Losantiville Mining Co.

Earlier today Six Flags Over Texas announced the permanent closure of the Conquistador, the park's 1981 Intamin Bounty swinging ship that opened in the Spain section, writing: Is this a one-off closure with an immediate replacement in mind, or are there more closures coming throughout the rest of 2025? Six Flags Over Texas will announce their newest addition on Thursday, September 25, 2025 during two special in-person events held in the newly restored Southern Palace Theater. Link to the Facebook announcement post: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17JH5Zwt81/

Double post to point out: Still no Halloween Haunt or Tricks and Treats map(s), no official food offering list, nor any HAP/HAEP redemption location list from Kings Island for an event that starts in two days. What's with the hold up? Is there something that still hasn't been confirmed, or is Kings Island just waiting much longer than every other Six Flags park for no reason? The map isn't a big thing, but it's very confusing when you have a park like Kings Dominion that published their map over a week before their event begins but Kings Island can't even get theirs published 2 days before the event.

It would've also been wise to have guests sign up for Conjuring time slots throughout the night. That would at least pace when people get in line and provide further incentive for the wonderful actors to maybe speed things up a little if there's a 2hr+ wait outside. I've heard tremendous things about TC:BF, but spending 2 hours waiting in line for one thing during a 5 hour event is not something I'd want guests to wait through in a park. The lines are one of the biggest issues with Halloween Horror Nights. Does anyone know if there is a 1:2 or 1:3 guides-to-rooms ratio for the attraction or if it's less than that? I have barely seen anyone show the entry experience and how you scan into the mazes or The Conjuring, and the parks haven't said anything either. If there's only one or two guides for the entire thing then I can imagine why the line is so long and so slow moving.

I know it is probably nothing, but this little setup of lights is very interesting. One pair flanking the pathway and another 2-3 seemingly pointing at something. Could this be for the new Phantom Theater with its bones rising around the headstone, or could it be the announcement of another ride retiring like we saw with Firehawk?

The lines at Horror Nights are easily the worst part of the event. About half of my time there in 2022 was spent waiting in line for a house which was just a little better than the ones at Kings Island and Cedar Point. The rest of the event was pretty nice though. It'd probably be even better if they found a way to reduce wait times for houses and relied less on screens overall. That being said, I have to assume this person got flamed for talking about a Six Flags in Houston, unless they're actually referring to any Fright Fest held at Astroworld from 1986-2005 — in which case they probably still got flamed by people who thought they were referring to SFOT. International Street looks mostly set up now. The only things left look to be getting the eyes up on the tower, removing the giant P&G banner from the tower, and making sure all of the fire and lights work. There's also some lights above Grain & Grill that have been bugging out for at least a week. Hopefully those can get fixed soon enough.

Today appears to be International Street setup day in preparation for Halloween Haunt. I missed the changing of the sign, but having it on in the background has let me see the big skeletons and a bunch of other stuff go up. It's a fascinating process!

Big typo on my part, should have read "when it was installed at the former Paramount Parks". I was trying to use it as a differentiator, so I wasn't paying as much attention to how I phrased it. Peanuts came to the Cedar Fair parks shortly after CF acquired Knott's Berry Farm. It replaced/supplemented the Berenstain Bears areas. Changing away from Peanuts or Looney Tunes across most of the Six Flags parks will probably be like changing away from Hanna Barbera (and partially Nickelodeon) at the Paramount Parks. Any arguments of "It's been here for so long" or "Do kids today still know the brand" might not be as relevant if the parks are forced to change because of licensing. Six Flags will do whatever they can to save money where possible. Whatever comes to Great America next year will probably be a good indicator as to what the future will hold for Peanuts at the Six Flags parks — if that project is still happening, that is.

I have to wonder what other options they could use that wouldn't be too expensive in the long run and aren't used by other operators. That would mean Sesame Street, Dreamworks, anything from Disney, and Nickelodeon (to an extent) are all out of the question. Thomas the Tank Engine has been removed from most parks its been at, and Six Flags already had that and The Wiggles in most of their parks. It seems the other options (besides Looney Tunes and DC, which would be cheap but "tacky") are to go with a no-IP area or to find another brand that might just be relevant enough. Peanuts may not be as "dead" of a brand as it was 15 years ago when it was installed at the former Paramount Parks, especially at the Legacy Cedar Fair parks. There are a lot of families that have now grown up with it like others did with Hanna Barbera or Nickelodeon, just not in the same way through watching it on TV.

