In a bit of a shocker... Six Flags announced on Tuesday afternoon that they were adding five more parks to the chain... most of which were former members of the Six Flags family if you have believe it before they were sold off years ago. So joining Six Flags are: Wet n' Wild Splashtown (Houston, TX), Wet n' Wild Phoenix, Darien Lake (Buffalo, NY), along with Frontier City and nearby White Water Bay (Oklahoma). Of the group, only Wet n' Wild Phoenix is new to the Six Flags team.
Now the interesting thing is that Six Flags isn't actually buying these parks. Currently the parks are owned by EPR Properties, who leases them out under a management contract to Premier Parks, LLC who takes care of the day to day operations. Six Flags worked out some kind of deal with Premier Parks to "acquire the lease rights" to these five parks, and once the deal is completed (expected sometime in June) then Six Flags will take over the management and operations of these parks.
As I pointed out, most of these were once upon a time under the Six Flags umbrella of parks before, so they are pretty familiar with them. Since Six Flags is looking to expand, I have to think that taking over the management contracts of these parks is sort of like taking a test drive to see how well they fit in to the current Six Flags park mold. If the numbers look good in a year or two, I'd expect to see Six Flags try to make a purchase offer to EPR Properties for the properties they want to keep.
It is worth noting that while Six Flags opted to act on these five parks, Premier Parks LLC still has a number of active management contracts to run other parks for EPR Properties for Magic Springs, Myrtle Waves, Rapids Water Park, Wet 'n Wild parks in Hawaii and Palm Springs, and Wild Waves, though the group did lose the management deal for Waterworld California to Six Flags last year.
I suspect, with some new cash in hand from the Six Flags deal, that perhaps Premier Parks may soon try to acquire another park to add to their list of parks they actually own which currently includes Clementon Amusement Park, Nashville Shores, Ocean Breeze and Wet 'n Wild Toronto.