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New CEO Big MOve - Pass & Membership Restructuring

Talk about anything that has to do with Six Flags Great America and Hurricane Harbor here.
Postby CoasterRiderSC on June 15th, 2022, 1:02 pm
One thing that I noticed is that to buy a single day ticket online, the "processing fee" is 11.99! The base ticket price is 34.99 (military) or 39.99 Both of those price points are less than the base ticket price for Kings Island.

The "processing fee" is pure profit!!
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Postby anewman35 on June 15th, 2022, 9:05 pm
CoasterRiderSC wrote:One thing that I noticed is that to buy a single day ticket online, the "processing fee" is 11.99! The base ticket price is 34.99 (military) or 39.99 Both of those price points are less than the base ticket price for Kings Island.

The "processing fee" is pure profit!!


And what is the ticket price, then, if not 'pure profit'? Do you think they're a non-profit organization?
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Postby CoasterRiderSC on June 15th, 2022, 9:30 pm
anewman35 wrote:
CoasterRiderSC wrote:One thing that I noticed is that to buy a single day ticket online, the "processing fee" is 11.99! The base ticket price is 34.99 (military) or 39.99 Both of those price points are less than the base ticket price for Kings Island.

The "processing fee" is pure profit!!


And what is the ticket price, then, if not 'pure profit'? Do you think they're a non-profit organization?


Obviously Six Flags is FOR Profit.... What I meant was that Six Flags makes the ticket price lower (than Kings) but then has the $12 "service fee" . It's a way to make the tickets "appear" cheap before adding that fee on!

Same thing happened with the 4 meal pass ($40 + $8 in taxes and fees).

I will say that I'm actually glad all the Free Friend days are gone because those weren't helping out the bottom line at all.
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Postby SFGAM__man on June 15th, 2022, 11:10 pm
This is basically blatant false advertising but very common especially in the travel industry. Hotels, rental cars, theme parks etc will advertise one price then when you get to the last screen when you're about to purchase it has fees added on, and they figure since you already made the mental commitment to make the purchase you will go ahead with it. There was one time I was going to book a hotel + theme park ticket at Mt Olympus for an advertised price of $150, then when I got to the last screen there was a $100 in fees added on, so after fees and taxes it was $300.
Hotel and rental car companies will try to get their prices as low as possible for the aggregator sites so you chose their hotels then when you go to book they add on the resort fees. The aggregator sites have now added a "total cost" check box that includes the fees and often you get totally different results. Its the same for stub hub/ticketmaster etc, after you click the "include fees" box the price is totally different. Many other countries have banned this practice but as usual here the industry lobbying groups have kept it going.
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Postby Sven18 on July 7th, 2022, 10:22 am
PRICES JUST INCREASED AGAIN FOR PASSES
Thrill pass $117 from $115
Exteme $177 from $175
Ultimate $390 from $350
Summer $80 from $70

Many reports that SFGAm & all SF parks are virtual ghost towns many days, with many rides walk ons or very short lines. SF while they needed to increase prices may have likely gone too much & too quick. Cutting benefits, higher prices, & less hours for people to use their more expensive products is going to make the Q2 results potentially very interesting.

SF are in major cost cutting mode , they have reduced operational hours at every parks except SFMM. They cut 1 hr or more compared to precious years & even some parks have reduced since June chaging their schedules. Here ate some examples....GAm closes at 8pm, Escape at 6pm, SFNE 8pm(7pm wed & thurs). Frontier City is closed on Tuesdays completely & at 7pm other weekdays, SFDK & St Louis 7pm weekdays & only 8pm weekends. SFFT is 7pm tues,wed, thurs & 8pm other days, 9pm saturday.

