Zimmerman stepping down as head of Six Flags

In other words, Six Flags won, and former Cedar Fair parks are in for a long slog of neglect and cost-cutting by former SF management. While most won't necessarily have any love loss for Zimmerman, he at least knew the value and appeal of the Cedar Fair brand and how it was superior to Six Flags.

I hope this doesn’t accelerate Six Flags closing down parks or selling them to other companies. Today’s earnings release again mentioned selling excess land and non-core assets. I suspect that new rides will continue to be delayed as Six Flags tries to salvage as much cash as possible to pay down debt.

I feel bad for the many employees that are doing double the work after the layoffs. There’s a lack of leadership at the parks with the park presidents being eliminated and now there is going to be a big change at corporate.

What will Six Flags do with the rides at Six Flags America once it closes? Will they send them to some of the smaller parks (Michigan's Adventure, Frontier City, Valleyfair) to give them some much-needed new attractions? Or will they sell them off to pay down debt?

I think it's a little early to call this one.

Can't really factor in last year because all they had time to do was basically rebrand before the season was over. This is the first real year that the chains have been combined and actually existing together. And considering the hand that Zimmerman has been dealt the past 5 years or so...with Covid and giant emergency debt to stay open and closures and quarantine and spiking labor costs, and interest rate spikes and insurance increases and inflation and the costs skyrocketing...and now a merger that essentially doubles the size of company and the debt, and adds a lot of historically problematic underperforming slackers to the park line up, I think he's done ok. If you read the release, the Q2 numbers are more of an indictment on the state of the legacy Six Flags parks than they are on Zimmerman. He ran Cedar Fair the past six years, and those parks don't appear to be losing.

Making this work has always been about implementing the Cedar Fair way of operations and business to the old Six Flags parks, and it's going to take some time to repair the image and reputation of the legacy Six Flags operations. Projects have to be delayed, resources need to be diverted to the parks that need them to level up. They have to watch their money, but on the bright side, a lot of the things they really need to do don't cost that much. For years people have bagged on the old Six Flags parks for ignoring all the basic things...operations, food, security, ambience, maintenance, lack of non coaster attractions, customer service, etc etc. Now is the opportunity to fix those hundred little things that erode customer experience and reputation and keep people from coming back, then go back and build the big rides and add the special events and such.

It's way too early to call this thing, and I don't see the correlation between Zimmerman stepping down as CEO and these Q2 results. For one, he's staying on the board, and two...his old side of the company is holding up their end of the couch. Let's see how Q3 goes.

@Dairyshrine - Everything that has happened at Six Flags in 2025 has been about self-preservation. I would surmise that the answer to your question would in how much it would cost SF to relocate attractions versus how much SF would receive from selling the attractions.

Given the merger of SF and CF, there's 1 less potential buying for major theme park attractions. While some of the smaller and independent theme park operators might be interested in purchasing some of the flat rides, but the larger rides and coasters would likely be prohibitively expensive to purchase and move to a smaller park. However, keeping the attractions in the chain and simply moving them to another park is going to cost a lot of money, and might not result in a tangible benefit for the chain. SFA's best rides are Superman: Ride of Steel, Batwing, and Joker's Jinx. You could also argue that Mind Eraser/Professor Screamore's Skywinder holds some value because the park invested in new trains and a full overhaul of the coaster. However, I just don't know where most of these attractions would help deliver enough revenue to offset the relocation costs.

The most likely outcome is that Six Flags will see if there's interest from smaller parks for SFA's best attractions, and if they can get a decent price, they'll sell them. However, ultimately, I think most, if not all, the attractions will be sold for scrap with critical parts stripped and shipped to parks within identical or similar rides to supplement the maintenance for other parks.

I think the remaining "small" parks in the chain are due for a reckoning, and could be closed as well.

A net loss of $100 million, combined with a 9% dip in attendance, suggests that he isn't leaving on a high note.

I'm seeing a lot of comments on the internet as well as enthusiast youtube videos that he was asked to leave/fired. Personally I do not think this is accurate, otherwise he would not be staying around until the end of the year and he wouldn't be included in the successor search. A companies board does not want someone in the top position staying around running things after informing him that he's getting the boot. That wouldn't do any good for anyone, they would just say either quit right now or we are firing you right now and he would be replaced with an interim CEO.

I don't think we will ever find out exactly why he is leaving but I think the most likely scenarios are:

1. He sees no turnaround and doesn't want to go down with the ship.
2. He can't stand dealing with Selim Bassoul as the chairman/doesn't have as much as agency as he thought he would.
3. He's in his mid 60's, has had a long stressful career, and wants to retire and spend more time with his family and hobbies.
4. A mix of some or all the above

I have been vocal on these boards for years that I do not think he was a great CEO of Cedar Fair, the company always seemed like kind of a dumpster fire during his tenure but it didn't get much attention because Six Flags was a bigger dumpster fire for a much longer period of time. Throughout history the merging of two dumpster fires rarely ever works out well and so far the new Six Flags seems to be having all the same issues that most struggling companies that merge have. The official reason given for the merger was that they could lower costs through economies of scale...TBH "lowering costs" is really not a great reason for two big corporations to merge.

Also this guy Selim Bassoul...he has become like the Trump of the amusement park business. He is clearly profoundly incompetent to anyone paying attention, but somehow swindled enough people into giving him the top job and managed to stay there for years and years. He is cashing massive checks as a reward for doing a horrible job.

(Mr. Bassoul if you are reading this I apologize for calling you profoundly incompetent as I don't know you personally, but when you speak nothing you say makes any sense, and you sound like the soup nazi. Also there is no question you are unfathomably overpaid).

Firstly, I don't think this was as simple as "Zimmerman screwed up." Instead, this sounds more like Zimmerman, who is currently in his mid 60s, sees the road to recovery for the merged chain is far longer than he previously anticipated and is choosing to step aside before getting too deep into things. Especially with reports that there has been a lot of infighting related to decisions being made by the merged company, it makes sense that someone who sees their retirement in the next three to five years would leave a couple years early rather than sticking it out in what is likely a stressful and challenging position.

Secondly, I don't think this automatically means Six Flags is doomed. They have been dealt a bad hand due to external factors and have certainly made some misplays, but I don't think they've experienced a critical failure yet. What I do think, however, is that they probably are going to fall short of the targets they claimed earlier this year and will probably need to liquidate more assets than planned in order to remain afloat long enough to get through this. I foresee several years of lean capital as much of the investment goes instead toward creating parks people want to visit and are willing to spend money at, because they've got a long way to go in order to hit their revenue target of ~$100/guest.

Lastly, despite what I said above, I do think Six Flags is in a pretty precarious position at the moment, and I don't think they have a lot of wiggle room going forward. If they appoint a new CEO who isn't effective, if they don't sell enough passes during this crazy sale, or if they don't make visible improvements in the guest experience next season, they could be in for a lot of trouble. Most regular visitors will shrug off a single bad day, but a few bad days in a row will definitely lead them to think twice about returning.