jzarley

I also used to collect them—I have a portfolio of them from multiple parks over multiple years. I think Disney may be the only parks still producing paper maps? The maps were one of those things stopped during covid then never restarted because the parks found it to be a cost savings. Same thing with airline magazines—and I miss them too!

Obviously the stock price is impacted by the recent bad earnings news, but I also wonder how much is due to short sellers in the market driving down the stock? I was at SeaWorld during the worst of the stock performance (at one point the stock price hit single digits) and I remember our leadership saying at the time the biggest issue wasn’t company performance but was the number of short sellers in the stock who made money when the stock price went down. I didn’t really buy that at the time, but lo and behold once they started shaking out the short sellers the stock price went up—and now routinely sits in the $50/share range. Short sellers are like sharks (to use a SEA analogy)—once they detect a struggle they go in for the attack. The stock price at SeaWorld raised a lot higher than the actual performance results did… I’ll also say that Chapek would not be a bad fit for Six Flags—they need a cost focus discipline guy that knows theme parks and that’s definitely him. His biggest issue at TWDC was just that he was not Bob Iger (with that style and charisma) and didn’t have the deep relationships with the Hollywood community that Iger has. People outside of Disney tend to think of the company as the parks first, and while they are an extremely important part of the success, the heart & soul of the company is still the studio.

Me too! I’ve heard rumors that it will happen sooner rather than later, but we shall see I guess. I’m really wondering how much the add-on for Epic will be? My current FL resident Premiere AP (parks only—no Volcano Bay) is roughly $70/month—so if the $35 per park/month average holds I’m hoping that adding Epic will up it to around $105/month (which is comparable to a monthly FL resident Incredipass level AP at WDW for the 4 theme parks-no water parks).

I hate to be overly nit-picky, but Six Flags LICENSES the rights to *some* Warner IP—they don’t “own” the rights to WB properties (the way Disney owns the rights to Mickey Mouse and Star Wars or Universal owns the rights to Shrek and Jurassic Park) and they’re paying some sort of ongoing fee to use that IP in their parks. My understanding is that the licenses to Looney Tunes & the DC comic characters is pretty long term, but at some point they will have to be renegotiated and renewed—and any IP not specified in the current licensing would have to be negotiated separately—for example, Six Flags couldn’t just create a replica of the “Friends” coffee house in the parks without negotiating the licensing to use that specific IP.

I’m one of those locals!

Although, if they expand my after 4p Express benefits for my AP to Epic, I could get behind this change

While I think SF management may be able to pinned with a certain amount of financial and operational incompetence, it seems pretty far fetched to believe that there’s any intentional fraud there. Every single bit of “guidance” they’ve ever published has been accompanied by the standard “forward looking statement” safe harbor provision that every public company includes when talking about the future…

A little off topic, but the Enchanted Voyage ride at KI is the thing that I credit most with launching my life-long love of theme parks and attractions. I rode it for the first time at age 6 and still remember the feeling of it being the most incredible, beautiful thing I had ever seen (I was from Zanesville, so that was probably accurate ). I know there’s some old Super-8 ride footage of it on YouTube, but I’ve avoided ever watching it because I’m pretty sure the reality wouldn’t hold up to my memories. And, I want to remember it as the most incredible, beautiful thing ever

Looks like the SeaWorld parks were a mixed bag…attendance was up (according to the comments on the call, a good amount in Orlando even after the opening of Epic) but revenue was down. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/united-parks--resorts-inc-reports-second-quarter-and-first-six-months-2025-results-302524044.html

I really hope that SF’s management does recognize and honor the historical significance of Peanuts at KBF—that would be a shame to lose considering Charles Schulz’s close ties to California. According to the internet, Peanuts at KBF goes back to the early 80s and Walter and Cordelia Knott negotiated the initial IP agreement directly with Schulz. But, when dollars and cents are involved, who knows what decision they’ll make…

^ definitely agree with you—their debt is their biggest albatross right now. The product is (or can fairly easily be made) fine. There may be some upcoming general financial headwinds on the horizon that could cause general market slowdowns, but it’s not like they haven’t been thru recessions many, many times before. Plus, if the economy does continue to sputter it will most likely cause the Fed to lower rates, which may give them the opportunity to refinance some of that debt at better rates—it’s not a solve for their problem, but could help incrementally. Meanwhile, Disney reported strong numbers for their Experiences division this morning as Comcast did a few days earlier. It will be interesting to see what United Parks (I *still* have a hard time saying that ) reports on their next earnings release—see if it’s more of an Orlando market strength thing or more destination vs. regional parks thing.

^ totally agree—both are fantastic What I’ve always found most amazing is that RMC was able to transform two of the most God-awful wood coasters into those incredible machines!

