homestar92

For what it's worth, they now have access to the Looney Tunes and DC Comics IPs.

I'd be willing to crack a Six Flags over Coney Mall joke, but that's been gone for about 10 years now.

Especially because at Six Flags, it's not Flash Pass, it's "The Flash Pass" because the character's name is "The Flash" So, "I purchased my The Flash Pass online" is actually the grammatically correct version of that sentence.

I will illustrate my opinion of today's merger with what I'll call "A Tale of Two Great Americas". In 1976 Mariott opened two largely identical parks, themed to the different regions of North America. In the 1980s, both were sold off to different owners, where they remained until 2024. Each of the Great Americas received a new themed area in the 90s, one very much in line with the theme and identity of the park, one not. In one park, the new themed area was the Southwest Territory, with buildings and rides designed to look like the American Southwest. One of them got Action Zone. Each of these parks had a beloved and rare Schwarzkopf Jumbo Jet coaster named the Whizzer. One of them has been preserved and remains a park staple. One was removed and replaced with... nothing. One of these parks' owners purchased the 1950 Schmeck Wooden coaster from another local amusement park when it shut down, so as to keep a classic in the same metro area. The other park's owners sold the land from under it to a real estate investor. One of these parks still maintains and operates its train ride. The other removed the train to build a small swing ride. One of the parks in this story has been controlled by Six Flags all that time. The other by KECO/Paramount/Cedar Fair. Do you know which is which?

You could get an Italian Job movie poster.

They might make lockers required, but I can promise you they won't make them free. TT2 is our most recent bit of precedent and its lockers are not free, unless the into I heard was incorrect.

https://www.carowinds.com/rides-experiences/thunder-striker Interesting to note, all of the photos now show the train from behind - presumably to avoid the trademarked imagery on the zero-car. Though I can't get the old Intimidator page to load properly on archive.org to confirm that this is a new change (but like, it's gotta be, right? those are far from the most appealing angles of the ride and I think the PR team knows that)

https://www.carowinds.com/rides-experiences https://www.kingsdominion.com/rides-experiences Kings Dominion is calling the ride "Project 305" and Carowinds has scrubbed it from the website entirely. I presume this means that a licensing deal has expired and will not be renewed and both coasters will have a new theme (and perhaps new paint) next year. The jokester in me wants to suggest "Nitro" and "Superman: Ride of Steel" as potential ride names ;-P

No way Six Flags Great America gets rebranded. That's been its name for decades, the two Great Americas are on opposite sides of the country, and the one in California will likely be closed for good before or shortly after the branding consolidation happens anyway. There may be some rebrands. I don't think either of those will be among them, and I don't think any current Six Flags parks see changes to branding UNLESS they are sold and leave the Six Flags portfolio.

Keep in mind, Six Flags Great America (one of the most "Kings Island-esque" parks in their chain) retained its distinct themed areas long after the merger, having only lost one of them to a licensed IP (Yankee Harbor becoming DC Universe) almost four decades after being acquired. They also added a new themed area, Southwest Territory, which fits perfectly in line with Marriott's original vision for that park's themes. Six Flags doesn't just rip out all the history and replace it with copy/pasted IP-based attractions. I would argue that Six Flags has respected the themes of that park more than KI's recent owners have respected some of our park's themes. I mean, Mini Coopers and a helicopter with machine guns in the "classic American amusement park" section? South-American ruins themed coaster and a Mexican restaurant in Oktoberfest? Banshee and Bat in the "movie studio backlot" section? It's not like Paramount and Cedar Fair were always 100% in line with the "theme" of our park either. DC Comics and Looney Tunes can coexist in the kids' area. Camp Snoopy being a subsection of Planet Snoopy seems like a good groundwork for this. And it's not unprecedented - Hannah-Barbera Land and Nickelodeon Central coexisted for years in what is now Planet Snoopy. We all love Snoopy here, but that's because we're used to it. To our kids, snoopy is just the dog from Kings Island and that Christmas special. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth when Snoopy came to Kings Island and it seems it's the same thing again now that there is the *possibility* (nothing confirmed at all) of it happening again a few years down the road. This could bring Snoopy to Gurnee just as easily as it could bring Bugs Bunny to Mason.

