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RitcheyRch
07-21-2006, 02:55 PM
The city of Santa Clarita's outreach process to Six Flags concerning a potential annexation of Magic Mountain has a county town council complaining of being left in the dark.
Magic Mountain sits in unincorporated territory in the area of influence of the West Ranch Town Council, an advisory body to the county that has no judicial power. City officials recently announced they would contact Six Flags about the perceived benefits of annexing into the city.
"I would commend (Santa Clarita) on (its) ability to try and save the business or work with Six Flags in order to secure jobs for the area but I wish they would partner more with the town councils in the unincorporated areas surrounding the city," said council president Dave Bossert.
"It's all in the talking stages," said city spokeswoman Gail Ortiz. "No letter's been sent. No call's been made" and the city's main focus is to keep the park open.
"Once we actually have broached a discussion or send a letter we'd be more than happy to share information with the town councils or anyone who's interested," Ortiz said. "We have no intention of going behind anyone's back on anything."
The park is somewhat of a political football for city and county leaders. Both sides are either sending or preparing to send a letter to Six Flags' headquarters, or planning to meet with the company's chief executive.
Fifth District Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich sent a letter Tuesday to Six Flags CEO Mark Shapiro initiating contact regarding the park's future.
It's a high stakes issue that draws concern from the town council as the park - or the property, should the park close - "would certainly play into whatever the future holds for the West Side," Bossert said.
"It would also play a significant role should the community go down the road to forming a new city and it's clearly an important source of revenue for the county of Los Angeles as is," he said.
The city's main arsenal to woo Six Flags toward annexation are cheaper taxes.
The absence of a business license tax, an admission tax or 5 percent utility user tax could save the park "hundreds of thousands of dollars" annually, Ortiz has said.
Lloyd Carder, president of the Castaic Area Town Council, said the county should take a look at its utility tax.
"The county's going to have to re-evaluate this 5 percent utility user tax," Carder said. "This seems to be a real tool the city's using. Maybe it's served its due because now it seems to be more of a thorn."
http://www.the-signal.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=31671&format=html

pixrthis
07-21-2006, 02:58 PM
It will all come down to $$$$.

RitcheyRch
07-21-2006, 03:00 PM
Always does.
It will all come down to $$$$.

Channel Rat
07-21-2006, 05:35 PM
This is all the quotes from the following site http://www.screamscape.com/html/six_flags_magic_mountain.htm
Looks like they update it often. There is even a save the park group. I dont think they want to loose all those jobs.
SIX FLAGS MAGIC MOUNTAIN
& Six Flags Hurricane Harbor
Valencia, California (Abbreviation: SFMM)
Six Flags Theme Parks
Park News - (7/21/06) After hearing that the city plans to talk with Six Flags Magic Mountain about incorporating the site and benefit offers to improve the park’s financial ends, a county supervisor eager to not lose Six Flags either has requested a meeting with Mark Shapiro to discuss the future as well. Either way under city or county, both are dedicated to the continued operation of the site as a theme park. Read more here.
(7/18/06) City officials are looking into options to “partner” with Six Flags Magic Mountain, to ensure the park’s continued operation. As the area’s top employer, they will apparently offer a number of financial incentives to the park, “we have a large incentive to work with them and make them as profitable as they can be.” One possible incentive may be a removal of a 5% “user tax” from the park’s electric bill that could save thousands or even millions from the budget. You can read more here.
(7/11/06) A Six Flags press release indicates that not only is the entire chain at a five year high in various Guest Approval scores across the board, but the release also puts a fine focus on the scored for Six Flags Magic Mountain and where the park has improved in: Ride Safety, Overall Safety, Children’s Rides, Employee Service, Character Presence and Non-Stop Entertainment offerings. Not only is it very interesting that they choose Magic Mountain to single out here, but they also list that the park is getting high ratings in all the problem areas that they listed as to why they might sell the park: overall safety and a lack of focus on family attractions. This just makes me think my theory about never intending to sell the park to lure in all the burned family guests for one more visit to the improved Mountain may be holding true.
(7/10/06) Since announcing that they might be interested in selling Magic Mountain, Six Flags has said that they have had some inquiries of late from investment groups about buying the park, many of which still with cash in hand after being outbid for the Paramount Park’s chain. Of course, land developers are also circling like sharks out there as well. Stay tuned for the latest news.
(7/6/06) The SaveMagicMountain.com website has launched to drive up awareness and support to save the park. Check it out.