I rank Iron Gwazi #2 on my overall favorites list—with Steel Vengeance still holding at #1 (and I used to work for what was then SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment so my admiration for SV outweighs even that bias ) I give Steel Vengeance the edge because I think the visuals are better—since the track is compressed into a smaller area and the in & outs through the structure add to the excitement. But, granted, it’s a *very* close #1 & #2

Thank you! That’s an awesome resource

So, is TT2 routinely running at this point? I know it had some issues in early June and was down for a few days, but haven’t seen much about it since. I looked at the CP website and there’s no indication that it’s *not* currently running.

I could not agree more with your assessment of Wing Gliders! By far it was the most pleasant surprise for me in the park—I thought it was going to be a boring coaster, but instead it really reminded me a lot of the same qualities that Hagrid’s has at IOA. I guess on the flip side, Mine Cart Madness was my biggest disappointment—I had a lot higher hopes for that ride than it actually delivered

In fairness, the reporter is pretty annoying Similar to Maverick or Mystic Timbers, I think this is going to be one of those coasters that don’t seem that exciting in the description, but ends up being a really fun ride in reality.

I was back for my third visit last Friday (6/20)—but my first since the park was “officially” open. I had purchased Universal Express for this visit, so my wait time experience this trip probably doesn’t say a whole lot with the exception of Ministry and Dragon Racer’s Rally (decided to skip Donkey Kong this visit—rode it during the AP preview and didn’t love it—especially not enough for the posted wait times). We got in line for Ministry a little before 10a and the wait time was posted at 90 minutes. I’m pretty sure we had at least one break down while in line (still outside), and couldn’t hear the announcements very well (but, the line completely stopped moving for about 15 minutes). However, once the line started moving, it moved at a pretty good and consistent clip. With a 90 minute posted wait time even with the suspected break down we were on the ride in about 70 minutes. (We also had a break down *during* the ride as well—for about a 10 minute stop before resuming.) Dragon Racer’s Rally was posted at 50 minutes (we rode after a weather delay and only one side was operating for the first part of our wait) and it took every bit of that 50 minutes (probably closer to 60)—that ride is a SLOW loader (and personally, I think should probably have at least three—if not four—“arms” for the attendance Epic will have). On another note, I saw both live theatrical shows for the first time. Both were impressively staged, but The Untrainable Dragon’s story was pretty weak. Le Cirque Arcanus was fantastic—impressive both technically and from a story perspective—I haven’t seen a theme park show that good since I saw Festival of the Lion King for the first time years ago. (I also saw “Villains” at DHS this weekend too…pretty “meh” on that one )

We’ll be able to get some idea by whether or not the WARN act is triggered, in which case they’ll be required to disclose the numbers laid off at each site (and give 60 days notice, or pay in lieu of notice). WARN is triggered if 50 or more FT employees are terminated within a 30-day period at any individual site.

“Retiring” and “leaving to pursue other opportunities” take on a different meaning when talking about corporate restructuring like this

Somewhat unrelated to this discussion, but still something about International Street I’ve been thinking about lately…I had always heard that the curbs/sidewalks were removed due to ADA compliance, but ADA applies nationwide and there are other parks (much busier, more attended parks) who still have the traditional street/curb/sidewalk design—Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios & Universal Studios come to mind. Was this removal of curbs in theme parks a more strict Ohio interpretation/application of ADA? (And, if so—what about the curbs/sidewalks on normal city streets?) Random I realize, but something I think about every time I’m walking around one of those other “curbed” parks

I kind of doubt if I’ll ever go there either A friend who I used to work with at SeaWorld moved to Abu Dhabi and now works for Miral—he says he likes it there. In fairness about the concept art—the day Universal announced Epic there was no detailed concept art either…they announced the individual lands 1/1 over several months to keep it in the news/chat groups for as long as possible. It’s just hard to remember that now because we’ve been talking about it for six years

Some surprising news coming out of this morning’s earnings call—Disney announces a new theme park resort in Abu Dhabi. It will be developed by Miral (the same company who developed/manages SeaWorld Abu Dhabi, Ferrari Land, and others) with design and operational support from Disney. https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-announces-abu-dhabi-theme-park/

I saw that as well! Here’s the link to the event page (it’s a limited time thing) https://www.universalstudioshollywood.com/hhn/en/us/things-to-do/entertainment/ffn-star-trek Years and years ago (prior to Paramount purchasing the KECO chain) USH used to have a Star Trek attraction—if I recall correctly, it was a live show? EDIT: Guess I could have just done a 2-second Google search before posting Here’s a link to some info about that older Universal attraction: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Adventure

^ I’m doing the AP preview on 5/3 (then a post-opening visit on 6/20)—I’m concerned about getting the virtual queue for “Battle”. Back when Hagrid’s at IOA was on VQ, I had horrible luck at snagging a time. (But, then again on Guardians at Epcot I think I was able to snag a VQ boarding group like 24/25 times, so hopefully my luck will hold out at Epic)