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This week, we're looking at Six Flags' latest earnings. Q3 revenue rose 1.4%, and attendance was flat; year-to-date, attendance is up 1.5%, and revenue is up almost 3%. That is with October attendance down 9% due to weather and the Goliath closures. The strategy hasn't changed: more passholders, more on regional passes, and more visits per pass. Cross-park visits are running about five times last year’s level, and about three points of attendance moved from single-day tickets to passes and memberships. The day before earnings, Six Flags announced its holiday dates and Black Friday deals: new live shows for Holiday in the Park at Magic Mountain, a Snoopy ice show at Knott’s, and Holiday in the Park returning to Great Adventure and Over Georgia after both were canceled last year. Meanwhile, United Parks reported the same week. Attendance fell 4.7% through nine months, adjusted EBITDA fell 5%, and net income fell 28%, with per-capita spending up 2.8%. SeaQuest is delayed to 2027, and the company teased a new ride announcement at IAAPA Expo and a Middle East project. Listen to weekly BONUS episodes on our Patreon.

Six Flags confirmed that ArieForce One, the RMC coaster it bought when Fun Spot America Atlanta closed, will reopen at Six Flags Magic Mountain in 2028 or 2029. The news landed a few weeks after Magic Mountain closed X2, amid the Goliath fallout, and days before Six Flags reports earnings. The company also sent a letter from the CEO to every passholder on October 23 with two commitments: seat belts on Goliath and other coasters with similar restraints, and independent engineers and ride inspection specialists reviewing safety procedures at every park. Seat belts raise the obvious question of why the rides ran so long without them. The outside review is the right move, although Six Flags has not said who the reviewers are or who holds the company to their findings. In the second half of the episode, we take stock of this year's Halloween and look at the trends driving Halloween innovation: Guest Play, Good Seamless Entertainment, and Great Food Listen to weekly BONUS episodes on our Patreon.

Comcast reported Q3 earnings on October 22, and the parks had little good news. Universal parks revenue fell 4.4%, and adjusted EBITDA fell 17%. CEO Mike Cavanagh said, “Competitors were quicker to anticipate and recognize softness in demand and adapt their marketing strategies.” Japan is still losing attendance as China discourages travel there, and Epic Universe is still working through ride throughput. Comcast expects Orlando to stay soft through the first half of 2027. Comcast also warned of a Q4 charge of over $1 billion for what Cavanagh called “the most significant operating and cost transformation in our company’s history.” No one mentioned layoffs, though Bloomberg and TheWrap have reported them, and there is no savings target or timeline. Listen to weekly BONUS episodes on our Patreon.

A 42-year-old man died on October 12 after he was ejected from Goliath, the B&M hyper coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia, striking four children on his way down. Six Flags closed Goliath that afternoon and, by the next morning, nine coasters it calls similar at six other parks, and SeaWorld Orlando and Busch Gardens Williamsburg closed Mako and Apollo’s Chariot. Magic Mountain reviewed Goliath and reopened it within three days. Hersheypark never closed Candymonium: its own inspectors and an independent one cleared the ride, and the manufacturer found no engineering basis to shut down similar coasters. Three investigations are open, and none has named a cause. The park reopened for Fright Fest on October 16 with Dr. Fright’s Dead Man’s Party renamed Dr. Fright’s Party, and Six Flags shares have fallen every day since, from $11.92 to $8.11. IAAPA’s statement puts the serious injury rate at 1.27 per million roller coaster rides, which makes a shark attack more likely. Those numbers matter to everyone except the public, who hear "roller coaster" and "death" and remember X2 from last month. The rest of the industry should get in front of it with its safety procedures, because every park that closed a coaster just told its guests the ride might be dangerous, and that question spreads.  Meanwhile, Universal Orlando is bringing back the horror makeup show with Blumhouse attached, spanning the classic monsters through modern horror. Classic monsters get a contemporary hook, Blumhouse gets a physical touchpoint, and the backlash to the show’s removal confirmed the demand. Finally, Nashville Zoo canceled Zoolumination after visa applications for its Chinese lantern artisans were denied. Any event that depends on artists from outside the country needs a parallel plan. Listen to weekly BONUS episodes on our Patreon.

