jzarley

Not entirely unrelated, but I saw my very first “real” concert (Tears for Fears) at Timberwolf in 1985 😀

I was really hoping that CP would announce the addition of a new sit-down restaurant in either the old Melt or Famous Dave’s marina spaces (or, both). There’s not a lot of full-service after-park dinner options available now other than TGI Fridays (not a fan of Bay Harbor) so will probably give the hibachi place in Breakers a try this year. Yeah, I know Famous Daves just moved over to Castaway Bay, but the part I like about that vacation the best is once I land at Hotel Breakers I don’t get in the car or leave the peninsula for two days 😀

This is a smart move to correct a mistake that should have never been made in the first place. Even as Hillpath has cut & cut & cut budgets at the United parks, not even they were foolish enough to remove the park President/GM role. (Although, I have to feel for the people who lost their job to this reorganization only to have it reversed like a year later…). A large theme park like KI, CP, etc. is essentially its own little city, and as such needs a “mayor” with the authority to make decisions and keep the city operating.

Yep! Although, I think Tampa is a pretty park too. I think it’s just hard to beat the hills and trees of Williamsburg. I’ve also spent a lot more time in Tampa with it being so close to Orlando—I was only at BGW a few times, so maybe it’s just more “special” to me that way. And, over half the times I was at BGW it was off season (I think February twice) so I’m sure part of it was wanting to get on the rides yet not being able to 😀

BGW is my favorite of the United Parks properties—it’s a gorgeous park. It’s the only theme park I’ve ever been to where the backstage areas were pretty as well 🙂

Universal sent out a survey to AP holders a few weeks ago asking questions to judge interest in Epic Universe AP scenarios—likelihood of expanding existing passes to include Epic, stand-alone passes and ticket packages. One of the things that surprised me was that when explaining the potential offering to add an expansion to the existing AP to include Epic it “would be roughly twice the cost.” It seems a little steep to double the cost of the existing two-park pass, but I guess they don’t want to overwhelm their already concerning capacity issues (still, in my mind I was thinking more like a 50% increase in cost to add Epic—that still puts a premium on it.) The option I rated highest was the opportunity to purchase a 3 or 5 day annual package of day tickets to Epic at the time of AP renewal that could be used over the course of the year. (It specifically said that an option like this would require advance reservations—which doesn’t bother me.) No pricing was proposed for these packages but you have to think it would be lower (or at least no higher) than the current daily discounted price for AP holders—and, if my after 4p Express benefits would apply I’d definitely be on board with that option.

I have a theory on why this merger occurred—I’m assuming it was out of desperation and the belief that economies of scale might be the only solution to dig out of the after effects of COVID. I think the COVID hangover is the reason why the “pure” park companies (those that don’t have other significant sources of other income like Disney or Universal) like Six Flags, United and Merlin are suffering financially today. I think we tend to gloss over the long lasting impact shutting down the only source of revenue for six months, a year, or close to two years (in the case of California) had on these businesses—everything seemed to come roaring back right after everything reopened, but that didn’t make up for the long period of essentially no revenue—things like maturing debt eventually came home to roost. I really think the problems the park companies are having now are part of the long lasting impact of the pandemic. Of course, there’s probably a deeper thought about how as a society we haven’t really dealt with the trauma of the pandemic either, but that’s probably a little philosophical for a theme park board 🙂

Once again, PE inserts itself to attempt to do more harm than good… First off, who exactly would be the buyer for the full SF company as it sits today? (Well, PE I guess…). They’re already strategically selling properties that they don’t feel fit into their long term strategy—selling the whole chain (AGAIN!) would only dump more debt onto the balance sheet because the company that gets purchased always seems to end up with the debt when PE is involved… Jeesh, guys—John has only been CEO for like 90 days—give it at least a few quarters to allow his strategy to play out 🙄

100% on the Hill Path Analysis—or probably more specific—a single person at Hill Path that I won’t name here. I don’t understand how the investors in the Hill Path fund that bought into United (at the time SeaWorld Parks & Resorts) are not SCREAMING. A large chunk of the stock that Hill Path bought into SEA was at the sub-$19/share level. At one point the stock was trading north of $60/share. Hill Path could have sold and made a huge profit for its investors—but they didn’t. They held on to it and now now the stock is almost 50% lower than at its peak.

