The Story Of: Six Flags

Originally Published: August 18, 2019

Sorry for the week-long hiatus. As I said earlier, I was in Southern California visiting Knott’s Berry Farm. Videos from that vacation here.

But now that I’m back… Without further ado…

One of the oldest amusement park chains, a former owner of the sad, sad Geauga Lake, owners of the self-proclaimed ‘Thrill Capital of the World’ and known for it’s non-theming, this is

The story of:

Six Flags

Six Flags originated in 1957 by Angus G. Wynne, with funding from others, originally being called ‘The Great Southwest Corporation.’

Its first park would take three years to break ground, with the park, ‘Six Flags over Texas’ breaking ground in 1960.

The name ‘Six Flags over Texas’ is a nod to the history of the state, and the 6 nations that have ruled over it, Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the U.S., and the Confederacy.

Back to Over Texas, the park would open in 1961 for the shortest park season I’d ever heard of, 45 days.

The original lineup was little more than a Native American village, a gondola, a railroad, Wild West themes shows, a stagecoach ride, a pirate-themed attraction called ‘Skull Island,’ and a riverboat attraction called ‘LaSalle’s River Adventure’ based on the La Salle Expeditions in the late 1600s. The ride was simply a riverboat ride in french-themed boats through wilderness with simple animal puppets.

All but the railroad have since been replaced with roller coasters, swing rides, log flumes, shoot-the-chute rides and an observation tower.

In an unexpected turn of events, only 7 years later, Six Flags Over Texas, still the only park at this time, as well as presumably all six flags branding that existed at the time, was sold to a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad, who was currently perusing non-railroad industries as to diversify profits away from the dying passenger rail business.

And this turned out rather well for Six Flags it would seem, with the new owners came more opportunity and capital for further investments. The first major of which was ‘Six Flags over Georgia’ in 1967, and ‘Six Flags Over Mid-America’ in 1971. These are considered the last two ‘original parks’ opened by the company.

This was perhaps due to their next park expansion being a purchase of AstroWorld in Huston, Texas, Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, and Magic Mountain, in Valencia, California in 1979.

Though these purchases made Six Flags more successful, it didn’t make them successful enough for Penn Central to hold on to them, and in 1982, Bally Manufacturing purchased the company.

And soon after this purchase, Great America, in Gurnee, Illinois was purchased by Six Flags, from Marriott Hotels.

And thanks to this purchase, Six Flags also gained the theme park rights to the Looney Tunes characters.

And yet again, in 1987, Bally sold the chain to Wesray Capital Corporation in a leveraged buyout.

Because that’s always a good idea.

And then Time Warner began gaining leverage in the company, by 1990 already having a 19 percent stake in the company, and 50 percent in 1991.

The remaining 50 percent was split between Blacktone Group and Wertheim Schroder and Company. Though Time Warner took the remaning stake in 1993, changing the name from ‘Six Flags Corp.’ to ‘Six Flags Theme Parks, Inc.’

And in 1966, they began to manage Fiesta Texas in San Antonio, Texas. And in 1998, purchased the park from USAA.

And now, we switch gears to Premier Parks.

Originally Tierco Group Inc., a real estate company based in Oklahoma.

They would eventually purchase ‘Frontier City,’ a theme park in Oklahoma City.

Despite the clear purchase of a Theme park, the company had no intention of entering the business.

Instead they wished to demolish the park after describing it as “Run down” and “Beat up”, and turn the land into a shopping center.

So why does the park exist today? Because: Oil.

Around this time there was an oil bust in the area and they lost interest in making it a shopping center, instead hiring Gary Story as the park’s general manager, and pouring $13 million into improving and rejuvenating the park.

And this was soon proven to be the right choice, since the park quadrupled in attendance and revenue, and more rides, attractions and better food service was added and improved.

And this was enough for Tierco to shift focus from general real-estate to amusement parks, in 1988.

Going so far as to liquidate much of it’s property in the late 1980s for the purpose of creating capital for the park.

Since the reinvestment paid off, more capital was made available, creating further growth of the park.

They would add a waterpark in 1991 called ‘White Water,’ now called ‘White Water Bay.’

And through this park, the company realized that the key to making a park more successful was adding new, exciting rides. And as to boost attendance moreso, they made the park family-friendly.

In 1992, the park ‘Wild World,’ in Largo, Maryland was not doing very well, and was purchased by Tierco.

With a name change to ‘Adventure World’ and a $500,000 investment, the park’s kiddie section was expanded, and re themed to be more tropical.

And, in 1996, the park manager mentioned earlier, Gary Story was promoted to Executive Vice President soon after the purchase of Adventure World.

