 So welcome to the first ever edition of Amusement Insider's Business Banter with me, your host, Jazm. I am super excited to be starting this new series on the Amusement Insider's channel and would love any comments, feedback, suggestions that you have in the comments below. Leave me a like if you liked this first video and a dislike if you don't. I don't care, let me know what you think. So I just want to start off real quick with sharing with you guys the purpose and intention of this specific new series. Why I collaborated with Brendan on it and why we're deciding to do it. And that's basically just because we talk a lot about the actual rides themselves, the parks themselves, and any big updates going on, on more of the enthusiast side of things and the guest side of things. But we don't always talk as much about the actual business behind the theme parks and the business behind the industry itself. And oftentimes for me anyways, I find the business side of things to be sometimes even more interesting. So what the series is really all about is sharing with you guys three to five maybe top tidbits from recent history about the actual business of the theme park industry. Sharing the top key pieces of information from business calls, investors calls, all of those types of things and just really bringing some enlightenment on why the parks do certain things that they do and why the industry trends go the way that they go sometimes. So that's just kind of like a high level overview of what we're hoping to achieve with this series. But definitely share your feedback, your comments and suggestions down below because this is definitely something that is going to involve over time and hopefully become a really awesome piece of the Amusement Insiders Weekly content that you guys begin to look forward to and want to be a part of. So without further ado, let's talk about some pieces of recent Amusement Industry business news. So the first thing we're discussing today is dynamic pricing. Is the way that theme parks sell tickets evolving once again? So this isn't new news per se, maybe more so something that's quickly becoming an obvious trend in the Amusement Industry and that is this new idea of dynamic pricing and changing up the way that we're charging tickets. For many, many years now, we have done things where in most parks you pay a single entrance fee whether that is per single day, two day or a season pass and that allows you entrance and access to pretty much the full parks with maybe one or two up-charge rides or attractions within the park. Before that, as many people know, Disney had a ticketing system where you would buy a book of tickets that would have tickets for certain classifications of ride A through E, I believe it was, someone's going to let me know that I'm wrong on that and that system was eventually replaced by the single admission ticket and now it looks like theme parks are starting to evolve again in the way that they're charging people to experience their parks and that is through what we're calling dynamic pricing. So Merlin Entertainment launched a new AI or artificial intelligence pricing system in late 2017 and it's a trend that seems to be picking up quickly with other parks and with other corporations. Even Disney announced that their pricing structure is changing again and we're seeing this trend start to grow in general. For example, just a couple of weeks ago, Babajan Land another one I'm probably saying wrong, please correct me down below they are actually also launching a new Pay As You Go app system so instead of paying a single price, assuming that you're staying for the full day at the park right now most parks are paying one price no matter what time you go in and what time you leave but Babajan Land is now starting to do things in a new way where you are logged as entering the park when you enter through this app and it tracks how long you stay and when you leave you're getting paid for the time that you spent in the park so they're calling it a Pay As You Go system and it's going to be really interesting to see how this is received by the public and how this works out. Now a little bit closer to home, you're seeing some less drastic changes in pricing for example, Six Flags recently updated their systems to include not only a season pass and a gold pass but also a membership option so this means you can choose to one, get a season pass which gives you access to your home park all season long from beginning to end of the season whether that is for a single year, if you're near a park that opens year round if that's for a single season, if you're at a home park like my former home park of Canada's Wonderland where it would be from roughly May through October or April through October I guess, or you have option two which is get a gold pass and that gives you access to not only your home park but any other park that that theme park corporation that you know is the umbrella over your park for example Canada's Wonderland is owned by Cedar Fair so when I got a platinum pass, they all call them something different so Six Flags is a gold pass, Cedar Fair is a platinum pass I was able to go to all the Cedar Fair parks on that one pass for the entire season but now we see companies like Six Flags offering an additional tier to that ticketing system so at Six Flags you can now have a third option that is a membership and that gets you not only the entrance to all of those Six Flags parks that you would get with your gold pass but you also get things like unlimited soft drinks on every visit an additional 5% discount on pretty much everything so with a gold pass you get 20% off, with a membership you get 25% off so it makes it a little more worth it to shop and spend money in the parks you get a one time skip the line ticket for rides you get one time preferred parking save 15% on food and beverages save 25% off bring your friend tickets and they're claiming, I haven't run them all, I will be honest with you but they're claiming you get up to 37 more discounts and perks to having an actual membership instead of just a season pass or a gold pass so it's a less drastic change than switching to an entirely AI system or a pay-as-you-go system or something like that however it is still an update to membership pricing so I'm about to get to a story about the industry as a whole and some trends that are going on on the large scale in the industry as far as what they're bringing in financially and I think that these changes and innovative new ideas in the area of ticketing is a big part of how the theme park industry as a whole is trying to improve their revenue I know when we go to parks we feel like, oh my gosh this place is always packed no matter what your own park is you probably feel like it's packed half the time especially during the main season which is summer for most people but as we're about to discuss the industry trends as a whole aren't actually going up at the level that we would like to see them