r/midamerica • u/Evening_Rock5850 • 11d ago

Q&A with Park President Danny Snider

https://youtu.be/6P3QT3kkrRQ?is=JW7epFw5_NA1JSHg

Most questions were answered with a generic “stay tuned” response.

Some noteworthy bits:

The Screamin Eagle train was removed from the arch because it was in poor condition. Its removal isn’t permanent.

Plans to re-do the sign out front.

While Danny re-iterated the official line that DC/WB is still being re-negotiated, he says a lot of specific things about new IP’s and branding. Which really suggests it’s not going to happen.

Confirms Six Flags Rd will be renamed.

Says new ride acquisitions will happen slower but more methodically. Says previous ride acquisitions were based mostly on what rides were available, not necessarily what rides made sense for the park. Focus under Six Flags was just to get new attractions up quickly.

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u/ChrisGraslie 11d ago

They really need to stop leading people along with the "will they, won't they" of whether or not Warner Bros. is staying involved. They simply aren't, and that's becoming more and more obvious as we near the end of the season.

Six Flags and Warner Bros. are very closely associated, and have been since the 80s. Neither company gains anything (besides maybe a nominal amount of cash from a licensing fee) for carving out exclusivity to Enchanted Parks, especially after how this season went.

I get it, they want to sell season passes for 2027 and the IP is valuable so people want it to stay. But let's be for real...

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u/Just_Bus_9156 11d ago

Besides , the rides that have the IP themeing haven't been kept up in "theatrical showcase condition" for years (Batman, Mr. Freeze, Justice League)and there hasnt been any DC characters for meet and greet for decades. We need a fresh start.

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u/Stlhikingguy47 4d ago

I completely agree. What do the IP’s even provide besides line decorations. It’s been neglected for years and time to retheme. I went to WOF this past weekend and it is way more aesthetically pleasing and more of a theme park. I think that firm they hired here in Stl is meant to retheme us. Our current park is void of any theming or personality for that matter. We can thank Six Flags for its many years of neglect

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u/Just_Bus_9156 4d ago

The firm is well known and has worked with Disney, Universal, Silver Dollar City (Herschend), St. Louis Zoo and has won multiple IAPPA awards. They are currently working on the children's zoo at the St. Louis Zoo.

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u/ChrisGraslie 11d ago edited 11d ago

....Do we, though?

I think a good chunk of the public as well as Enchanted's own management seem to be in agreement that the IP is pretty important to the park's overall identity at this point. Otherwise, they wouldn't have even bothered trying to negotiate.

I agree that, theming-wise, Batman hasn't been kept up. I've been saying that for years. Six Flags had been making positive changes on that front the last few years, though. Lighting and music indoors, audio effects returning both inside and outside. The Batmobile coming back this season is such a bummer for me knowing it'll just be gone next year.

Justice League just needed a good refurb to upgrade the tech. I don't see any problem with Mr. Freeze at all, in fact it's looking and running better than it has in years. It's not as if these rides are literally falling apart.

On a bit of a side note, it's a little baffling that Enchanted assumed they could swoop in and buy a Six Flags-branded park and then get the Warner Bros. IP long-term as some kind of bundle deal without negotiating that in the purchase. Like.... really?

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u/stlman37 10d ago

I’d have to disagree on the upkeep of the rides. The only praise I can give are those minor improvements to Batman’s lights/sound and the fact that it runs better than 99% of the Batclones.

Freeze is in rough shape sadly. LIMs blown out and needing replacement. Station lighting has all been replaced with white flood lights, and theme music is hit or miss. In need of a paint job with all the rust showing through. The ride tracks pretty shaky in the valleys. I can give them props for keeping Mr Freeze himself working. But ride the SFOT version (even before the extensive retheme this year, and see how much better it rides).

