What if Cedar Fair Owned Magic Mountain?
Six Flags Magic Mountain: Could someone else do a better job managing Six Flags' Los Angeles-area park?
From John K
Posted August 9, 2004 at 9:01 PM
I went to knotts berry farm a few weeks ago and truly enjoyed it. I'd say Cedar Fair has done an excellent job with their parks. Six Flags has done a good job with Magic Mountain, but money issues is the result when it comes to owning too many parks.
Now what if Cedar Fair took over the ownership of Magic Mountain?
For some, they would be sad to see Six Flags go. For others, it's a dream come true.
I would find that SFMM's the TEEN park, would go back to a family theme park. Time to start adding some more small attractions: ferris wheel, something like Autopia at Disneyland, stuff like that.
The ticket prices wont be so out of control too.
From M F
Posted August 9, 2004 at 9:42 PM
http://www.rollercoasterpro.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=683
From John K
Posted August 9, 2004 at 10:19 PM
you dont need to repeat yourself, 1 post is good enough
From John K
Posted August 10, 2004 at 2:40 PM
Six Flags does not need to own so many parks, some Six Flags parks need to be privately owned, not owned by an amusement-park chain. If Bill Gates ran the company, ok things could be different. But the president of Six Flags Theme parks, Gary Story,doesn't have as much money for every park...everybody knows the money issue is the main problem. Sell six flags mexico city, and if magic mountain goes up for sale, I'm pretty sure Cedar Fair will put a huge offer for the park.
I don't really see how Cedar Fair would do anything differently. Like Six Flags, all they can focus on is roller coasters. And they haven't done all that well in Knotts either. What has that park gotten? A bunch of minimally themed thrill rides and Ghostrider. Big deal! Meanwhile that damn diosaur ride still exists! Whyyyyy?
I think a more interesting question would be what would happen to it if someone with a more spotless record bought it: Busch! Busch would rock these parks up and down.
Kevin,
What do you think of the following?
1) What if Universal owned Magic Mountain?
2) What if Disney owned Magic Mountain? (Maybe this will restore the magic in Disney?)
I picked Busch and not those two because owning SFMM would seriously devalue their current parks. Disney could never own a park that focuses almost solely on roller coasters. Universal could, but without stuff like Men in Black, Spider-Man, Jaws, Dudley Do-Right, T2: 3-D, etc, the park would hurt the brand name. And it would be too costly to theme it up properly. If money was no object, I would personally LOVE to see Universal buy the park and turn it into Islands of Adventure West. But that will never happen.
I think that it would be a better operation. Most of Magic Mountain's chronic problems....(ride maintenance, bad food...etc) would disappear. Guests would experience a much different (and better) park in terms of basic operation and guest experience. It would still be thrill ride heaven, granted the park has enough space to continue that kind or expansion. Would it be better?? yes. However, I think that Cedar Fair has plenty of work to do at it's other parks at this time. They seem to be spreading themselves a little thin at the moment as it is. In theory Cedar Fair would be a good fit for Magic Mountain, but Kevin is also right about Busch. They have a good reputation, and their current product is top notch.
I'd written somewhere before on the site (and haven't bothered to look it up) that Paramount would do well to acquire Magic Mountain. It would give Paramount a needed presence in a major theme park market, though it would raise troubles with Universal over Nickelodeon licensing. (Paramount Parks have that being part of the Viacom family with Nickelodeon, but Viacom's licensed it to Universal in SoCal and Orlando, where Paramount does not have parks.)
As for consumers, it's been so long since I've been in a Paramount park that I don't wish to speculate. But Lord knows they'd have to try hard to be in a worse position than the under-capitalized Six Flags is with Magic Mountain now.
From John K
Posted August 11, 2004 at 10:17 AM
robert you mentioned Paramount in Russell Meyers trip report. From what I hear, they have a great park up north in San Jose, Paramount Great America, I dont know really the rides they have. But a new ownership will be interesting because the new owner will always have something new in mind
PGA sucks! It's not entirely Paramount's fault that it sucks, since Santa Clara owned it before them, but they haven't done a lot of good stuff since owning it. They've built one coaster, removed another coaster and built and removed a third coaster. They added a damn mouse coaster a while back. The only thing the park has going for it is an Imax theater, a fun (but old) inverted coaster, an inverted boomerang and a Huss Giant Frisbee. That's it. They suck.
