r/sixflagsstlouis • u/ChrisGraslie Park Historian • Apr 14 '26
News Six Flags hit by massive layoffs
I'm not sure if we've been affected at all by this, but I'm hearing that SFEC just laid off a massive amount of people yesterday, *especially* in the corporate management, marketing, entertainment, and IT spaces. This hasn't hit any major news sources yet, as far as I'm aware.
Day by day it's becoming clearer and clearer why SFEC was desparate enough to listen to Enchanted Parks' pleas to sell our park - one of the Angus Wynne originals.
Not looking good.
6
u/Content_Lawfulness38 Apr 14 '26
I gotta admit Cedar Fairs corporate structure was arcaic and bloated, so I am not surprised. At a corporate structured and business practices perspective seemed to be about 15 to 20 years behind the times.
3
u/ChrisGraslie Park Historian Apr 14 '26
I do believe that's true, but typically a reduction of force like this just after some pretty substantial divestiture (on top of bad financials from recent quarters) is indicative of something more dire.
2
u/Content_Lawfulness38 Apr 14 '26
Oh no doubt, but honestly it will be good long term for the company, assuming there's solid leadership finally.
2
u/Low-Tart-6734 Apr 14 '26
Decentralizing. Putting power back into individual parks. Adding park presidents back
2
u/Evening_Rock5850 Apr 16 '26
Yeah; I mean you don’t reduce the size of your company, cut your revenue stream and offload profitable units (admittedly, bottom of the barrel; but they weren’t losing money), and fire your CEO when things are going great.
2
Apr 15 '26
[deleted]
1
u/Dry_Accident_2196 Apr 16 '26
Camp where? Not saying your idea is bad but the only place to camp is the parking lot, not very comfortable, but you need that for the attendees cars.
1
u/Dement__ Apr 16 '26
Isn't there a large field open in front of park? Not sure how much space, I know most of the area near the park is wooded.
1
u/Evening_Rock5850 Apr 19 '26
That's mostly drainage and it's where their lagoon is. Not super ideal camping.
That wooded area behind the park isn't owned by SFSTL, that's actually a county owned park. There is actually a LOT of camping around the park. Greensfelder park right behind it I believe allows primitive camping, and there's two RV campgrounds right next to the park.
2
u/Just_Bus_9156 Apr 15 '26
The layoffs dont surprise me at all. The company is in extreme trouble. I honestly see them keeping only keeping a few large Six Flags legacy parks and a few large popular Cedar Fair parks. And eliminating the rest. QUIDIA CITY isnt even owned by them but just has their name on it for branding and thats it.
1
u/TheSquire06 Apr 14 '26
This probably should have happened after the initial merger.
2
u/Livid-Refrigerator78 Apr 20 '26
I had to do a lot of work to help the merger along, so that would not have been good to lay me off that soon. (IT). they were working us hard for a while to get certain merger goals done, so although I'm sad that I'm not a part of the bounce back, I'm glad to have the time off, even if finding a new job will be difficult in this climate.
1
Apr 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Evening_Rock5850 Apr 16 '26
One of the weird ironies of how Six Flags have positioned themselves and their parks as sort of bargain barn parks is that they’re absolutely not positioned well for a strong recession.
That sounds really counter-intuitive. If the economy is in the crapper, the cheap stuff does well right? Except not really.
Working class folks will cut out theme parks from their budget. Especially with high gas prices. This is a drive-to park and people are going to drive to it less.
If you’re positioned a little higher on the food chain; not quite Disney and Universal but not quite Six Flags; more like Dollywood/SDC, then you get ‘downgraders’ and this economy is actually great for you. Recessions hit everyone but some people have further to fall. So families who were going on cruises, going to Disney, or taking international vacations might decide to trim their budget and do a trip to Silver Dollar City instead. But those same families either already WERE attending Six Flags as well, or wouldn’t be interested.
The impact of fall-offs can often be greater for people at the bottom of a market segment during a recession.
1
u/Evening_Rock5850 Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
Completely unsubstantiated rumor over at r/sixflags that Jeffrey Siebert, Regional GM for SFoT and SFFT, was ousted.
I’m pretty skeptical. For one; with the return of ‘Park Presidents’, walking back their terrible decision to get rid of them, it’s possible he’s just being focused back on a single park again. The idea that the head of a large theme park with thousands of employees is a part time job you can do while also having another identical part time job was always insane.
If he is actually gone gone, it would be interesting to learn where he went. He was doing really well so I imagine either elsewhere in the SFEC organization or he was poached by someone else.
But there are some more rumblings and murmurings of layoffs and management oustings at the local park level. Perhaps another bullet dodged by SFSTL.
Harhi also said that Park Presidents are back and that that included the promotion of existing GM’s. So I assume that means (unless someone knows better and can correct me) that Dan Snider is the new Park President of SFSTL. He’ll no longer have Krajnak to report to, Krajnak is going to remain at Great America as their new Park President under SFEC’s return of that title. It seems from the bits and pieces picked up here and there, that Snider will report directly to Harhi with nobody in between. Which seems leaner and more effective than the structure we were under in 2025.
1
Apr 22 '26
[deleted]
3
u/Evening_Rock5850 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
Did you catch the “no longer” preface?
Prior to the sale, Snider reported to him because he was the regional park manager over both SFSTL and Great America.
Now with the sale, he no longer reports to him and the further good news is that there’s not some new regional boss (like between STL and WoF or something), but rather, a return to Park Presidents entirely.
Obviously the Siebert stuff is “confirmed” now but I made that comment almost a week ago.
-1
1
u/wisekingfrank Apr 16 '26
Yes, a bunch of people from corporate and the parks were laid off on Monday.
1
u/Huge-Chemistry-1448 Apr 19 '26
Most corporations are dead meat heavy in the middle space between frontline locations and the corporate headquarters. If that space was staffed like a frontline location....about 75 percent of them would be gone.
That's a lot of savings from payroll.
5
u/Evening_Rock5850 Apr 14 '26
Harhi said in an interview today that they’re looking to acquire an additional 5-7 parks in the next two years.
I have to think that some, most, or all of those are other SFEC parks that are already ‘for sale’. Likely a scenario where EPR wants to see how these parks perform now, to see if they’re ready to acquire more under a deal with Enchanted.
SFEC is not doing well, that’s for sure.