 I'm Sharon Parker, Communications Manager for Six Flags. I'd like to update you on the latest plans for reopening our parks. Alrighty, so in today's video I'm going to be discussing a probably a very sensitive topic for the people that are following my page and my subscribers on this channel. So it's no hidden fact that my subscribers and my base and my typical views definitely sway in the favor of Cedar Fair, and I typically have always been a Cedar Fair fanboy. I'm invested in Cedar Fair stock-wise, and for those of you that have followed the channel along the way, with the new CEO stepping into Six Flags and taking over, I've noticed a lot of really positive changes. In fact, if you go back and watch some of my videos, I've been a huge fan of their new CEO, and boy is it only getting stronger. This new CEO is definitely taking Six Flags to a new level, and this year 2020 has really showcased how strong he is of a leader. So not to give too much away, but this video is definitely going to be on Six Flags vs Cedar Fair in terms of handling the pandemic, and I'm going to be viewing this from a business side of things, not a safety side of things. So my video is going to be on Six Flags vs Cedar Fair, business-wise, how did they handle operations, opening parks, and being innovative during a pandemic that has forced a lot of parks to be closed, or forced a lot of reduction in attendance, and definitely impacted even operations. So just to get it started, it is no hidden fact that Six Flags definitely had it easier opening up a lot of their parks. With the locations of their parks and where they're located, they've definitely had a better opportunity, better chance of opening their parks. So we know that a lot of Six Flags parks have been open through the pandemic. Cedar Fair has definitely had a good, I would say maybe like 40 to like 60% of their parks open. Some of their bigger parks like Knott's Berry Farm and Canada's Wonderland were not unfortunately able to open, but King's Island and Cedar Point were able to open, and then Carolin's a little later on for Winterfest. So Cedar Fair had a little less luck in terms of opening their parks, and that was very evident. We did see Cedar Fair trying to open up some of their parks in these areas, so they fought for, especially like a park like Canada's Wonderland. They tried really hard to get it open, and it unfortunately did not work. So it wasn't that they weren't trying to get parks open, they were just a little unfortunate in terms of where their parks were located, definitely in a lot more stricter areas or regions or provinces or states. So that has something to do with it as well. In terms of being innovative, we all know where this point's going. So Cedar Fair in my opinion, and this is not to sound offensive to anyone that works at Cedar Fair, I do know that we do have people that watch our channel and follow us on Instagram that work at Cedar Fair parks, and we're close to some of them. This is not meant to sound offensive at all. We know you tried really hard, but I do have to be honest, Six Flags definitely was extremely more innovative in terms of getting the parks open. So this new CEO had the idea of opening up some of their safaris as drive-throughs almost right away, and we saw that huge boost in sales and attendance. I would almost say it definitely saved the bottom line in terms of bleeding cashflow. So that was a very smart decision on Six Flags' part. And just for even their fans and people that live in the area, something to go do. You'd be able to go in your car as a family and go look at the zoo animals at the park. So definitely very innovative and smart, and it definitely paid off. And we're going to see that trend later on in Winterfest as well. I'm not positive that they did it for their Halloween event, so comment down below if they did, but they probably would have if this continued through 2021, which I don't think it's going to impact the later season of theme parks. But nonetheless, Six Flags was able to open their Halloween events in a different form, and they were very smart on the marketing side of it and incorporating the masks into the costume design as well. So again, point innovative wise Six Flags handled this really well. I'm not sure if any Cedar Fair Park had Hello Weekends or a Halloween event with Haunted Houses. I could be wrong. I wasn't really paying attention to be honest in terms of Hello Weekends at Cedar Point if they actually did it, or they just remained open. I think they just remained open and they didn't have any Haunted Houses. But again, always correct me down below in the comment section. Six Flags did hold their Halloween events, and it was a very big draw from what we saw online. And then we transitioned into Winterfest, and this is where Six Flags really stood out, and this is where it really did convince me that Six Flags is the owner of handling this pandemic extremely well. Six Flags opened Winterfest, and it was already an event that was selling out. So tickets were being sold out in advance. What did the park do? The park, sorry I should say, the chain, they opened up Monday to Friday, a drive-thru event during the day, or during the night I think it was, sorry, for families to come through their car to experience the Winterfest, that it was not a walk-through. So you could go through your car and you could pay a ticket for your car to go through