He was later promoted to president and Chief Operating Officer, and more rides were also added to Adventure World that year, 1994.

In 1994, in a stroke of pure genius, Tierco renamed itself to ‘Premier Parks’ since they were becoming a premier regional park operator.

And the new CEO at the time, Kieran E. Burke, commented that the new name signified a new era for the company.

Okay, here we go.

Premier picked up speed in the 90s. In 1995, they bought many properties owned by Funtime Inc., including…

Geauga Lake near Cleveland, Ohio,

Wyandot Lake in Powell, Ohio,

Darien Lake near Buffalo, New York,

and Lake Compounce in Bristol, Connecticut.

In 1996, Premier added to its portfolio, buying Elitch Gardens in Denver, Colorado,

the Waterworld USA waterparks in Sacramento and Concord, California,

Riverside Park in Agawam, Massachusetts,

and Great Escape and Splashwater Kingdom in Lake George, New York.

They would immediately sell Lake Compounce to Kennywood.

While Geauga Lake (sigh) Wyanddot lake and Adventure world included Water Parks, and Frontier city had one, though 14 miles away and needing separate admission, they added waterparks to Darien Lake, Elitch Gardens, Great Escape and Lake Compounce, before it was sold to Kennywood,

And Premier Parks was valueable enough at this point that their initial public offering raised nearly $70 million, at $18 per share. And it planned to use that money to expand it’s current, and buy new parks.

In 1997, they would purchase Kentucky Kingdom in Louisville, and Marine World, in Vallejo, California.

A Second public offering soon after would raise $2 million at $29 per share.

To put the company into perspective, nearly 8.8 million combined guests visited Premier’s parks in 1996.

Late 1997 saw the agreement to purchase 94 percent of Walabi Family Parks, a European company, and the agreement went through in 1998, adding 5 Walabi parks, as well as Bellewaerde to the chain.

Also in 1998, Premier added rides and roller coasters to Marine World.

And we’re back to Six Flags!

Six flags was bought in it’s entirety in 1998 by Premier Parks.

And they soon applied the Six Flags preface to many of their parks.

And Premier would take more from Warner, with the purchase of Warner Bros. Movie worlds in Germany and Madrid, though Madrid had yet to be built at the time.

In this deal, Premier had the option to buy several other parks in Europe, as well as European and Latin American rights to Movie World branding, on top of their existing rights in the U.S. and Canada. Though outside of these areas, branding was not an option, and neither was Movie World in Australia.

And in 1999 would purchase Reino Adventura in Mexico.

And in 2000, Premier Parks would rename itself officially to Six Flags Theme Parks Inc, and would continue re branding parks such as Geauga Lake and Riverside parks. SF Ohio and SF New England respectively.

They also re branded Walabi Flevo to SF Holland, and Reino Adventura to SF Mexico.

In 2001 Six Flags bought SeaWorld Ohio across the lake, and merged it with SF Ohio, making it one park called SF Worlds of Adventure.

SeaWorld was making the right choice.

SF World of Adventure was slated to compete with Cedar Point.

In 2001, Six Flags entered a deal with Montreal, Quebec in Canada to operate the La Ronde park in a long-term contract to least the land from the city and operate the park.

And Walabi Wavre was renamed to Six Flags Belgium.

In 2004, Six Flags was in too much debt for their liking and decided to sell many properties to pay it all off.

These included all European parks, with the exception of Movie World Madrid, to Star Parks, owned by Palamon Capital Partners.

Though soon, even Madrid fell back to Warner, who renamed it to Parque Warner Madrid.

And in April, in was, unsurprisingly discovered that SF World of Adventure would have been to expensive to compete with Cedar Point, causing the park to be sold to Cedar Fair.

But at least, even with the loss of the most successful park in the world, this did at least raise over $340 million to relieve their debt.

Though, this progress would be hindered in 2005, when Cascade Investments and Red Zone LLC, which owned a combined 23 percent of the company, demanded change. And in August of that year, Red Zone would begin a proxy battle in order to gain control of the board of directors.

And also SF New Orleans was destroyed by a hurricane.

They also had to close SF AstroWorld in 2006 due to the neighboring Reliant Stadium and problems caused by it.

Six Flags expected to get upwards of $150 million form the property though.

They got $77 million after they had to clear it at a cost of $20 million.

But hey, in November 2005, Red Zone announced it had gained control of the Board, and booted the current CEO, Kieran Burke and replaced him with Mark Shapiro, former VP of programming at ESPN.

They then named Jack Kemp, Harvey Weinstien and Michael Kassanm who was the firmer president of Interpublic Group of Companies Incorporated, to their new Board of Directors.

