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Six Flags/Cedar Fair Merger, EPR Sale

Rob Coasters said:
Six Flags Over Texas is not fully owned by Six Flags, they had plans to acquire the rest of it by the end of 2025 and take full ownership but they seem to no longer think they can afford to do that.
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You're a star. Much better than this gobbledegook:

"Six Flags Entertainment Corporation (NYSE:FUN) announced Monday that it will not exercise its option to redeem outstanding limited partner interests in the Texas Partnership, which holds the Six Flags Over Texas amusement park in Arlington, Texas."

:D
 
Rob Coasters said:
Six Flags Over Texas is not fully owned by Six Flags, they had plans to acquire the rest of it by the end of 2025 and take full ownership but they seem to no longer think they can afford to do that.
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To add more of a throughline, Six Flags already has majority ownership stake in Six Flags Over Texas - this remaining purchase option was for "non-controlling" shares. They're opting to save the money rather than try to own the full 100% of SFOT.
 
Justin2000 said:
My Thoughts:
Weird to see them getting rid of Six Flags St. Louis
Why are they selling Oceans of Fun when Worlds of Fun is included with it
Why are they selling the Great Escape Hotel but Not Great Escape?
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I'm thinking, either they just haven't trademarked the dry parks yet, or SF is only selling the waterpark portions. Enchanted parks seems much more interested in water parks, and yeah it's a weird deal but SF is desperate for cash right now.
 
That’s an intriguing development. Apologies if I missed this, but is Enchanted Parks an entity that currently exists and operates parks, or some sort of new offshoot being invented?

To tell you the truth, I initially saw the post and thought that the whole merged chain was being renamed to Enchanted Parks…
 
Matt N said:
That’s an intriguing development. Apologies if I missed this, but is Enchanted Parks an entity that currently exists and operates parks, or some sort of new offshoot being invented?

To tell you the truth, I initially saw the post and thought that the whole merged chain was being renamed to Enchanted Parks…
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No one is 100% sure but links to Enchanted Parks' website briefly re-routed to the website for the owners of Enchanted Forest Water Safari, whose name I forget right now, and who have said they're looking to acquire more water parks. It's looking like that company is at least in talks to purchase all these other parks from Six Flags.

EDIT: Innovative Attraction Management is the company in question.
 
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Rob Coasters said:
Six Flags Over Texas is not fully owned by Six Flags, they had plans to acquire the rest of it by the end of 2025 and take full ownership but they seem to no longer think they can afford to do that.
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Wait, what? Six Flags Over Texas is the original Six Flags park. It's literally how the chain got its name. The original concept for the park was "Texas under six flags", that is, the six countries that have claimed ownership over it since Europeans brought flags to the New World. To wit, these are Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the USA, and the Confederacy. Then, in typical Texan fashion, it was decided that "Texas shouldn't be 'under' anything", and the perspective changed from that of the flags to the ground. "Six flags over Texas".

One would think that out of all parks in the Six Flags group, SFOT would be the most Six Flags of them all. Strange to hear that this isn't the case.
 
Did some digging on the ownership history as I was also curious. The park was always owned by Six Flags Over Texas Fund, Ltd. - a limited partnership - which basically lets a bunch of investors and companies have portions of ownership. Premier Park eventually boosted their ownership share to controlling (and subsequently Six Flags), which gets us to where we are today.

TL;DR it was cheaper to do a limited partnership structure in the 1960s when building the park to get all the investment in place. Six Flags, the company, gradually boosted their share count to controlling majority.
 
Six Flags Entertainment Corporation reported their 2025 fourth quarter and year-end results with a net loss of $1.6 billion over the year, but per capita spending increasing 8% in Q4. Source
 
Enchanted Parks EPR Properties taken over 7 parks;

The parks included in the transaction are Valleyfair (Minneapolis, Minn.), Worlds of Fun (Kansas City, Mo.), Michigan’s Adventure (Grand Rapids, Mich.), Schlitterbahn Waterpark Galveston (Galveston, Texas), Six Flags St. Louis (St. Louis, Mo.), Six Flags Great Escape (Queensbury, N.Y.) and Six Flags La Ronde (Montreal, QC)
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Full press release from 6F;

Six Flags Further Streamlines Its Portfolio With Agreements to Divest Seven Parks

Transaction Will Optimize the Company’s Portfolio, Sharpen its Strategic Focus and Strengthen its Financial Position by Accelerating Deleveraging Six Flags Entertainment Corporation (NYSE: FUN) (“Six Flags” or the “Company”), North America’s largest regional amusement park operator, today...
investors.sixflags.com investors.sixflags.com

No more "fair" in Cedar Fair :(
 
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All will be owned by EPR Properties and six of them will be operated by Enchanted Parks.

