Six Flags announces another roller coaster delay

At least they're giving plenty heads-up about this one and not waiting until midway through the season, which has been the Six Flags M.O. these past few years.

This is the most important park for SF being by far the biggest park for the NYC market and northeast megalopolis, and I generally support taking the time to do things right rather than rushing something that isn't going to be done properly. This park has a great location, a lot of land, and a pretty good coaster lineup, but it still needs a LOT of work to bring it up to its potential. Other than its headline coasters its still a bad park that is somehow a shell of its former self (and the park really was not good in its heydey either coming from someone that has been there many times over multiple decades).

That being said I just don't get how they keep dropping the ball on the PR of this whole situation. Like...why announce Kingda Ka's replacement is opening in 2026 in the first place? Should have just said coming soon. The attendance at the park currently is god awful (hence why they cancelled Holiday in the Park for this year as well) and they are getting absolutely destroyed in all correspondence channels. I think a few years from now they can build that fanbase back up if they do things right, but it makes you wonder why not just be transparent and not piss people off in the first place. If you come out and say there are long term plans to substantially improve the park I think there would not be so much vitriol towards the new Six Flags from this parks fanbase.

While I know there are plenty of factors beyond Six Flags's control when it comes to projects like this, the company is not presenting itself well at the moment. It's far better to simply not announce anything than to wind up delaying a project post announcement, especially when that kind of thing keeps happening. Particularly at seasonal parks, it's reasonable to expect a new ride to be open by the first half of June, but half of their 2024 projects and a quarter of their 2025 projects missed that mark, which is a very bad look when new attractions are being used to sell season passes.

Speaking of pass sales, Six Flags just announced that when 2026 passes go on sale this week, they'll be including the all park passport at no additional cost rather than the ~$100 upcharge it was for 2025 passes. To me, this sounds like desperation in making their numbers look better, as I'm guessing they're currently trending significantly below where they expected to be. While I can't deny that access to 26 parks for 17 months at less than the cost of a single day at Disney or Universal is an extremely sweet deal, it makes me very concerned for the future of the chain as that sort of thinking was what got Six Flags into the mess they were in prior to the merger.

AJ highlights some important observations of Six Flags' current maneuvers. The first is the delay of this new coaster is pretty expected, and probably the right move. There's absolutely no reason for the park to rush this, especially if taking some more time ensures that the new coaster is reliable and perhaps includes some more theming. I wouldn't be surprised if the current environment with importing goods into this country played a role in this delay, and it also wouldn't shock me if the delay of Alpen Fury had an impact on Six Flags wanting to get ahead and create a situation where they're under-promising and over-delivering instead of the other way around.

The second part of this announcement is the elimination of Holiday in the Park. I'm on board with SF establishing realistic expectations for their new attractions, but they sold guests, specifically season pass holders, a bill of goods last year and earlier this year on a season that would include the Christmas-themed event. SFGAdv has some of the most expensive season passes in the country, and guests not only purchased those passes expecting to use them through the end of December, but many probably also purchased season dining plans, which include up to 2 meals each visit that now won't be available for 2 months of potential visits. As a make-good, SF is giving season pass holders a "bring-a-friend-for-free" ticket, but as I've noted when discussing the pending closure of SFA, regional amusement parks are often some family's primary source of entertainment and things to do for young people when school is out. I have little doubt that there are thousands of folks with SFGAdv season passes who were expecting to take their kids to the park during the typical 2 weeks of Winter Break because it's a cheap and easy entertainment alternative. Without Holiday in the Park, many families are likely scrambling to figure out what they're going to do for those 2 weeks of the year. I get that HitP crowds were pretty minimal, and it probably makes sense for the chain to refocus on improving their performance during their core operating seasons, but it's incredibly unfair to sell folks a season pass that is good for the entire year, but then truncates the season by 2 months after you've passed the midpoint of the year. Speaking of which, while SFA has announced that they are closing the park at the "end of the year", the online calendar has eliminated operating hours in September and October, suggesting the possibility that the park may not even hold Fright Fest despite advertising temporary employment positions and previously noting the park would be open through the end of October. It's possible that management is still trying to determine what days/hours the park will be open for the Halloween event, but there were operational hours shown through the first weekend of November at the beginning of the season, and those have seemingly been stripped from the calendar. I know that I will be trying to get to the park at least twice over the next month in the event the park's last days are over Labor Day Weekend.

Finally, AJ brings up the most important piece of news, which has been making the rounds of theme park message boards for the past week since Canada's Wonderland first announced the offering of an "All-Park" season pass for just $99 (CAD, which is close to $80 USD). This is very much a return to what many believe was the downfall of Six Flags when they kept undercutting and undercutting themselves just to juice revenues in the fall and winter months. I do think Six Flags is extremely concerned with their performance this year, and empirically, I have observed some trends over this year what is generally being reported as an overall decline in regional theme park attendance this summer. I'm putting together a trip report from our travels over the past 2 weeks through the Great Lakes region, and I can say that all 4 SF parks we visited felt less crowded than we expected or remembered from prior visits (granted our previous visits to both Canada's Wonderland and SFGAm were 10+ years ago). I honestly think SF is struggling right now to draw guests to their parks, and slashing prices is the only strategy they know, especially when landmark additions (save for the record-breaking B&M Dive Machine coming to SFoT) cannot possibly be completed in time for the 2026 season. It really seems like the transition period of the merger is creating a massive gap in what the chain can provide, which is going to essentially create a "lost year" in 2026. Now, if SF is doing this as a 1-time deal because they know they're just not adding anything new to most of the parks, I guess it's OK, but they can't set a precedent that establishes expectations for guests to get a full year of entertainment for less than $100 and then expect to double that for the following year just because they're adding a handful of new major coasters. When the chain announced their regional management structure, I expected them to follow that up with a regional annual pass structure, but this announcement undermines all of that.

