Bob McCarty Writes

Yesterday, my 19-year-old son and a half-dozen of his closest college friends decided to take advantage of a special admission price — $9.80 per person, courtesy of Y98 radio in St. Louis — and spend the day at Six Flags St. Louis, located in Eureka, Mo., a few miles southwest of the city. News of their experience has convinced me that visiting bankrupt theme parks is probably not a good idea.

On June 13, the day the popular theme-park chain filed its bankruptcy petition, Six Flags spokesperson Sandra Daniels offered assurances that the bankruptcy filing “will not affect the operation of the company’s 20 parks in the United States, Mexico and Canada.” Alas, she was wrong as the laundry list of “FAILS” below explain:

• FAIL #1: In order to take advantage of the special Y98 Six Flags promotion, my son had to purchase his ticket online and pay a “shipping and handling fee” of $5.  Now, the cost of the ticket was almost $15.

• FAIL #2: My son and his group arrived at the park around 1 p.m. Central only to find that only one of the roller coasters — “Mr. Freeze” — that my son and his friends wanted to ride was operational.  Two others — “Batman: The Ride” and “The Boss” — were not operational.

• FAIL #3: Though no one can control the weather, the fact that it started to rain within a couple of hours of my son’s arrival at the park only added further to the downer that was my son’s Tuesday visit to Six Flags St. Louis.  The “FAIL”, in this case, surfaced when the theme park’s what-if-it-rains policy — “No refunds and no rain checks” — took effect.

LESSON LEARNED: If you want to have a really good time, you might not want to visit a bankrupt theme park, especially one whose leaders employ tactics (i.e., blaming their predecessors) similar to those of President Barack Obama as evidenced in an open letter the company’s top executive sent to employees on the day of the bankruptcy filing.  An excerpt of that letter appears below:

“Unfortunately, however, as you know, we inherited an unsustainable $2.4 billion debt load from the previous management team.” — Six Flags President & CEO Mark Shapiro

[Editor's Note: As a former corporate spokesman for a large national corporation that went through several rounds of restructuring before eventually filing for bankruptcy protection and being liquidated, I'm familiar with the thinking behind statements like the one made by the Six Flags spokesperson.  In effect, statements like that one are offered up in a thinly-veiled effort to provide creditors, investors and, most importantly, the bankruptcy court judge, assurance that the company can continue as a "going concern" that, one day soon, will be able to pay back creditors at least a portion of what they were owed at the time of the filing.  If yesterday was an example of day-to-day operations at Six Flags since the bankruptcy filing, I predict the worst for this company -- Five Flags, Two Flags or, gasp, One Flag -- after a court-ordered selloff of assets and other bankruptcy-related downsizing.]