I'm sure many of you remember Six Flags parks banned smoking in all their parks, partly because "children shouldn't see people smoking".

The news was full of reports last week that Six Flags is having financial problems. Their stock fell 25%, they're talking about selling a couple of parks, and one commentator surmised it's because they are the "lower end" of the theme parks (can't compete with Disney, etc.). The main blame, however, was placed on teenagers "hanging around the parking lots, smoking, drinking alcohol"...and, supposedly, keeping "families" from attending the parks. There was no mention of the fact it was park policy that forced people to gather in the parking lots to have a cigarette, nor any mention of the smoking ban as another reason "families" (the zealots always forget smokers have families, too) are staying away.

Nobody, of course, attributes any of the losses to a smoking ban....

And they did so well in 2005. LOL

link

Their stock shot up after Redskins owner Dan Snyder bought the Parks. He's the genius who instituted the smoking ban. When their smokefree policy obviously didn't attract all those pure-as-the-driven-snow families, their stock dropped like an anti getting a whiff of SHS (even though the media wouldn't DARE mention the ban as at least partly at fault).

quote:

Originally posted by Freedom:
Their stock shot up after Redskins owner Dan Snyder bought the Parks.

I wasn't talking about the stock price. Attendance was up 4.9% in 2005. Let's how 2006 does. LOL

BTW, I can't honestly believe there's more than a 100 boneheads in this country who would actually NOT go somewhere because their kids might see someone smoking. That Dan Snyder is a dumbass beyond belief.

These parks are not inexpensive to attend and smokers who work in draconoan enviroments are not willing to enjoy the same ambience when trying to entertain the kids.

Maybe attendance would work return if smokers would dare drop off the children at the gate and return later to pick them up. To spend hours standing in lines with the children isn't any fun for the adults. Parents enjoy watching the children enjoy themselves but at the same time they need something to occupy themselves and smoking helps them cope with the children and their needs and desires.

Could the parks afford the liability insurance to take care of the children from drop off thru pickup? Could any parent trust them to actually take care of their children?

What would Child Protective Services think of a parent who would drop off their child for hours alone at a theme park?

Without the parents the parks can not survive.

quote:

Without the parents the parks can not survive.

That, Bruce, sums it all up.

Personally, the ban at 6 Flags parks doesn't effect me, as I have never been to one in my life, have no idea where the nearest one is, and have no desire to find out. Those type parks hold no interest for me at all.

Carnival season in this area starts this weekend. We'll be attending different ones weekly throughout the summer, and some more than once. I would much prefer to spend my money supporting the local volunteer fire departments than some corporate conglomerate.

Just curious............Have the Six Flags parks completely banned smoking within the gates or are there designated smoking areas as there are at Disney World? I was under the impression that there were select areas for smokers, but correct me if I was wrong.

Pat, as I understand it, smoking inside the parks was totally banned; there is no designated smoking area. The only place smoking is allowed is in the parking lot, which explains why all the kids are hanging out there. They'd probably be inside the park spending money except for the ban. They're also a convenient excuse.

If this is the case, then rest assured I'll never set foot in a Six Flags theme park again. Financially, I hope they lose their shirts.

Something I forgot to mention about all the local carnivals.........smoking is permitted.

In fact the vast majority of volunteer firefighters and EMTs I know, who all man the booths and rides at the carnivals, are smokers.......go figger.

Firefighters are a current target of the anti-smoking cartel as was recently reported in our local press. Health care costs was given as a reason. I would think someone whose career is to work in buring enviroments could appreciate a better resistence to smoke. At the same time health care costs for a public servant whose it is to risk their lives daily should be high, as well as, their life insurance premiums.

There is nothing like a couch potatoe at a desk, a reformed smoker, or a born again Christian when it comes to making decisions for the rest of us. There was a time when these people enjoyed life, once converted no one is to be allowed any enjoyment like that ever again.

As Marie Antoinette told the starving residents of Paris "Let them eat cake."

Six Flags Selling 7 Parks for $312M
Thursday, 11-Jan-2007 1:50PM EST Story from AP / MICHELLE CHAPMAN


Associated Press/AP Online
NEW YORK - Theme-park operator Six Flags Inc., which has been struggling with falling attendance and a large debt load, said Thursday it will sell seven of its 27 parks for $312 million.

Shares of Six Flags gained 48 cents, or almost 9 percent, to $5.91 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange after the news.

The sale comes after Six Flags found itself on a management roller-coaster ride in recent years. Mark Shapiro, a former executive at ESPN, became chief executive of the company in December 2005 following a proxy fight led by investor and Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder that resulted in the ouster of former CEO Keirian Burke and other executives.