(7/3/06) KTLA has posted a good article claiming that the local residents are not happy at all with the thought that Six Flags may try to sell off the park to land developers, or anyone else for that matter. Most seem to want the park to stay open and site many reasons why the park should stay, from it being the largest employer in the area, to the huge amount of taxes the park pays to the region, to the many businesses set up to service the park visitors (hotels, gas stations, restaurants, etc). Even more, as I was suspecting, the threat of losing the park has caused many locals who grew up in the region and may have even worked there in their youth, to become nostalgic about the park and their memories of past visits. Check it out.
(6/27/06) A reader has started up an online petition to Save Six Flags Magic Mountain. You can sign it here.
(6/26/06) Even now, going into the Monday news update, I can’t hide the fact that I’m still in shock over the very idea that Six Flags would even think about selling Magic Mountain. Over the weekend I had some time to think about it, and the only logical conclusion I’ve been able to come up with is... perhaps Shapiro and crew are bluffing.
Here me out here... Synder is a ruthless business man and one shark knows another which is why Shapiro is calling the shots right now. Shapiro has past history with Disney and their management, so he’s seen first hand how the master theme park spin doctors work and has made no secret of trying of the fact that he wants Six Flags to start going after Disney’s audience, which is family groups.
Six Flags Magic Mountain, which has marketed itself over the last several years as the planet’s top Xtreme Thrill Park has had abit of a problem. Goliath, which opened for the 2000 season, was perhaps the park’s last big success story. The park would build a new coaster at least every other year and attendance would soar and things. In 2001, things changed. The park promised too much that year when they announced Deja Vu and X. Deja Vu was the first to open, but from the start was plaged with technical problems and low throughput numbers that still plague the ride even today. X, the highlight of the year, failed to even open until January of 2002, and then was hit with it’s own technical and throughput issues as well. In short, a lot of people were burned by the park those years on top of the 9/11 crisis that made it harder to attract tourists from far away, leaving the park to focus entirely on the drive-in market. In 2003, they wanted something more reliable and went back to B&M for Scream, but the crowds never came. After this, no major new thrill rides were added to the park for 2004 or 2005 while attendance continued to dwindle.
This year, Magic Mountain has opened one of their most impressive rides to date... Tatsu, the world’s biggest flying coaster. However, it’s too early to know what the overall effect is going to be on attendance, but I’m going to guess that they are still failing to bring in the family groups that the new management is seeking. This is understandable though, given the fact that Disney is still flooding the local market with the second summer’s worth of their big 50th Anniversary celebration. So management had to be asking themselves what they could do to bring these guests back to the park again, including the many of which were perhaps burned by bad experiences in previous years. If big new rides weren’t enough, in typical SFMM style, perhaps they needed to try something a little more Xtreme.
Thinking back to Disney’s history a bit... one of Disneyland’s biggest marketing successes was promoting the demise of the Main Street Electrical Parade. A parade so old that everyone had ceased caring about it and Disney really had stopped marketing it in favor of their new big nighttime show, Fantasmic. But once Disneyland started their ads about how the Main Street Electrical Parade was “glowing away forever” at the end of the year, the local SoCal public went completely nuts. It seemed as if everyone you knew had to get back to the park and see the parade one last time... to relive those childhood memories one last time before they were gone forever. Of course it ended up as a giant marketing ploy while they sent the parade to Walt Disney World for a few years. The parade came back to Disneyland a few years later, though across the walkway at California Adventure instead, but the year it left Disneyland, they had one of the top 2-3 all time attendance years as a result of a remarkable marketing campaign that pulled on just the right strings.
So, as sneaky as it is, I’ve got to wonder if Six Flags’ management may just be attempting a similar bluff on the public to get everyone to do whatever it takes to visit the park again, just in case the park closes for good. Even in articles with the press, they mention specifically that they may just reinvest in Magic Mountain and keep it, but they’re just not sure.
Why? Just because I still can’t fathom them really going through with closing the park. Sure the park has a ton of rides, but most aren’t worth selling or moving. Most of the flat rides are so old, that you can find them at just about any carnival. The flume rides have been custom built to the mountain terrain of the park itself and really can’t fit in anywhere else, and you’ll find the same problems with most of the park’s coasters. I can only see four of the park’s coasters being saved or sold: Batman, Riddler, Deja Vu and Scream. The rest would all end up as scrap because they have been custom made to fit the park’s unique terrain or they are just not anything that would likely sell on the marketplace (ie: Flashback, Psyclone, Viper, etc).
Maybe I’m crazy and it really will just all comes down to simple greed and knowing just how much they can sell the land under SFMM for. The land is just so high priced right now that no other amusement park operator could even attempt to compete in a bidding war against land developers. But that isn’t the reason the park was build years ago... it was build out in the middle of nowhere as a theme park, not as a placeholder until the land value rose to an insane cost.
I’ve got a few wild ideas as to how they can really fix the park to bring it back in line with their new company focus, but I’ll save that one for a future article.