Though this wouldn’t save them from from the sell-off, whoch would continue into 2006.

In January 2006, Six Flags announced that it would sell Frontier City and Whitewater bay after 2006, as well as closing corporate offices on Oklahoma City, moving it HQ to New York City.

Though the Mark Shapiro still expected the parks to operate after the sale.

But then, in June, Six Flags announced interest in the sale of six of it’s parks, including Elitch Gardens, Darien Lake, Waterworld, in Concord, California, Wild Waves and Enchanded Village, in Federal Way, Washington, Splashtown, in Huston, and most notably Six Flags Magic Mountain. They would later also announce the sale of Wyandot Lake, in Powell, Ohio to the nearby Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.

In the end, Magic Mountain was spared, but the rest of the parks would get sold to CNL Lifestyle Properties.

But things would only get worse, as after Mark Shapiro was appointed CEO, the company’s revenue had fallen by over $120 million, and by 2008 their stock price was too low to even be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

And with the financial crisis at the time, it was believed that Six Flags would not be able to make the August 2009 payment to their shareholders.

But despite this, the management saw the business as a sound one, pointing out the increased park attendance in 2008 as compared to 2007, even if only a slight increase.

Mark Shapiro claimed that the company’s problem was the declining attendance and revenue of the parks caused by new management. If these issues were not resolved, the company warned, in it’s 2008 annual report, that it would have to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. They already had a counsel in place in the event that they would have to file.

But the company stated that it would operate normally, even if the filing occurred. Despite reports that it would decrease all parks attendance by approximately 6 percent, given that most people would not want to ride a roller coaster, or any ride for that matter, operated by a bankrupt company.

In April of 2009, The New York Stock Exchange stated that it would delist Six Flags on April 20th. Though the company did not intend to appeal the decision.

Later that year, in June, Six Flags announced it would delay it’s $15 million debt payment by using a 30-day grace period.

It wasn’t two weeks later, in June 13th, 2009, that Six Flags would file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection. They planned to run the parks as normal while the company restructured, but this event put their fate into question.

It was in August that the restructuring plan was announced. Six flags would lend 92 percent control over the company to lenders, in return for $1.13 billion less debt.

An important part of the plan was getting a new lease with the board of the Kentucky State Fair, in order to continue operations of SF Kentucky Kingdom.

Six Flags had requested to frogo the next 9 years of Lease payments, instead diverting a portion of park revenue to the board. The board rejected the offer, and Six flags announced it would not reopen the park for the next season. Though the board stated it was still open to a revised lease agreement of some kind.

It took until April of 2010 for the company’s board to agree on a reorganization plan. Junior Note Holders would assume control of the company, these included as Hedge Funds Shark Investments, and Pentwater Capital Management. While the Senior Note Holders were paid cash.

Despite disagreement from certain partied who would gain nothing, the Bankruptcy Judge approved the plan later in April.

As a part of the plan, the chairman of the board, Dan Snyder was removed, while Mark Shapiro would keep the CEO position for a brief time.

And this would seem to work, as on May 3rd, 2010, Six Flags Entertainment Corp. would emerge from bankruptcy and announce it’s intention to issue new stock on the NYSE.

Due to suspicion of the company’s future however, Mark Shapiro would step down as the CEO, and Al Weber Jr. would take the mantle of interim president and CEO.

As well as moving their Corporate HQ from New York City, to Grand Prairie, Texas.

There’s been a lot of things to happen between 2010 and now. So I’ll cover some of the highlights for time sake.

In August 2010, Weber would step down as CEO and Jim Reid-Anderson would take his place, becoming Chairman, President, and CEO. Also in 2010, John Duffey would join the company as Chief Financial Officer. And Al Weber’s last role in the company would be lost, retiring from the position of COO, with no immediate successor.

In February of 2016, John Duffey would take Anderson’s place as President and CEO, with Anderson being promoted to executive chairman.

And in 2017, Six Flags gained it’s 20th property, taking over operations of Waterworld California, a waterpark located in Concord, California.

Also in 2017, John Duffey stepped down as President and CEO, wirth Anderson taking the positions back.

2018, Six Flags purchased the operating leases for five EPR Properties parks.

Darien Lake, Frontier City, Wet’n’Wild Phoenix and SplashTown and WhiteWater Bay.

And that’s about The Story of: Six Flags. Now being bigger than ever, they plan to get new parks in China. Within Haiyan, Bishan, and Nanjing, between 202 and 2021. And the furthest plans being in 2022, with a park in Riydah, Saudi Arabia.

Six Flags is doing well and has plenty of expansion plans.

Here’s to that somehow leading to cheaper and better food…