Six Flags Magic Mountain has permanently retired X2. The announcement follows two hospitalizations in July, three brain-injury lawsuits filed in September, and a law firm that says hundreds more riders have contacted it. Park president Brian Oerding says the ride consistently passed safety tests and was closed because “when we see guest confidence affected, we take it seriously.” The plaintiffs’ attorney responded the same day, saying the closure came too late and the lawsuits continue.  Meanwhile, Six Flags is surveying passholders about adding its name to Cedar Point and Kings Island, with options like Six Flags Cedar Point and Six Flags Over North Ohio.  Mattel’s first indoor waterpark is set for Bellevue, Nebraska, at the end of 2027, with a Barbie pool and a Hot Wheels slide tower. The city owns the building and is funding it with up to $110 million in bonds. Listen to weekly BONUS episodes on our Patreon.

Netflix House is adding a K-pop Demon Hunters experience, opening November 12 in Dallas and November 20 in Philadelphia. It's a linear, play-based experience where guests start backstage with HUNTR/X, help restore the Honmoon after a demon crashes the show, and meet Derpy Tiger as a giant puppet built by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. In Dallas it replaces Stranger Things, and in Philadelphia it replaces One Piece. That means Netflix House is swapping experiences in under a year, while Horror Unleashed won't change a house until late next year. The asset-light model, the viewing data behind every IP choice, and that price point all work in Netflix's favor. The detail isn't at Univers's level, and guests increasingly don't seem to need it to be. Making the tiger a puppet also reads the room at a moment when audiences are tired of screens. Meanwhile, Chimelong has deployed more than 300 humanoid robots from Agibot at its Spaceship park in China, covering live entertainment, guided tours, retail, hotel check-in, and table tennis with guests. Plenty of hospitality jobs go unfilled, and robots that give directions or move luggage could free staff for personal work. Whether operators use them that way or simply to cut jobs will decide how this lands. Adoption in the U.S. is unlikely anytime soon, since American sentiment toward AI runs the other way, while China's tighter AI rules have left its public more comfortable with robots. Listen to weekly BONUS episodes on our Patreon.

JANA Partners is pushing Six Flags to explore a sale again, according to The Wall Street Journal. It's JANA's second push this year, but this time there's no public letter and no statement from Six Flags. JANA pointed to disappointing second-quarter results, and Philip thinks interest rates explain the timing. About $1.48 billion of Six Flags' roughly $5 billion in debt has a variable rate, so the Fed's September hike adds about $4 million a year in interest, and each bond that comes due will likely be refinanced at a higher rate. That debt also makes a sale harder, because any buyer is mostly buying the debt. Meanwhile, three more riders have sued Six Flags Magic Mountain over brain injuries they say they suffered on X2, and their law firm says more than 100 others have hired it. The complaints allege fraudulent concealment, claiming the park kept running the ride after learning of injuries. None of it has been proven, but the story keeps getting worse for Six Flags. Enchanted Parks is running Halloween at all six of its parks, including its first season at the parks it bought from Six Flags. Every park has a daytime family event, four add haunted houses at night for an extra fee, and all of them offer allergy-safe trick-or-treating. Running both formats in a transition year lets the new owner see which one pays. Finally, five Six Flags parks made the top 10 of a Stasher study of America's most overrated attractions, with Great Adventure at number two. The Hollywood Walk of Fame ranked first and Plymouth Rock third, so take the list with a grain of salt. Listen to weekly BONUS episodes on our Patreon.

We kick off the show by apologizing for mispronouncing ArieForce One last week and addressing some of the comments about the UAE. On the UAE, listeners raised labor conditions, LGBTQ safety, and J.K. Rowling, and we address each one based on firsthand experience living and working in the region. Then, the news. Legoland Dubai, Real Madrid World, and Motiongate reopen on October 7, which means a lot of people in the region are going back to work. Sphere is bringing The Wizard of Oz back on September 25 with new effects, including animatronic winged monkeys flying overhead, scents, glitter, and what the release calls pyrotechnics. The building and the screen were the expensive part, so each new layer is relatively cheap, and each one makes the show something you can't recreate at home. In Pigeon Forge, Rocky Top Mountain Coaster is running a nighttime overlay called Zombie Invasion, with live actors, fog, and military props along a track that already had half a million dollars of lighting. The coaster is already paid for, and fog rising off a hillside on the Parkway is better marketing than any billboard. Finally, the Golden Ticket Awards. Dollywood won four, the most of any park. Six Flags Fiesta Texas won for Monster Mash Bash a year after winning for Voodoo Dolls, and Europa-Park was named best park. Nobody agrees with every winner, but the awards recognize excellence, and the whole industry benefits when they do. Listen to weekly BONUS episodes on our Patreon.