(6/23/06) In a huge shocking announcement, Six Flags has announced that it will “explore potential strategic options” for six of their parks. In other words, they are looking to sell them off to the highest bidder for use as either a theme park or for other redevelopment. While some of the six are not all that shocking, there is one really big shocker that is sending waves through the industry. The list includes: Six Flags Darien Lake (outside Buffalo, NY), Six Flags Waterworld (Concord, CA), Six Flags Elitch Gardens (Denver, CO), Wild Waves & Enchanted Village (outside Seattle, WA), Six Flags Splashtown (Houston, TX) and Six Flags Magic Mountain & Hurricane Harbor (north Los Angeles, CA).
While the rest are mostly smaller parks that are not surprising, and I think Darien Lake is just a misunderstood park, I just can’t even begin to fathom that they would ever think about selling Six Flags Magic Mountain. SFMM was long considered one of the holy trinity of top performing parks in the Six Flags chain, rounded out by Six Flags Great America and Six Flags Great Adventure. While I can’t find any figures right now, I believe they used to say that the three parks combined were responsible for at least half of the company’s profits each year.
In the case of Magic Mountain, they went on to say in a local news report that it was because of the park’s “rowdy teenage atmosphere” drawn by the armada of 17 coasters that made it hard to attract the new family marketplace they seek. They mention that the teens don’t spend enough money in the parks and cause security problems, so they will examine their options for the park. They didn’t rule out investing heavily in the park to make it more family friendly. This is what I’ve been saying for years, that the park needed to buy about a dozen new flat rides to replace all that have been lost due to age. Unfortunately, other options for the property would be to sell it off to developers who would love to get their hands on the real estate in a market where the land in Valencia is currently selling for $750,000 to $1 million per acre! WikiPedia lists the park as sitting on 260 acres, so you can see what a huge price they could get for the park if they gave into greed. I just can’t imagine a world where the largest city in the country no longer has a Six Flags theme park. Perhaps Daniel Snyder is just looking for a new site to build a stadium and perhaps bring an NFL team back to Los Angeles, since I can’t believe LA has gone this long without a team either.
(4/5/06) The local news reports that a park forklift driver had a little run in with the Log Jammer, damaging the flume when it tipped over on top of it. The extent of the damage is unknown right now, but it we assume the ride will remain closed until it is repaired.
(3/29/06) You can see a bunch of photos here of Magic Mountain taken way back when it first opened in the 70s and early 80s.
(3/24/06) The park is currently offering the Play Pass for $59.99 that will get you in for free for the rest of year.
(1/20/06) I’m going to rant here for a moment...
I’m starting to think that the new management of Six Flags does seem to be a little out of touch with the average group going to a theme park and are determined to treat them like they are going to a football game instead. Sure... both groups end up paying extremely high prices for food and merchandise, but following in the steps of the no re-entry policy they backed off of last week, several Six Flags parks (Magic Mountain included) are now set to raise the price of parking from $10 to $15 in 2006. Park guests have become increasingly irritated over the last five years as parking fees have increased steadily to the $8-10 range across the country.
Sure we all expect to pay something for parking... and we’re all shocked when we come across the occasional small park that still has free parking, but no one is happy about paying the parking fee no matter if it’s $5 or $15. You just feel like your being robbed before you’ve even gotten into the park... and that feeling carries through and is not easily forgotten throughout the day. Every time you pull your wallet out to buy something to eat or a T-shirt you’ll remember that $15 you shelled out just to park in an inconvenient parking space way out past Colossus and how you had to walk a mile all the way to the front gate because the they didn’t have enough trams running to handle the crowds. And when you think about that... there is a chance you’ll decide that you really don’t need to spend that $25 on a Tatsu T-shirt and you’ll start to wonder why the park never runs Flashback, the Monorail or the Sky Tower any longer. You wonder why so many of the coasters are only running one train instead of two or three and why the lines are so long everywhere. You’ll remember that you just paid more to get into Six Flags than you did the day before when you visited Disneyland... and you’ll start to wonder just what the heck you are doing there... and maybe you’ll think twice before you come back again.
See... most people don’t go to a several football games in any given season. In fact, most people just stay home and watch them on TV, but the people who do go to at least one game a season get taken for the full ride. The stadiums pretty much just rob of them every dime they have during the game and spit them out at the end without a second thought because the next several games in the season are already sold out with a fresh batch of noobs. Theme Parks don’t work that way... people expect to get something of worth for their money and if the price is too high and the experience is poor they will not come back and will bad-mouth the park to everyone they know. There is a careful line to walk here between making money and robbing your guests blind. Perhaps if they let the public stomach the $60 ticket price first for a season or two before slamming on the $15 parking fee, it might take some of the sting away. But massive price increases in both parking and ticket sales from a chain that is not known for their guest service skills just kind of says to me that the new owners still have a little to learn about their audience.
