BOWIE, Md. — Jerry Huster’s eyes welled as he watched the red cars of the Wild One roller coaster click up the worn wooden tracks, thinking about those days, now decades ago, zipping around on repeat with his childhood friend Amy.
“I’m fighting back tears thinking about how much fun I’ve had on this ride and what it’s been through,” said Huster, who traveled from his home in Orlando, Florida, to Six Flags America in Maryland for one last visit before the theme park permanently closes on Nov. 2. “I’m just afraid that someone’s not going to come along and save the park. That this is just going to get knocked down with a bulldozer.”
The 108-year-old Wild One roller coaster, which Huster estimates he’s ridden hundreds of times, has survived fires and hurricanes. But like the rest of the rides at the park, it’s unlikely to weather the latest storm of corporate turmoil at America’s largest amusement park operator and a sluggish economy that’s hit Six Flags’ core middle-class customers particularly hard.
Six Flags has struggled with declining attendance, aging infrastructure, CEO turnover and a mountain of debt in recent years. The company will also likely shutter its park in Santa Clara, California, at the end of 2027. More closures could be on the way after a group of activist investors, including Kansas City Chiefs tight end and Taylor swift fiancé Travis Kelce, took a 9% stake in Six Flags to push for an overhaul of its corporate strategy.
“The company has been a ship at sea without a captain,” said Dennis Speigel, a former theme park executive-turned-industry consultant. He said the company’s focus needs to be on paying off the $5.3 billion in debt it accumulated through a merger announced in 2023, “and that is not going to go away by putting in another roller coaster.”
Amusement parks across the country have been on an economic roller coaster since the pandemic. While they saw a surge in visitors after Covid restrictions were lifted, that period also brought a shortage of workers, rising labor costs and then a spike in gas prices and inflation. These trends have hit large venues like Disney and Universal, as well as smaller mom-and-pop parks, Speigel said. (NBC News’ parent company Comcast NBCUniversal owns the Universal theme parks.)
Six Flags America in Maryland is no exception. The park has long catered to the middle class, with season passes selling for as little as $50 and a daily ticket sold online for $29 — about what it costs to go to a nearby bowling alley for a few hours. That’s made it one of the few remaining forms of affordable family entertainment as businesses have increased prices and sought to draw higher-income households, which drive more spending.
But while theme park stalwart Disney has bolstered its bottom line by focusing on wealthier households, with add-ons like skip-the-line passes, private guides and perks for staying at Disney properties, Six Flags has struggled to pivot.
In 2022, Six Flags’ then-CEO Selim Bassoul acknowledged that its middle-class customers were struggling and told investors that the company was trying to shift away from “what I call the Kmart, Walmart to maybe the Target customers.” On the same call, Bassoul lamented that the park, with its relatively affordable season passes, had become “a cheap day care center for teenagers during breaks and the summers.”
But the complex pricing system that the company put in place instead cost it millions of visitors, Speigel said.
“That may work for Disney, but that’s not what you want in a regional theme park. You want everybody,” he said. “You just need to get a whole lot of people in the door. You can’t just have 10% of the population coming in.”
In Six Flags' statement announcing the closure of Six Flags America in Maryland, the company said the park was “not a strategic fit with the company’s long-term growth plan.”
While Six Flags reported falling attendance across all its theme parks earlier in the year, the company said last month it had seen an encouraging uptick over the summer. Still, Six Flags reported a drop in revenue nationally, which it attributed to promotions and lower spending by visitors at the park.
Paying the price for the company’s decisions are the 70 full-time park employees and hundreds of seasonal workers, along with the hundreds of thousands of annual guests who will have one less form of affordable entertainment.
Nikolas Hubbard got his first job at the park in 2015 as a teenager in the games department and went on to become one of its entertainers. He currently works as a stunt performer on weekends — working full time outside of the park during the week in information technology.
“It is really bittersweet,” Hubbard said of the park’s closing. “I am going to miss meeting new people, meeting families, inspiring the kids, and just seeing the smiles.”
He plans to keep working as an actor, writer and producer, and credits the park with inspiring him to pursue a career in entertainment.
“When I make it big, I want to be able to say Six Flags America is what got me started,” he said.
When Christopher Reed read the press release that the park was closing, he cried — comparing it to getting a terminal diagnosis for a loved one. He has been a season pass holder for 10 years, since he was 18. He goes to the park several times a month, sometimes driving the 35 minutes from his home just to decompress after a day of work, walking around smelling the fresh popcorn and turkey legs.
“The idea of it being marked for demolition because executives can’t run their company properly, it’s always the end user who suffers,” Reed said. “It just leaves a scar on every community when a corporation decides to close a park.”
It’s unclear what comes next for the park, which started in the 1970s as a drive-through wildlife safari partially financed by Ross Perot, with lions, elephants and giraffes. Officials in Prince George’s County have said they hope the 500-acre site can be redeveloped into a source of year-round tax revenue.
“The park has not fully realized the vast potential of its footprint,” Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy said in a statement earlier this year. She said the county “will pursue a higher and more impactful use.”
Speigel doubts a future buyer will want to keep the property as an amusement park because there is already a lot of competition from amusement parks in Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. But he said some of the rides could be shipped elsewhere.
A Six Flags representative said the rides may be relocated to other Six Flags parks or sold, and that the company has seen high interest in the site from buyers and developers.
Matt Donoghue isn’t sure how his family will spend their days without the park, which they typically visit more than 100 times a year. Donoghue’s 10- and 13-year-old sons grew up there — the family, which lives about half an hour away, got a season pass when their younger son, Ray, was 6 months old.
Ray remembers skipping through the park entrance when he was 3.
“Whenever I’m sad, that memory just pops into my mind,” he said.
In the summers, Donoghue tries to wrap up his work midday to take the boys to see a magic show and ride the roller coasters.
His older son, Alex, said he’ll miss seeing the friends they have made at the park, like one of the ice cream shop workers and the magician.
“What are we going to do next year?” Alex asked.
The park hasn’t just been a form of entertainment. During those visits, Ray and Alex took an interest in dance — getting up onstage with the park’s performers and talking with them after the shows. The boys are now competitive dancers, doing jazz, tap and lyrical ballet, and Donoghue keeps in touch with many of the performers, sending them Christmas cards and messaging them on Facebook. The family has also made friends with other parkgoers, traveling and spending holidays together.
“When I look back at my life, am I going to say I wasted 10 years walking around Six Flags America?” Donoghue said. “I don’t think so, because my kids have learned so much about how to be good people from being around good people there.”
