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Dolly's amusement parks company Herschend took over operations of Kentucky Kingdom and it has been very interesting watching the care being put into that park,

Dolly's amusement parks company Herschend took over operations of Kentucky Kingdom and it has been very interesting watching the care being put into that park, especially with comparison to when it was managed by Six Flags. Kentucky Kingdom is not yet "Dollywood North" by any stretch of imagination, but you can see enough of the care and emphasis on friendliness that you can kind of see the expected trajectory at this point. I've found it encouraging to watch.

xp84 1y ago
That's great to hear. With Six Flags being such a polar opposite to the kind of care Dollywood represents, especially. I'm still sad that Cedar Fair sold out to Six Flags, because they had at least a modestly better reputation. Six Flags in my opinion has long been run in a fashion that makes private equity proud: Reduce cap-ex to the minimum level, minimize cleaning, maintenance, staffing, etc. while extracting every last dollar possible for short-term gain.
- WorldMaker 1y ago
  Yeah, Six Flags basically bankrupted Kentucky Kingdom before they left, sold off a lot of rides and left many in states of disrepair that were hard to come back from. (It didn't help that the bidding process to buy the park out of that bankruptcy involved the Hoosier owners of a rival regional park that eventually gave the impression they may have intentionally been sandbagging the process to stretch out the time the park was left non-operational and without active maintenance.) It's hard not to worry about the Cedar Fair parks under that sort of management having seen it at its worst first hand once already. Kings Island has a big place in my heart and I saw the Six Flags takeover with some grimacing from the viewpoint of a tiny, tiny shareholder in Cedar Fair. But also yeah, trying to come back from the CapEx problems Kentucky Kingdom was saddled with by Six Flags is a part of where I have a lot of respect for what Herschend has been doing at the park. It's slow, but steady improvement so far, with a CapEx plan that doesn't seem that aggressive, but also takes into account how much was needed and most importantly seems to be planning for the long term again (versus Six Flags' short-term mentality).

xp84 1y ago

That's great to hear. With Six Flags being such a polar opposite to the kind of care Dollywood represents, especially. I'm still sad that Cedar Fair sold out to Six Flags, because they had at least a modestly better reputation. Six Flags in my opinion has long been run in a fashion that makes private equity proud: Reduce cap-ex to the minimum level, minimize cleaning, maintenance, staffing, etc. while extracting every last dollar possible for short-term gain.

WorldMaker 1y ago
Yeah, Six Flags basically bankrupted Kentucky Kingdom before they left, sold off a lot of rides and left many in states of disrepair that were hard to come back from. (It didn't help that the bidding process to buy the park out of that bankruptcy involved the Hoosier owners of a rival regional park that eventually gave the impression they may have intentionally been sandbagging the process to stretch out the time the park was left non-operational and without active maintenance.) It's hard not to worry about the Cedar Fair parks under that sort of management having seen it at its worst first hand once already. Kings Island has a big place in my heart and I saw the Six Flags takeover with some grimacing from the viewpoint of a tiny, tiny shareholder in Cedar Fair. But also yeah, trying to come back from the CapEx problems Kentucky Kingdom was saddled with by Six Flags is a part of where I have a lot of respect for what Herschend has been doing at the park. It's slow, but steady improvement so far, with a CapEx plan that doesn't seem that aggressive, but also takes into account how much was needed and most importantly seems to be planning for the long term again (versus Six Flags' short-term mentality).