This has been a terrible month for water parks!
Both Key Lime Cove in Gurnee and the Sheraton CoCo Key Waterpark in Arlington Heights have filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection.
I used to live in Gurnee. Having two major attractions file for bankruptcy ( Great America and Key Lime Cove) will have a huge negetive impact on tax revenue in Gurnee. It didn't help that every road around each of those attractions has been under construction for the last two years. I wonder if the partnership between Key Lime Cove and Six Flags will continue?
I am losing all my favorite spots!

Yes, plain and simple. The relationship will stay, there bolth in chapter 11( I think) so they both need help, but the only problem is, most hotel/indoor waterparks peak times=winter, theme parks=summer.

I hope the relationship stays together. But when you have two insolvent companies it's up to two different bankruptcy trustee's to decide what relationships each entity can have and continue. Sort of like the rules that an ex felon on parole cannot hang around other ex felons.
However, the best thing that could happen is that Key Lime Cove, Six Flags and Gurnee Mill all team up into one giant megaplex and convention center.
They also need to have decent representation within the local government.
Gurnee imposes way too much tax on these companies and far too little in valuable services and it has hurt businesses in Gurnee badly. It seems that they (public officials) have forgotten that without the revenues (both direct and indirect)from Gurnee Mills, Six Flags, etc. There wouldn't be much more than cornfields in Gurnee.

The fact that these two corporations in my opinion has nothing to do with Gurnee taxing them too much. Six Flags has made stupid mistakes, and continues to make stupid mistakes. Now, they just aren't as costly. To me, you put Superman Ultimate Flight in which would be fine in 2003, but yet why did they put in Mardi Gras and Revolution the next year? You put a big chunk of change in 2003 - I think 15 million!!, and than they should wait a few years until they spend major bucks. Sure, Revolution only costs transportation, and re-assembly, but they added a whole other area with another roller coaster.

Think about it really. I think people that go to the park 20 times a year with their season pass are the only people that really complain about oh you don't have a new ride this year, and thus I'm not going to the park. Now, if it's been 5 years, and nothing, they might.

I personally think that Six Flags is stupid partenering with Key Lime Cove. They are both in the same type of business, and I think it could only hurt them. Key Lime Cove has a product that you have, so why would you say hey let's advertise them.

A problem I find with Key Lime Cove is that they don't offer day passes. They don't have to be that cheap in order for people to come. If I live 10 miles away, I have no reason to stay in a $200 room because what's the point? It's different if it were Wisconsin Dells, and the people from IL don't live that close to the Dells.

Six Flags has too cheap season passes, but I think as other people say, they need to work on customer service. When you charge money for lockers, do they know how many people they could have lost because of that alone? You pay this much money for parking, to get in the place, and than if you get a drinkable mug, you have to pay for a locker to go on a roller coaster.

Key Lime Cove's refusal to entertain the idea of day passes is probably what hurt them most.
I used to live less than a mile away. There would be no reason why I would pay upwards of $250 a night to stay there just to use the waterpark.
The reasoning was that they wanted to ensure that hotel guests had access to the waterpark at all times and letting non hotel guests use the waterpark might compromise their ability to offer that.
They also claimed that their restaurants were a destination for locals exclusive of the waterpark and that the income from those would supercede the neccesity to offer waterpark passes. They were wrong on all counts!
The partnership is mutually beneficial. It was just implemented poorly. SFGA would want access to 800 or so guests right across the street and Key Lime would want a shot at offering food and/or accomodations to out of town visitors at SFGA. The problem is that they left the deal up to the consumers. Had they offered recipricol discounts that made sense economically, it would have worked out much better.
On the tax front; As I understand it, part of the reason that the parking is so expensive is because the town levied a per car surcharge to help offset the cost of extra traffic control. The goofy part about that area of Gurnee is that you have the state, the county, IDOT and the towns all in charge of various pieces and parts of the same roads surrounding the park.
If you've ever noticed that snow is plowed along Grand Ave only from the east end to the west end of the bridge at I-94 by IDOT, Gurnee plows only from the east end of the bridge past SFGA. Then it's Gurnee again from the west end of the bridge up to the mall, then the county plows from there up to Almond and then it's Warren Township beyond that. It's completely chaotic. The taxing structures are also arranged this way. At any given time you could potentially have four different taxing bodies coming to you to collect almost identical taxes! And I am sure they all come knocking at SFGA's door because that is a tax collection goldmine.

Both of these places need to take a look at the prices they charge. 200.00 a night for a room no food included we went to the Res Inn and got breasfast and lodging for 3 and spent that for the whole weekend. and the prices sfgam charges for things is outrageous and the locker dollar business whizzer will let you bring things through the line and the demon platform is more than large enough to feature some bins to put your stuff in. If they are wondering why they are in such monetary trouble maybe they should check their books and reconcile their accounts and find out. the same for key lime cove. The only way we were going to go there was by using the free coupon in the sfgam pass book.