Grace Seelagan warned her kids that she might tear up at the amusement park.
“I’m going to cry the whole day,” said Seelagan, 38.
She had been visiting Six Flags America in Bowie, Maryland, since she was in sixth grade. On Sunday, Nov. 2, the park’s last day of business, she brought her three kids, the oldest a sixth-grader, from nearby Crofton.
Over the years she had gone on just about every ride. It was hard for her to understand why her kids wouldn’t have the chance to grow up with the Looney Tunes and DC Comics-themed attractions.
“I should be writing letters to the CEO to change his mind,” Seelagan said she’d been thinking. They would say, “Thank you for the memories, but it’s just really sad it has to come to an end.”
Six Flags Entertainment Corp. announced earlier this year that it would close and sell the property and adjacent water park because they were “not a strategic fit with the company’s long-term growth plan.”
Others in the Six Flags portfolio — which includes 26 amusement parks and 15 water parks — could face the same fate, executives said recently. During a call with investors earlier this month, chief financial officer Brian Witherow said that while some of its most popular parks were performing well, other small properties were struggling and at risk of being shed.
The 64-year old company is at a crossroads. A merger with a competitor, Cedar Fair, is in the recent rearview. Performance this year, CEO Richard Zimmerman said, “has fallen short of our expectations.” He announced in August that he was stepping down by the end of the year.
Six Flags has accumulated $5 billion of debt. It’s facing sluggish attendance and disappointing season-pass sales. Oh, and the future will somehow involve Travis Kelce, because the NFL star recently teamed up with an investment group to take a 9 percent stake in the company.
“The company needs to really decide what Six Flags is going to be,” said Martin Lewison, a roller coaster enthusiast and associate professor of business management at Farmingdale State College in New York.
“You and me and everybody else who has nostalgia for Six Flags is hoping that it’s going to offer some of the same things, like a fun time, family, good food … and roller coasters and barfing when you get off a ride. That’s why we go.”
Those reasons were on display during the final hours of Six Flags America. All around, families and friends rushed to grab one last coaster ride, a few more photos, a final hug from Tweety Bird and heavily discounted souvenirs.
A man and woman veered toward an iconic car: “Oh, the Batmobile!” Young men sat around a bar and offered guesses about the park’s future. Vloggers walked around shooting video as the day waned.
On the way out, many — including Seelagan and her kids — stopped for a picture in front of a wall that bore a fitting message: “That’s all Folks!”
A roller coaster ride
Six Flags’ history has been full of twists and turns, acquisitions and mergers.
After a period of investment and expansion during the economic boom of the 1990s and early 2000s, the company was forced to declare bankruptcy in 2009. Years after it emerged from that process, the pandemic dealt a fresh blow.
In 2022, then-CEO Selim Bassoul made headlines when he complained to analysts that the parks had become “a cheap day-care center for teenagers.”
He embarked on a mission to raise prices, inviting complaints that the company hadn’t invested enough to justify price hikes. He rubbed many observers the wrong way when he said he was “migrating a little bit from what I call the Kmart, Walmart, to maybe the Target customer.”
Some shareholders recently filed a lawsuit alleging that Six Flags had failed to disclose that it had underinvested in its parts before the merger. The company declined to comment on the suit.
A deal for a “merger of equals” with Cedar Fair, the owner of parks including Cedar Point in Ohio, Knott’s Berry Farm in California and Carowinds in Charlotte, closed last year.
October attendance was down 11 percent year-over-year after a slight uptick in the third quarter, executives said in an update this month, and numbers are expected to dip for the rest of the year as well. That followed a second quarter of steep attendance drops.
‘Spotty’ value
Lewison, who researches and teaches about theme parks, remembers visiting Six Flags Over Texas and AstroWorld as a graduate student in the 1990s. He was excited to ride a Batman-themed stand-up coaster and a fully looping space shuttle-themed ride.
“AstroWorld was really cool at the time,” he said.
The Houston park closed in 2005 when the parent company decided the real estate was more valuable than the attraction — a fate similar to that of the Maryland property.
In recent years, Lewison had paid for a top-tier membership that got him admission to Six Flags parks and a bevy of discounts and other perks. By earlier this year, turned off by management decisions and a lackluster pipeline of rides, he was done.
“We just kind of finally threw up our hands and said that’s it,” he said. “Our experiences this year have been spotty.”
Enter Travis Kelce
Late last month, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end and Taylor Swift fiancé made news unrelated to football and pop stardom: He had joined a group including activist investor Jana Partners to take a 9 percent share in Six Flags.
On his Facebook page, Kelce shared videos of himself as a kid at Cedar Point to accompany the news.
“So crazy to even imagine this is real, but you gotta love it when life comes full circle,” he wrote.
New Heights, the popular podcast that the three-time Super Bowl champion hosts with his brother, Jason, released a clip on YouTube titled “Travis and Jason = Rollercoaster Tycoons.”
They heaped praise on Six Flags and spitballed about what a Kelce roller coaster could entail: “a few drops, one or two, definitely loops,” Travis said.
He said he had an all-access pass ready so he could hit as many parks as possible during the offseason. His brother joked about a challenge they could create to rack up experiences.
“It’s like a marathon race of amusement at Six Flags,” Jason said.
The investment group and Six Flags declined to discuss plans, though the company said in a news release earlier this month that it is working with Kelce’s team on “a broader branding relationship” that capitalizes on his history with the parks.
“These discussions come at an ideal time as we continue to invest across our business to modernize our brands, reinforce their longstanding cultural relevance, and build stronger connections with guests,” the release said.
Dennis Speigel, founder and CEO of the consulting firm International Theme Park Services, said Kelce’s involvement “at the zenith of his career” has generated some of the best press he’s seen about Six Flags in a while.
“To bring him in and have him promote it, it can’t hurt,” he said. “How does it really shake out? Too early to tell.”
A new roller coaster might bring visitors to an amusement park once or twice a year, said Deutsche Bank leisure analyst Chris Woronka. But events featuring sports celebrities — especially sold at premium prices — could generate important repeat business, he said.
“They need to create more experiences that kind of change by the week that get people excited,” Woronka said.
‘I can’t even look’
Whatever the future holds, it was a bitter end earlier this month to more than 50 years of amusement park history at the park just outside D.C.
The property first opened as a drive-through safari in 1974 and became part of the Six Flags portfolio in 1999.
Friends Derek Ano, James Shewan and Fredy Morales arrived before the park opened and rode every ride they cared about for the last time. Near the end of the day, they pulled small signs showing their displeasure.
“Richard Zimmerman, we demand you apologize,” one read. Another begged Prince George’s County to save the park.
Shewan understands that it’s tough to get people to buy a ticket for a day of rides when they’re trying to find work and having to spend more on essentials. But he didn’t think it had to be the end.
“I feel like something could have been done better — like reinvest into the park,” he said.
Nicholas Bernstein, 25, of Pennsylvania, was glum as he browsed a chaotic gift shop with his wife. Everything was 85 percent off, and customers waited in long lines for T-shirts, snow globes and squid-shaped hats.
“I can’t even look at this,” he said. “This hurts.”
The couple came to the park as high school sweethearts. On its last day, they drove nearly four hours with family, including their two young kids, to scoop up mementos and take in the scene. The lines for rides, he said, were far too long.
“You can’t look at the park from when you’re a teenager and see how much was neglected over the last 10 years and not hurt,” he said. “It’s very depressing.”
The post Six Flags is on a bumpy ride. Can Travis Kelce help?
appeared first on Washington Post.
