Worlds of Fun becoming Six Flags?

[AllThingsKC]

Six Flags and Cedar Fair to merge into an $8 billion theme park giant

https://www.kshb.com/six-flags-and-ceda ... park-giant

Looks like they're keeping the Six Flags name. This could be good news for WOF, right?

[bhedges1987]

Might get a few more visitors per year.
As far as the park, I think WoF has surpassed Six Flags st Louis. So I’m not sure the park atmosphere and rides will benefit.

Honestly it’s a nice change going from six flags to WoF. Every six flags is the same. Looney toon characters running around.

Also zero chance they get rid of Halloween haunt right? That pulls in so many visitors.

[Highlander]

Six Flags and Cedar Fair to merge into an $8 billion theme park giant

https://www.kshb.com/six-flags-and-ceda ... park-giant

Looks like they're keeping the Six Flags name. This could be good news for WOF, right?

Will the name change to Six Flags over Kansas City or stay Worlds of Fun? I hope the latter. The former is so corporate and contrived (and Texas centric).

[dukuboy1]

Reading the article it appears that some properties will keep their names & some will change that were Cedar owned. I suspect that from a marketing standpoint the WOF name & brand is very stable with 50 yrs of experience & brand recognition. The big benefit appears to be the money to fund the parks and improve facilities, amenities, and attractions. Will be curious to see how it plays out. But I’m optimistic it will lead to even better theme park experience in KC

[ericwyner]

will they at least fully staff the parks and bring back later hours in the Summer? Six Flags parks close even earlier during the summer, at least SFSTL

[ericwyner]

I think they'll sell Magic Mountain with the land being worth more than the park, they've thought about it

[TheSmokinPun]

I really don't think this will pass the federal check, this is an outright monopoly & they're going to close a lot of parks for the real estate/just because if they let it through.

I also can't for the life of me figure out why they'd keep the tainted Six Flags brand. Since Dan Snyder had it briefly 20 years ago, it's just been one mess after another for this company. Going to a CF park compared to a SF park these days is like night & day. I just can't believe that CF would decide to take this massive anchor & attach it to their neck.

[ericwyner]

I really don't think this will pass the federal check, this is an outright monopoly & they're going to close a lot of parks for the real estate/just because if they let it through.

I also can't for the life of me figure out why they'd keep the tainted Six Flags brand. Since Dan Snyder had it briefly 20 years ago, it's just been one mess after another for this company. Going to a CF park compared to a SF park these days is like night & day. I just can't believe that CF would decide to take this massive anchor & attach it to their neck.

more name recognition?

[dnweava]

The six flag name is going to be way more famous outside the KC market and could maybe help bring in a few more tourists, and having things like DC characters could make a kid in Wichita want to go to WOF over Silver Dollar City even though SDC is a far better park.

[GRID]

Worlds of Fun does not seem near as busy as it was when I was a teen. I mean all the parking lots would be filled every weekend and I'm talking about the parking lots they barely ever use anymore (all the lots east of the park). There is a reason why they needed trams, you had to park far away. It's just not a busy park anymore which is why CF has not put a lot of money into it. They invested a lot of money into new coasters after purchasing the park with Mamba, Patriot and Prowler all pretty quickly. Then they just stopped. I think it's because WoF was not getting the attendance even after the new rides so the ROI is not there for WoF. It was not for a very long time till they added a new and pretty small coaster ZZ this year. Other than that WoF basically gets leftovers from other parks.

I think CF also hurt the park by taking out too many of the parks legacy rides.

My point is that WoF might be one of the parks that may be at the losing end of this merger. I'm not sure how they lease the land or of the Hunts still have anything to do with the land.

I hope the park stays open, but Silver Dollar City has morphed into a top theme park and Iowa and Oklahoma are building new parks which are taking away even more regional customers. Hopefully it doesn't close or anything, but I don't see this helping WoF either. It will remain a bottom tier park for the chain which is too bad because it's a really nice park. It just needs a few more rides and better ops. (even with small crowds, the rides can take forever and are closed too often).

They really need to make WoF a destination park for the midwest. Something more like Carrowinds. So that even if they have parks in Des Moines or OKC etc, WoF would still be a destination park for 300-400 mile radius. If WoF is not much better than what other cities in the midwest have, it will only draw from the KC market and I think that's becoming a problem.

Much like the Royals. WoF has lost its regional draw. And the Royals and WoF used to feed off each other and bring in a ton of regional tourists.

