TEXAS, USA — During a company-wide conference call, Six Flags Entertainment announced it would be eliminating its monthly meal plan, referencing attendees who came to eat at the park "all day" and created "choking points" for regular customers.
In 2021, TikTok user @thundermunker, who got the nickname "Six Flags Scoundrel," took advantage of this monthly plan and had his social media posts go viral regarding his meals at Six Flags Magic Mountain in California.
“The pass gives you two meals a day, one snack, and unlimited drinks, so that’s up to 400 meals and 200 snacks a year for $200," the TikTok user explained in one of his most-viewed videos. "I live less than ten minutes from a Six Flags, so I decided to start doing it.”
President and Chief Executive Officer Selim Bassoul spoke on this change during the call, saying that the old monthly plan had too many things attached to it, such as too heavy discounting on food, no blackout dates and free parking.
Bassoul called the dining meal plan "very unprofitable for us." He said it was often causing delays for daily customers trying to get food while these other customers were taking advantage of the situation.
"Those people would come in and they can have several of those and sometimes they will most probably abuse the system as you've seen online," Bassoul said during the conference call. "It created a lot of choking points for those people coming in and regulars who came to eat in our park all day long. It then ruined the experience of somebody who came in on a single-day ticket with their family who paid a lot of money to come, paid parking and came in. Now they have 45 minutes to an hour waiting to get a meal while those other people are choking the line for $80 for the whole season."
While Bassoul acknowledged the people taking advantage of the monthly plan are "most probably upset" that it's now gone, he said the dining plan needs to be "totally revisited" before it is reintroduced.
Bassoul said most likely, his team will choose between a season-dining plan or an all-exclusive plan.
"It's going to be completely changed from what people expect because I want to avoid the choking points," Bassoul said. "It complicated the business. It complicated the way our employees were delivering the service. It complicated our accounting. It complicated our security and safety."
This change was part of a larger discussion during the call in terms of how Six Flags would try to increase its profitability and bounce back from financial issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic and inflationary costs.