The odd one out is La Ronde, which finally leaves the chain altogether and will be independently managed by THE Kieran Burke, who currently also runs Calypso outside of Ottawa and the formidable Valcartier Resort in Quebec city.

LA RONDE AMUSEMENT PARK TO BE MANAGED BY THE OPERATOR OF VALCARTIER AND CALYPSO

/CNW/ - La Ronde Operations Inc., a company owned by Kieran Burke, will assume the operation of La Ronde amusement park following its acquisition by EPR...
www.newswire.ca www.newswire.ca
 
Updated thread title to capture the new sales activity.

Definitely wild to see the $331M sale figure for all the park properties. A few thoughts taking everything in:
  • These parks were basically making no meaningful revenue with a collective EBITDA of $45M annually. EBITDA is one measure of how much money a business makes throughout the year before taxes - generally the higher the better.
  • Low EBITDA could be why the sale price was so low.
  • Alternatively, EPR could have had the upper hand in negotiating the sale price. Without two competing franchises between Six Flags and Cedar Fair, the list of "large" U.S. park chains grows quickly short. Outside of Herschend (who just got done with a large acquisition) and Busch Gardens, you're down a handful of regional park operators, who don't have large sums of cash for big buy-outs like this. Gone are the Paramount-Cedar Fair merger days.
  • As much as I love have a new, diverse park ownership come into form to create competition and opportunity for new ride development (rather than Six Flags controlling a large percentage of new U.S. coaster projects since the merger) - hard to see how EPR would muster the cash for improvements, save taking on new debt and investors.
  • How the heck was Darien Lake spared in all this? 😅
 
Wow, so they're really downsizing in the midwest and releasing all 4 of the smaller midwest parks and only hanging onto the 3 big boys in the region (CP, KI, and SFGAm).

Does this mean SF STL loses its "six flags" branding?
 
Hyde said:
How the heck was Darien Lake spared in all this? 😅
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Darien Lake, Frontier City, and a few others were already owned by EPR and still have operating contracts in place with Six Flags. Getting out of these contracts (which I'm sure they would love to do) would/is going to be an entirely different nut to crack. I imagine they'll probably be renegotiating within a few years.

Steely Dan said:
Does this mean SF STL loses its "six flags" branding?
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Enchanted Parks has secured the right to retain Six Flags branding for the time being, but I meannn they did trademark Enchanted Parks St. Louis

I'd love to hear the story on how Six Flags finally pulled out of La Ronde. There was contract baggage not due to expire for a long time at least but the city had grown weary of them over how they razed various Expo 67 landmarks/attractions without notice, and I imagine the new Cedar Fair overlords were eager to cut ties with the park. There was word last year that Premier Parks was eyeballing the merger hard to see if they could pick up a dropped park, and given their decidedly autopilot independent operation of Calypso and the very famous Valcartier I'd imagine the city was enticed.

Enchanted Parks has also just tapped Franceen Gonzales as COO effective this month, who previously served in executive positions at Legoland Florida and WhiteWater West.
 
TPoseOnTantrum said:
Enchanted Parks has secured the right to retain Six Flags branding for the time being, but I meannn they did trademark Enchanted Parks St. Louis
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Yeah, you're probably right. It likely loses the SF branding somewhere down the line.

It'll be kinda sad to see one of the three original six flags parks leave the flock.

Oh well, nothing lasts forever.
 
Some encouraging words about St. Louis. I wouldn't be too worried.

James Harhi, CEO and founder of the Florida-based Enchanted Parks, called Six Flags St. Louis the “crown jewel” of the deal and said it will be renamed "Mid-America by Enchanted Parks" in an homage to its original name, Six Flags Over Mid-America.

“It’s a unique park. We really pushed for Six (Flags) to include St. Louis,” Harhi told the Post-Dispatch Friday. “It’s a valuable property."

Harhi said Enchanted Parks will use this year to figure out what visitors want, which rides are popular and how operations work. He said the company looks forward to fixing up the amusement park and injecting it with life.

“It should be seeing new attractions on a consistent basis,” Harhi said.

Already, Harhi said, he’s been in conversations with Warner Bros. who hold the licensing rights to the park’s DC Comics’ rides like the Batman roller coaster and The Joker: Carnival of Chaos pendulum swing.
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Source
 
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