Buying Time is Expensive
Six Flags Aims to Refinance $1B
Six Flags has announced a major debt refinancing, issuing $1.0 billion in senior notes due in 2032 at an 8.625% interest rate to retire bonds coming due in 2027. The move extends the company’s debt maturity by five years—but at a steep cost. Compared to the retired notes at roughly 5.5%, the new debt increases annual interest expense by approximately $30 million per year, reflecting today’s higher-rate environment and investor risk pricing.
Six Flags will buy more time, but at an opportunity cost that narrows the margin for error. Every additional dollar of interest expense is a dollar that can’t go to staffing, maintenance, marketing, or the guest-facing improvements Six Flags has already said it needs—better food, better operations, better consistency.
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This Might Be the Only Option
What were the alternatives? Six Flags could have used operational revenue to pay down the 2027 debt directly, but that would have gutted the capital needed for the very infrastructure upgrades—restaurant improvements, Halloween expansions—that leadership believes will drive revenue growth. They could have sold assets faster, though park sales typically take years and involve payments spread across a decade. They could have raised equity, but diluting shareholders in a struggling company is rarely popular. Or they could have done nothing and hoped Q4 revenue from Halloween and Christmas would close the gap. Clearly, it didn’t.
Will the Investments Pay Off?
This refinancing represents a calculated bet: that having capital now to invest in operational improvements will generate more incremental cash flow between now and 2032 than the additional $30 million per year in debt service. It may also be the least-bad option available. If the 2027 maturity wall looked risky in the current rate environment, pushing maturities out five years reduces near-term refinancing pressure. But it also means the plan now has to work—there’s less room for experimentation, less flexibility if attendance softens, and more pressure to make operations lean and efficient.
Six Flags Over Texas and Six Flags Qiddiya City
That context also frames Six Flags’ decision not to exercise its call option on Six Flags Over Texas, citing capital-allocation priorities while still emphasizing the park’s long-term importance. And it sits alongside the opening of Six Flags Qiddiya City—a major new park in Saudi Arabia that Six Flags operates (rather than owns)—showing where large-scale growth is still happening, even as capital risk sits elsewhere.
Taken together, these moves read as a company prioritizing financial flexibility and survivability over growth. Refinancing doesn’t solve the business—it simply extends the runway. The question is whether Six Flags can use that runway to execute fast enough before the higher cost of capital shrinks its room to maneuver. Five years sounds like a long time. At $30 million in additional interest per year, it may not be enough.
The Menu Is Changing (And Theme Parks Already Know It)
Pizza is out, and Mexican Food, Coffee, and fibermaxxing are in - or are they? As usual, it depends. On this week’s bonus episode, we looked at the macro food trends through the lens of the amusement industry.
Pizza is losing ground. Once the second-most common U.S. restaurant type, pizzerias are now outnumbered by coffee shops and Mexican food eateries, according to industry data. Pizza chains still generated around $31 billion in sales in 2024, and roughly one in ten Americans eats a slice on any given day. But sales growth has lagged behind the broader fast-food market for years, and the outlook isn’t getting brighter.
The reasons are structural: food-delivery apps have put a wider range of cuisines at consumers’ fingertips, price sensitivity has made a $20 family pie feel expensive next to $5 fast-food deals, and GLP-1 medications are quietly shifting eating habits toward more nutrient-rich options. Even when customers choose pizza, they’re ordering smaller pies with fewer toppings. Among different cuisines, pizza ranked sixth in U.S. sales last year—down from second place in the 1990s.
Haven’t theme parks already known this?
But if you’ve been paying attention to the attractions industry, none of this should come as a surprise. Theme parks have been moving in this direction for years. The food festivals, the talk of food on earnings calls, the expansion of HHN food… Knott’s Berry Farm’s two newest restaurants? A coffee shop and a Mexican restaurant that functions like a theme park Chipotle. Epic Universe’s confirmed 2026 expansion includes another Mexican restaurant. The pattern is clear.
Mexican food is the same base ingredients combined in different ways, keeping costs manageable while delivering high perceived value. Coffee shops have similarly favorable economics. Both offer what pizza increasingly struggles to provide: a sense of variety, customization, and—crucially—an experience that feels worth the premium. As Scott put it, “there’s a higher perceived value in two tacos versus a sloppy Joe, even though they’re fundamentally the same thing.”
It still depends
Young people still drive much of America’s pizza consumption. Regional tastes vary. A park in the Midwest might have different calculus than one in Southern California. The lesson isn’t that every park needs to swap pizza for tacos and cold brew—it’s that food strategy has to reflect actual consumer behavior, not legacy assumptions about what theme park food should be.
The attractions industry has been ahead of the curve on this, but the stakes are getting higher. Consumers are more value-conscious, more willing to pay for quality, and less tolerant of generic fast food at premium prices. Food isn’t just an amenity anymore—it’s content. When guests post about your restaurant as much as your marquee attraction, you’ve either built something worth talking about or revealed a gap in your offering. The choice between those two outcomes increasingly comes down to understanding what people actually want to eat, not what you’ve always served.
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