Six Flags now lets guests finance a season pass, or any online order of $49 or more, through Flex Pay by Upgrade. It is presented as a way to spread a pass into monthly payments, and it is a loan from an outside lender, with a credit check, an 18-and-over requirement, a possible down payment, and an APR from 0% to 36% depending on the borrower. For a company this cash-constrained, the move makes sense: Six Flags gets paid up front, the lender carries the risk, and no internal department has to exist. The program helps most the people who need it least, since guests who cannot buy a pass outright are the ones who draw the highest rates.  A day later, Six Flags said it acquired ArieForce One, the Rocky Mountain Construction coaster that closed August 2 when Fun Spot shut its Atlanta park, and will reopen it at an undisclosed park in the 2028 to 2029 seasons. No price, no timeline, but the name stays. A used coaster costs a fraction of a new one even after teardown and transport.  Meanwhile, Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi named its three Harry Potter lands: Diagon Alley, Hogwarts Castle, and the Forbidden Forest, the first Potter lands outside a Universal park and the first built by the company that owns the IP. Whatever the online reaction to the region, this is a good sign for anyone in the industry. New immersive builds with real show control mean work; Warner Bros. has run physical experiences since the London studio tour, and Miral knows how to run a theme park.  Listen to weekly BONUS episodes on our Patreon.

Six Flags settled the wrongful death lawsuit over X2 at Magic Mountain on August 27, two weeks before trial. Christopher Hawley, 22, rode the coaster in 2022, lost consciousness after exiting, and died the next day of a subdural hematoma. The settlement is not an admission of liability, and Six Flags maintained the ride passed daily inspections. X2 has been closed since July, when two riders were hospitalized with brain hemorrhages within days of each other, and Cal/OSHA opened an inspection that is still ongoing. We're divided on this, so let's take some time to tease it out. Meanwhile, Enchanted Parks renamed Six Flags St. Louis to Mid-America Adventure. The name is the first step. The harder part is making every choice that makes the park feel different from Six Flags, and guests will call it Six Flags for years regardless. Finally, Halloween's recall season arrived early: a clown costume pulled from Target, a German soldier costume pulled from Walmart, Amazon, and Target, and Knott's Berry Farm removing an Inked T-shirt over concerns it carried a racist caricature. Fans suspected AI, and the Six Flags statement on human-led design never says AI wasn't used. Either way, a person approved it, and anyone recreating the golden age of animation is recreating an era that was racist by default. Listen to weekly BONUS episodes on our Patreon.

Six Flags is moving its corporate headquarters from Charlotte to Arlington, Texas, with the transition complete by March 2027. CEO John Reilly framed the move as "concentrating our personnel, processes, and decision-making" in one office to improve coordination among the new executive team. This is an efficiency of time. The pure money play would be stipends and no office at all. A turnaround built on live entertainment rollouts, reinstated park presidents, and new layers of communication needs people in one room, because the ideas that matter tend to happen outside the meeting. Meanwhile, Disney filed a patent application for a system that lets guests flag the specific ride moments they cannot handle, then warns them before those moments arrive, swaps in a milder effect, or changes the ride in real time. Real-time ride changes are a long way from any show system, but the intent reaches well past ADA. Heat, loud noises, confined spaces, and vertigo keep people out of parks without qualifying as disabilities, and only Disney can build the moat that brings them in. The pushback is that opt-out design can become dumbed-down design, and a homogenized park eventually sends the pendulum back toward the biggest, fastest, tallest. Listen to weekly BONUS episodes on our Patreon.

Six Flags announced its largest Halloween lineup ever: 448 experiences across the chain, including 11 new haunted mazes, 196 scare zones, and live entertainment offerings. Four new licensed franchises headline the year, with Jason: Blood Reign, Final Destination: Death's Playground, Blair Witch: No Signal, and Diablo: The Infernal Path each landing at multiple parks alongside returning brands like The Conjuring, Saw, and Trick 'r Treat. The timing is the strategy: the announcement dropped three weeks before the September 7 deadline on the lowest season pass prices of the year. This is the earnings-call playbook made concrete. Scare zones and entertainment come included with admission, haunts are the flexible upcharge with single-night and all-season options, and nearly half the total lineup is live entertainment. The legacy Seasons of Fun model is back: atmosphere gives the whole family a reason to come, while haunted houses have become the roller coasters of the Halloween season, a checklist for some guests and scenery for everyone else. Maze passes run $10 to $15 a night at legacy parks and $25 to $35 at Six Flags parks with no visible consistency, and the best explanation is pricing fitted park by park to guest behavior during a transition that is far from over. Meanwhile, D23 was a fan-forward show, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris while executives walked the floor. Nearly everything announced was already known, with a Spaceship Earth renovation, a Yeti fix, and a Tomorrowland reimagining added without dates or dollars. In a tariff environment where nobody can price a ride ten years out, keeping the numbers off the stage is the safe play. Listen to weekly BONUS episodes on our Patreon.

