The question is... Who's going to buy these smaller parks at a price that moves the needle on debt payoff? It's no secret that the top 10 or so parks bring in something like 80% of the revenue. That doesn't mean the rest are necessarily all operating in the red, but they are essentially small businesses that are fairly complex to operate and are probably slightly profitable in a good year. No one is going to want to pay say $2 billion for 10-15 small parks that will take decades to pay off. I can't speak for all of them because I don't know the areas, but the land under Michigan's Adventure or Dorney, for example, isn't going to fetch much. The two with the most valuable land are already closing. The next several with valuable land are probably in their top 10 parks that they wouldn't want to sell as they are big revenue producers - places like Canada's Wonderland, Kings Dominion, Carowinds, Magic Mountain, etc.
Zimmerman and the people on the board that pushed this merger through took borderline criminal action at the expense of the existing parks, employees, and Cedar Fair investors. The savings and synergies they promised didn't exist as the corporate structure of SIX had already been purged and they did not consider heavily enough how run down the Six Flags side of the house was. There was no benefit for anyone on the Cedar Fair side aside for the fat cats at the top and the lawyers and bankers that consummated the deal.
-Matt
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