From joe simons
Posted August 14, 2004 at 12:49 AM
PGA does suck. I've been there once and I thought it was going to be better then what it really is. It could be a nice little park if it had some work done to it.
From joe simons
Posted August 14, 2004 at 12:53 AM
I don't think Six Flags will sell MM. I'ts their largest park and it draws people from across the country but if they did sell it. It would be the end of Six Flags as we know it. something tells me Cedar Fair would neglect MM but its just my opinion And most people would dissagree with me.
From John K
Posted August 21, 2004 at 10:02 PM
obviously not, six flags won't sell their big park. But who knows, maybe CF may give a BIG offer
Never a big enough offer. SFMM is one of SF's big three. Plus, CF has a park in the area that they think they can make compete.
Kevin, I don't see how Knott's Berry Farm can ever compete with Magic Mountain. i had an annual pass to Knott's and the last time I was there I left after one hour. Many rides were not running, and the ones that were would not run if there were not enough people in line. It seems that CF is doing a worse job with Knott's than SF is doing with Magic Mountain.
Six Flags would never sell Magic Mountain, but I wish they would. That park needs help. I'll be going there sometime in the next few months and really hope that more then half the rides are open.
From John K
Posted August 22, 2004 at 8:51 PM
Jason, 15 of the 16 coasters are currently open and will be open for awhile
From joe simons
Posted August 22, 2004 at 11:35 PM
I must agree. evry time i have been to MM in the summer or early fall most of the rides have been open but late December early January is a diffrent story.
if ceder fair owend Magic Mountain i think they might do a pretty good job. like buliding the world's 2 largest drop on a rollercoaster. yes they might not have done a whole lot at Knott's Berry Farm because they just bought it about a year ago. thats why they only have 1 brand new ride. other wise if they do buy MM they might do a good job. but i can't say for sure. lets see if they sell MM at first.
Actually, Six Flags is putting up six of it's parks for sale. It announced that this Thursday after the stock market closed. And, surprisingly, one of it's flagship parks is being put up, Magic Mountain.
Although SFMM is my all-time favorite theme park for it's world-class collection of roller coasters, I can honestly admit that it's park services and staff aren't too great or helpful. But when I visited Knotts in CA and Ceder Point in OH, the staff were very friendly and perfectly answered all the questions I asked them. These parks were also much cleaner and tidier than SFMM. I just hope that if the park truly is going to be sold, then it will hopefully go to a trusted theme park company such as Cedar Fair and not for real estate.
Premier Parks was a dinky company that owned half a dozen theme parks and some water parks. In '98 they bought Six Flags from WB for $1.9 billion-ish. A huge part of the deal was to get the rights to use the DC Comics and Looney Toones characters, and sell merchandise with those characters.
Once they owned the rights to the use of those characters in Six Flags parks, they "re-branded" their larger parks as "Six Flags". And they started using the characters and selling the merchandise.
In short, the only reason Six Flags was worth the $1.9 billion was to get those characters and merchandise rights. Once you have those rights, then it is most cost effective to use them at as many parks as possible.
They continued to buy parks to maximize use of those rights.
Big law suit with WB over whether they had the rights to use the characters in any park they renamed "Six Flags", or only in the parks they aquired in the WB deal.
It went to trial, and neither side came out happy. As I recall, PKS had to pay WB additional money to use the characters and sell merchandise at all those renamed parks.
Point is, they're not short of money because they own too many parks. They are short of money because they were a tiny company that tried to bite off a HUGE chunk when it aquired Six Flags.
Ever sense, it has been trying to dig out from under the debt by cutting costs and driving attendnace with coasters.
Now they are going a different direction. Rather than trying to drive attendance up, they are trying to drive guest spending up by making the parks friendly to families again.
It isn't a problem of too many parks. It is a problem of too many years of engaging in the coaster wars that left the parks devoid of any guests except low spending coaster junkies.... (which I am one of!!!)
Darrell has a point. Six Flags has been in the coaster wars to long and it will only take a Universal, Disney, Busch, or Cedar Fair to fix that. Also with all the unthemed roller coasters and lack of flat rides at almost every Six Flags park is not helping. The only one of those chains that has parks loaded with coasters is Cedar Fair which dosen't theme their rides very good. Universal, Disney, and Busch Gardens do not cram their parks with unthemed rides, so they would probably not buy the park. The way this park would get better is if they kept the good coasters and transfer the smaller, not as fun coasters to other Six Flags parks. Then have Universal come in and turn it into a western Island of Adventure. I would love to see what they could do with X and Tatsu.
