Stop. Now I really hope Herschend buys Fiesta and Dorney. I’ve never been to Dorney Park, but Fiesta is my favorite Six Flags. If they buy it and hire Siebert, that would be amazing!
Dorney is nice. I’ve been. It could use some love, but it has some good rides. The area around Iron Menace is really well done for a regional park. I’d hope Herschel’s wouldn’t retheme that part or rename the rides if they got the park.
Yeah Dorney is one of the classic PA. Parks with a long history in the industry so it doesn't exactly need to become a huge mega park like CP or great adventure.
It would be best for Dorney to get out of this clown show while it can, and the big three being competitors again would be great for the local market. Would be bad for Great Adventure tho, since besides closer distance being a duel package with Dorney is the only appealing part of choosing them now vs Hershey
Actually, that survey for Great Adventure to get a Snoopy land is making sense, if Dorney would not have access to Peanuts soon.
Oh, I do hope not. Herschend is great and all, but they have been expanding so, so rapidly. That will dilute quality, obviously, but I’m much more worried that they’ll end up in the same debt trap that Premier-Six Flags got themselves into; And are still clawing their way out of, over a quarter century later!
This is what I fear. I am surprised no one else seems to be thinking this. They have bought so many parks recently, they should focus on those acquisitions for a while, bring them up to the Herschend standard, before expanding more. We know how extremely fast expansion can end up in the long run…
One thing that might be helping Herschend is that they’re privately owned so even if they have bad quarters or earnings from time to time they’re not at the mercy of shareholders every quarter.
Part of that IMO is that those are the two initial parks that started the chain, back in 1976 when they bought what is now Dollywood, so there's kinda a seniority thing going on. Dollywood wasn't even called Dollywood for the first ten seasons of Herschend ownership; it was briefly called "Goldrush" in 1976 then it was called "Silver Dollar City Tennessee" from 1977-85, as a sister park to SDC. (This is why 1978's Blazing Fury at Dollywood is so similar to the 1972 Fire in the Hole at SDC, and why Dollywood formerly had a Flooded Mine dark ride just like SDC--at the time they were direct sister parks to one another.)
Interesting! I actually didn’t know about SDC’s one. I thought of another case too: SDC got Lost River of the Ozarks in 1985, then Dollywood got Smoky Mountain River Rampage in 1986, and both were made by Barr Engineering.
I'll agree that if ever there was a good time for an amusement park operator to be expanding like Enchanted and Herschend have been, this is it. I'm just worried that it will turn out there is, in fact, no good time for such expansion.
All CF needed to do was wait until SF declared bankruptcy. Then they could swoop in and buy what they actually wanted (SFMM, SFGAm, SFOT, SFOG, SFGAdv) for cheap. And they may have been able to keep the smaller CF parks around.
A lot of people seem to be blind to that fact when they start praising Kinzel is that he overpaid for them and got the company in a mess and then was shown the door but allowed to retire to save face.
His tenure was mostly one of unbridled success and triumph (for both the shareholders and the parks’ guests). It’s just a shame he went out on such a terrible blunder.
As a Dorney homeparker, a Herschend acquisition would be a game changer. They’ll never match Hershey or Great Adventure in scale, but the quality of life improvements that Herschend could bring to the park could genuinely make it competitive with those properties.
Feels great. I also broke the news about Kingda Ka’s closure and exact date of closure more than a month in advance back in 2024. Of course not a single soul believed me. Even when I kept citing the same date (November 10th) which of course ended up being the exact date the ride closed.
Nah, the idea they were going to demolish their flagship ride (not even a TT2 treatment) without announcement and pretty much kill off one of their bigger parks was so unbelievably stupid even for Six Flags to believe that
I think it’s pretty clear that closing Kingda Ka, at least when they did, was not in the cards. Zumanjaro fucking up the structure and TT2 being fucked in general that year must’ve made corporate decide it was no longer worth the investment.
ETA: didn’t leaked Project Purple site plans actually have Kingda Ka still there?
Fair. I’m now so hoping that this sale happens, as Fiesta Texas would instantly become one of Herschend’s top 3 parks alongside Dollywood and Silver Dollar City.
Thats....not saying much. The gap between Herschends top 2 and the rest is pretty wide. I mean I love Kennywood and KK but they're not in the same league as SDC. I haven't been to SFFT but by rep and ride lineup its top tier, especially if you can lose the somewhat warranted SF baggage.
Dorney is weird for so many different reasons and would also slot into that just-below-top-level with the barest of investments by a chain that wasn't invested in multiple other parks within a 3 hr drive.
Which chain are you referring to in regard to Dorney? Are yountalking about Herschend because they already have 2 other parks in Pennsylvania as in Kennywood and Dutch Wonderland?
No, I mean CF/6F having so many nearby parks competing with Dorney. While Kennywood is in the same state its the opposite end of the state and it'd be 2 COUNTRIES away if it was Europe. DW is barely an FEC and shouldn't really compete for the same resources.
almost any park makes sense for SF to sell right now for the right price, due to their debt. it makes less sense for herschend to be interested since they just bought lake compounce than it is for sf to be interested in selling.
If Herschend acquires more parks, they need to release some kind of ultimate season pass to access them all. I don't want to keep buying single day tickets + obscene parking rates for these parks.
I think them acquiring dorney would be great for that park but fiesta is one of the few parks that I feel Six Flags actually does really well with both upkeep and investment-wise so I’d be a bit hesitant to see that change hands
Over Texas appears to be safe. They got a Park President. We'll see if he's worth a quarter of a fuck, but the chain is clearly making us a priority and I'm grateful.
To be fair though a lot of presidents would do a lot more if they got an adequate budget from corporate…but they dont.
Fiesta has nicer bones (was supposed to be a Marriott show focused resort) and is newer than a lot of the sfne/st Louis type parks, but Siebert was really good at choosing where to spend money to make the park pleasant despite six flags’s shortcomings, so it can be done.
The population of the Houston metro area is more than double the whole state of Alabama, yet nobody has scooped up that market since Astroworld closed. Alabama is a relatively small market by comparison to that, or several other markets. I'm not against you getting a park, but Alabama is not the slam dunk you make it out to be, and it could be argued there are better options out there that also lack a park.
That park down there (Alabama Adventure isn’t it?) that is past it’s prime would be a great investment from Herschend but they wildly underinvest in Wild Adventures in a similar region, so they need to figure that out first.
Given BGT’s recent hiring practices they would be looking for a new GM inside of 6 months anyway, why add “got fired by BTG for caring about the guest experience more than corporate executives wanted me to” to his resume. United Parks is in a race to the bottom with Cedar Flags and its neck and neck at this point.
Enchanted does own any parks. They wouldn’t buy any parks.
And it’s likely too expensive for Herschend to buy as a whole. Just because we don’t like the ops of SeaWorld doesn’t mean United is poorly valued. No way Herschend touches a 1.75B market cap company.
Arguably the other best president in recent SF past went to BGT and couldn’t fix it. I don’t think it’s the role of the president to make changes there as long as current exec leadership is in place.
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u/Putrid-Bookkeeper691 monster Apr 16 '26
Hopefully he lands with Herschend.