Universal detailed its Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood plans at Midsummer Scream, and the throughline is small IPs moving fast. Art the Clown returns in three controlled deployments: a Terror Tram takeover built around an original storybook and metal Christmas covers from Ice Nine Kills, a dedicated photo op, and a character encounter. Nikki from Curry Barker's Obsession joins as a character experience two months after the film premiered, the kind of deal that only closes that fast with an independent creator. And Slash scored the Killceañera house with an original song the villain lip-syncs, delivering exposition as a ballad so good fans are already asking for it on Spotify. The takeaway for operators is to build the event bones and hold the budget placeholder, so the hot IP can plug in late. Elsewhere at Midsummer Scream: Hollywood adds its first Unmasking the Horror daytime tour at $20 for two houses, Winchester Mystery House drops the linear haunt for an open festival format, and Six Flags Magic Mountain adds Final Destination plus a werewolf maze from a Knott's Scary Farm designer, cross-park design work the old corporate structure never allowed. Meanwhile, Six Flags opened 2027 pass sales one day after earnings, with regional Gold passes, Prestige passes, dining as bundles, and all-season Fast Lane pricing that runs $600 at Knott's and $2,000 at Cedar Point. Entry stays cheap because the strategy is repeat visitation.  Finally, SeaWorld Orlando, Aquatica, and Discovery Cove return to a single president, 23-year company veteran Brad Gilmore, reversing the 2023 split. Listen to weekly BONUS episodes on our Patreon.

Six Flags’ new leadership is successfully reorienting the company toward repeat visitation, yet this quarter its debt cost more than its parks earned. The strategy of getting more passholders to attend more often and spend more, thereby increasing lifetime spend, is working. Revenue and attendance were up, adjusted for the divested parks, and the upcoming Halloween season, with 448 Halloween-themed experiences from coast to coast, should supercharge that strategy. Yet, while the parks made money, the company still posted a loss due to its debt. Running the parks produced $88.6 million of operating income, up from $74.5 million a year ago. Interest on the company's debt cost $102 million, and the quarter landed at a $20.1 million loss before taxes. The $203 million headline loss is mostly a $157.4 million tax charge, an accounting catch-up tied to the park sales, not a bill: Six Flags paid $4.5 million in cash taxes in the entire first half. Same-park revenue, attendance, and EBITDA all grew, pass sales are up 7%, and the stock still fell 16%. Meanwhile, Six Flags Great America announced Camp Timber Trail, a nine-attraction family land opening in 2027, led by Sky Hawk, a suspended family coaster billed as the Midwest's longest, tallest, and fastest, another build aimed at the family-together demographic that keeps spending. Listen to weekly BONUS episodes on our Patreon.

United Parks is bringing licensed IP to Howl-O-Scream for the first time, licensing two Sony films across all five of its events. Busch Gardens Tampa and Williamsburg each open an Anaconda house on September 11 with different storylines, Fear Has No Escape in Tampa and Dead on Arrival in Williamsburg, while I Know What You Did Last Summer: The Final Catch opens at SeaWorld Orlando, San Diego, and San Antonio. Sony says it is the first time either film has been licensed for a major Halloween event. Howl-O-Scream built its identity on avoiding IP. Original stories meant the licensing money went into the product instead, while Universal paid for rights before building a single set. That calculus has flipped in a market where guests gravitate to what they already know. The risk is the pattern other parks have followed: pay for the IP out of the same budget, build less event, and blame the IP when attendance disappoints. Guests buy the whole event, and when the event shrinks, one house cannot cover the gap. Anaconda is an animal-attack story at a company historically sensitive about how animals are portrayed, and neither film carries the pull of a Halloween staple. The two Anaconda storylines suggest houses built to swap parks next year, the right instinct, since IP buying power only works at corporate scale and the next step is infrastructure consistent enough to rotate shows between parks. One haunted house does not make a premier Halloween event. Listen to weekly BONUS episodes on our Patreon.