I think a lot of the sentiments I've seen here to the effect of "person in my social circle who doesn't even like theme parks has a negative opinion of Six Flags" doesn't realize that these people probably have an even less informed opinion of Six Flags than you do, because their opinion is likely just what they've heard from you. People who never go to parks aside from their local one only know about other parks from the things that their friends who do go to other parks say about them. Enthusiasts broadly seem to dislike Six Flags, so normal people who occasionally talk to enthusiasts end up with a negative opinion of Six Flags. It's really just a feedback loop. Six Flags operates *a lot* of parks and many of those parks feel very different from each other. Some SIX parks are indeed dirty and poorly operated, but not all. Six Flags does many things well. Their Flash Pass system is far more elegant than Fast Lane, and it works well at every park. The same cannot be said of Fast Lane (ever tried using it at Cedar Point? Enjoy somehow still waiting an hour after paying hundreds of dollars). The idea that *every* Cedar Fair park is always clean and always has great operations isn't any more true than the idea that Six Flags are all dirty and mismanaged. Six Flags Great America is one of my absolute favorite amusement parks anywhere, and they've won awards for their cleanliness. I'm also a big fan of Darien Lake. Both are SIX properties. Coincidentally, "dirty and poorly operated" was my experience when I visited Worlds of Fun, which is a Cedar Fair park. Six Flags also has two different parks with animal safari-type exhibits, so they have the experience and expertise to bring that back if they wanted to. Six Flags has IPs that are far more relevant to children than Snoopy (as much as I personally LOVE Snoopy, he's not culturally relevant anymore outside of the Christmas special). Kings Island is going to be just fine, and I don't know that we have any reason to believe that Six Flags will even be added to its name (aside from perhaps "Kings Island - a Six Flags park". Both chains have things that they do well and I really do think their collective expertise can really help both chains. Remember, Six Flags and Cedar Fair didn't compete with each other outside of California. But they *do* compete with the likes of Disney, Universal, SeaWorld, and other destinations, and this merger gives them access to the resources to actually stand a chance at competing with those chains. If anything, this has created more *actual* competition even though there are fewer competitors in the game.

One thing I've learned all too well since moving into a management position at my work: no matter how important somebody is to your future vision, employees are, at the end of the day, people. People with their own life goals and motivations. A successful business can move forward from losing any employee, and I have no doubt that both Don and KI will be just fine going forward. One of my best employees left because they inherited a bunch of money and didn't need to work anymore. Another left because he simply didn't want to live in the Midwest, so he moved to Boston. No matter how well you treat your employees or how good of a manager you try to be, people have their own lives and motivations which have nothing to do with work and sometimes your company just isn't a fit anymore. It's a bummer, but it's life.

Much of the old guard has moved on to other hobbies and other forums. Folks like you and I have to pop in every now and then, just to keep these youngins on their toes!

Six Flags Great America is an hour's drive away from both downtown Chicago and downtown Milwaukee and doesn't really connect to either of their transit systems (Chicago maybe has a bus that runs to Gurnee, but it's about as useful and frequent as the one running from Cinci to Kings Island). Gurnee is pretty close to Kenosha, which has been the site of some recent political unrest. But that was an extenuating circumstance and I don't even think the park was open when that was going on. The problem isn't so much a class thing as some have suggested in comments on articles like this as it is an uninvolved parents thing. Kids from wealthy families and kids from poorer families are both going to turn into little jerks if they have the kinds of parents who will just drop them off at the theme park frequently to be rid of them for a day. Now, there is some correlation to involvedness of parents and class just because obviously married single-income families are better equipped to spend time raising their kids, but the married single-income family is an incredibly rare thing even in the upper levels of middle class. Additionally, the chaperone policy equally prices people out. You either pay more for your kids' passes which costs more money, or you have to buy passes for mom and/or dad, which costs more money AND requires them to spend their time accompanying their kids to the park. So you either increase the cost or you increase both cost AND hassle. Raising prices is the better solution for everyone. Especially that sweet, sweet "one visit a year but we bring two kids and buy one of everything" demographic that theme parks LOVE.

American Eagle at SFGAm to literally anything aside from "peeling chips of decades-old paint" color.