t have to be paid off any time soon. Debt is at low enough interest rates that it’s (in my opinion) not going to impact their ability to reinvest at the parks. Again most of the debt was from covid so low rates. I don’t think CF needed SIX as much as the opposite, to be honest.
I hope they drop the superhero IP/theme all together at some point in the future. The superhero theme stuff is over saturated & recycled over & over in the six flags parks. Imo it's just kinda corny to have coasters themed to superheros lol.
All I know is the tradition of putting the Missouri parks on a slow investment time table will not be changing.....alright, maybe I'm in a bad mood on a Monday. Lol, time will only tell. Competition is actually heating up in the region, so who knows what will happen in 10 years.
The problem is... The Cedar Fair team isn't that popular with local enthusiasts to be honest with you. At least from my point of view. The changes the current Cedar Fair team has made, haven't been that popular.
I’m really excited for this merger honestly. The headquarters of the big company will be located in Charlotte, North Carolina where Carowinds is, and also where I live. Carowinds is my home park. Since cedar fair was located in Sandusky, where cedar point is, I hope we get a lot of investment into good rides at Carowinds after the merger
While I agree with basically everything that you stated but my concern falls on the finical impact. The amount of debt CF will be taking on, along with the very low gate pricing I see this as Geuaga Lake part 2 times much much more give the amount of parks that are not turning a profit. Throw in the 80+ million CF had to fork over and I see this just coming out of the existing CF parks. While ops might not fall much but the amount of capital going into each park (CF parks) per year is going to drop. Thankfully Dorney received their coaster in 24, otherwise they may be waiting a while. If I am Valleyfair, MIA and even WOF, I would not be expecting to see anything large for many many years to come.
Luckily no change of control on the debt was hit, so they didn’t have to pay off the debt. Also, it’s lucky that it’s at such a low interest rate. But still, the debt should cut into CF’s investments into the parks. But I think if they had something prepped for those parks already, I doubt theyll toss the plans
Most of Cedar fair parks made profit, of course some of the smaller ones need some work and effort to become profitable. They will probably have an increase of pass prices.
I like cedar fair leadership but now i hate them as well because they just refuse to work with many manufacturers and right before this merger Six Flags had began working with intamin again and now that’s gone with Zimmerman being at the helm
@@Cefon2121 Would love to see SFNE get an Intamin Hot Racer. I imagine there will be a period of 1-2 years where both sides of the company stick with their current preferred manufacturers. So there might be a couple more legacy Six Flags parks that might get something new from Intamin.
@@brianfoss571 I mean an Intamin hot racer could happen despite their higher price they are more reliable than the rmc raptors and Six Flags have been having many problems with them lately like Wonder Woman and Jersey Devil so they are fed up with rmc because almost all of their rides are having major problems currently
@@benjaminmarlatt6111 their new ones are a lot more reliable than their old ones but the industry is starting to swing towards these multi launch intamins like velocicoaster and they are proven to be very gp friendly so eventually they’ll be buying coasters from them
Honestly, I think Cedar Flags might give up on Six Flags Quiddyla due to the fact Falcon's Flight is built by Intamin and Cedar Fair is through with Intamin. However, they should sell some of the 3 Six Flags Brand Parks to other theme park owners Six Flags America to Parques Reunidos/Palace Entertainment, The Great Escape to Herschend, and to La Ronde whoever theme park company that would be reliable.
Great Escape to Hershend would be interesting considering how much they invested into the lodge. I can 100% see Qiddya getting thrown out but hope it doesn’t happen
@@coasterking836 Qiddya isn't gonna get thrown out, because the Saudi government has a lot of funding being dumped into it. I could see them ending involvement with the project, however. Everything I have seen from the Qiddya project makes it look like the Six Flags involvement is a lot less then people think.
@@themeparkreconnoiter9787 Qiddya is being built using the Saudi investment fund. Six Flags is just charging a licensing fee for its name and IPs (like Iron Rattler). They aren't going to save any money by pulling out.
I was trying to calm everyone down on Facebook in my rollercoaster and theme park group about it. When Cedar Fair and Six Flags merge to Cedar Flags, both brands will still be separated when they'll be own by Six Flags. But I keep getting harassed by a few members.
if there is one thing I think cedar fair needs to do is Drop iRoc six flags is much better without it and they don't to many safety redundancies that are really pointless and slowdown ride operations
@@coasterking836 heck no raging bull at my home park has really good dispatches witout the use of seatbelts and the extra safety check ride ops have to do which is an overkill heck even ElTore Ryan says that iRoc is not good look at milli dispatches because of it
I hope for the all park pass there is an option to do both, just six flags, or just cedar fair for cheaper because 400 dollars for a all park pass is kinda a lot
If I'm not mistaken when they "bought" it previously they just signed an agreement to lease and operate the parks from EPR. So I think they'll just transfer the agreement to the new company. Really good point though, thanks for bringing it up.
@coasterking836 I'm hoping Six Flags will buy Darien because Cedar Fair loves resorts and Darien is one of them with an on-site hotel, campground, cabins, waterpark, and an on-site concert venue, also the park sits on over 900 acres of land to expand on.
@markvolpe2305 Thing is, Cedar Fair specifically loves Cedar Point as a resort. And I don't think they'd dump about $100M into Darien Lake to get to that level. Not only does Cedar Point get a decent number of guests from the Buffalo area, but DL is poorly located for people driving to Niagara Falls from the Midwest. It's just not ideally located for a major resort, not unlike Geauga Lake. Darien Lake has value for locals visiting the state park, but it's arguably a better fit for Herschend than the combined CF/SF.
parks like six flags st louis will be ousted or shut down, can't see this helping six flags st louis. it gets so much hate, even these videos on you tube always are stating that six flags st louis won't survive. it is my home park and as far as six flags parks goes was the only only that opened during the pandemic while MM closed. and if there prices go extremely high, people won't go and that will be the end of amusement parks.
One of the most underrated parks out there with a strong collection of woodies. But historically suboptimal attendance might point to the chain investing less. Either way, I do think that St Louis should get an RMC in the next 5 years or so, especially now with Zimmerman & Co. in charge.
@@coasterking836 I can't see SFSTL getting an RMC, but it's clear that Boss would benefit from 500 ft of Titan Track. And if by some miracle they can replace Ninja with an S&S Axis, that'll be phenomenal.
