GAcoaster

The Golden Kingdom was spectacular when it opened, and now is quite sad and underused.

Great Adventure used to offer a full day of shows, but now offers practically nothing with several venues sitting vacant. Bring back a show at least to Showcase.

The parks big restaurants got remodeled and look half done with dull, uninteresting gray interiors which don't fit the buildings fanciful exteriors.

The Big Wheel is desperately in need of restoration including the lighting. The ride has always been a centerpiece of the park and deserves to look its best.

The Log Flume is one of the few remaining original attractions and continues to be a favorite attraction, but it has been showing its age. The park is promising to do a full restoration of the ride, and we hope it actually gets all the TLC it needs.

Operating days and hours used to be pretty much set in stone, often published in brochures at the start of the season. Now that everything is online, the calendar and operating hours seems to fluctuate constantly and does not always match what the park actually is doing.

It's funny to me I passed by it hundreds of times, and probably even stopped and watched people climb it, but I didn't remember it moved from one end of the Boardwalk to the other until I started writing the text! For a while it seemed like rock climbing walls were EVERYWHERE!

Like so many parks, Magic Mountain is streamlining and updating their entrance plaza: All the parks have realized the old entry plazas were not suited to today's uses. There's no need for so many ticket booths when most guests are buying tickets online. They're also adding solar panel canopies above their parking lots right now.

IF they do end up making Fright Fest/Haunt separate tickets chain wide, I would expect that they would have to elevate the experience to be worth the price. Dorney's Haunt is far better than GA's Fright Fest-- they should all be on the same level.

I think the whole industry is moving towards charging specifically for haunt events as hard tickets like HHN/Howl-O-Scream/Knott's Scary Farm. They're all looking to double dip with day guests for fun/friendly Halloween then a special event for nights that is specifically less family friendly. The problem with including Halloween with the daytime admission is people keep their kids in the park and complain about them being scared when that's the point.

Lance did a pretty good analysis of the merger for BlooLoop, and it's worth a read: https://blooloop.com/theme-park/opinion/six-flags-cedar-fair-merger-impact/

It's interesting to see all the doom and gloom on this around the fan groups-- I see mostly plusses, and I get Cedar Fair park fans fears of their parks declining, but Six Flags can only improve at this point.

People keep poo-pooing this and I remember when Cedar Fair bought Paramount Parks and it was the same kind of complaints. They came out just fine with a few growing pains. I think this will be the same, and I think we'll see Cedar Fair taking the lead on rolling out similar cleanliness, and maintenance standards company wide.

I can't see an issue with approvals-- theme parks are not a necessity, and there is still plenty of competition. It's interesting to see their current strategy will keep Peanuts and the DC/Looney Toons stuff.

The combined company will use the Six Flags name: https://investors.sixflags.com/news-and-events/press-releases/2023/11-02-2023-100020810?fbclid=IwAR1oAGiPUhdQes4BDNs1k6fMUTSvDXnen92SJDNr1HmZ5KxE7-tNdPJE-jg&mibextid=Zxz2cZ

Nope-- I would guess that Great Adventure, Great America, Magic Mountain, and SFOT are safe as "keepers" for the new company since they along with their parks (Canada's Wonderland, Cedar Point, Kings Island, and Knott's Berry Farm) all are top draws and money makers. The smaller parks would be the most likely sale candidates since SeaWorld and Herschend would probably have some interest in acquiring them. Things like Frontier City, Discovery Kingdom, Great Escape, America, Dorney, Valleyfair, Michigan's Adventure would be more likely sale candidates.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/six-flags-cedar-fair-near-merger-report-ac10f3ac They've explored merging several times in the past, but I think this time it has a good chance of happening. Six Flags has lost their way in the past few years, and Cedar Fair has a much better track record in most respects. The money they could save in combined operations is substantial (at least in the short term) the consumers could be big winners with Season Passes valid for so many parks. Of course they would then have less need to spend on big additions to their parks with less competition, but things could change, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the combined company sell a park or two off to either SeaWorld or Herschend.

It looks like the great weather for all the east coast parks made Saturday a BIG day-- it's typically the busiest day of the year.

Yeah, not too surprising. January/February the weather is just too iffy to justify spending on staffing and to lose the off season maintenance window.

Here's a few more:

Over on Twitter/X, Eddie Sotto who did a lot of the design work for the Power Plant has been posting fantastic concept art and info about it: His account is amazing with lot of great background info on the Power Plant and many other projects he worked on. He was a big part of the Euro Disney design team and has been posting tons of stuff about that park in celebration of it's 30th anniversary.

Seems to be a trend--

Yep-- apparently Photopass and food prices went up as well. They keep raising prices, then selling discounted tickets to try and get people to come to the parks.

I think we'll have a definitive answer on the swinging in a couple of weeks when B&M sets up at the IAAPA convention. I assume they'll have ride vehicles for the BGT and SWO coasters on display there.

Made to Thrill has teamed up with Six Flags for a new line of merchandise! His work is AMAZING, and I can't wait to see what he did for each park. I'm going to go broke... If you're not familiar, check out his website: https://madetothrill.com/ I have several of the prints, and a few pins and patches from MTT already, and the official line he did for Cedar Fair Parks is amazing. Lot's of retro/past attraction stuff and logos! This will be awesome for the 50th!