In contrast Cedar Fair are back to full hours, they even have their small parks like Dorney closing at 10pm,which was one of the parks last year they were closing tues &wed last year, with short hours the other days. SF is going to have tough comparisons to their competitors. Cedar Fair just released a thru July 4th year to date update & they had record revenues at 704M(increase 117M, record per caps up $59.52 (up $12.13), record season add ons (up 26M), record season pass sales at over 3M...etc..etc...
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Postby RobSFGAm on July 8th, 2022, 10:08 am
I wonder how much of the hour cutting is a security measure more than a cost cutting (probably both). They have the most issues at the park after 8 pm in pre-Covid years at most parks.
The monthly passes are a loss for the park as well. I hear people go to Walmart, but a $25 pore-paid Visa card. They get into the park for two months, then just walk away as the park can no longer bill the remaining 9 months on the pass as the pre-paid card is used up and the park is out the remaining $.
They need to change that to 1/2 down, then monthly fee. People can still do the same thing, but at least the parks would break even as they would get $40 + (2 x $7).
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Postby CoasterRiderSC on July 10th, 2022, 12:55 pm
We went to Kings Island, KY Kingdom and Holiday World 6/1 - 6/3.

NONE of those parks was super crowded! At Kings we got on 27 rides (with 0 'rerides') and we weren't pushing it that hard. 28 rides at KY Kingdom and they were only open 8 hours and 32 rides at Holiday World in 9 hours. Holiday wasn't that crowded even though it was a Friday and they had their "Holiday Nights" event.


My point: OTHER parks aren't that crowded either .

I do believe it has to do with the hyperinflation we're seeing now for gasoline, groceries, natural gas, electricity, etc. Families have much less disposable and discretionary income now since 1/21/2021. It was Steve Cortes (I believe) who said an average family is paying 6700 more per year for basic necessities now!
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Postby Sven18 on July 10th, 2022, 6:58 pm
CoasterRiderSC wrote:We went to Kings Island, KY Kingdom and Holiday World 6/1 - 6/3.


My point: OTHER parks aren't that crowded either .

I do believe it has to do with the hyperinflation we're seeing now for gasoline, groceries, natural gas, electricity, etc. Families have much less disposable and discretionary income now since 1/21/2021. It was Steve Cortes (I believe) who said an average is paying 6700 more per year for basic necessities now!


The first week of June midweek, before schools are out, is different than the sparse crowds. late June & in July at SFGAm. Went over it before, every SF park cut hours from their original operating hours for a reason, cutting hours is never positive. Closing a top 3 park in the chain like GAm, at 8pm in prime season pf July is a massive warning sign. Also, all the other hours changes I partially documented. Cedar Fair is not cutting hours, they expanded them at small parks to pre Covid levels of 10pm close, They produced record results in their July 4th YTD update. SF produced poor reults Q4 & Q1, Q2 is shaping up for the same. The stock is down almost 50% YTD. The analyst cut estimates and downgraded Six Flags pending evidence that the new "Jerry Maguire" strategy is working, " or at least not backfiring." That's a quote from a note. Wallstreet is not really buying what Bassoul is selling, they seem to think he went for too big of increases, too fast & he keeps raising prices. up again this month. Any weakness there is naturally with inflation is being compounded for SF with the massive price hikes by SF historical standards
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Postby CoasterRiderSC on July 10th, 2022, 8:50 pm
I posted a reason why parks attendance is down. I've heard from other riders (on another forum) that they've seen sparse crowds at OTHER parks even in July!

I'm stating that one very likely reason is due to the hyper inflation: Steve Cortes said that average family's costs of basic and necessary items is up $6700 for a year. I know my family is feeling it for sure!

So families don't have the disposable and discretionary income that they had 1-2 years ago.

My post had nothing to do with cutting hours, the new CEO, changing paint colors, adding more shade,etc.

It's all about the hyperinflation since 1/21/2021.......
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Postby Sven18 on July 10th, 2022, 10:46 pm
CoasterRiderSC wrote:I posted a reason why parks attendance is down. I've heard from other riders (on another forum) that they've seen sparse crowds at OTHER parks even in July!

