 On October 28th, 2020, Six Flags held its quarter three earnings call and the company dropped quite the bombshell. We are eliminating 15 underperforming rides this year, reducing maintenance costs and freeing up significant CapEx resources, according to Mike Spanos, president and CEO. This will basically allow the company to continue adding new rides to each park every single year according to the company. What I want to talk about is not which rides I think will be removed. I will say though that I don't necessarily believe each of the 15 parks will be removing a ride. I think we could see certain parks letting go of two or maybe even three rides. It is also mentioned that certain rides will be removed altogether while some may be refurbished and others yet being redeployed to other parks. What I will be doing is addressing the reasoning why they've carried this out and why it may be essential for the continued success of the company and for other operators moving into the coming years. 2020 has been an incredibly difficult year to say the least for everyone and the amusement park industry has felt the effects for sure and undoubtedly will continue to feel the effects for many years to come. As sad as it will be to see some of these rides going as there will surely be some classic rides lost, I believe this decision is in the best interest if we as enthusiasts want these parks to continue to succeed. In my opinion I think we will see many old rides that are known to be costly to keep operating, bite the dust. Especially rides like aero log flumes and shoot the shoot rides as well as huss flat rides. In fact this has already been happening quite frequently over the last few years at many parks across the world. In order for not just six flags, but many parks and especially small ones to continue to operate well into the future across the world, we are going to see drastic cost cutting measures such as this one being executed around the globe. In the case of six flags I'm willing to bet that many of the 15 rides they end up axing are rides they have already been thinking about removing for some time now due to various factors such as age and maintenance costs as well as loss of ridership. And this can be applied for the rest of the industry. Just look at other recent news in regards to a devastating number of classic rare rides being removed. How many parks will be willing to keep such rides operational for years to come when we are in an ongoing worldwide pandemic that has forced individual parks and chains to take massive blows to their revenue, with large numbers of staff being laid off as well? Not only do these classics need to be maintained, which in many cases costs a lot of money, but of course these rides need to be staffed as well. In certain cases a ride will require several operators at minimum to be able to open. So when we see parks making the difficult decision to close multiple beloved rides that shape their identity, you can start to see what they may be thinking in terms of being able to disperse staff throughout the parks in order to be as cost effective as possible. I do want to be very clear about something here though. When it comes to the closure of classic rides, sometimes extremely rare or a one of a kind ride in the world, I am very devastated about losing such classics. And the most clear example here is Kennywood, which just announced the closure of four classic rides being removed before the 2021 season. So last rides, Baron Curve, Paratrooper, Volcano, and Kangaroo, which is the only one of its kind in the world. They're all biting the dust. These are great historic rides that have really helped to shape the identity of a park like Kennywood, even though I don't necessarily agree with their decision to close all of these at once. At the end of the day an amusement park is a business and they need to make money in order to continue to operate. Even if I do believe that the park will suffer tremendously in the coming years due to such a mass exodus of classic rides in one swipe. That is a whole other tangent I could go into though. I'm not really sure how to wrap this up, as I'm not exactly sure which rides Six Flags may choose to retire and which ones may be sent to another park or refurbished, even if some rides are very evident contenders for the chopping block. I do know that due to the events that have transpired this year, the coming five years in the amusement industry will be astronomically jeopardized. Hopefully after that things will begin to pick back up a bit, whether or not we see the boom of the past decade for the industry return. I think that's about all I have to say regarding those recent announcements of numerous ride removals. As usual, be sure to let me know what you think about all of this and how you see it shaping the amusement park industry in the future. Thanks so much for watching, this is CoasterDaddy, bye.