Don't get me wrong, I will be buying a pass for next year the moment it goes on sale (we were heavily tempted to buy 2026 Canada's Wonderland passes when we were there, but decided to wait to see if Kings Dominion would offer a similar deal that would allow us to have Pass Perks for the location we would visit most often). It's a great deal for anyone who expects to spend more than 1 day in a SF park in 2026, but it's definitely a bad sign for the overall health of the combined chain despite many positive steps that certain aspects of the operation were making to improve the guest experience.

It seems like, at least from a sales perspective, SF is going away from the legacy park vs. Cedar Fair park thing and just making it all one cohesive brand which was probably the plan all along. The drink pass and unlimited Fastlane appears to be good at all Six Flags parks as well.

I agree that is a VERY cheap price for unlimited access to almost every major seasonal theme park on the continent. If I remember correctly the all parks CF pass was like $150+ before the merger, and now even with adding the entire SF chain to it its going to be half the price? There is something very fishy about that and I agree you can't help but think SF is really desperate financially.
Its possible that outside of California and maybe Texas very few people were buying that "all parks passport" upsell, and now having it all be included may encourage people to add SF parks to their road trips or at least add a SF visit to whatever city they are visiting on vacation.

The seasonal theme park business is extremely tough and without a big financial buffer one bad season (or even a bad few months) can screw a park over because the costs of operating the parks are so high. They don't have the option of softening the blow because of income from another division like Disney and Universal do. CF came in and said they can cut a lot overhead which will help the parks be more profitable, but again, just like everyone else for the past 30 years or so, they are struggling to turn this company around. I personally think a lot of SF fans were delusional thinking their park was going to be turned into Cedar Point or something, not realizing that CF wasn't really that great of an operator either.

That being said I remember when CF bought the Paramount Parks and it took CF a few seasons to get everything sorted out. When the merger was announced I expected SFGAm, SFGAdv, SFOT, and maybe SFMM will get substantial improvements but the rest of the chain probably will not and it seems like that is whats happening. CF just doesn't care about its small parks.

Also I want to add there is a huge irony with SF/CF's management coming out saying bigger is better, with a bigger company we can lower costs, be more stable financially, invest more in the parks etc. But their attendance is atrocious and they are struggling while the smaller companies and independent parks are killing it. It goes to show how actually running your parks well and giving your customers a good experience makes such a big difference in the long term success of a company. In 2024 Selim Bassoul made over $20 MILLION to basically do nothing. He ran the company into the ground, got appointed to an executive chairman role, and is getting paid big bucks. Where is the board? Where is the shareholder revolt? The parks have millions of dollars in deferred maintenance and Selim Bassoul is getting $20 million for what? Its still just a horribly ran company.

"If I remember correctly the all parks CF pass was like $150+ before the merger,"

Actually, our all-park passes from Kings Dominion that we bought last year for the 2025 season were closer to $200 (though with some incentives and perks), and I seem to recall that Cedar Fair used to sell an "Ohio Passport" that was good at just Cedar Point and Kings Island (and Geauga Lake before that park closed) that was close to that $200 price point too.

I actually think there are quite a few guests who are interested in an all-park pass even outside of the CA and Texas markets, which is why I really thought that SF would first introduce a value-priced "regional" pass, especially given that they were reorganizing their park managers around a regional model. There is a lot of clear regionality between certain parks in the chain, and I'm sure there are plenty of guests who would pay a slight upcharge to have access to the 3-4 parks in their region with a smaller subset of those guests willing to spend a much larger upcharge to have a chain-wide annual pass.

For example, SF could easily charge $75 for a single park season pass to pretty much every park in their chain, and could get most (if not all) of those folks to pay an extra $25 to give them access to the next closest 2-3 parks in their region (i.e. Kings Dominion would get access to Carowinds and SFoG and perhaps SFGAdv and Dorney Park) How SF sorted the regions could get a little tricky, but that's where the all-park option would come into play and preserve Cedar Fair's convention to charge $100 extra for that.

I just think SF is setting a bad precedent with these cut-rate passes that now extend to Cedar Fair parks that were NEVER this cheap, and it will either come back to haunt them with a lack of funding to operate and maintain their parks in the coming years or will train consumers to not accept higher prices if they do choose to raise prices in future years.

If you think of it from an annual budget standpoint, someone like me, who is a pretty big theme park fan, was spending upwards of $400/year on season passes to regional parks before the merger (SF, CF, and Busch Gardens). When SF/CF merged, I was able to buy one pass to access all of the combined-chain's parks, which brought my season pass budget down a bit, but if I can spend just $100 to access all of the SF parks, it would bring that annual spend down to @$250. It's not like I'm going to take that savings and directly allocate it to other theme park costs, it's going to get spent on various things. However, if SF starts jacking their prices back up, it's going to be harder to find the money to reallocate back into annual theme park passes. SF is literally training their guests to spend less for their product, which is going to be hard for them to claw back.

Giving away the all-park passport is really just eye candy. Only a tiny minority of park goers take trips to visit other parks in the chain, and it is generally the hardcore fans (that's us) doing it. I am more concerned about the cheap base pass price. That genie will be nearly impossible to get back in the bottle.

It appears the current management is playing a numbers game, trying to get the guest count back up. Maybe they know something we don't. With all the improvements made over the past year to clean up and freshen up the parks, could it be their strategy is to get guests to return and see the difference? If that is the case, and guest numbers really improve, they could incrementally raise pass prices slowly over several years. Bad reputations are tough to fix, but maybe that is what they are attempting to do.