Six Flags sells seven of its parks

The sale price seems a smidge low. Herschend took out a loan of over $1 billion to finance the purchase of the Palace Entertainment parks. That was a larger portfolio, but mostly comprised of smaller family parks, water parks and FECs. Cedar Fair paid $28 million for Michigan's Adventure a quarter century ago and they can't get $50 million a park for that and the other 6 former Six Flags? It appears as though a limited # of willing buyers depressed the sale price and New Six Flags was desperate to get them off the books.

Given what it does with season passes, it is any surprise that the company would offer its parks at fire sale prices?

I don't know Zarex, if you assume that this reporting is accurate, EPR is paying $331 million for parks with a combined attendance of 4.5 million. That equates to a per cap average of $73.55, which is well beyond what any SF or CF park has produced in history with the most recent per cap number for 4Q25 sitting at $61.90. Certainly, it feels like the purchase price is low, but the reality is that EPR is paying a premium to get their foot in the door here. Let's not forget that these are parks that were already the red-headed stepchildren of SF/CF even before the chains merged, and were rarely seeing any significant investment, so to project the sale of these 7 parks on the value of the rest of the SF chain is not a fair comparison. In other words, SF sold their lemons for tangerine prices.

They're buying the parks for more than one year, so I don't think that per cap math makes much sense. A little sad to see Valleyfair, one of the original Cedar Fair parks, kicked to the curb. But the hope has to be that these parks fair better under a smaller management umbrella rather than inevitably getting lost in the shuffle in a much larger corporation.

While Valleyfair is one of the OG Cedar Fair parks, this deal also includes SFStL, which was one of the 3 original Six Flags parks. I realize that this is a longer term deal, but when a transaction like this is made in the business world, analysts look at the immediate return, typically as a per-share price to value the sale. Who knows what other agreements are in place, because the details are slowly trickling out - in fact they just noted that guests who purchased season-long dining plans would only get a $10 food voucher per visit at the divested parks - so aside from the $331 million for the 7 parks and use of SF (and presumably previously licensed IPs) branding for the rest of 2026, it's not clear what other concessions have been (or will be) made by both sides to finalize the transaction.

I do wonder how EPR will move forward with these properties, because it's possible that they end up consolidating some of these parks that overlap markets or utilize assets from one park to improve another. Today's announcement feels like it's just the first domino in a larger series of moves that will be made not only by EPR, but also SF in the next year or 2.

It seems extremely likely now that the EPR owned Six Flags properties - Darien Lake, Frontier City, and the assorted stand alone Hurricane Harbors - will also lose their branding after the 2026 season. And I am wondering if New England and/or Discovery Kingdom are still on the bubble or if this is the end of the portfolio paring.

To be honest, I'm surprised they aren't jettisoning SFDK and Dorney too. I would imagine they'll sunset whatever management contract they have at Darien Lake and Frontier City (I believe?). Go big or go home is I guess their final option to see if they can get this all to work.

SFDK will be the company's only park in the Bay Area once California's Great America closes.

I've seen this one coming a mile away, and other than Valleyfair being sold off the same year it's getting some sizable investment, nothing here is all that surprising. Six Flags has made it clear they're only really interested in the larger parks, and given that everything being cut loose is in the smaller half of the chain in terms of attendance and revenue, that seems to be holding true. Of note is that if all the other moves expected to happen after this season actually pan out, the chain will be down to 16 theme parks for the 2027 season, just one more than Six Flags has before the merger. I feel like this is a good thing, but only time will tell.

As for why keep Dorney and SFDK, the former serves as a partner park to SFGAdv in a similar manner to the pairing of Knott's and SFMM in SoCal, and they probably want to give the latter a couple years after CGA's closure to see if it can scoop up the entire bay area audience. I expect those to be quick cuts should they fail to perform in their roles over the next two or three seasons.

@ AJ Hummel
Given the cash crunch that SF is in now, I would not be surprised that 2026 could be the last full season for SFDK and DP. The longest I see them hanging around is till before LA2028 at the most

The biggest loser here is unquestionably La Ronde. Such a great city, such potential to be a nice park, my god.

At least the Enchanted Parks people seem like they have a pulse and are saying all the right things, Kieran Burke has a 30 year track record of destroying everything he touches. I have always thought La Ronde has the potential to be like the North American version of Tivoli Gardens, its just such an amazing location. But now its basically doomed.