Six Flags Entertainment Corp. Adds 5 New Parks to North American Portfolio

Six Flags Entertainment Corporation has announced that they have agreed to purchase the lease agreements to operate five amusement and water parks from Premier Parks, LLC.  This is not an outright purchase of the parks, instead the owner of the properties will remain as EPR Properties, a giant real estate investment trust that is publicly traded.

Six Flags is looking to expand in North America, and adding these give properties into their network will allow them to do so.  The fact that they will be lease holders, not full owners, will probably not be apparent to visitors, as the parks will be under full control of Six Flags' decisions.  The securities filings for the transaction shows that Six Flags is paying about $23 million for the right to operate the parks, which combined have an estimated annual attendance of about 2 million.

© Darien Lake

So what are the parks that are joining the Six Flags family?  First up is Darien Lake, which was once known as Six Flags Darien Lake.  Indeed, the park was owned by Premier Parks before it swallowed up Six Flags and then renamed itself as Six Flags and as such was branded Six Flags Darien Lake in 1999.  It remained that way until the failing company sold it, along with a handful of other parks, in early 2007.

Darien Lake has changed both owners and lease holders several times since then, being operated by companies such as Herschend Entertainment and PARC Management.  It has seen modest expansion through the years, including a brand new roller coaster, Tantrum, for 2018.  It wouldn't be too much of a stretch for this park to be a branded Six Flags park again, but the jury is still out on that.

© Frontier City

Next up is Frontier City, which is actually the theme park that started Premier Parks way back when, setting off the chain of events that saw Six Flags eventually grow to a truly unsustainable size, then abandon the park at the same time it sold off Darien Lake.

This park, however, was never branded as a "Six Flags" park in the name, it always retained its Frontier City brand.  In recent years it has continued to add smaller rides that fit the size of the park while taking steps to develop a water park as part of the property.

© Wet n' Wild SplashTown

The final three parks are all water parks:  Wet n' Wild SplashTown in Texas, White Water Bay, which is located near Frontier City theme park, and Wet n' Wild Phoenix, in Arizona.

Both White Water Bay and Wet n' Wild SplashTown, like Darien Lake and Frontier City, were a part of the original Premier Parks group.  So these four are all homecomings in a sense, even though the Six Flags Entertainment Corporation of today is nothing at all like the Six Flags of the early 2000s.

The one truly 'new' park as part of the agreement is Wet n' Wild Phoenix, which opened in 2009 and was built by Village Roadshow Entertainment.  I'm not sure if Six Flags was after the geographical location, or perhaps the park is very successful, but the company now has another presence in the Southwest U.S.

It will be interesting to see if Six Flags will keep the brand that each water park currently has, or if they will all quickly become Hurricane Harbor properties.  I'm going to guess the latter.

As for what the future holds, one thing to note is that often obtaining a lease may be a step toward fully owning a park - so perhaps down the road Six Flags will purchase the assets outright.  Or perhaps not, it all depends on EPR Properties' plans.