The company said the sale is part of its strategy to reduce debt and enhance its operational and financial flexibility. Six Flags had total long-term debt of $2.1 billion as of Sept. 3, 2006, when it filed its most recent quarterly report.

Six Flags spokeswoman Wendy Goldberg said the company is not actively looking to sell any more parks.

Combined with the June 2006 sale of land underlying its Houston AstroWorld theme park for $77 million, the sale will result in proceeds of $352 million to be used for debt reduction, according to the company.

The parks are being bought by Jacksonville, Fla.-based park operator PARC 7F-Operations Corp., but PARC will simultaneously sell them to Orlando-based real-estate investment trust CNL Income Properties Inc. CNL will then lease the parks back to PARC.

The seven parks include Six Flags Darien Lake in Buffalo, N.Y.; Six Flags Elitch Gardens in Denver; Frontier City and the White Water Bay water park in Oklahoma City; SplashTown in Houston; Waterworld USA in Concord, Calif.; and Wild Waves and Enchanted Village in Seattle.

While the Darien Lake and Elitch Gardens sites will not longer carry the Six Flags brand under the new ownership, any 2007 season passes purchased at the parks will continue to be honored at all Six Flags branded parks for the 2007 season.

The deal is expected to close in March, subject to customary closing conditions.

Six Flags reported last month that 2006 attendance slipped 14 percent from the previous year. In November, the company said third-quarter earnings fell 16 percent to $159.3 million, or $1.08 per share, below Wall Street's expectations. Revenue in that quarter slid 1 percent to $540.7 million.

Chief Financial Officer Jeff Speed said in a conference call last month that the company considered 2006 a "transition year" due to changes in both management and strategy. CEO Shapiro added that the company increased its television and radio advertising spending, a key driver of attendance, by $30 million this year after being hurt by higher pricing from last-minute buying during its management turnover.

Goldberg said Thursday that weather played a role in the company's drop in attendance last year, but there was "no one cause" for the decline.

She noted that Six Flags is currently focused on getting families back into its parks, which can take some time. Families are viewed by theme parks as a quality source of revenue that tend to spend more.

Six Flags is the owner and operator of 27 North American parks, including the seven it plans to sell. The seven parks drew a collective attendance of 3.6 million in 2006 and generated about $30 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

Good. Let them go bankrupt. They chose their destiny and did so vountarily. I have no sympathy for these people. Looks like a smoking ban didnt work out so well for u. Oh well. LMFAO!!! I am truly glad to see these parks fail. O:-)

quote:

Originally posted by claude zachary:
Good. Let them go bankrupt. They chose their destiny and did so vountarily. I have no sympathy for these people. Looks like a smoking ban didnt work out so well for u. Oh well. LMFAO!!! I am truly glad to see these parks fail. O:-)

Imagine what all 50+ million American smokers organized (even merely belonging to a single mailing/leaflet/phone tree) could do to them if we were to pick one company getting too loud with its antismoking policy, such as Six Flags, and declare in one voice -- not a single family of a smoker will set foot or spend a cent in your parks unless you reverse antismoking policies to at least 1970s levels (within the limits of the present laws and which would be worked on separately).

For this (phase #4) to work, it would have to be used sparingly, one at a time (for max publicity & stock market effects), with target selection untainted with any other agenda but to crush the antismoking leach as quickly as possible. It is thus essential that every smoker is welcomed in, no matter what else s/he is or what s/he does outside smoking, otherwise our strength would splinter along any extraneous agenda coloring our strategy and tactics. Our "denormalization" is of great help here -- we are marked and segregated already, hence we can spot each other around the town, connect and pass the word very quickly.

The same method could be applied to politicians, again one at time and the most vulnerable one would be picked. We would be basically putting the 'death curse' back, on a company or a political career. The only way out of it for them would be not simply a reversal of their policy to the one before the 'death curse' was issued, but a reversal with interest i.e. they would have to go some extra distance in opposite direction, in our favor, beyond their starting point to get the 'death curse' lifted.

Vast majority of smokers would belong only to the "leaf nodes" of the "smokers tree" i.e. they would only receive a leaflet or an email with the current target and explanation (which would come at one per month for companies & politicians) and would not be urged to pass it on (it's best to ask them to do absolute minimum needed for the method to work i.e. 'get back at this particular single target'). The core would be smokers who are outside of the antismoking propaganda matrix, who are thus not under the 'death curse' and who don't mind spending time and effort to pass the word around their town since they know they are doing a good thing, serving a noble cause.