I'm stating that one very likely reason is due to the hyper inflation: Steve Cortes said that average family's costs of basic and necessary items is up $6700 for a year. I know my family is feeling it for sure!

So families don't have the disposable and discretionary income that they had 1-2 years ago.

My post had nothing to do with cutting hours, the new CEO, changing paint colors, adding more shade,etc.

It's all about the hyperinflation since 1/21/2021.......


I travel all the time, to parks for all chains this year, SF is down compared to other chains. Hotels are also solidly booked & prices are not falling. You do not want to face facts many people do not think SF is worth the price with the big increases & inflation is a distant second Many people used to $60 season passes for all parks are not willing to pay $115 for 1 park, & $175 to get all parks, but still less benefits. $175 is what they used to get a pass, dining & season drinks for. SF season & membership base shrank,look at the q4 & Q1 report compared to pass years. In the past, when SF had 8M base, w/ the cheap prices, the people had already bought the fall/winter before. People thus would show up now to use what they already paid. However, SF instituted big increases w/o, which cut down the off season pass pre sale numbers.Now people aren't willing to pay as described before. Selling passes pre sale off season is a hedge against weather & economic conditions The fact is Cedar Fair in comparison has record season pass sales, record revenue, record season add on product(dining/drink) & hotel/resort numbers & bookings ahead of 2019 , etc...So, CF patrons are just not being affected by inflation & SF are or it's because what CF did compared to SF, it's the latter. The hours cuts are b/c the attendance is down for the above reasons. SF is trying to cut costs to make the numbers for Q2 & Q3 better because things are down.
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Postby SFGAM__man on July 11th, 2022, 10:21 am
I've been saying it over and over, the new CEO not being from the industry is a huge negative. You can have all the best intentions in the world but it doesn't matter if you don't know what you're doing.

I'll give you an example, in 2011 Cedar Fair hired Matt Ouimet to turn the company around. The first thing he did was cut off doing business with Intamin (at least for new rides) and all of their big new coasters they added over the next decade were B&M, GCI, and later on RMC. Now i'm not saying all the big coasters need to be B&M/GCI in all circumstances but at that point in history Dick Kinzel's Cedar Fair had been burned by Intamin over and over and over and over and the parks were so full of unreliable Intamin's that they badly needed big coasters that were super reliable and high capacity. Matt Ouimet understood how much of an issue it was to build rides that were low capacity, and he understood what manufacturers were good at what, because he had industry experience to draw from. He also understood how importance operations, maintenance, and landscaping was because he had been dealing with Disneyland's fanbase for years before that who will relentlessly call you out for stuff like that. He also understood how to actually budget and deploy resources over a long period of time because he worked in theme park finance for 15 years before becoming the VP of Disneyland.

It's easy for a high powered executive to come in and say "fix everything," but here we are in the middle of summer and SFGAm has just as many closed rides as its ever had and the parks apperance is just as poor as its ever been. We even made Screamscapes twitter as a few weeks ago Lance retweeted a bunch of photos showcasing the poor upkeep of the park.
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Postby Dural on July 12th, 2022, 3:09 pm
CoasterRiderSC wrote:I posted a reason why parks attendance is down. I've heard from other riders (on another forum) that they've seen sparse crowds at OTHER parks even in July!

I'm stating that one very likely reason is due to the hyper inflation: Steve Cortes said that average family's costs of basic and necessary items is up $6700 for a year. I know my family is feeling it for sure!

So families don't have the disposable and discretionary income that they had 1-2 years ago.

My post had nothing to do with cutting hours, the new CEO, changing paint colors, adding more shade,etc.

It's all about the hyperinflation since 1/21/2021.......


