Michigan’s Adventure closed out its 70th anniversary season with a promising sign for the park’s future: record season pass sales.

The Muskegon, Michigan, amusement park wrapped up its 2026 season on Labor Day, completing its first year under Enchanted Parks. The company operates Michigan’s Adventure under a long-term lease with EPR Properties, which acquired the park and six others from Six Flags Entertainment earlier this year.

Despite having only a short window before the May 22 opening, the new operators made their presence felt. Rides received fresh paint, decorative elements were restored and live entertainment returned for the first time in several years, including local performers and the Nerveless Nocks Flying Water Circus over the park’s central lake.

Guests also found new food choices, including Detroit-style pizza, cheese curds and walking tacos, along with lower prices on several meals.

Record season pass sales suggest guests liked what they saw in Year 1. With Michigan’s Adventure now closed for the season, park leadership says there’s more in store for 2027.

After a season focused largely on restoring and refreshing what was already there, the question now is: What will Enchanted Parks do for an encore?

@DispatchMaster Record season pass sales is fact, not opinion.

That right there is why having so many parks in one chain is not a good idea. Especially a mix of very big and small parks. Under Cedar Fair now merged with Six Flags there just isn't room in budgets to invest in these smaller parks when you have these big destination parks that need investment year and year out.

I'm sure there is also some excitement among the passholders related to being part of a new chain. We don't know where Michigan's Adventure will place among the 8 parks of the Enchanted Parks chain, but now they at least have some hope for continued investment. I'd really like to see Enchanted put in at least one brand new major coaster at each of their parks by 2036. Hopefully they can have similar successes in their other new parks as well.

Six Flags currently has about 19 parks in North America (not including stand-alone waterparks) and has been very slowly working toward improving some of them. Bowing out of the contracts for Darien Lake and Frontier City would bring them down to 17. After that, they could either split the company in half or continue to sell/spin off parks until they're down to a more manageable number. I don't personally feel it is wise to have a chain consisting only of major parks, but I do agree that Six Flags has a few too many parks in general. Then again I also think Herschend has too many parks.

They seem to be proud of their "Largest Theme Park Operator in North America" title so we'll just have to see how the next few years go in terms of park sales.

13 hours ago, Hawaiian Coasters 325 said:

That right there is why having so many parks in one chain is not a good idea. Especially a mix of very big and small parks. Under Cedar Fair now merged with Six Flags there just isn't room in budgets to invest in these smaller parks when you have these big destination parks that need investment year and year out.

Any lack of investment by SF into MA was due to mismanagement, not budgetary or having too many parks or whatever. In fact, having a broad portfolio can provide diverse revenue that can withstand regional issues like a bad stretch of weather during a holiday weekend that would otherwise adversely affect annual revenue to the point it could affect cap ex plans. And in the case of MA specifically, any lack of routine maintenance (fresh paint, etc.) is strictly the fault of SIX's mismanagement, and is not a broader indictment of a company that is "too big". After all, MA was well cared for under Cedar Fair.

14 hours ago, DonHelbig said:

@DispatchMaster Record season pass sales is fact, not opinion.

Yes, this is clear when reading the original MLive article you pretty clearly "borrowed from" without attribution.

@DispatchMaster The Super Bowl favorite Los Angeles Rams opened the season with a 27-7 loss against the San Francisco 49ers. That’s fact, not opinion. ESPN? NFL Network? Yahoo Sports? Associated Press? NFL.com. Since you’re an expert on all things, who should I attribute knowing the final score to?

There's a difference between relaying a final score of a game and what you clearly did with the MLive article, which was lift several whole sections of the article and restructure and reword them and then present it as if the information and thoughts were your own, without linking to or even mentioning the original article or the author who did the actual work on getting the information. It doesn't take an "expert" to see that what you did is borderline plagiarism, no?

Further, you can dispense with the straw man BS of mentioning me in every new thing you post with regard to fact vs opinion. That you seem triggered by the mere request that things you cite as factual should be supported by something other than "because I say so" is no reason to spam topics with irrelevant, snarky, troll-ish comments.

2 hours ago, DispatchMaster said:

There's a difference between relaying a final score of a game and what you clearly did with the MLive article, which was lift several whole sections of the article and restructure and reword them and then present it as if the information and thoughts were your own, without linking to or even mentioning the original article or the author who did the actual work on getting the information. It doesn't take an "expert" to see that what you did is borderline plagiarism, no?

Further, you can dispense with the straw man BS of mentioning me in every new thing you post with regard to fact vs opinion. That you seem triggered by the mere request that things you cite as factual should be supported by something other than "because I say so" is no reason to spam topics with irrelevant, snarky, troll-ish comments.

You weren’t a DispatchMaster. Fact, not opinion. 🤣

The last time I checked, this was not a junior high school hallway. Since you guys want to air your grievances with each other on every thread (and I thought my message was clear the other day about treating everyone with respect here), either cut it out, or you can find somewhere else to argue with each other besides KIC, for I have had enough. This is a place to have fun and forget about the outside world for a bit.

3 hours ago, IndyGuy4KI said:

The last time I checked, this was not a junior high school hallway. Since you guys want to air your grievances with each other on every thread (and I thought my message was clear the other day about treating everyone with respect here), either cut it out, or you can find somewhere else to argue with each other besides KIC, for I have had enough. This is a place to have fun and forget about the outside world for a bit.

I’ll happily leave the forum. This clearly isn’t the place for the insights and perspective I’m able to share. I’ve enjoyed being part of the community. I’ll see some of you on the midways.