According to the Los Angeles Daily News, Six Flags has started testing a simplified season pass structure at some select parks, including the two in California: Magic Mountain and Discovery Kingdom.
What’s Happening:
- The simplified passholder program is designed to streamline the complex season pass and membership plans into an updated system that could be rolled out to the amusement park chain's other parks later this year.
- Six Flags Magic Mountain, Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, Six Flags Over Texas and Six Flags Fiesta Texas – which all remain open for the season – have also removed the membership option from their websites.
- Six Flags stopped selling memberships at those parks on Friday, January 14th.
- Prior to the beginning of this test, all Six Flags locations offered both season passes that were paid in full at the time of purchase as well as memberships that were paid monthly, similar to a gym membership.
- Current Six Flags members will be grandfathered into the membership program as legacy members. Existing Six Flags members will continue to be honored as long as they keep making payments.
- Membership refunds are not being issued at this time.
- Active members will see no changes to their memberships or benefits. Six Flags Member Appreciation Days will still be held for legacy members.
- Six Flags lost 3 million season passholders and 900,000 members in 2020 amid pandemic closures at its amusement parks, according to the company’s annual report. Season passholders declined from 5.1 million to 2.1 million while members dropped from 2.6 million to 1.7 million, according to the Six Flags report.
- The changes to the membership and season pass programs come as new Six Flags CEO Selim Bassoul makes swift changes to the amusement park chain. Bassoul has streamlined the Six Flags organization and eliminated executive positions to allow for faster decision making since being named CEO in November 2021.
- For an excellent breakdown of the changes to the Six Flags season pass and membership program, including price differences, I recommend checking out the video from YouTube user Airtime Thrills below:
What They’re Saying:
- “We continuously look at ways to improve our product offerings with the goal of elevating the guest experience,” according to a Six Flags spokesperson. “Based on guest feedback, we are testing a simplified product architecture at select parks that better aligns with our guest-centric goals. As a result of the test, we will decide which changes to implement company-wide.”