So what killed Six Flags America?
Six Flags announced last week that it would close its Six Flags America amusement park and associated Hurricane Harbor water park in Maryland at the end of the 2025 season. It's the first park to close since the former Cedar Fair and Six Flags companies merged under the Six Flags brand.
According to the company's President and CEO, well, Six Flags America was worth more to the company as a real-estate property to sell than a theme park to continue running.
"As part of our comprehensive review of our park portfolio, we have determined that Six Flags America and Hurricane Harbor are not a strategic fit with the company’s long-term growth plan," Richard A. Zimmerman said. "After reviewing a number of options, we believe that marketing the property for redevelopment will generate the highest value and return on investment. We anticipate strong interest in the property and will continue to strategically pursue portfolio optimization opportunities as we work to unlock the full value of our portfolio."
My translation of that last sentence? Six Flags might not be done with closing and selling parks.
So our first suspect in the demise of Six Flags America is the U.S. real estate market. At the risk of venturing off topic for this website, real estate in the United States (and in other countries, too) no longer derives its value from its usefulness as a place to build a home or business, but rather from its attractiveness as speculative investment to private equity and other institutions. That puts pressure on land owners to get rid of those pesky businesses and tenants who are getting in the way of cashing in on a sale.
But this is not our only suspect. Some of Six Flags America's fellow parks cannot escape suspicion in this foul deed.
Is it a coincidence that fans are mourning the impending loss of Six Flags America as we also prepare to welcome the new Epic Universe in Orlando? The theme park industry does not need to be a zero-sum game, but that does not mean that parks do not affect each other. Universal and Disney have been raising the standard for what customers can expect from theme park attractions. That puts pressure on every other park in the industry to find something fresh to keep fans coming back to them.
That something does not need to be nine-figure technological marvels. No Six Flags or United or Merlin or Herschend park cannot afford those. But every company in this industry can invest in thoughtful decoration and theming, preemptive maintenance of attractions to maximize uptime and capacity, and friendly customer service to make fans feel welcome whenever they visit.
Those initiatives do not cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but they do cost a not-insignificant amount of cash. In recent years, it's become harder for many parks to justify these kinds of investments due to our next suspect.
Six Flags reported that its guests spent an average of $61.31 per day in the parks last year, including admission, parking, food, merchandise and fees. Like many parks, Six Flags is pushing to sell its guests on annual passes and memberships. That locks in a steady stream of income for the company, but at the cost of encouraging guests to see its parks as a subscription service - a utility to exploit for maximum value rather than a delight to splurge on for special occasions. That means less money over time for the improvements that any park needs to keep up with the rising expectations set by Disney and Universal.
So in this twisted game of theme park "Clue," perhaps we have our answer. Passive management did it in the real estate market with a cheap annual pass.
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“Disney and Universal has been raising the standards.” Nail on the head. As somebody that has been to Six Flags almost every year for decades, I will say Six Flags has gotten worse every year. The intangibles are now gone, like the little shows and semi-decent food. And these are things that still could be done with a similar park. Just look at Silver Dollar City. Six Flags is a shell of its formal self.
And to add to it: even Magic Mountain is not what it was. The only SF park that seems to try is Fiesta Texas. The first park, Over Texas, is beyond run down. It is almost like they need the cost of a new coaster in paint alone. The redo of the Cave is beyond embarrassing. It is worse than the water ride Danny McBryde operates in The Land of the Lost. Anyway, not to be overly negative, the Runaway Mine Train is still there, and the Texas Giant is excellent.
I have little doubt that this is just the tip of the iceberg in the reorganization and consolidation for Six Flags. Aside from Great America, which already had a confusing name with its now sibling SFGAdv near Chicago and had its fate predetermined before the merger, SFA was the lowest performing park with a market that overlapped other SF park markets. Even before the merger, it was common for people living the DC market to purchase passes for SFA solely to visit the far superior SFGAdv in New Jersey. Passes for SFA were often @50% cheaper than SFGAdv, so if you lived close enough to activate your pass at the Maryland park, you could save a lot of money over buying a pass at SFGAdv.
While I think SFA would have eventually been sold because of the overlapping markets and overall lack of interest compared to the other nearby parks in the chain (mostly KD and SFGAdv), the immediacy of this announcement was all about opportunity. With the Washington Commanders announcing last week their intentions of moving away from their current stadium in Landover, MD (about 8 miles from SFA) and back to Washington, DC, Six Flags understood that if they were able to get decent return from their property, they would need to sell now, before the current Commanders stadium property is on the market. Also with the coming economic storm predicted to significantly slow the overall growth we saw across the US over the past 2-3 years, Six Flags is trying to get ahead of that by getting the SFA off their hands before a potential recession. Those predicted economic conditions may also accelerate divestment plans for other SF properties, but I do think the primary catalyst for SFA was the Commanders stadium announcement.
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This biggest problem with this park was that it was never built or expanded to be a "real" park but was owned by a major corporate chain. I think if it were owned by a family, like Holiday World, where it was an affordable place with a good waterpark, good rides, and had management that put effort into building some kind of fanbase it probably would have thrived. I think that there is space in the market for smaller parks but when you have a soul-less corporation ran by apathetic people with other things on their mind...it just doesn't work.
But it was highly mediocre since the moment it opened as an amusement park, then SF did the early 2000s Six Flags cash infusion (which I think we can all agree was not thought at all) and since then it was just a substandard park with second hand rides in the same market as two other excellent parks Busch Gardens and Kings Dominion. SF never put any effort into competing in this market.