29th April 2019 Last week, a rumour circulated in the theme park industry. It suggested that discussions were taking place within the Six Flags corporate office regarding the possibility of selling off Six Flags over Texas along with up to two other parks in the chain to another established theme park company.
By Lance Hart, Screamscape
A little more light digging revealed that that the established company involved in the talks was possibly Herschend Family Entertainment, the company behind the Silver Dollar City and Dollywood theme parks, along with a portfolio of other known attractions.
As the man behind the Screamscape.com news site for the past twenty years, I was immediately intrigued. I just had to know more. After all, Screamscape has long been famous for our rumour reports; often digging up very juicy information long before the official announcements are made. This wasn’t my rumour however, and was not first leaked by Screamscape. Nevertheless, it had a large group of my contacts also buzzing.
Rumours vs. The Truth
The problem here was that the story was false. There were no current talks with Six Flags about selling off a few of their parks happening at all. According to an update from the original source of the rumour, they claimed that the rumoured talks did happen briefly. However, this happened some time ago and it was no longer an item up for consideration.
Rumours are a funny thing. And after dealing with them for so long, I like to think that I’ve learned enough about the industry to typically tell the difference between the truth and a fantasy when someone comes claiming to have the inside scoop on something. Most “bad” rumours can be spotted quite easily.
For example, when the story being told just doesn’t make sense, or seems too far fetched to be true. Some of these bad rumours have even achieved a bit of legendary status, becoming a running joke for many insiders. Such as the ongoing joke at Cedar Point about how “Magnum is sinking”.
See also: Would Six Flags buying the SeaWorld parks be a risk worth taking?
Truth-based rumours
This rumour was a bit different than most. The idea that Six Flags was considering to sell the very first Six Flags park ever built just seems bonkers on the surface. And yet this rumour gained considerable traction in the industry over the weekend before being snuffed out by the source. How did this happen? Because sometimes, even the most strange sounding story can be based on some very interesting truths.
In this case, digging deeper into this rumour were claims that the sale concept was pitched by the minority owners of Six Flags Over Texas. These were owners who were dissatisfied with the current management of the park by the Six Flags corporate office. If this story sounds familiar at all, it should, because the same thing happened back in the late ‘90s.
The group of original investors/stockholders that backed the building of Six Flags Over Texas were unhappy with the way the park was being run under Time Warner’s ownership of the Six Flags Theme Parks chain. They used their influence to organise talks for a buyout of the original Six Flags Over Texas park to that era’s Premier Parks company. There were also rumours at the time that a similar movement was brewing with the minority owners of Six Flags Over Georgia as well after winning a lawsuit settlement against the corporate office over the installation of the used ‘Viper’ coaster at that park in 1995.
See also: Six Flags plans to buy rather than build its way to a bigger U.S. footprint
Mystery partners of Six Flags
The short-lived uprising movement was quickly put to rest. This was when Time Warner offered to simply sell off the entire chain to Premier Parks, along with a license deal for their characters. At the time, it was expected that as Premier Parks became the “new” Six Flags company, they would buy out the remaining local shareholders from both parks in order to make these two parks fully corporate owned. Unfortunately, it looked like that never happened.
The former Premier Parks management team grew the chain too fast and found themselves in bankruptcy. This lead to another management team who also stumbled along the way, before giving way to today’s corporate structure.
So do these mystery partners really still exist? According to the official Six Flags annual reports, both Six Flags Over Texas and Six Flags Over Georgia still mention that the parks are not fully owned by the company, but are listed as ‘leasehold interest’ instead, with a note that the “Lessor is the limited partner of the partnership that owns the park” with the leases of the Georgia park set to expire in 2027 and the Texas park in 2028.
At that time Six Flags will be given the option to “acquire all the interest in the respective lessor that we have not previously acquired.”
Strange Six Flags rumours
Adding another piece of reality to the puzzle was the possible identity of the mystery third park that could have been involved. This I believe would have been the Six Flags White Water waterpark in Atlanta. Again, according to the annual report, Six Flags does not own this park by itself. Instead, that particular property is listed as being, “Owned by the Georgia partnership”. Digging into that park’s history reveals that while the waterpark was actually built by Herschend themselves in the mid 80’s, they sold the park in 1999 to a “group of limited partners that own the nearby Six Flags Over Georgia theme park”.
So as strange as this rumour was, there was a history of similar action from the partners. This, along with just the right kind of ownership issues behind these three parks that could actually make just such a deal an item that could have been brought up for consideration once upon a time.
In the end, nothing is happening. No parks are changing hands, no deals are being struck. And the rumour is false, for now at least. Yet, this particular rumour strikes me as being special. Not only did it catch the eyes and imagination of so many people over the weekend, but it does provide an excellent example of Mark Twain’s old adage, that the “Truth is stranger than fiction. But it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.”
The third mystery park very well could have been Six Flags St. Louis. It was the third of the original three parks built by The Great Southwest Group and Angus Wynne.
Six Flags Owns St Louis
You know when I first heard this it didn’t sound so crazy.
It sounded like one of two possibilities (if it had all been truly for real, mostly).
1. They wanted to sell off the parks they completely ignore/neglect/don’t really do well such as St. Louis, SF America Maryland, maybe one they got with all the water parks not doing as expected.
2. They were (to me they are and I think it can easily lead to trouble) growing too fast again-acquiring way too many new water parks and of course getting frontier city and six flags darien lake back.
However the Six Flags Over Texas thing pretty sure made it sound completely false.
If it’d even had the 3rd park above as being six flags new England I wouldn’t even be in total doubt, (can’t add great escape because they clearly care more about the waterpark and even so having a park next door separated would literally make it competition).
So when the Texas Six flags park and Georgia six flags park expire in 2027 and 2028 they will no longer be six flags parks at all?
That is up for debate. The investment group that funds SFOG and SFOT is still principally owned by the Angus Wynne family. At that point it would be their decision first (as I have understood it) to either sell to Six Flags Corporate or another chain altogether. The problem is, I have heard that both SFOG and SFOT have been doing quite well for some time now. I believe the Wynne’s and their investors would be better off extending their agreement with Six Flags Corporate another 5 to 10 years. If they sold out to, say, Herschend, they would assumably loose all rights to Looney Tunes, DC Super Hero’s, and more as well as some ride titles that are copyright by Six Flags parks. Those properties use their characters and IP’s to really market Six Flags parks. Losing that licensure would see a huge drop in attendance and revenue. Herschend has no IPs that I know of, Cedar Fair has Carowinds in North and South Carolina and Cedar Point in Ohio so I don5 think they would be interested, Disney and Universal are in the same boat as well as their properties are in neighboring states that would cause competition. It will be interesting to see what the end result will be. Six Flags could always throw out a hell of a deal to the Wynnes as well where they will sell the parks to Six Flags.
I had thought that as well at first, but looking over the corporate documents, the Six Flags St. Louis park (formerly known as Six Flags over Mid-America) is fully owned by the current Six Flags Theme Parks company, and does not have any partner or investor groups to appease, so the sale of that park would have be less likely baring an extremely significant financial offer.
Not at all. The clause just states that currently these two parks themselves are ‘still owned’ by the local partners, and Six Flags is operating them under a lease agreement, but in 2027 and 2028, the corporate Six Flags company will then be able to purchased them in full from the local partners and make them fully owned parks by the Six Flags company.