Silver Tier Parks
The following parks are smaller, more locally-oriented parks in the new Six Flags chain. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re expendable. Just the opposite, smaller parks that maintain steady local attendance without major capital investment can be an important part of the ecosystem. But with a now-massive chain to maintain, it’s also possible Six Flags would look at these parks, determine if they pose any competition to others in the chain, and decide to either sell them or close them and send their worthwhile rides elsewhere…
- DORNEY PARK (Allentown, Pennsylvania) – Located in eastern Pennsylvania, Dorney Park really slots nicely alongside other Cedar Fair mid-level parks we’ll rank in this tier – pleasant, well kempt, clean, and bolstered by strong local support. This is a very delightful amusement park that theoretically serves the Philadelphia and Harrisburg metro areas, but is rural and remote, making it far more of a locals’ park.
Dorney Park will probably never be a destination (except for those passing through the region and wanting to collect its coaster credits). But it still has a very strong coaster collection that includes Hydra: The Revenge (a B&M floorless coaster), Steel Force (an old school Morgan hyper), Talon (a custom B&M invert), and Possessed (an Intamin Impulse coaster salvaged from Geauga Lake). For 2024, the park received its first new coaster since 2008 – the B&M dive coaster Iron Menace, which is a really nice show of faith in this regional park.
- SIX FLAGS DISCOVERY KINGDOM (Vallejo, California) – Located in the northern Bay Area (sharing the San Francisco and Sacramento metropolitan areas), Discovery Kingdom is an unusual Six Flags park in that half of its appeal is its animal collection. The park includes dolphins, sharks, seals, cheetahs, giraffes, exotic birds, otters, lions, penguins, and more, sequestering its ride collection into a fairly condensed (and chaotic) corner of the space-limited park.
It’s a very nice park, but even before the merger it was already an outlier to have one Six Flags park with animals, and Cedar Fair (new majority owners of the combined Six Flags venture) historically has a particular distaste for animal experiences altogether. (Some of Discovery Kingdom’s animals are relocated from when the only other Six Flags park to feature animals – Six Flags Worlds of Adventure – was sold to Cedar Fair in the 2000s.)
Aside from the complexities of its animal operation, Discovery Kingdom also presents a unique puzzle for the new Six Flags in two other ways. The first is that it’s located in California’s Bay Area – where real estate is at such a premium that many entertainment endeavors are finding that they can make more money by folding and selling than they’d ever make in earned revenue. Second, the Bay Area happens to be one of very few markets where the merger armed the new Six Flags with two parks… Though notably, the other park (California’s Great America) has already sold its land with intention to close, so Six Flags will probably want to hang on to Discovery Kingdom to keep a foothold in the San Francisco market.
Even though they’re only part of the draw, Discovery Kingdom’s headlining coasters are Medusa (a B&M floorless coaster), Superman: Ultimate Flight (a B&M flier cloned at Over Georgia, Great America, and Great Adventure), Flash: Vertical Velocity (an Intamin Impulse coaster with an iconic leaning tower due to local height restrictions), and Joker (an RMC redux of the park’s “Roar” wooden coaster).
- WORLDS OF FUN (Kansas City, Missouri) – An “A.D.” (After Disney) park opened in 1973, Worlds of Fun was initially themed to “Around the World in 80 Days” (with lands stylized as America, Africa, Scandinavia, Europe, and the Orient). It’s another Cedar Fair park in the mid-sized tier of Valleyfair. A surprising amount of its “globe-trotting” decor is still present, but as you can imagine, it’s coasters that fill the park’s ranks. It’s anchored by Mamba (a Morgan hyper), Patriot (a B&M invert), Prowler (a GCI terrain hugging woodie) and Zambezi Zinger (a 2023 GCI hybrid coaster emulating an older, decommissioned ride of the same name). Worlds of Fun is a perfectly-sized family park that the new Six Flags really has no incentive to invest majorly in, but also probably wouldn’t bother to sell or close.
- SIX FLAGS OVER TEXAS (Arlington, Texas) – Before you try to hit them both in one day, recognize that the other Six Flags in Texas is five hours from Fiesta Texas. Actually, Six Flags Over Texas was the original Six Flags. (The company’s name comes from this park, which famously flew the “six flags” that have fluttered “over Texas” throughout the state’s history and had lands dedicated to each). Despite being the original, “SFOT” isn’t much of a flagship for the company. The park today includes the original RMC (The New Texas Giant), Titan, and Mr. Freeze among its lineup – not a blockbuster park, but a historically important one.
- SIX FLAGS DARIEN LAKE (Buffalo, New York) – Darien Lake opened in 1981. It was one of many parks purchased in the mid-’90s by an insatiable group called Premier Parks, which then turned around and bought Six Flags three years later, retroactively applying the Six Flags prefix to its own properties. In the midst of financial turmoil caused by its overgrowth, Six Flags sold Darien Lake in 2007. A decade later, the company signed on to operate the property (not own it), re-adding the Six Flags prefix in 2019. Darien Lake is a fairly modest, local family park, but it does have two outsized rides including Ride of Steel (a 208 foot tall Intamin, formerly Superman-themed) and Tantrum (a Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter).
Given that Six Flags is merely the operator here and not the park’s owner, it’s not their prerogative to sell or close the park. The only choice they could make depends on a few factors, including the length of the operating lease. (It’s not unusual for operators to sign on for 99 year operating agreements.) It could be that the park’s owner (EPR Properties) pays Six Flags well for their operating expertise and the brand licensing that allows the park to use the Six Flags name. But if Six Flags signed a short-term lease, it’s possible that when the opportunity presents itself, they’ll bow out and leave another operator to take over.
- VALLEYFAIR! (Shakopee, Minnesota) – The lesser-known “Fair” half of Cedar Fair’s name, “Valleyfair!” is of a tier of legacy Cedar Fair parks we saw quite a bit in this tier – sort of mid-sized family amusement parks anchored by one or two “big” coasters from the ’90s or 2000s – in this case, Wild Thing (a Morgan hypercoaster), Renegade (a GCI woodie), and Steel Venom (an Intamin Impulse coaster) – that doesn’t really get any big capital investment aside from hand-me-downs or ride re-locations. In some ways, that makes this level of park attractive in that they become self-sustaining without much spending, and cater almost entirely to locals who show up for the water park all summer long.
Unfortunately, that leaves us with just the parks whose futures we might be a bit concerned about… Or, on the other side of the coin, whose best rides may soon find themselves relocating to Six Flags’ other properties…