That will probably not happen though so Magic Mountain should just spend some years on demolishion of old rides, repainting, and relandscaping to let some of the other parks in the country catch up so that 15 coasters will not seem as much. Some ways of that is to tear down Physclone and put in some flat rides.
From john jon
Posted July 2, 2006 at 3:21 AM
first off after reading all the comments some of you have not yet realized that six flags has already announced that magic mountian is for sale!know if they dont sell (by sum maraculis feat) or another amusment park company buys the park they need to fix some things!they would need to do something to the coasters. now i say if you cant get a rid to opperate 3 quarters of ther year you should get rid of it and fast(de javu,flashback,ect.)this would give them a chance to build some more beter coasters!i also say they should get rid of huricann harbor completly!by doing this they have the chance to expande on bugs bunny world and build some more children attraction this would bring in the family groups. on to the subect of other companys buying magic moantian. some of you are saying that the ceader park corporation will probly buy the park.but becuse they just recently bought knotts berry farmi would guess that they would want to expand that first.granted if they where to buy magic mountian they would own to of the worlds biggest baddest parks but i highly dout that they will buy magic mountian!now i also hear that the Busch company might be looking at magic mountian even though they already own sea world san diego. this would be a good idea becuse they would have a coaster park on the west coast(they currently have both coaster parks on the east coast)and another park to add on to there season passes(if you buy a season pass it will work for every park owned by busch gardens company.
From john jon,
"if you cant get a ride to opperate 3 quarters of ther year you should get rid of it and fast(de javu,flashback,ect.)this would give them a chance to build some more better coasters!"
It isn't that they can't get the coasters to operate year round. The problem is they can't bring in enough people to bring in enough revenue to be able to afford the operating costs... Employees to maintain and operate the coasters cost money.
The park doesn't need more great coasters. It has been shown that great coasters bring in teens that spend too little money.
What the park needs is more rides that will bring in MONEY. That means rides that will bring in families.
When I was there last week, my duaghter and I counted strollers.... All day on a Saturday we counted a toatl of 29 strollers. Surely we missed some, but we probably counted some twice.
If Six FLags can't turn that around, the park is doomed. And, from their statements last week, that is what they fear. That they won't be able to bring back families. They fear that this park may be too far gone to ever turn into a family park. More coasters certainly won't do that.
"i also say they should get rid of huricann harbor completly! by doing this they have the chance to expande on bugs bunny world and build some more children attraction this would bring in the family groups."
Yes, why keep the area of the park that brings in the most money with the least operating/maintenace costs.
There is plenty of room in the park for family friendly attractions. In fact, I think they need to spread these attractions out. Have a family friendly ride back in Gothem so that the older/younger people have stuff to do while waiting for the others ride the coasters.
" on to the subect of other companys buying magic moantian. some of you are saying that the ceader park corporation will probly buy the park.but becuse they just recently bought knotts berry farmi would guess that they would want to expand that first.granted if they where to buy magic mountian they would own to of the worlds biggest baddest parks but i highly dout that they will buy magic mountian!"
Their more recent purchase is Paramount Parks from CBS. They probably don't have the money to buy more parks at this time.
"now i also hear that the Busch company might be looking at magic mountian even though they already own sea world san diego. this would be a good idea becuse they would have a coaster park on the west coast(they currently have both coaster parks on the east coast)and another park to add on to there season passes(if you buy a season pass it will work for every park owned by busch gardens company."
But, the Busch Gardens parks have a nice mix of coasters and themed, family friendly attractions. Are they going to want to spend $300-400 million for SFMM, then drop another $500 million retheming it?
That is the big question.
From john jon
Posted July 3, 2006 at 9:37 PM
from Darrell Shimel
"It isn't that they can't get the coasters to operate year round. The problem is they can't bring in enough people to bring in enough revenue to be able to afford the operating costs... Employees to maintain and operate the coasters cost money."
that is not entirly true!as a matter of fact some of the rides that are not opperating are not being opperated becuse the people attending the park dont like the ride.take flashback that ride hasnt been open for nearly 5 years not becuse of opperating costs but becuse guests keept complaining that the ride was to ruff and gives you wip lash.and if im correct i think that they even announced that flahback will not be reopened and that its just there so that they can keep the record for most coasters!