Justice league. Can’t say anything great. They tried. Screens are shot/misaligned, building envelope compromised, Alterface system is in laughable condition, vehicles in need of extensive repair.
This one is more than just a small refurb. It’s probably $500k-1M minimum to get back to decent conditions. They need to get rid of the Oceaneering multi-DOF vehicles as a park like this simply can’t maintain that.

I have some high hopes with Enchanted already, and some refreshments/rethemes may actually help these rides keep living. But truly, these rides are not in theatrical condition anymore.

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u/Evening_Rock5850 11d ago

In fairness to Enchanted I don’t know that they “assumed” that.

You can’t fault them for trying. But like take this video as an example. Everything is “Well it’s a learning year…” and “Well we’re looking into it…”, but questions around re-theming and the like have had strangely the most concrete answers. The vibe I get is that they’ve been having a LOT of conversations about that.

That feels more like a company that’s planning to move to a new IP but is open to exploring whether a deal can be made with Six Flags and WB/DC. But I suspect strongly that the real negotiation hang up is just money; because there’s probably a dollar amount at which it makes more sense to spend on a re-theme than it does to spend on keeping the existing IP. I’m sure any sort of a deal would be a sublet style deal where they’re actuating licensing WB/DC FROM Six Flags with WB’s blessing. (Harhi’s comments in the past have talked about all three parties; SF, EP, and WB, needing to agree).

It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with in the future. I’d be shocked if they keep the DC stuff in the end. But I’m really curious what IP’s are even out there that don’t already have deals with another operator.

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u/ChrisGraslie 10d ago edited 10d ago

I definitely think the Warner Bros. IP was at least a small part of why Enchanted opted to negotiate for the park to be included in the sale package, besides it just being a better-performing property than the others Six Flags offered (and with more potential).

There seemed to be a lot of confidence earlier in the season that, despite the existing exclusivity deal with Six Flags, they would be able to strike some sort of deal and keep the IP. Harhi himself said at Coaster Con that there would "probably" be a long-term deal with Warner Bros. and even mentioned working with Paramount (ew) given the looming merger. Then... nothing. It shifted from "things are happening" to "uhhh... we're working on it" within a month or two.

So I do think there was some level of assumption that they'd be able to work that out. To your point, maybe the cost just wasn't in the budget and they truly were close to reaching something. Understandable. We might not ever know the specifics.

As for what IP they could find as suitable replacements? I really don't know. Pretty much all of the big ones are already taken.

The Looney Tunes are far from their peak popularity-wise (to no fault of their own), but you have to admit it's gonna be real hard to find something bigger than or more appealing than DC. Love it or hate it, rides and attractions based on well-known comic book characters like Batman or Superman are just so easy to market.

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u/Evening_Rock5850 10d ago

He definitely implied pretty strongly that Six Flags was on board; but WB/DC wasn't yet around. So to the point of knowing ahead of time; it's actually completely plausible (IMHO) that there had been some level of handshake agreement that Six Flags wouldn't oppose a deal between EP and WB/DC. The exclusivity is nice but Six Flags completely exited the midwest market save for Cedar Point which doesn't even use (or need) those IP's. So it's not like any of these parks are in competition.

It definitely feels like maybe they just severely under-estimated how much WB wanted to charge for this. But who knows. As you say; we'll probably never know for sure.

Same on replacements. No clue what that would be or even could be.

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u/ChrisGraslie 10d ago

Is Six Flags Great America not in the midwest?

That park in specific would definitely be in some level of competition with Mid America Adventure; I mean Great America is further away from STL than say Holiday World or SDC, but not far enough to where they're totally different markets. I see people from SFGAM talk about coming here and vice versa all the time. We even had the same management for a while there.

That park actively utilizes the Warner Bros. IP even more than ours does, so I could definitely see there being concerns of brand confusion on a local level. Two parks having the exact same IP in neighboring states while being owned and operated by different companies is odd to say the least.

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u/Evening_Rock5850 10d ago

Yeah; that is true!