Six Flags May Merge With Cedar Fair?

[cory]

Well i heard this rumor but didn't believe it. It was reported on Screamscape.com that Six Flags is possibly merging with Cedar Fair. This is strange.

http://screamscape.com/html/industry_news.htm#SixFlags

[Changsucks]

Nah.

[Austin]

No. This is more crap people make up. for example, Disney buying KK and moving us out pretty much within 30 minutes of Kings Island? Theyre taking advantage of Six Flags situation.

[cory]

Yeah i agree with you. Like my teacher saying that his son works at Kentucky Kingdom and said paramount was walking through the the park checking it out.

They could not move Kentucky Kingdom anyways.

[palmer]

No way in hell. It's bad enough we have "ok" theming. We'll end up seeing rides like Batman: The Ride, a clone around SFI, become something like Boo Berry Blast on Boo Hill

[Vic]

Yeah i agree with you. Like my teacher saying that his son works at Kentucky Kingdom and said paramount was walking through the the park checking it out.

They could not move Kentucky Kingdom anyways.

Paramount was the park looking into making the purchase about 3 weeks before Premier Parks showed up back in 1997.

I wish SF and CF would combine... 2 bad business groups together.... i see a lot of other companies sitting back and smiling!

[Austin]

But its bad for the industry as Lance pointed out:

In a strange news story I find hard to believe, it seems that some of Six Flags creditors believe that Apollo Global Management may swoop in to make an attempt to acquire Six Flags shortly after they finalize the deal to buy Cedar Fair, thus creating the theme park mega-merger deal of the century. While many theme park chains have been exchanging hands and merging of late, it just seems crazy that the former Paramount Parks, Premier Parks, Cedar Fair parks and Six Flags parks could possibly ever operate under one banner. The marketing overlap alone from a deal of this magnatude makes my head hurt as several major competitors could soon be allies.
My biggest fear from a deal like this is in one fell swoop, we could see the monopolization of America’s regional theme park industry. Without competition to drive up innovation and propel the sale of new rides and attractions, the industry in this country will quickly become stagnant, wither and die. While it may not be a perfect example, lets take the events that transpired at Ohio’s Geauga Lake to heart as a possible micro-sized version of what could happen across the country.
For years, Geauga Lake and SeaWorld Ohio survived and even thrived as competitors running two very different theme parks on opposite sides of the same lake. When SeaWorld was sold to Six Flags, the properties were merged together into one giant mega-park experience and renamed Six Flags Worlds of Adventure. Instead of finding financial success… or even staying even with previous attendance levels at the two parks, they quickly found attendance levels at the megapark to be dwindling. Instead of spending a day at each park, many people simply came for one day to visit both at same time. Suffering, the park property was soon sold to their Cedar Fair, their nearest competitor who shared the same market with Cedar Point. They promptly removed the Six Flags branding and renamed the property back to Geauga Lake.
It’s no secret that once Geauga Lake and Cedar Point were owned by the same company, Geauga Lake essentially got the proverbial shaft when it came time to handing out budgets for new attractions. Cedar Point was Cedar Fair’s flagship park and there was no way they were going to get Geauga Lake steal their thunder. When the opportunity to buy the Paramount Park chain arose, Cedar Fair jumped right at it, taking over the other big competitor in the state… Kings Island. With three massive parks all sharing the Ohio market under one owner Geauga Lake always drew the short straw. Attendance and profits continued to fall, because of a lack of major new capital attractions, and before anyone knew what was going on Geauga Lake was shut down for good.
Now think about the parks that share the same basic market where this could happen all over again? Six Flags Great Adventure shares the same basic marketplace as Dorney Park and Six Flags America with Kings Dominion a bit to the South. In California Knott’s Berry Farm and SF Magic Mountain are close and to the north California’s Great America and SF Discovery Kingdom are also competitors. Six Flags St. Louis isn’t too far from Worlds of Fun, and Carowinds is about 4 hours from Six Flags over Georgia.
In short, this is the bad idea of all bad ideas… so lets hope this is just some crazy pipe dream and nothing more.

Many parks would close if this happened.

[palmer]

^All small, less money making parks, like SFA and SFGE. But SFMM, GADV, GAm, maybe even SFNE and SFLA could survive in the merge. Plus, SFDK would probably become like a Gilroy Gardens, and be all animal stuff

[Austin]

They wont survive. They are sitting pretty much on top of each other. They survive now because of competition. Merge and eliminate competition then what? Whos there to compete with other then the small family owned parks?

This will never happen. It would put hundreds of small parks out of business and would force closure of quite a few SF and CF parks to accommodate this new alliance. And btw, Apollo never bought CF and they wont ever buy CF. All shareholders are voting against it.

[palmer]

I wouldn't even think Six Flags would be bought by anyone, period. CF won't. Apollo has no chance or the money to maintain all the parks. Blackstone wouldn't expand because they won't more vacation destinations, rather than parks in Jackson, New Jersey (not near the shore nor Trenton/Newark/Cape May), or, if it was still around, Louisville, Kentucky (sorry, but not a tourist attraction area).

[Austin]

On the contrary it actually is. Just saying lol.

[cory]

Yeah because of Church Hill Downs and Waverly Hills and more.

[Austin]

Fort Knox also. One of the top 10 largest Military bases and many live in Louisville, coupled with the Patton armor museum. Plus other unique museums like the ali and frazier ones.

[cory]

Yeah and people always came to Kentucky Kingdom for concerts because i remember walking throught the parking lot and alot of license plate had different states on it. Six Flags complained saying nobody never came to kentucky only people in the city and i know that is not true.

[nitrofan]

Why did you remove my post Austin?

[Austin]

That was an accident. It showed 3 of the same posts so i selected 2 of them which would have left the one but I must have accidentally got all 3

[nitrofan]

Ok, I just wasn't sure.

I don't know why it got posted 3 times though.

[cory]

Dont Paramount own Kings Island?

[nitrofan]

Dont Paramount own Kings Island?

No, Cedar Fair bought all of the Paramount parks in 2007.

[palmer]

Dont Paramount own Kings Island?

That's why we see more typical ride names instead of pretty cool names, like Top Gun, Face/Off, Tomb Raider, etc.

[Jp]

All I know so far is that this rumor is false!?!?!?!

[Jp]

According from the Fan Call, Apollo is not buying Six Flags.

[nitrofan]

This rumor is absolutely ridiculous.

EDIT: Apollo no longer has interest in Cedar Fair and Shapiro confirmed all rumors of merging as false.

Thread Locked