[langosta]

Worlds of Fun does not seem near as busy as it was when I was a teen. I mean all the parking lots would be filled every weekend and I'm talking about the parking lots they barely ever use anymore (all the lots east of the park). There is a reason why they needed trams, you had to park far away. It's just not a busy park anymore which is why CF has not put a lot of money into it. They invested a lot of money into new coasters after purchasing the park with Mamba, Patriot and Prowler all pretty quickly. Then they just stopped. I think it's because WoF was not getting the attendance even after the new rides so the ROI is not there for WoF. It was not for a very long time till they added a new and pretty small coaster ZZ this year. Other than that WoF basically gets leftovers from other parks.

I think CF also hurt the park by taking out too many of the parks legacy rides.

My point is that WoF might be one of the parks that may be at the losing end of this merger. I'm not sure how they lease the land or of the Hunts still have anything to do with the land.

I hope the park stays open, but Silver Dollar City has morphed into a top theme park and Iowa and Oklahoma are building new parks which are taking away even more regional customers. Hopefully it doesn't close or anything, but I don't see this helping WoF either. It will remain a bottom tier park for the chain which is too bad because it's a really nice park. It just needs a few more rides and better ops. (even with small crowds, the rides can take forever and are closed too often).

They really need to make WoF a destination park for the midwest. Something more like Carrowinds. So that even if they have parks in Des Moines or OKC etc, WoF would still be a destination park for 300-400 mile radius. If WoF is not much better than what other cities in the midwest have, it will only draw from the KC market and I think that's becoming a problem.

Much like the Royals. WoF has lost its regional draw. And the Royals and WoF used to feed off each other and bring in a ton of regional tourists.

I don't see the regional draw alone but if you package it together with a bunch of activities a trip to WOF still makes sense.

I also think that ULCC's cuts the need for a regional draw theme park. Flights to Florida are regularly CHEAP from across the Midwest

[kas1]

Worlds of Fun does not seem near as busy as it was when I was a teen. I mean all the parking lots would be filled every weekend and I'm talking about the parking lots they barely ever use anymore (all the lots east of the park). There is a reason why they needed trams, you had to park far away. It's just not a busy park anymore which is why CF has not put a lot of money into it. They invested a lot of money into new coasters after purchasing the park with Mamba, Patriot and Prowler all pretty quickly. Then they just stopped. I think it's because WoF was not getting the attendance even after the new rides so the ROI is not there for WoF.

They invested a lot of money in the park, but invested poorly. I remember that everyone was pretty excited about Mamba, but then just one year later they built Millennium Force. So basically we got a near clone of a ride that had been at Cedar Point already for over a decade while they got something 50% bigger. And that was the point when we all realized that Cedar Fair was never going to give us a new flagship ride. Patriot and Prowler followed the same pattern - spending quite a bit of money on rides that offered no new experience to anyone that had visited other decent amusement parks around the country in the past 10 years. And ride times at the very shortest end of the spectrum.

Meanwhile they burned a lot of goodwill by removing the Zambezi Zinger for no apparent reason with no advance warning, and they followed that move by tearing out the main entrance while doing nothing much to improve the back entrance. Other theming/scenery elements disappeared around the same time.

They bought a park with a great atmosphere and a history of being a family park with also some top tier thrill rides, and they immediately tried to convert it into a generic thrill ride park. And they pretty much succeeded. I mean, when they build Mamba they also build a 50's-style American diner right next to it. In the middle of the Africa section. Just clueless. They bought the park without understanding why it was popular and immediately started changing it. Pure hubris.

In recent years I've noticed that they've been trying to undo a lot of this damage. More focus on the theming, the park's history, the park's entrance. Only small investments, but at least smart ones.

I don't see anything good coming from this merger. The only way WOF will get back to what it used to be is to become a bigger regional draw, and there's much less incentive for a company to make those types of investments if they own another park 200 miles away.

Silver Dollar City has proven that the region will still support a park that does everything that WOF used to do. But Cedar Fair screwed it all up, and it will be really hard at this point to convince anyone to make the type of investment necessary to make up for decades of limited/poor investment. Especially large, risk-averse companies.

[GRID]

Agree, Good post. The day they closed the main entrance and just started using the back entrance seemed like such a downgrade. The park used to have pretty good theming and more shows and stuff. Should have kept Orient, Zambezi etc while also adding newer rides.

You are right, Cedar Fair seems to understand what they did and are trying to correct things, hopefully they will over time and WoF keeps its originality and doesn't end up looking like a generic six flags park.

