Six Flags up for sale

[DLcastmbr]

Due to lack of customers and Revenue six flags californias coaster park is up for sale. If you have around 300 million dollars u may wanna buy it looks like fun

 

[my_lenaptalf]

Due to lack of customers and Revenue six flags californias coaster park is up for sale. If you have around 300 million dollars u may wanna buy it looks like fun

hmm, I've never been. I recently moved to AZ from Chicago, where our Six Flags was a pretty good coaster park (except for lines of course). I should try to get out there this summer.


300 million seems cheap for the profit these places must make.

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

It's more of a real-estate play.

Six Flags took on too much debt acquiring parks. Magic Mountain sits on valueable real-estate. Hence it's on the block.

 

[DeloreanGirl]

I heard about that today too, isn't it weird? Magic Mountain is kinda in a weird area away from the major cities. But since my husband and I want to move to Valencia next year, maybe I shouldn't be too mad. I'm curious to see what will happen......!

 

[dazeddaisy]

Does this mean the park is closing? or will this mean that whoever buys the park has the decision to close it?

 

[BLOWZO]

do a search under google NEWS for "magic mountain"

a million articles come up ....
(i would link you but it does not allow me to link yt)

 

[back2disney]

Crazy! I can understand dismantling the one in Houston, It was very old & no new rides forever, but Magic MTN is getting new rides every year with roller coasters keeping up and topping the Cedar Pts of the world.
Oh well, I hope its still there when I visit in a couple of years... I thought it would be a nice diversion to do while at Disney(my wife also a mom loves thrill rides, go figure?)

 

[BLOWZO]

I live literally 10 minutes away, and have not been in over 2 years. I love the place... I went a ton before I moved close to it.

perhaps I will go soon, Just incase

 

[JayS]

Crazy! I can understand dismantling the one in Houston, It was very old & no new rides forever, but Magic MTN is getting new rides every year with roller coasters keeping up and topping the Cedar Pts of the world.
Oh well, I hope its still there when I visit in a couple of years... I thought it would be a nice diversion to do while at Disney(my wife also a mom loves thrill rides, go figure?)

The land is worth 10x (or more) to a housing developer what the whole park is worth to an amusement park operator. IMHO, the most likely outcome is that many of the newer rides will be sold, disasembled and relocated. If the neighbors are lucky, they'll keep the water park, but don't count on it.

 

[back2disney]

The land is worth 10x (or more) to a housing developer what the whole park is worth to an amusement park operator. IMHO, the most likely outcome is that many of the newer rides will be sold, disasembled and relocated. If the neighbors are lucky, they'll keep the water park, but don't count on it.

Yeah, probably so. But I guess with Snyder or whoever is in charge more money comes first. Could you imagine Disney selling DL for boocoos of money???
Well, if they move the rides to other parks, specifically Six Flags over Texas - that park will become a major major attraction for the midwest.

 

[Alice's Mom]

I haven't been to MM is at least 10 years, I just hate thrill rides. We do however love Hurricane Harbor, it is the best and cleanest water park around. I'll be dissappointed if that goes, we make regular trips in the summer.

 

[kaze1sd]

Just a quick clarification....

SFMM is not up for sale due to lack of customers or revenue. I just came from SFMM over the weekend and believe me there are plenty of guests in the park. SF's CEO has also maintained the SFMM is indeed very profitable.

The real problem is that Six Flags (the parent company) is in debt as shares have been falling due to customers moving away from the Six Flags brand (as a whole). To remedy this they looked at each of their parks to determine which parks would fetch the highest value on the market. SFMM being on valuable SoCal land happened to be one of them.

SF (the parent company) also has stated that they would to reinvent the Six Flags brand name to once again cater to the family setting. SFMM with all of its thrill rides really has become a "teenagers" or "Gen-X" park and SF (the parent company) maintains that they no longer want to deal with frustrations of a Gen-X park.

Going from here SF (the parent company) is exploring all offers on SFMM and I believe 3-5 other parks. There has been some talk of the SF's desired number for SFMM to be between $300-500M and some of the estimates that I have seen is that the land alone is worth $200-250M. Will it close soon?... probably not. Will it close?... if the money is right, its a possibility.

That being said, again, I just got back from there on Saturday. The rides are great (especially Tatsu and X - although Tatsu did break SEVERAL times during the day)! Sure, there were plenty of things that I would have improved on but I am sure if you put anything under the microscope you are going to find something. I particularly did not have a problem with the younger crowd and do think that the logistics of running a younger crowd park is is manageable.