the Winter event instead of going on the weekends of crowds. So if you were one of those people that were a little weary of going to group events or crowded areas, you could actually have the experience of the Winter event in your car. So that was extremely smart to me, especially in a country like Canada or even Ontario that would have done really well. And personally I was really let down when Cedar Fair didn't even introduce that at Canada's Wonderland, since Canada's Wonderland is one of those parks where the decorations for the most part remain up. So all the lights remain up at Canada's Wonderland for the most part for Winterfest all season long, so they were already installed. They really would have just had to move a couple things around and then lay out a path. So I was extremely shocked when Canada's Wonderland and other Cedar Fair parks didn't introduce a drive-thru event. Anything to stop any sort of cash flow bleed, your bottom line in my opinion should have been introduced. So I was a little shocked by that, but I was extremely impressed when Six Flags stepped up and on top of opening Winterfest introduced a drive-thru event. So it'll be extremely interesting to see what Six Flags has planned in the future, because their new CEO is definitely on top of things and is really elevating this brand to a new level. I've been so impressed with Six Flags and how they've handled it. We've hosted on our story, our Instagram story, who do you think handled the pandemic better in terms of business-wise and more people voted for Cedar Fair and I'm really shocked and disappointed by that personally. Again these are my personal opinions. What I'm saying doesn't mean that Six Flags definitely handled it better, but in my opinion they did. I'm still a little shocked and disappointed in the results. I think you know Cedar Fair fanboys need to honestly look at the bigger picture here and realize that unfortunately, yeah Six Flags did handle it better business-wise no matter how you look at it. So again I'm not trying to offend anyone, just a little shocked by the voting results to be honest. I personally voted for Six Flags. It's very obvious Six Flags has handled it better business-wise and they're going to come out of this in a much stronger position in terms of cash flow and their bottom line. And from what I understand I don't have the numbers on me and I wasn't going to include this in the video, but now I'm like wanting to include it so I would have had this written down, but I think that Six Flags is still offering a 25 cent dividend on their stock whereas Cedar Fair isn't. And again it's only going to help them in the longer picture coming out of this pandemic being able to stop some of that cash flow and cash burn their bottom line that they're spending like about 30 to 35 million very similar to Cedar Fair in terms of cash burn per month, but they in my opinion probably were very much able to control that cash burn versus Cedar Fair. We do know that the Cedar Fair parks that did open were successful just like the Six Flags park, so there was nothing wrong with that. Cedar Fair had a very successful season from what we saw online and both parks handled it very well in terms of safety, so there's no concerns personally from there, very different from what we saw at some Florida parks handling it pretty poorly, so I'll say that Six Flags and Cedar Fair definitely handled the pandemic extremely well compared to some of those other parks out there, but these are just some of my opinions on who handled the pandemic better, I definitely think no matter how you look at it Six Flags handled it better, no offense, but again I'm curious comment down below I want to hear your opinions and thoughts I'll try and respond to as many as possible comment down below who you think handled the pandemic better in terms of business wise were you shocked by some of the decisions that Six Flags made were you like a little shocked by you know Six Flags coming out on top and being so on top of an innovative in terms of handling a virus and the pandemic and still being able to operate as a business in unique ways because I most certainly was to be honest I as you can tell from previous videos I was not a fan of Six Flags until I visited Six Flags Great Adventure and I started to realize that a lot of the hate online was coming from biased Cedar Fair fanboys. Six Flags definitely deserves a lot of props for how they handled this and can't wait to see the future of Six Flags and this new CEO because he's truly absolutely amazing and I am honestly excited to see what he does with these parks honestly super excited anyways thank you so much for taking any time to listen to my opinions on this this is definitely a huge topic of discussion that I'm highly interested in so I really wanted to talk on this I've wanted to make this video for a while but again my life is all over the place in terms of being back to work and everything so I'm just trying to find a perfect balance in terms of making these videos still and managing my full time professional life now anyways thank you so much for taking any time to listen and watch my video hopefully you had an amazing new year and yeah see you in tomorrow's video on Canada's Wonderland I think I'm launching or releasing a video on what happened to Canada's Wonderland's Hotel tomorrow so stay tuned for that thank you so much guys have a good one bye