I think I can see about 24 cars on the stage: either the other 3 are hidden somewhere or I counted wrong. Hopefully we can see some good progress photos during their transformation!

In reference to the idea of Haunt being downgraded, I'm curious to see how Phantom Fall Fest goes this year at Kennywood and the other former Palace parks that have it. The future of those events would probably tell us what could happen to Haunt under Herschend besides a name change. I don't think they'd use an IP for the kids area if they can help it though, since that's not really HFE's jam. Now if United were to be a buyer, I could definitely see them bringing Howl-O-Scream to replace Haunt. Sesame Street would replace the Peanuts as well. I have to wonder what they'd do about the name though. While it's very likely they'd keep the Kings Island name, none of their theme parks operate under a non-Busch/SeaWorld/Sesame Place name. Either way, admission prices would almost certainly double across the board within 5 years.

Divesting themselves from in-house food service is not something I think the current Six Flags is going to do. They've spent a good amount of money already to improve food quality at Legacy Six Flags parks and hired new Executive Chefs at parks while removing a ton of other positions. The chain has also actively been in the process of renovating the larger dining locations at the Legacy SF parks where they see future growth. I don't think it would be smart at all to rely almost entirely on local/mom & pop restaurants/restauranteurs as a park's main dining services provider. Adding to what DispatchMaster said above, most local establishments don't often have the resources to open and close seasonally, especially on the scale of a park like Kings Island. Ice cream stands are one of the only business models that seasonal operations seems to work for. If the parks want to rid themselves of needing to worry about food then they should look into hiring an independent dining services provider like some universities and stadiums do (although I've consistently had much worse experiences with those than I've had with any food at KI). Kings Island and Cedar Point, for the most part, have good and decent food for what they are. Out of nearly 30 meals at Six Flags parks this season, I can count the number of poor experiences I've had on one hand.

Maybe Six Flags can save some money by moving the Boo Blasters props up to Cedar Point and giving them their own Boo Blasters on Boo Hill. They need an indoor dark ride anyways.

The Boo Blaster cars have been moved to the Timberwolf stage, presumably to be packaged and sent to wherever is redoing them for PT:ON.

The fabulous MVP sale has now ended, and it seems the "value" and/or "sale" part of the promotion only applied to how long the price stayed a little lower than normal. A Kings Island Gold Pass is now $125 and the Prestige Pass is now $225. Both still seem to include access to all Six Flags parks and access to Haunt and Winterfest — still about $40 below the pass+APP price from last year. Six Flags is not done giving away the gate and if they're not careful, they'll only further forfeit their ability to raise prices when they actually need to do it. For now, it looks like the concept of a separate All Park Passport is dead. To nobody's surprise, the webpage still shows the MVP Sale while a bunch of other park websites still show the MVP Sale front and center. I can understand keeping them up if the new websites were going to be released tomorrow, but there is no sign of that and rumor says they might be published in November. Is there really not a photo they could go back to using on each home page that at least doesn't include the MVP Sale? I know my expectations should be low at this point, but is it too much to expect a "limited time offer" to be removed from a website soon after the sale ends? It isn't even consistent between parks/legacy chains. Some parks automatically moved onto the AI generated Haunt/Fright Fest promotion at 12:02 this morning, while Magic Mountain is still fully promoting the MVP sale.

Even a short line at most mazes will mean more money made compared to last year! Let's hope the quality has transferred to the other parks.

The new version in the Six Flags app still shows everything that has been open this year, except for Batwing and the railroad. I suspect we might see some more early permanent closures before November arrives, but hopefully there will be some light at the end of this tunnel.

New maps have been uploaded to the Six Flags app for all Legacy Six Flags parks! They look just like the newer Legacy Cedar Fair maps, though a couple of them look like they have a lot of production errors and aren't up to snuff with the rest of the maps. We saw some errors on the first versions of the new Cedar Fair maps (including that long-running gag of Viking Fury's queue/exit being placed wrong). Six Flags Over Texas and Six Flags America appear to be the two worst offenders when it comes to errors. I personally also have an issue with how the icons are set up on the Six Flags app compared to the Cedar Fair apps. On the SF app they have it so the icons/list view take up most of the screen, and it is very clear that they just switched the map client on that app until they can release their new websites and app(s) later this year (I believe I heard someone say November?). Whenever those all come online I think I'll be a much happier camper. Everything looks even more jumbled and mismatched now than before, and I wish they could have at least found a way to make the Fright Fest event websites look more like the Haunt/HalloWeekends/SCarowinds/ValleyScare websites. I don't know how possible it would be to have copied/pasted most of the code over (or if that would mess with other things), but it's very noticeable if you go between the websites.

