OK, so, amusement park news went and upstaged my trip report. After many false starts Cedar Fair (owners of Cedar Point, Valley Fair, and one or two other parks) and Six Flags (owners of Six Flags, Six Flags, Six Flags, and Darien Lake) have agreed to merge. It's nominally a merger of equals, although the current Cedar Fair stockholders (like me and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger) will end up holding slightly more than 50 percent of the stock in the new corporation, while Six Flags stockholders (such as me and bunnyhugger) will have slightly less. Difference of how many shares are outstanding on both sides.
I ... feel very uneasy with this. Mostly on general principles, as I think there should be more than three companies in the world. I think most any industry is better served with multiple companies of similar size, the way Cedar Fair and Six Flags currently are. But I also dislike it on more sentimental grounds: the new company's to be called Six Flags, burying the Cedar Fair identity. And I don't want every roller coaster at Michigan's Adventure to be renamed Batman.
It's not hard to make a business case for this, though. They're companies that do very similar work of regional amusement parks, and there's almost no overlap in the regions they do cover. New York/Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are the only markets where they have two parks close enough that someone could reasonably visit both in a day. New York/Philadelphia and Los Angeles can probably support two parks from the same chain indefinitely. San Francisco, well ...
If there were any prospect of saving California's Great America the deal will certainly end it. One could just about imagine Cedar Fair deciding to move what could be moved to new, cheaper land in the area. There's no way Six Cedars would. They might sell the remains of the park to someone who would, but who'd open up a new park with old rides on those terms?
And then there's other questions like would they even keep all the parks in the super-chain? If they did shed some, would they sell them off, or spin off a secondary chain, or just close them altogether? Michigan's Adventure, to give an example, serves a market in Michigan and Indiana that Six Cedars might decide they want going to Chicago's Great America and Cedar Point instead. (I don't think that's likely, but I can't dismiss the prospect that they'd decide they don't need a day trip park in range of Ludington, Michigan, and also don't want, say, Kennywood's corporate owners to have it either.)
bunnyhugger wondered if they would try to unify their corporate identities or keep running two separate brand identities, the Six Flags and the Cedar Fair parks. I like that idea, largely because of an aesthetic dislike of the phrase ``Six Flags Cedar Point''. It's got the weakness, though, that while Six Flags has a brand identity --- to the point people will talk about going to ``Six Flags'' as though there was no need to specify which park they were at --- Cedar Fair doesn't. There's unifying elements in logo style and sign design and all that, but you only know Michigan's Adventure and Dorney Park have a common owner if you read the print on the plastic bags of the gift shop.
It's easy to see what Six Flags gets out of the merger. A CEO who lasts longer than a Cedar Fair ride cycle, for one. And a remarkably more stable attendance and cash flow. It's harder to see what Cedar Fair gets out of this besides the CEO position and the chance to do restorations on some really old carousels in urgent need. And I guess Six Flags's extensive experience in going through bankruptcy proceedings. Perhaps coincidentally, it's only the Six Flags shareholders that have to approve the deal. I don't know why that is; maybe it's being formally structured as Cedar Fair buying out Six Flags, for all that it's equal partners, like in the Penn Central merger.
I've heard of only one large Six Flags shareholder opposing the merger. This from a real estate investment trust, which put out a statement that Six Flags would do better for the stockholders by --- wait for it --- scrapping all that pesky amusement park detritus and renting the land out. Gah. You hate to be co-belligerents with guys like that.
Well, that said, how about pictures of a park that Cedar Fair used to manage, though never own? You know what it is ...
Gilroy Gardens has some big trees, but they're not so big I can't Dutch angle them!
Here's the Ferris wheel peeking out between even more trees.
And here's the towering trees of the future. I think there's something funny in a tree being propped up by a tall piece of wood but you know me.
Beside the new tree is this rock that seems like it'll grow up into a statue of a rhinoceros someday.
More water, more falls.
And underneath this gorgeous cover is a food court. Lovely, isn't it?
Trivia: In July 1968, Penn Central stock sold for $86.50 --- its peak --- and the board of directors voted to pay $55.4 million in cash dividends, roughly 63 percent of reported earnings. (For the six years before the merger the Pennsylvania Railroad paid about 36.15 percent earnings in dividends, and the New York Central averaged 43.79 percent.) Source: The Wreck of the Penn Central: The Real Story Behind the Largest Bankruptcy in American History, Joseph R Daughen, Peter Binzen.
Currently Reading: Cuba: An American History, Ada Ferrer. So the book drops a mention of Conan O'Brien's visit to Cuba, after Obama and Castro opened relations, mentioning Conan's vision of a Cuba invaded by American brands. Ferrer leaves off the funniest part of the joke, Conan envisioning (and showing, with computer effects) a place becoming three Foot Lockers stacked on top of each other. And while there's mention of the many refugees sailing from Cuba to Florida in the 90s, there's no mention of Elian Gonzales. Given the book's recurring theme of how Cuba and the United States are tied together and mirror one another so it's a curious gap, since it's very easy for me to believe that Clinton's handling of Gonzales caused at least three hundred Cuban-Americans in Florida to resist whatever impulse they had to vote for Gore and instead vote for Blundering Evil instead, with enormous consequences for the world.