I think it's a combination of things, but inflation certainly doesn't hurt. I stopped by on Friday 7/1 with my 6yo so he could ride Whizzer and it was empty. I couldn't believe it being a holiday weekend, also couldn't believe the park closed at 8pm on a holiday weekend in July. I think a lot of people were pissed off by the stupid reservation system last year as well, I know I was and hadn't been to the park all season until the visit on 7/1. The cuts and price increases obviously aren't going to help.
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Postby Sven18 on July 20th, 2022, 3:29 pm
The first capitulation by new CEO on Pricing

BUY 2 GET 1 FREE ON ALL PASSES & TICKETS.
1)He's probably trying to make Q3 not as bad, as parks continue to be light in July (Q3) after light June(end of Q2)
2)Trying to build a 2023 base, as the massive price increases with new pass system in the spring hindered the pass base
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Postby Jodon on July 20th, 2022, 6:15 pm
They are also offering BAF for 29.99 on select dates over the next two weeks.


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Postby Sven18 on July 21st, 2022, 9:45 am
Six Flags out with another round of Operating Hours reductions, nothing new at SFGAM yet. SFOT is changing from 8pm close to 7pm close in July(started the season at 9pm close.
SFA has 7pm close rest of July/August..previous 8pm
SFNE has 7pm close rest of July/August, previous only closing 7pm Wed & Thurs
DL has 7pm close rest of July/August & closed completely Tuesdays in August
SFDK has 6pm close Tues & Thurs(previous 7pm) , 7pm Su(previous 8pm)

Posted a couple of weeks ago about SF in major cost cutting to keep the numbers from being really disappointing, they are ramping it up more. Will not be surprised if SFGAm ops are curtailed come August, already stopping weekdays ops 2 weeks before Labor Day.

The new CEO's strategy may have worked too well, of lowering attendance.
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Postby CoasterRiderSC on July 21st, 2022, 9:09 pm
Sven18 wrote:Six Flags out with another round of Operating Hours reductions, nothing new at SFGAM yet. SFOT is changing from 8pm close to 7pm close in July(started the season at 9pm close.
SFA has 7pm close rest of July/August..previous 8pm
SFNE has 7pm close rest of July/August, previous only closing 7pm Wed & Thurs
DL has 7pm close rest of July/August & closed completely Tuesdays in August
SFDK has 6pm close Tues & Thurs(previous 7pm) , 7pm Su(previous 8pm)

Posted a couple of weeks ago about SF in major cost cutting to keep the numbers from being really disappointing, they are ramping it up more. Will not be surprised if SFGAm ops are curtailed come August, already stopping weekdays ops 2 weeks before Labor Day.

The new CEO's strategy may have worked too well, of lowering attendance.



Sven - You've just accepted the CEO of Six Flags position! Congratulations! How would you start to turn around the franchise?? What would be your first 5 big moves and what timeline would they occur in??
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Postby CoasterDave316 on July 24th, 2022, 8:50 pm
Sven18 wrote: Will not be surprised if SFGAm ops are curtailed come August, already stopping weekdays ops 2 weeks before Labor Day.


It's believe it's been pretty common for them to stop weekday operation 2 weeks before Labor Day weekend. So I wouldn't really read much into that. The cut hours also might have more to do with staffing then attendance.
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Postby CoasterRiderSC on July 24th, 2022, 10:50 pm
CoasterDave316 wrote:
Sven18 wrote: Will not be surprised if SFGAm ops are curtailed come August, already stopping weekdays ops 2 weeks before Labor Day.


It's believe it's been pretty common for them to stop weekday operation 2 weeks before Labor Day weekend. So I wouldn't really read much into that. The cut hours also might have more to do with staffing then attendance.


Dave - YES, it's really about staffing I believe! I've talked to several operators and they all tell me they're short staffed.
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Postby Coaster Justin on July 30th, 2022, 8:56 am
CoasterRiderSC wrote:
Sven18 wrote:Six Flags out with another round of Operating Hours reductions, nothing new at SFGAM yet. SFOT is changing from 8pm close to 7pm close in July(started the season at 9pm close.
SFA has 7pm close rest of July/August..previous 8pm
SFNE has 7pm close rest of July/August, previous only closing 7pm Wed & Thurs
DL has 7pm close rest of July/August & closed completely Tuesdays in August
SFDK has 6pm close Tues & Thurs(previous 7pm) , 7pm Su(previous 8pm)

Posted a couple of weeks ago about SF in major cost cutting to keep the numbers from being really disappointing, they are ramping it up more. Will not be surprised if SFGAm ops are curtailed come August, already stopping weekdays ops 2 weeks before Labor Day.