"The park doesn't need more great coasters. It has been shown that great coasters bring in teens that spend too little money.What the park needs is more rides that will bring in MONEY. That means rides that will bring in families. "
i both agree with this statment and i dont agree with it.i understand that building coasters brings in more teens then adults but hey with a theme park where your main attractions are roller coasters the thats your own falut. but i also agree with you when you say they should build more family friendly rides which is why i belive they should take out hurican harbor and build kids rides there.but to that you said...
Yes, why keep the area of the park that brings in the most money with the least operating/maintenace costs.
"There is plenty of room in the park for family friendly attractions. In fact, I think they need to spread these attractions out. Have a family friendly ride back in Gothem so that the older/younger people have stuff to do while waiting for the others ride the coasters."
im not quite sure how much huricain harbor makes but im sure that it dosnt make more money in a 3-4 month summer season then magic mountian makes in a year.
and they do already have family rides around the park(carnival rides).lets take gotham city for example they have the coaster in the back but while walking towards the ride youll find about 3-5 "family friendly"carnival type rides!
What are the 3-5 family friendly rides in Gothem?
Sand Blasters?
I don't consider Grinder Gearworks of Atom Smasher to be family friendly. Most older people don't like to be spun around and left feeling motion sick the rest of the day. In fact, those rides have 42" height restrictions.
Of course, even Sand Blasters has a 42" limit to ride and 54" to drive.
The family friendly rides in Magic Mountain (height restriction no more than 36", and not a true kiddy ride) are Log Jammer, Jet Stream, Bucanneer, Carousel, Sierra Falls, Granny Grand Prix(maybe).... Oh yeah, the sky tower.
That ain't much.
As far as bringing in money, don't confuse revenue with profit. Revenue is cash in the drawer, and surely SFMM operating year-round brings in way more revenue that Huricane Harbor.
However, profit is what you have left of that money after you've paid for expenses. Maintenance, operations, advertising, interest, construction costs (well, those are capital expenses, but have to be paid off over time as depreciation), administration, etc.
While the thrill park has way more revenue than the water park, the water park has much lower operation, maintenance, construction cost, etc. The water parks have a much higher return on investment. Certainly higher RoI than what they could make by expanding buggs land.
And, there is no reason to expand Buggs land since there is so much other room available for expansion. As you mentioned, Flashback will likely never run again. Psyclone is a horrid coaster and should go. Freefall is likely done for. Viper could go as it never has a line... too painful anywhere but the furthest back seats. More room back by Scream that is under utalized. Midway area could use rides.
There are lots more areas that could be repurposed before they have to take out the water park.
From Greg S
Posted July 5, 2006 at 8:58 PM
1. They run Psyclone casue people still ride it. Sure, they bitch about the pain, but they still get guests riding it enough to keep it open, and keep it up. Why one Earth would they EVER keep and maintain a ride that no one rides? Same with Viper. Enough people ride it to keep it. Besides, Viper does infact have lines. Be it short or long.
I've heard that they're going to tear it down, I've heard they are going to revamp it. BUT, it was not closed down because of the pain? Hell, people still rode it(just like people still ride Psyclose). The problem was, it was way too loud. And being that it was way too loud, and RIGHT next to Huricane Harbor, it posed a problem for the life guards to hear the guests. Life guards not only need to see what's going on, but sound factors in dramatically too.
On top of that, now the steel is rusted even more, and if they just decided to reopen with no fixup, it would be even louder, and more painful then ever.
They mainly kept that coaster for the coaster wars. JUST so they can state that they now have 16 coasters, as opposed to 15.
The future of Flashback is bleak, but hey, you never know what could happen.
Being a former mechanic for MM for seven years, I can verify that flashback is indeed a heep of #@!$ and is closed because of HH. It is also closed due to state inspection(not being inspected for how many years now?).I love MM to this day and really miss working there. They have some of the best in the business working there in the maintenance dept. Premier parks has run the place into the ground. Everything there needs attention. The park needs someone like busch to come in, shut it down, rebuild, and then and only then re-open. If MM gets demo due to real estate, That would be a shame to let soomeplace that's been a staple for the LA area for the last 35 years go back to House's (likie we need more of that!).And by the way, HH costs nearly zip to operate and brings in huge revenue. Those rides require little to no maintenance during the season, and if taken care of properly, very little maintenance in the off season. HHY is around to stay for sure unless the property is sold to build houses.YUK!
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