Daved Thomson

With Bill Muirhead appointed to head Six Flags' European operations, Tim Black (VP/General Manager of Six Flags New England) was designated the new VP/General Manager of all three of Six Flags' New Jersey parks. Black joined Premier Parks during his college years at the University of Oklahoma, giving him 19-years of experience in the theme park business. Black would now be running the company's largest property.

After a five-year marketing collaboration between Six Flags and the owners of the Six Flags Factory Outlet stores located across I-195 from the park, it was announced that the factory outlet stores would be dropping the Six Flags name. In place of the theme park company's name, the outlets would instead adopt the township's name as part of its own. Both the stores and Great Adventure agreed to continue working together promoting each others properties.

A group of Roller-Coaster enthusiasts who have Internet websites on the topic, visited Great Adventure on opening day to see Superman: Ultimate Flight, even though the new coaster would not be opening until April 17. GA's public relations department worked with these "internet publishers" hoping they would create posts on Internet enthusiast websites.

Contrary to what many visitors to the park believe, the animals in the Wild Safari animal park live at Great Adventure all year long. Some of the park's animals have special housing to keep them comfortable and safe from the elements during the winter months.

Mark Shapiro, then Six Flags' Chief Executive Officer, discusses his dramatic change in marketing the parks to families with small children. While the parks did improve their family focus and safety/security/cleanliness, significant declines in attendance across the parks as a result of few major attractions being introduced severely impacted revenue for the company. Reality would dictate that the company would ultimately sell several parks. While Magic Mountain was under consideration for sale, Great Adventure was not.

Business analysts, corporate executives, and GA's park president all discuss the dilemma the company faces from season-to-season when determining capital expenditures for each of their parks. To grow annual attendance and revenue at the company's larger parks (including Great Adventure), significant capital must be spent on new attractions.