My suspicion is that the law suit will force United to pay then things will go on like always. This isn’t the first time they’ve stopped paying bills just to see how far they could push it—I’ve seen that before (granted, at least then the pandemic could be blamed)

^ I’m pretty sure the suit would apply to the entire chain (legal issues typically got rolled up to the corporate level), although there’s probably park-specific violations of the IP licensing they’re citing. That’s a sad situation—United/SEA/BEC has a long and mutually beneficial relationship with Sesame Workshop. IMHO this is just one more example of the negative aspects of how the current PE control of them has damaged the brand. When I was at SEA, the agreements with Sesame Workshop were taken *very* seriously—even to the point of staffing character interactions (i.e., if Elmo and Abby Cadabby appeared together it was specified that Elmo had to be taller than Abby)

After experiencing how poorly operations are running currently at SWF and BGT, I’d cross United off that list as well

Remember too that John started his career as a popcorn seller at BGW. I’m sure there’s a certain amount of satisfaction in knowing that you now control a park you always considered your biggest competitor early in your career 🙂

My gut is that an onsite hotel at the southern side of the property and the existing GWL on the northern side would do just fine together (especially when talking about a property of only 200 rooms or so)—particularly in the Summer. Many, many, MANY years ago during a summer in college I worked at Red Roof Inn’s central reservations center at their HQ near Columbus. At that point, Cincinnati was one of RRI’s busiest markets especially in the summer. I would personally take dozens of calls (the center got about 10K calls a day at that point) for people going to KI and wanting to book a room nearby—and I was just one of a few hundred reservation agents. The caller’s goal was always to be “close to Kings Island” and at that time RRI’s closest property was Blue Ash (which was still 10 miles away)—it was almost always booked, then would expand out to Norwood, Sharonville, etc. (if I recall, at that time there were maybe five RRIs in the Cincy market?). Most weekends in the summer, the whole cincy market was sold out. (Once, I was even able to book “Columbus-South” in Grove City for someone going to Kings Island and desperate to find something—I got a sales bonus that day 😀) I’m sure the local market has a lot more rooms in it now than it did then (again—this was many, many, MANY years ago 😀) but I’m guessing the booking activity is still robust enough to support something like this.

Unless I missed it in the FUN press release (which is possible), I didn’t see any mention of how Six Flags plans to utilize the $342m received from the sale (minus the normal sales expenses of course). It would only be a tiny hit to their current $5B+ in outstanding debt, but a tiny hit is at least something. However, the cynic in me fears that it will be used for stock repurchases… I had zero knowledge of Enchanted Parks (which, I guess before this deal there wouldn’t be much reason for me to)—I was surprised to see that their corporate HQ is like 4 miles from my house 🙂. I’m assuming Enchanted is comprised of principals who came from one of the Orlando “big 3”?

I’ve had an internal debate with myself for a while now whether or not when they (finally) add an Epic option to AP whether I’ll decide to pay upgrade or not. (My guess is that I’ll probably do it 😀) I do have a bone with UO’s marketing referring to “the four theme parks of Universal Orlando”. There are three theme parks and one waterpark—otherwise WDW should get to add two more “theme parks” to their count as well 😁

I can say that people internally are happy about it (especially in Orlando). I was also really happy to hear about Dana Walden being promoted to President and Chief Creative Officer—I had been worried that we would lose whichever didn’t get the CEO job and either one would have been a big loss.

I’m not sure I completely understand, but I see a white background on the drop down menu items. Maybe it’s a browser issue? (I’m using Safari for iPad…)

An interesting article (there’s a paywall, but you get a few free articles first…) about how the proposed acquisition of Warner Brothers by Netflix could impact park licensing of WB IP. I’m sure all of the impacted park companies have multi-year agreements that account for changes of ownership, but few licensing agreements last forever (unless it’s Marvel at Universal east of the Mississippi ). I do have to wonder if part of SF’s strategy in keeping the Peanuts licensing was concerns over what might happen to WB’s IP library (a sale has been on the horizon for several months now) just to hedge their bets and keep some IP in their back pocket just in case… https://www.vulture.com/article/what-netflix-buying-warner-bros-means-for-wb-theme-parks.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=social_acct&utm_campaign=feed-part