The new CEO's strategy may have worked too well, of lowering attendance.



Sven - You've just accepted the CEO of Six Flags position! Congratulations! How would you start to turn around the franchise?? What would be your first 5 big moves and what timeline would they occur in??



If I may speak for myself:

1- More Shade in Waterpark Seating Area
2- Raise Dining Passes $25 but keep them
3- Eliminate the lower tier Membership Pass
4- Replace Blacktop with Concrete/Cement
5- Bring back Chainwide youtube announcement videos

HMs:
6- Add Coke Zero to all Soda Refill Locations
7- Live Youtube Videos of Fireworks on July 4th from all the parks
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Postby Jodon on July 30th, 2022, 12:50 pm
Replacing the blacktop with concrete would do WONDERS for the park in appearance and comfort. I was there on a sunny mid-70’s day this summer and the park felt so hot just because of the blacktop.


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Postby Coaster Justin on July 30th, 2022, 3:44 pm
One more big/small thing

Add more festivals. Like Chili Fest, Mardi Gras Events, Pet-Fest, German Fest, and other things to bring people back

Also Races around the park, which doesn't cost much and can be added easily.
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Postby Sven18 on August 3rd, 2022, 3:52 pm
THE CAPITULATION CONTINUES

Got email today on bring a friend for free. I have a membership but assuming they sent this to pass holders also.

Bassoul perspective on free tickets Q1 call:
"I don't want free tickets. Free tickets people -- we know data. Those people don't spend any money in our parks. They come for free.

They come in, they don't even buy a bottle of water. So from that perspective, I don't want to have them choke the parks, It was suffocating our parks.


I guess when the parks are empty you change your mind...Lol
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Postby SFGAM__man on August 4th, 2022, 10:39 am
I just want to point out that in the past few months Sven18 has done at total 180 on his opinion of the new CEO. He had no problem giving me a hard time about my viewpoint at the beginning of the season when I said I was skeptical that this guy was going to actually follow through with what he was saying he was going to do :roll:.. Like I said at the start of the season, it was the same exact thing that hapenned numerous times with management changes in the past: "we need to fix the park experience and stop discounting so much." And every single time they make it like half a season and then make massive budget cuts and start discounting.

Like I said before, it's easy to say a bunch of common sense, it's hard to have the experience and knowledge to be able to successfully implement your vision over a long period of time.
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Postby JT2002 on August 5th, 2022, 8:33 pm
Sven18 wrote:THE CAPITULATION CONTINUES

Got email today on bring a friend for free. I have a membership but assuming they sent this to pass holders also.

Bassoul perspective on free tickets Q1 call:
"I don't want free tickets. Free tickets people -- we know data. Those people don't spend any money in our parks. They come for free.

They come in, they don't even buy a bottle of water. So from that perspective, I don't want to have them choke the parks, It was suffocating our parks.


I guess when the parks are empty you change your mind...Lol

There's a clear and present divide between corporate and the parks themselves. They're cocky, unable to empathize with their largest customer bases, and lack the industry knowledge that the average park management full timer has. Yet corporate will squeeze these parks for all they're worth at the expense of the employee, and the exodus is already underway until you have people who will strip the park of its integrity and what brings families and friends back year after year.
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Postby CoasterRiderSC on August 6th, 2022, 8:54 pm
CEO Sven18 - What are you first 5 big moves to turn around the Six Flags company and what's the timeline for these moves?? What are the metrics that will be used to measure progress??
Last edited by CoasterRiderSC on August 11th, 2022, 3:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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