Six Flags America got to have their map updated one last time before they close later this year via their 2025 Fall Event Guide for their Kids Boo Fest. It doesn't appear to be as developed as the rest of the new Six Flags maps, however it's nice to see they didn't just cheap out on it entirely. Link: https://qr1.be/Q35W

That would be cool, although I don't entirely see how it could be a never-before-seen/new take on an attraction.

I've been reading some very good reports out of Carowinds and Cedar Point about the new scream-ium experience, The Conjuring: Beyond Fear. Carowinds had their Media Night last night and Cedar Point was open to the public. Something to note is that the Express Pass doesn't get you to the front of the line for TC:BF, it just gets you in the line. It didn't sound like the regular mazes had improved, but it was also both a Thursday night and the first night of HalloWeekends. I didn't see much from SCarowinds besides the people raving about TC:BF. Facebook user Ryan Donahue was kind enough to share his experience with getting the wristband for the All-Season Haunted Attractions Express Pass. They work similarly to Fast Lane with the QR codes and how you go to a HAP/HAEP booth to scan your pass and get your wristband. It looks like you have to get the wristband and cannot scan your phone at each maze. He said it's about a 30 second process (although wait times may vary depending on the night). I haven't seen anything about the regular pass or the one-time tickets for The Conjuring, but I'd assume the HAP wristband looks similar and TC:BF ticket might just be on your phone. Photos: Ryan Donahue Allegedly the Axe Axe Baby location is going to be used for a new Conjuring bar area. Someone else also shared that the Antique Photos building has been cleared out, and speculation said that it might be a store for The Conjuring. Cedar Point's versions are called the "Mullins Workshop Bar" and "The Conjuring Universe: Archive of Artifacts". Fun Fact: both Canada's Wonderland and Carowinds have their Mullins Workshop Bar as specialty food location "G" on their map. It's not much, but it's weird that it happened twice. There are only seven parks left who haven't released their Halloween Haunt/Fright Fest maps, including Darien Lake, Discovery Kingdom, Great Escape, Kings Island, La Ronde, Magic Mountain, and Six Flags Mexico.

There might also be a case to say that Legacy Six Flags didn't take as good care of their coasters than Legacy Cedar Fair did. Over at Carowinds we saw Stealth Borg Assimilator Nighthawk stay open longer than Batwing despite being the model prototype. At Great Adventure we saw Kingda Ka running at least a little worse than Top Thrill Dragster. Those probably aren't the best comparisons, and my perceptions are probably tinted, but I have to wonder what Great Adventure would look like if Ka had started the TT2 treatment instead of total demolition. If only they'd let it sit SBNO until Cedar Point and Zamperla could work out the final issues with TT2. I don't think the L-SF rides were unsafe, but it seems that their maintenance work generally followed a course that led to more long-term wear and tear than coasters at L-CF parks.

About $40-$80 per pass that would've gotten it anyways. I'd bet the low price points across the board are what made them all so attractive to guests — even to those who claim that season passes are still too expensive. Add "less euphemisms" to the list of hopes and dreams for the new CEO. They can keep doing it for some things, but there's a line after which they're overdoing it. I think the price might have gone up at some Legacy Six Flags parks, especially those who offered a Silver Pass for 2025 and now only offer Gold/Prestige for 2026. With G/P passes being the new norm instead of S/G or S/G/P, I can entirely understand how they can claim that 3% increase in prices.

I mean, there would need to be some reconfiguring of the parking lot done whether they're brought back or not. KI's parking lot needs a lot of work as it is beyond just repaving. The easiest solution would just be to have them go up and down the old Columbia Road between the main entrance and Soak City entrance. That would at least provide service to 2-3 stops along the southern part of the parking lot. Doing that much may only require the installation of the station platforms. Up until this year there were still a few Six Flags parks that still had trams, including Magic Mountain and Over Texas. Parking lot trams would be another good way to improve guest experience at the bigger parks (even if they only ran on weekends) for less money than a coaster or a few new flat rides. They could even be electric if some investments were made to cover part of the parking lot in solar panels (a project that could also be sponsored).

It'd be nice if Kings Island could get a sponsor and bring back the trams. Maybe some day in the future.

I fully believe the plan to close SFA was not in the works until early this year once the Cedar Fair people saw just how bad of shape everything from Six Flags was in. They might've been eyeing it for eventual closure, but not this fast. Batwing being past the end of its service life was likely another nail in the coffin for the park.