Here's a link to one of the million articles on this sale...
http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_4057143

Hope this clears up any misinformation...

 

[Disneyjosh229]

Wow, california real estate is absolulty crazy. I was in San Fran a few months back and had a conversation with a real estate agent. He was saying that most of his clients are entry level latino customers, who are looking at older (20 years) 1,200 sq ft houses for $500k!! AHH crazy, my house right now would go for $100k less then that and its 3,000 square feet on an acre sized lot 30 miles from Detroit!! That being said, i totally want to move to California, i just cant continue my current lifestyle!!

 

[exDS vet]

There's no way that a lack of guest or revenue would ever be a reason for selling Magic Mountain. For the southern California locals, it's probably the #1 attraction. That being said, I would be very surprised if the park was closed in favor of real estate, but crazier things have happened.

 

[jtown]

I was just there for a corporate event. The MC joked repeatedly about how the tickets they were giving away (as event prizes) were good until the end of the year or until the park shut down. Then he'd say, "Just kidding. We're not shutting down." The corporate line is that the parks are being sold as a whole, not individually and the Magic Mountain park will not be razed for housing.

Whether that's true or not, I don't know. Never believe a corporate shill. For the last decade or so, I've noticed that Magic Mountain seems to have given up on "presentation". Back in the 80s, they followed the Disney example by theming the various sections of their park. Each section had its own look and feel. Asian on the top of the hill, southwest on baja ridge, frontier on the western side, etc. There was nice landscaping. Everything was clean and worked.

Now the old rides are dirty and run down. The TV monitors in the queues are all dead. Lighting barely works on some rides. The fluorescent paint in Superman is all rubbed off so it doesn't glow. A number of the older rides seem to be shut down for good. (They've been shut down long enough to get that "abandoned" look.) Most of the photobooths were closed. The new rides don't even bother with any kind of theme. They're just crammed in wherever they fit with fences to herd the people into the lines.

I don't know what the rest of the parks are like but whoever buys them will have to put a lot of work (and money!) into overhauling the classic rides and clear out the old stuff that's gone to seed. Give the presentation a kick in the rear and make it look like they care about their park(s).

 

[moikturtle]

I live literally down the road from Magic Mountain. As others have mentioned previously, the park itself is not in financial trouble, it's Six Flags. In fact Magic Mountain is one of the more successful of the company's parks.

Anyway, the city of Santa Clarita has actually now been trying to make agreements to have it kept open and annexed to Santa Clarita. Right now it's within the Los Angeles County borders, and not Santa Clarita's. Even though all you have to do to get into Santa Clarita's borders from there is go under a freeway overpass. Anyway, it's important to the city of Santa Clarita that Magic Mountain stays open because it's the largest employer of the city's residents, plus there are a number of hotels and restaurants that depend on the Magic Mountain crowds for revenues. In fact, the Marie Calendar's across the street from the park is the top seller of all Marie Calendar's restaurants by leaps and bounds.

 

[MateasMom]

The previous poster said exactly what I was going to say. The city and county are currently both 'in discussions' with MM to try to lure MM to either 'stay' in county or come to the city but either way to stay in business. They both are offering tax advantages, etc. It will be interesting (at least to us locals ) to watch it play out.

Like others have said though, they can say all they want on the news about how MM is 'up for sale' because of the rough crowd. It's for sale because the land is worth an insane amount of money. SF needs to cash out and MMs land is their cash cow. Plain and simple. Developers will plop 10 condos per 10,000 sq ft and charge $600,000 a pop for them.

 

[aztecgoods]

This is crazy, MM and Cedar Pt are the 2 best non-Dis and Universal parks around. I hope the city or county doesn't let them do anything fatal to the park it is one of the best parks in the world I think. That would be a real blow to the theme park world if MM closed, maybe one of the biggest blows to the industry in history. And yes So Cal real estate is crazy. I've never seen anything like it.

 

[JayS]

I saw an article today that said Six Flags would be deciding what to do in December. Anything from sell to a good offer to keep the properties to wait another year for more offers.

 

[disneegrl4eva]

lets also not forget that there are 2 SF parks in California which may be another reason why there is talks of doing away with Magic Mountain....I dont think another state has 2 SF parks...we are the only ones and I have no idea how the one in Vallejo stacks up in regards to profit, property value etc....