going up for it to be a truly healthy industry so without further ado let's get into story number 2 I didn't mean to make that run but it did so recently the global amusement park market report was published for 2018 to 2022 and what this is is basically a financial analysis of the industry as a whole studying the main players in the industry so the big corporations that run the majority of the theme parks and coming up with trends sort of a recap of what's been happening in recent years and how that may affect what's going to happen in upcoming years so those big key player organizations that I was referring to that this report takes into consideration would include Walt Disney Corporation Cedar Fair Entertainment Corporation, Comcast Merlin Entertainment and SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment so what are the main key takeaways? well we did see a forecasted compound annual growth rate of 8.2% between now and 2022 that is fairly healthy it's good to see a growth rate in the positive numbers and not the negatives that growth rate is expected to gradually decrease year after year so 8.2% is an average over the growth of the coming years to 2022 but it's an average of numbers that are slowly decreasing so the industry is not on an upward swing right now what do you think is causing that? I'd love to hear your feedback on this leave us some comments down below and we will definitely speculate further on this in future videos now with that said there is a lot of innovation and improvements happening within the industry to try to change that trend and turn it around and see those numbers gradually increasing once again and that includes the dynamic ticketing systems that we're seeing all of these parks implementing that we were just discussing as well as the trend of virtual theme parks growing whether that's virtual aspects within a theme park like we're seeing a lot of virtual rides a lot of virtual attractions or the actual idea of a completely virtual experience as a theme park and this is another topic I'd love to hear some thoughts on down below let me know what have you heard about this trend what would you like to see what would you not like to see and what would make you more enticed to spend your vacation your time or your money at an amusement park at one of these big players corporations theme parks and amusement parks and attractions so let us know in the comments down below so in an attempt to keep this video short and sweet and just a little bit of an introduction to the kind of topics that we're going to cover in these future videos and in this business banter series I want to move on to our final topic of the day SeaWorld that's right I'm going there SeaWorld settles to pay $5 million for misleading investors now this particular article is not about what is or isn't happening to the sea life itself at the SeaWorld parks this article is specifically about the fact that SeaWorld has supposedly misled their investors about the kind of financial backlash that they felt as a result of all of that controversy so this article is alleging that starting in December of 2013 the company SeaWorld itself as well as its former CEO James Acheson made misleading statements and made false statements about how much that film Blackfish and the controversy around it actually had on the parks themselves specifically around the area of earnings and press so this information is actually coming directly from the SEC or the Security and Exchanges Commission in the US and it is a fraud settlement that they're seeking now in my opinion this may end up becoming a pretty open and shut case because eventually SeaWorld themselves didn't come out and say that the controversy, the film and the backlash all surrounding it did actually have an impact on their business and a significant one at that they admitted declining attendance and declining financial results obviously leading to declining stock values and losses for investors all as a result of this whole situation so what the SEC is essentially saying is that SeaWorld is being asked to pay $4 million and Acheson himself is being asked to pay $1 million without either conceding or declining that these losses actually happened so without having to publicly say, yeah, we lied, we were wrong they're just going to pay these damages and basically move on so my question to you is, do you think this is right? do you think that there were actually specific results from this film that were negative on the parks and on the industry? and do you think that they should have to pay up? because they said otherwise at the time back in 2013 and if you want my opinion on this I think they're making the right move I think whether or not you agree with the documentary whether or not you think it was embellished it was hyped up too much, it was staged whatever your feelings are about it at the end of the day they have seen a gradual increase in their stocks since they've started making these changes even though they, I guess, lied to investors and said, no, no, we didn't see any bad effects they're listening to what the public is asking them to do as far as changing their parks, changing their habits changing what they do and don't do with these animals and you're seeing actually pretty much an all-time high in SeaWorld stocks lately their stocks have been gradually on the rise since hitting an all-time low in November 2017 so even though this particular article is about the lows that we saw in 2013 because of the film their all-time low from what I've seen it was actually in November 2017 in fact they actually haven't been as high as they are now since March 2014 which was well after this 2013 debate but they're actually starting to take a dip again since this news so what are your opinions on this how do you feel this might affect future stocks and do you think that other parks are susceptible to controversy like this that can affect their financial revenues and potential success so I actually feel pretty good about it I think it's unfortunate that this is coming out so many years after it happened but in my opinion I think people do need to be held responsible we can't just have CEOs running around to their investors but yeah let me know what your opinion is down below and would love to interact with you and share thoughts around this hopefully last SeaWorld controversy so with that story I'm going to wrap up business banter for today I want to thank you guys for watching if you made it to the end like I said at the beginning I would love to hear your comments thoughts, feedback, anything about this series about how you would like to see it change and evolve and what kind of topics you'd like to see covered in the future thank you for joining me make sure you hit subscribe both here to Amusement Insiders as well as to my channel JazzM for some other theme park related content as well as non-theme park related content but to get to know me a little bit better too and I will see you next time