FWIW—the posts I’m seeing from all my former colleagues at SeaWorld (and a few that had jumped to Palace at some point) on LinkedIn have all been overwhelming positive on the news. I think it’s always telling when people you used to work with say good things about you and congratulate your new place of employment for getting you . During my career I’ve had a mixed bag of executives I’ve worked for I’d say that about—but John would be one of the positive ones. Regardless, he’s going to have a tough road in front of him at SF—a perception of failing customer service and crushing debt would be a huge challenge for anyone.

So, I do know John—I worked with him at SEA both when he was COO under Joel Manby and as acting CEO after Manby was forced out. He was not CEO when Blackfish came out (I believe he was still park president at San Diego when that occurred)—Jim Atchison & the remaining old guard at BEC were still in place when Blackfish dropped. Joel was brought in as CEO (from Herschend) to try to reverse the mistakes that had been made after Blackfish—if I recall correctly, he then promoted John to COO from the San Diego park. Personally, I like John—I thought he should have been named CEO after Joel and before they hired Gus from Carnival (who I was not a fan of). John started his career as a popcorn seller in college at BGW (he enjoyed telling that story ) so he grew up in park operations when SeaWorld/Busch were at their best. I’m a little biased probably, but I think this is a good choice.

Universal released some more details about their kid’s resort under construction in the DFW Metroplex from IAAPA this week. Thoughts on the descriptions and concept art? My initial thought is that this park appears to be a significant step down from the immersive theming done at the “full” parks—which makes sense. I haven’t seen any expectations listed for annual attendance, but I can’t imagine they expect it to come anywhere close to the destination resorts, so it makes sense that the investment would reflect that as well. Still, the concept art feels a little “flat” and more regional-parkish than typical Universal standards. (Although, my complaint with DreamWorks land at USF is that it seems a little “flat” as well…) https://www.themeparkinsider.com/flume/202511/11173/

Texas also has the advantage of population—both in the state overall and the individual MSAs (I’m assuming SFFT pulls pretty well from the Houston and Austin markets as well). San Antonio is also a pretty long drive from DFW—close to 5 hours if I recall correctly. San Antonio has been able to support two large theme parks in the same market for many years with both SFFT and SWT (granted, SWT is the lowest attended of the SeaWorld parks…) Doesn’t SFOT have some weird ownership situation (or maybe did int he past?). I seem to recall something about the park actually being owned by a local ownership group separate from the other parks. I may be remembering that incorrectly, but that sticks in my mind for some reason… I’m really curious about how the new Universal “kids park” will do in the DFW market—I’m sure there will be some crossover, but wonder if the target demographic is so different from SFOT they won’t really impact each other much?

I still have a bit of PTSD whenever I hear the word “Blackfish” I wonder if the talks with CF occurred when Jim Atchison was still CEO, or if this was something initiated after Joel Manby came in 2015? (If the release of Blackfish wasn’t public knowledge yet, I’m guessing it was under Atchison.) I’ve long maintained that if Blackfish would have happened when Busch Entertainment Corp owned the parks, the entire situation could have played out differently. Anheuser-Busch would have had the messaging and communication expertise to counteract the effects of the documentary (or, at least address it head on). After all, AB makes an addictive product that kills people and everyone still seems to love them… But the timing was such that it occurred right after the spin off, and the leadership at the time just didn’t have the expertise to address it. Not only that, but I fully believe that after years of being the “good guys” who loved and cared for animals, they just couldn’t believe that public perception about them could change. Of course, we know how that turned out…

True, but my hope would have been that they would have spun off the new company (the combined SEA/FUN) into a new IPO that may have gotten Scott Ross & Hill Path to take the profits and exit. (I realize that may just be wishful thinking…) To be honest, I’m really surprised Hill Path didn’t cash out a long time ago—they bought most of their shares in the sub $20 price point and the stock now routinely (for a few years now) trades in the plus $50 range (and a few brief times in the +$60 range). I would have thought the fund investors would have wanted to take their profits and cash out a while ago.