WHY ENTHUSIASTS ARE WRONG ABOUT THE SIX FLAGS CEDAR FAIR MERGER | My Thoughts 

There should be. Like maybe just the local Ones? $400 is expensive because the vast majority of us won’t go to more than 2 parks a season

exactly. They’ll be distinct. Only parks that will change are Six Flags

Think we should see either Six Flags move To it or Cedar fair move away. With Cedar Fair mamagement, I’m thinking they’ll all have to move toward iRoc

@@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

Xcelerator too

*Montezooma's revenge has entered the chat*

not 11 months... Intamin also sucks so

Screw it, purple

Red is the color of the ride operators at Cedar Fair parks. Each department has their own color shirt.

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

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

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.

@@brianfoss571they also are only leasing it so theoretically less upside in investing heavily into DL

@@coasterking836 Right, the $100M+ would include purchasing it from EPR.

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

@@coasterking836 I have the og six flags membership

For sure. Especially for kids section. DC Rivals and Planet Snoopy will be everywhere eventually.

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.

Haha true clearly some bad blood between CF and Intamin.

@@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

Intamin has no one but themselves to blame for that bad blood. One maintenance headache after another, I'd have cut bait too.

@@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

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)

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

@@coasterking836 Agree. Hopefully they can restructure their debt and push it out as far as they can.

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.

Wdym lol

@@coasterking836 do you still work at six flags great adventure

Nope. You working there now?

@@coasterking836 this is my 4th year

Wouldn’t be suprised

I think they run their top parks well (KI, Carowinds, Cedar Point, KD, CW) and the Rest are run worse than the bottom tier of SF parks

Generally so, although I have a lot of issues with Kings Island lately. Just mediocre policies and selective enforcement of policies.

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.

@@coasterking836that would certainly increase attendance by a lot.

@@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.

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

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.

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.

100%. so many opportunities with that

Not for 2-3 yrs

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

Darien Lake back to Hershend would be a fun return

@@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.

@f1fan112 Makes a lot of sense since they're located by a state park. And Herschend could offer day trips to Niagara Falls for hotel guests.

@@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.

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.