http://www.marketwatch.com/story/al-weber-...lags-2010-05-12

Al Weber, former CEO of Paramount Parks is now Interim President and CEO until a permanent replacement is found.

Didn't see that one coming.

Whoa! That came out of left field!

David will be happy about that.

I didn't knew that Shapiro's out. NO MORE FUCKING KIDDIE RIDES OR MACK MOUSES SHIT! Maybe next year will get Chang for good. :happi:

That's too bad. He was a nice guy with a hard job.

This Al Weber guy has a Doctorate from Capella University? That's a mail order/correspondence school! I have a whole roll of Capella degree's hanging next to my toilet.

This maybe a very bumpy year for SFGA.

:canospam:

The man was GM at PGA for nine years, and CEO of Paramount Parks for five.

Well, I am willing to wait and see what Mr. Weber can do with SF.
What choice do I have? I don't own the company.
I am not familiar with PGA or Paramount park.
But, there is more to this story then anyone is saying because Shapiro had a lot (And I mean a butt-load) of SF stock (Preferred, not common garbage.)
So I find it hard to believe he was fired. I am more worried that he's jumping off a sinking ship. We'll see.

Shapiro wasn't fired. These things happen in the process of Bankruptcy emergence. Shapiro was "removed"

There was no love lost between Snyder and the rest of the board and he put Shapiro in there. Plus the company is now controlled by a consortium of creditors, some of who weren't thrilled with Shapiro's original idea which essentially let them twist in the wind. So I know he was forced out. But, he has a lot of ancillary interests attached to SF, not the least of which is the total ownership of DC Productions. This is why we had the Dick Clark Blooper stuff there.
But there's more to all this. One of the directors is a Harrahs Casino guy, another one is a big shot with Dunkin Donuts, and the rest are hedge fund managers and equity capital dealers.
As with anything I have ever invested in, I have to read a direction or mission statement out of the corporate governance. So, I would say they may know something about the future of gambling/gaming in Illinois. They may be able to re-list the stock at NYSE then sell off everything piece meal to various operators. They may enter into licensing agreements with franchise operators or a combination thereof. Either way, I don't think SFGA 2011 will be the same. I expect it to become a more corporate-smarmy, slick entity with much higher prices and a lot less service.
A good example would be Home Depot. When two working slobs (Like myself) Bernie Marcus and Arther Blank started the place, it was user friendly, well stocked, priced right and the employee's were like family and treated the customers like friends. When they retired they installed Robert Nardelli as part of a package that was sold to several capital firms like Bain Capital (Owned by Mitt Romney) who proceeded to desimate everything from prices to service. Now the joints look like dirty roadside shanty's and finding help is as easy as winning the lottery. And when they were done giving themselves huge bonuses and raiding the rainy day money that was made by the previous owners, the economy took a dump and who got screwed? The employee's and the customers.
I guess what I am saying is that when you have a business that's run by someone who made their way from the bottom to the top (Like Shapiro) they tend to value and treat their customers and employee's much better than the Wall Street trust fund babies with shiny fingernails who are only interested in profit margins and getting in and out as quickly and profitably as possible. That leaves people like us who really love the product at the back of the line.

I kind of REALLY hope that Dick Clark productions loses it's connection to Six Flags.

Now that Shapiro is gone, if there isn't a long term contract (signed after the chapter 11 filing.) Then for sure, it will be gone.
As much as I liked Mr. Shapiro I have to admit that paying 175 million for Dick Clark Productions wasn't one of the most prudent efforts he ever put forth.
No one under thirty knows who Dick Clark or his Blooper show is/was. When I saw the show, the material was so dated it was sad. They were showing out takes from shows like Happy Days. Which again, if you're under thirty, you wouldn't even know what you were watching.

QFT. I also hope that we can pare down and get rid of some of our less profitable parks so Great America can finally get something decent.

They already did that. Also part of the reason why SFKK was closed.

I mean more of them. We pared DL, EG, FC, etc. in 2006, KK in 2010, hopefully we can tank Adventure World, Riverside Park, Marine World, Reino Aventura, The Great Escape and others in the future. Maybe pare down to the three majors (GAm, GADv, MM), plus the three originals (OT, OG, OMA), then try expanding out into foreign markets again (I know that was a bad move in the 1990s, but parks like Nagashima, Fujikyu, Alton Towers, Pleasure Beach Blackpool, etc. would be great additions to our chain.) Try to strengthen our brand with fewer, better-managed parks.

SF may not want to sell the original 3 parks. A Six Flags in England and Japan would be cool, but SF once had European parks until they sold them. As far as I know of, most of the parks in Japan are owned by major companies like Toshiba, Oriental Land Company, Ect. That may not happen in the future unless a company decides to sell a park.

If SF bought a large acre land in Japan or England, They need to seriously advertise the park around the area. Buying a land Japan is extremely hard because of the population and for the lack of land especially cities like Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Yokohama, Ect.

If they bought a land in England, there would be a TON of land to build a park the size of CP or SFMM.

My friend just got a job at Equity Residential and guess who is the director?
Our friend Mark Shapiro!

Mark Shapiro has an empire of assets, he's also CEO of Dick Clark Productions, and is a huge shareholder in ABC, The NFL, and loads of other networks/media entities.

This guy is branching err'where!

He owns Dick Clark Productions. He sits on the board at the Tribune. I guess he's an active director at this equities firm. So maybe he's not venturing into the theme park market again? Too bad.