(Sorry, the link may be paywall for some) The Wall Street Journal is not only reporting that the two park chains are potentially merging but are stating that the deal could go through as early as this week. Not sure how anyone else feels about this but I think this could really hurt the consumer… sure, everyone wants to think about a unified season pass but the cost to the consumer would likely skyrocket and we’d see less competition which would likely mean even less major rides being built.
From the article: “An agreement could be finalized as soon as this week assuming there is no last-minute snag, according to people familiar with the matter. Cedar Fair is scheduled to report quarterly results on Thursday morning.”
I’m skeptical but I wouldn’t think the WSJ would make this up. Assuming Cedar Fair runs things this might not be terrible, especially for top tier SF parks. I have some concern about lack of competition but with so many other regional parks, plus Sea World building coasters like it’s the early 2000s there’s no monopoly with this merge.
The problem is that SEAS isn’t really a mainstream competitor to SF/CF mainly because of their locations. The bulk of America only has CF and/or SF and the travel to a SEAS park isn’t accessible. Palace is closer competition than SEAS but even they have a lack of locations as well.