(1/10/06) Six Flags Magic Mountain is now the most expensive park in California after hiking their ticket prices this week by $10 to $59.99. This is likely to be both a response to Disneyland’s ticket bump ($3) to $59 last week, as well as the fist signs of change from the new Red Zone team on the board of directors. This can be viewed as both good and bad I suppose. Good in the way that Six Flags has been criticized by discounting their tickets too much to the point that the parks become over crowded with troublemakers and used as a cheap day care option by some parents in the summer. The bad news is that with that kind of price comparison, they are saying to the market that they are offering an experience on the same price level as Disneyland and nothing could be farther from the truth at this point.
2006 - Tatsu - (6/1/06) It’s been awhile, but we’ve got a new Tatsu update from WestCoaster. You know you missed it after all those months of weekly and even near daily updates on the ride’s construction. Now we get another look at it, up and running, in all its glory.
(5/20/06) Tatsu is now open. You can see photos from the grand opening posted to Theme Park Review and Coaster Realm.
(5/2/06) New photos of Tatsu in action have been posted to Coaster Realm.
(4/25/06) RCPRo and Coaster Realm have added new Tatsu photos today, this time they were taken from the Skytower looking down, a unique view we have not seen before.
(11/18/05) Six Flags Magic Mountain has announced Tatsu at last, the world’s Tallest, Longest, Fastest “Flying Beast” on the planet. Tatsu, named after a Japanese flying dragon, will feature a 170 foot tall lift hill rising out towards Roaring Rapids ride before plunging into the trees near Ninja, soaring around the park’s Sky Tower, before diving back through the trees in what appears to be a horseshoe style overbanked turn similar to what is found on the Vekoma flying coaster. From there you will fly towards the front of the park and over Revolution to drop into the world’s largest (124 feet) Pretzel Loop which exits into a inline barrel roll and a final banked turn over the Valencia Falls before slamming into the brake run. All said and done, you will run through 3,602 feet of track and four inversions (a flat spin, zero-G roll, the pretzel loop and the inline barrel roll) before returning to the station. Speaking of which, the station will have dual sided loading station and Tatsu will run three trains, each holding 32 riders. If the artwork holds true, the front of each train will be decorated with a dragon head. You can see a few small pieces of artwork as well as watch an animated video at the Six Flags website.
2007 - Scooby Doo - Rumor - (2/28/06) Near the end of an article posted by the OC Register, it mentions that Shapiro hopes that the park’s next big investment will be “a ride for the junior set. Perhaps a version of a Scooby Doo themed ride at a Six Flags park in Texas where customers shoot laser guns at targets.”
Future Developments - (1/2/06) While we’re not entirely sure about what is going on with the property across the tollway from the park, we have heard a bit more about the construction going on near the freeway and the employee entrance road. This is part of long standing plan with the city as we have documented below.
1. City Council approve the acquisition of real property interests valued at $349,800.00 plus 15 percent for negotiations for right-of-way;
2. Approve the granting of utility easements, consents, and transfer property rights as required for the construction of interstate ramps and relocation of The Old Road, Magic Mountain Parkway/Interstate 5 Phase II, Project No. S1003, from property owners including, but not limited to, Los Angeles County, State of California, Newhall Land, Mobil Oil, Chevron Oil, and Ocean Park Hotels; and
3. Authorize the City Manager or designee to execute utility easements, consent agreements, and all other documents related to the transfer of property rights, subject to City Attorney approval.
BACKGROUND - This project includes the reconstruction of the Interstate 5/Magic Mountain Parkway Interchange and the realignment of The Old Road. It includes reconstruction of all four freeway ramps, a new auxiliary lane in advance of the northbound off-ramp, widening of Magic Mountain Parkway from The Old Road to the proposed northbound ramps, necessary tapers on Magic Mountain Parkway to join existing, and realignment and widening of The Old Road from approximately 550 meters south of Magic Mountain Parkway to approximately 450 meters north of Magic Mountain Parkway. Reconstruction of the I-5/SR-126 separation structure was completed in Phase 1. The identified work is Phase 2 of a three-phase improvement project.
Due to the traffic impacts within the City, the City agreed to sponsor this phase of the project. As a result, the City has obtained funding and has been designated as the lead local agency for the construction phase of the project.
Los Angeles County is the owner of The Old Road and portions of Magic Mountain Parkway within the project limit. California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) District 7 is the freeway owner and the owner of portions of Magic Mountain Parkway/SR-126 within the project limit. Close coordination with Newhall Land, Los Angeles County, and Caltrans will be required throughout the construction duration.