BIG Infrastructure Changes at Flags

[bkroz]

Via Screamscape, the following letter was sent out to Six Flags staff from Al Weber late Tuesday afternoon.

Six Flags Team,

Over the last four months we have successfully realigned our corporate structure and made adjustments to our corporate and park leadership. In order to make our Company even stronger and more efficient, today we are announcing additional park level organizational changes that will affect all of our parks.

Today we have implemented changes at our parks to better align our park operations with the new corporate structure. Although these were difficult decisions to make, members of the corporate and park teams collaborated closely and are confident that these changes will help us to further sharpen our focus on being the preeminent regional theme park organization. The following summarizes the organizational changes in each park, effective immediately:

* The Park General Manager positions have been eliminated and each has been offered the position of Director of their respective divisions- Operations, Maintenance, and Finance;

* Our Water Park Directors, with the exception of the Directors at SFOT and SFOG, now hold the title of Water Park Managers, and, along with the Entertainment department, report to the Director of Operations;

* The Food, Retail, and Games departments, along with the Purchasing department at each park, will all report to the Director of In-Park Services;

* The Loss Prevention and Audit Manager departments have been consolidated into the Resource Protection Department and, along with the Labor Optimization Managers, report to the Director of Finance; and,

* The Marketing, Sales, and Communications divisions have been consolidated into one division led by the Director of Marketing, which allows for a stronger and more focused marketing effort. The Group Sales Managers and Communications Managers will report to the Director of Marketing.

To better align our operations with the seasonal nature of our business, effective today we have also reduced the number of supervisory level positions at the parks and discontinued park assistant manager positions. In addition, we have carefully assessed all areas of park management and adjusted staff levels to create a leaner and more efficient organization. This was done taking into account certain exceptions for alternative structures and staffing levels that are necessary to accommodate variations in park facilities, scale, and other factors.

As always, we remain fully committed to providing our Guests with friendly, clean, fast, and safe services and to focusing on excellence and innovation. The adjustments we are announcing today support these core values and are expected to accelerate and solidify Six Flags’ improving performance.

I appreciate all the hard work and on behalf of the entire senior management team, thank you for your commitment to Six Flags.

Al Weber, Jr., Ph.D.

Chief Operating Officer

Six Flags Entertainment Corporation

To quote Screamscape's summarization (which may or may not be accurate - I'm not an expert, I'm just sharing this with you all):

Screamscape sources tell us that somewhere in the neighborhood of 140 full time jobs were cut from Six Flags theme parks across the nation today. Some parks were hit harder than others with about 20% of the positions cut from from the Six Flags Great Adventure parks in New Jersey alone.

In addition to the “reduction in workforce”, several I’ve also been told that countless staffers have been demoted throughout the chain, including the elimination of the General Manager position entirely from the chain as a whole. Many of the former General Managers have now been demoted back into department Directors, and in turn many of the former Directors demoted to Manager positions.

[jzarley]

So, I'm a little confused...does the elimination of the GM role mean there will no longer be a single person with overall responsibility for each park? (Or, does SF handle that with a different title...i.e, "VP, Six Flags Over Texas" or something like that?) If the former is correct, I have to question the wisdom of not having a local "the buck stops here" at each park...by and large, decentralized management tends to work best (from my experience, anyway), especially when you're talking about geographically diverse and customer service-centric operations.

Al Weber has a Ph.D.? I wonder what subject his doctorate is in?

[RailRider]

I was wondering the same thing. Is management now centralized? Not sure how effective that will be.

[CoastersRZ]

If I had to guess, I would say that this move results in lower salaries for those affected, but likely much of the same responibilities.

[IndyGuy4KI]

we've had to know big changes were on the way.