Is The Merger of Six Flags and Cedar Fair Doom and Gloom? - Part 1

McLovin is the king.

Fun fact: That DC/Marvel merger you mentioned really came close to happening. Twice.

Years ago in business school one of my professors said “all mergers are actually acquisitions - sometimes it just takes time to identify who was acquired”. His point was the new management will primarily (often nearly exclusively) come from one company. In this case it’s likely Cedar Fair managers will be running Six Flags parks 2-3 years from now, which means Six Flags effectively was acquired. That’s probably a good thing for the amusement park industry overall.

If no one else has said this yet, thanks for dumbing this down for those of us that felt on the fence and uncertain about this to feel comfortable and look forward to this with hope that it will benefit everyone. I say this sincerely and don't want this to be taken in any negative way. The Sea World/Busch Gardens/Sesame Place comparison shows that the Six Flags and Cedar Fair brands that we may know and love could still exist very similarly while maintaining their current identities. Thank you!

In this “merger of equals,” Six Flags gets the name and stock ticker, but: Cedar Fair CEO Richard Zimmerman stays at the top, Cedar Fair unitholders control 51.2% of the new entity, finance and operations functions stay in Sandusky, and the new HQ is in Charlotte (closest park: Carowinds).

In all my years of covering this industry, I would've NEVER thought of this happening - but now it's here, and it's real. Very, very concerned by this merger. However, I can't help but think that this massive move was made in order to counter some insane further expansion by Universal and Disney - almost to keep Cedar Fair's and Six Flags' hold on their market share for fear of it being eventually overtaken by them.

I swear cedar fair is still salty that kingda ka took top thrill dragster’s record, so cedar fair merged to say they operate the tallest coaster in the world 💀

Wow McLovin, our boy worked for Cedar Fair for 2 years? Wow, he's someone that we really should trust in terms of their internal business strategies and overall financial analysis~~ Honestly, the analysis that he did, combined with Ryan's very informative things he said within the video makes this the best video to describe the situation between Cedar Fair and Six Flags. In my opinion, no other videos can really compare.

As a low level enthusiast, my number one concern is the well being of Cedar Point. That's the one place I consistently visit on a yearly basis, and don't want anything bad to happen to the park. My biggest complaint is not creating a new name, like Cedar Flags. Because people who don't read past the headlines will assume that Six Flags bought out Cedar Fair and we know that's not what happened

This video has served to alleviate a lot of my anxieties over this merger. There are still plenty of things that could go wrong, but, if Ryan is optimistic, then I will be too. He hasn't steered me wrong yet.

Very good breakdown, but generally the consumer gets screwed when major players merge.

One thing i want to add is a response to people stating "the merger eliminates competition so we will be seeing massive ticket hikes." While this is a valid concern as most mergers tend to lead to this, Six Flags already tried an immense ticket price increase strategy under Selim in 2022. And it failed. Horrifically. The parks were losing more money from the lower attendance than they were gaining from higher ticket prices, hence why Selim walked it back. If people felt priced out of their local park, most didnt go to their nearest Cedar Fair park, which could be many, many hours away for some markets. They found other ways to entertain themselves during the summer. The same thing will happen if Cedar Flags creates massive price increases all at once. Again, from the guests perspective, this merger wont mean anything in terms of their purchasing power.

All I want from this merger is for them to keep the identities of the Cedar Fair parks separate from the Six Flags brands, especially the ones with a stronger identity like Cedar Point, Kings Island, and my home park Knott's Berry Farm. After thinking about this merger a bit and watching this and a few other video analyses, I'm feeling reasonably okay about how it will affect the parks/concerns about competition. In fact, if Cedar Fair will truly be the ones running the show and their investment strategy is used, this could actually be the best thing to happen to good old dumpy Six Flags Magic Mountain in a while. But please just keep the park identities intact and don't go crazy with the Six Flags branding. Hopefully with Cedar Fair seeming to be more in charge of things, that could be the case. If they managed to remove the SF name from the current SF parks, that would be a welcome bonus (imagine if it went back to being just "Magic Mountain"!) But I'm not getting my hopes up there. But please just keep the CF names intact.

Can’t believe SixFlags and Cedar Fair just merged into the biggest Blockzone in North America.

I appreciate your and McLovin’s insight on the merger. I concede that you are far more knowledgeable about both company mergers and amusement parks than I’ll ever be. That being said, I am a bit wary, as a lot of your arguments about competition being not an issue due to the regional nature of the parks could have been applied to ski resorts out west. And yet, in the past decade, we’ve seen Vail Resorts gobble up a ton of resorts and have pushed prices of lift tickets astronomically high, especially for single-day passes, trying to get people to get their all-resort season passes, as well as a lack of investment in any one particular resort and focusing more on cost savings. I worry that the new Six Flags/Cedar Fair may go down a similar path, and that worries me.

Whew, Cedar Fair has a (slim) majority share, that's reassuring.

McLovin put in the WORK when the news broke. He texted me his dissertation at 11am the same morning. Get him on the payroll ❗️

I think this was a good move for both companies. We've seen similar success in 2017 when Bass Pro Shops acquired Cabela's, and I can see Six Flags learn a lot from Cedar Fair such as better operations, improvements in cleanliness and atmosphere, and less ride closures.

My current biggest fear of this merger is the potential for MORE DC theming. Like you said, Id like to see SF scale that back, but theyve only added more and more to their parks over the years and now we may see it in CF parks

So just two powerful companies working towards a full monopoly..... I just hope this means good things for customers