[Highlander]

Agree, Good post. The day they closed the main entrance and just started using the back entrance seemed like such a downgrade. The park used to have pretty good theming and more shows and stuff. Should have kept Orient, Zambezi etc while also adding newer rides.

You are right, Cedar Fair seems to understand what they did and are trying to correct things, hopefully they will over time and WoF keeps its originality and doesn't end up looking like a generic six flags park.

Which is ironic because Six Flags began as a very theme oriented park in Arlington TX. The rides were themed around each of the Six Flags that flew over the state (well except for the confederacy, I guess they called it "Old south" and have since removed the flag totally).

[Eon Blue]

Where was the old main entrance?

[dukuboy1]

Where was the old main entrance?

used to be right on the East side of the park, where the Patriot and such is now just to the South of that general area. Maybe where the Steel Hawk is now. That entrance took your right into Americana where all the shops and stuff are and you fanned out from there. More akin to entering into Disney on the "main street" and then heading to the parks unique areas which housed the rides. There was also a simple "back entrance" that took you to Scandinavia, which is now the updated "main entrance"

The WOF of my childhood in the late 70's & 80's was awesome and very thematic for sure. As a kid I always thought a cool job would be the guy on the back of the parking lot trams who got to do announcements and talk to ppl as they went to the entrance. I miss the trams and that whole process of riding to the entrance. No park does that anymore, a "by gone era" I suppose.

[Highlander]

Where was the old main entrance?

used to be right on the East side of the park, where the Patriot and such is now just to the South of that general area. Maybe where the Steel Hawk is now. That entrance took your right into Americana where all the shops and stuff are and you fanned out from there. More akin to entering into Disney on the "main street" and then heading to the parks unique areas which housed the rides. There was also a simple "back entrance" that took you to Scandinavia, which is now the updated "main entrance"

The WOF of my childhood in the late 70's & 80's was awesome and very thematic for sure. As a kid I always thought a cool job would be the guy on the back of the parking lot trams who got to do announcements and talk to ppl as they went to the entrance. I miss the trams and that whole process of riding to the entrance. No park does that anymore, a "by gone era" I suppose.

Don't you mean west side? That's the side facing I435 where the Patriot is. Was there parking lots out there or is that just where the parking trains brought people?

[kas1]

The Hunts had bought some full-size replica boats that had been used as film props. When entering the park, you walked across one of the boats in a moat, and then there was another one sitting nearby in another moat.

But since they weren't real boats, their condition deteriorated. It was just a coincidence that they were near the end of their life span when Cedar Fair took over.

The trams brought you to to the main entrance just so that the view at the entrance wouldn't be marred by parking lots. I think I recall reading once that insurance companies in the 90s started to take a strong dislike to anything at amusement parks that didn't have restraints. This is probably the reason why both the trams and the Zinger went away.

So part of the main entrance was rotting and the trams were a liability and it would be a long walk without them. Rather than spend money on a real solution, they just got rid of the entrance and boats and sent people in through the back door.

The second moat was reused, and I believe that some of the first moat still exists next to Steel Hawk, where you still have to walk over it.

[GRID]

I have such vivid memories of riding the trams past the lift hill of the Orient with the trains going up that hill and the screams from people on the other trains on the ride. The lift was really loud and sort of intimidating.

Even today, with the orient no longer being a huge coaster, it would be nice to enter the park with a coaster towering over you like that.

It's really too bad they didn't keep the main entrance, but if they were no longer using the trams, they would have to move it anyway as it was a long walk from the parking lots.

Worlds of Fun is a great park. It just needs a few more rides and it would be one of the better parks in the entire midwest. I don't think people in KC realize how nice WoF is. It's like the Zoo. I don't think a lot of people in KC realize they now have one of the nicest zoos in the entire country.

KC needs to figure out how to rebrand itself as a major tourism destination for the middle of the country.

[TheSmokinPun]

Trust me, WOF in the hands of Cedar Fair has been much better than if they were in the hands of Six Flags. It's a lot easier to build a park & do with it as you want when it's the only one you own. I don't think amusement parks really have much of a future anyways, and I say that as someone who spent their teenage years trying to ride all the coasters.

WOF will never again be a regional draw, I'm sorry. We are better focusing it on KC & immediate surrounding areas. DSM might lose Adventureland soon, don't go down like them. You aren't going to be able to compete with SDC, the Herschends don't own as many parks as CF/SF so can throw the money around easier.