Six Flags has filed Chapt 11

[car67]

Wow how can a amusement park file bankruptcy? These parks are always full bumper to bumper with paid tickets! Is any company or business safe? Wow

[justbroke]

If you look at Theme Parks, as I have in great detail, their attendance patterns are seasonal and well defined. Even when the parks look full, they make more money from concessions and souvenirs than they do from admissions. A park full of American teens, usually doesn't yield as much as a park full of tourists from some other country.

Also, the attendance is pretty much tied to these dates...

• Christmas Break (Peak)
• President's Week (Normal)
• Easter Break (Peak)
• Spring Break (Peak)
• Summer Break (Normal)
• Any Saturday or Sunday (weekend for locals!) (And locals pay a lower daily rate with an Annual Passe that may cost the equivalent of just one day's paid admission.)

Everything else, is low attendance... especially between the end of summer and Christmas. Then, the other major low attendance time is those gaps between President's Week, Easter, Spring and Summer Break.

Those parks take a lot of people to run them, and a lot of resources (water, electricity, gas, fuel, etc).

[TooMuchCredit]

The trend toward year round school has caused issues as well. They don't have the pool of summer teen workers they used to have. You used to have 3 months where the kids were out in summer, but with year round schools, that's down to 3 weeks. Even in traditional school years, the break has been cut to 2 months. When I was in school we used to get our the 1st week of June and started back the day after Labor Day. Now they get out the last week of May but start the 1st week in August.

[justbroke]

We also took our own lunches and stuff and left it in a camping cooler in the car. The amount they charge for food is totally outrageous.

Exactly! Locals don't spend money in the parks. Yet, many theme parks count on locals to "cover them" during the off-seasons and down time.

[Amy26]

That's too bad though... in these times we need happy fun places to go. I'm still amazed that I see blockbusters in our neighborhood... who goes to blockbuster anymore?

I just wonder how bad this economy is going to get... its scary.

[DustinLH00]

Lol, I work at Blockbuster for my 2nd job, you know, the one that is putting me over the median income...

That's too bad though... in these times we need happy fun places to go. I'm still amazed that I see blockbusters in our neighborhood... who goes to blockbuster anymore?

I just wonder how bad this economy is going to get... its scary.