I'm sure I wrote about it back in the day, but the merger of Six Flags and Cedar Fair was a terrible idea. CF was making some missteps, but generally the company was functional and making money. Six Flags was cratering with an already damaged brand and management that had no idea what it was doing. All of the people responsible for that train wreck are gone, but the new leadership is probably making things worse. I wrote some thoughts on LinkedIn that have had an awful lot of views given my limited network.
If you go back to the start of my roller coaster and theme park fascination, say, 1998-ish, there was a consistent, decades-long dominance for Cedar Point, the "home park," if you will. There were others, not part of Cedar Fair at the time, like Kings Island, Kennywood, Holiday World and such. In 2006, Cedar Fair bought the Paramount Parks, and the transitions was pretty rough. The CEO, Dick Kinzel, after decades leading a smaller company, engaged in hubris believing he could just apply the same practices to every park, which did not work out. He did the same with cross-town Geauga Lake. He kind of overstayed his time, instead of leaving on top.
But then Matt Ouimet lands the CEO job next, and brings a ton of Disney and hotel experience, unlocking a lot of the potential of Cedar Point specifically, but also finding the different potential at all of the parks. This is all through a stretch of time where I made a lot of friends working in various roles there, including the GM for awhile. It made me realize that regardless of the rides, it was the people that really made it special.
Since the merger, and a revolving door of leadership, the company has let go of so many people, that it's unclear who is still there to run the parks. For the first time in 28 years, I don't really know anyone at Cedar Point. That's pretty weird. Mind you, I don't live close, so the park doesn't nearly have the importance it once did. But it feels like the end of an era.
Amusement parks and theme parks are not a slam-dunk as far as success goes, but there are proven fundamentals that have worked for decades, and still work. The private park companies are all doing pretty well, and Disney is killing it too. Comcast says their Universal parks missed targets, but they're not hurting, as best I can tell. Above all, these are hospitality businesses, and those are built on people. Letting go of all the people will not make it better.
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