It is also important not to start using these highly focused soft target 'death' stings until the phase #4, when the core is strong enough, in order to avoid duds (which would greatly diminish psychological and stock market effectiveness of this tactics). The soft target would be first privately advised to reverse its policy to the previous state within one week, or else. Before starting to use these kinds of hard, sticky 'death' stings, though, it would be useful to test and demonstrate our strength with quick, transient and mild stings, such as 'no smoker or their family will patronise McDonalds, or watch CNN or ABC news,... for a day (or week)'. No requirement would placed on the target in this case, except that it would be picked based on their prior antismoking activities, mass media focus and stock vulnerability (i.e. we target company wich is already the most likely one to lose its shares value for any other reason - we expedite their fall and cause greater effect with less).

This message has been edited. Last edited by: nightlight,

quote:

Originally posted by nightlight:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by claude zachary:
Good. Let them go bankrupt. They chose their destiny and did so vountarily. I have no sympathy for these people. Looks like a smoking ban didnt work out so well for u. Oh well. LMFAO!!! I am truly glad to see these parks fail. O:-)

Imagine what all 50+ million American smokers organized (even merely belonging to a single mailing/leaflet/phone tree) could do to them if we were to pick one company getting too loud with its antismoking policy, such as Six Flags, and declare in one voice -- not a single family of a smoker will set foot or spend a cent in your parks unless you reverse antismoking policies to at least 1970s levels (within the limits of the present laws and which would be worked on separately).

Nightlight,
A suggestion: include the obese too. Smokers make up only about 22% of the adult population;if you add the fatso's(as they are called),you could greatly increase your numbers.
Either way, count me in!!!

quote:

Originally posted by gkayser30:
A suggestion: include the obese too.

Yep. And like us, they are easy to spot, too (perhaps even easier than smokers). Our enemy is the same, anyway -- the Big Pharma, Big Med, "health" bureaucracies (note that loudmouth health "nannies" and their "grass roots" organizations are just fronts for the con artists behind the hoopla making the big bucks; arguing or trying to convince these loud, obnoxious nannies is not worth a minute of our time and efforts; they bend wherever the wind blows, anyway, tomorrow they may well be barking as hysterically at the Big Pharma). It's just a matter of time before the obese get discriminated against as much as we are now (e.g. obese must pay more for airline tickets since they require extra fuel, more for Six Flags rides because of extra electricity cost,...).

quote:

Either way, count me in!!!

I hope the good folks at FORCES and Smokers Club are listening in, since they already have pro-smokers organizations with knowlegable and dedicated people, along with web sites and other resources to get these kinds of actions that would work, off the ground quickly. In any case, these things will happen one way or the other (I am working my way through the phases #1 and #2 presently and will set up my own site if nothing comes along in the meantime). We have been kicked around enough.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: nightlight,

As I stated in an earlier post, "Attendance was up 4.9% in 2005."

From Dave's post: "2006 attendance slipped 14 percent from the previous year."

Does anyone remember the date the smoking ban took effect?

Remember the smoke-free cruise ship that went back to smoking? Maybe 6 Flags should contact them. LOL

quote:

Originally posted by squeezer:
From Dave's post: "2006 attendance slipped 14 percent from the previous year."

And that is without any organized effort. With a proper strategy behind, such as the one sketched above, the sting would cost them 30-40 percent in attendance and their stock value, which tends to overreact to reality, would suffer even more. Since the fellow smokers would be the first ones to know what is coming, what company is the target and when, they could even benefit financially by shorting the right stocks ahead of the crowd (to get back at least few crumbs from the money being stolen from us every day).

It would take only few good, hard well publicized falls like that to see companies and politicians take a notice and then to start seeing real world benefits, such as the reversals of the bans and taxes, smoker friendly restaurants, bars, theaters, airlines,...

[QUOTE]Originally posted by nightlight:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by squeezer:
]

Since the fellow smokers would be the first ones to know what is coming, what company is the target and when, they could even benefit financially by shorting the right stocks ahead of the crowd (to get back at least few crumbs from the money being stolen from us every day).

Now sloow down Sir; that sort of thing is illegal and conviction for it would do a great deal of harm to a good idea.

quote:

Originally posted by squeezer:
As I stated in an earlier post, "Attendance was up 4.9% in 2005."

From Dave's post: "2006 attendance slipped 14 percent from the previous year."

Does anyone remember the date the smoking ban took effect?

Remember the smoke-free cruise ship that went back to smoking? Maybe 6 Flags should contact them. LOL

This is awesome news! I'm glad they fell 14% and wish for more declines until they reverse their Fascist policy. I hope the same thing happens to the Marriot and Westin hotel chains. The bastards deserve it.