Operator
Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Six Flags 2025 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, again, press star 1. Thank you. I'd now like to turn the call over to Six Flags Management. Go ahead, please.
Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. My name is Michael Russell, Corporate Director of Investor Relations for Six Flags. Welcome to today's earnings call to review Six Flags Entertainment Corporation's 2025 Second Quarter Financial Results. Earlier this morning, we issued two press releases, including our earnings release for the second quarter and another release announcing a leadership change. Copies of these press releases are available under the News tab of our Investor Relations website at investors.sixflags.com. Before we begin, I need to remind you that comments made during this call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements may involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those described in such statements. For a more detailed discussion of these risks, you may refer to the company's filings with the SEC. In compliance with the SEC's Regulation FD this webcast is being made available to the media and general public as well as analysts and investors because the webcast is open to all constituents and prior notification has been widely and unselectively disseminated all content on this call will be considered fully disclosed on the call with me this morning our Six Flags chief executive officer Richard Zimmerman and chief financial officer Brian with a row with that I'll turn the call over to Richard.
Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Before we discuss our financial results, I want to address the leadership announcement we made this morning. I will be stepping down as president and CEO by the end of 2025. I plan to remain in the role until my successor is appointed, and I will work closely with the board to identify the next leader to guide Six Flags forward. I will continue to serve as a director of the company, so I will remain actively involved in overseeing the continued execution of our strategic plan. This will be a smooth, orderly succession process. To put this in some context, I've been in the entertainment industry for 38 years, and I've seen it evolve and change. For most of that time, it has been a goal of mine to help create a leading North American operator that can cater to all ages and entertainment styles. With the successful combination of Cedar Fair and Legacy Six Flags completed last summer, we've now done that, and I couldn't be prouder of what we've accomplished so far. With that said, we've only just scratched the surface of the enormous potential of our combined company. As you'll hear us discuss in more detail this morning, we experienced some macro and weather-related headwinds in the second quarter. Even so, July was strong, and the leading indicators heading into August look good thus far. We are also making great progress on integration and synergy realization. So despite the rainy weekends we saw back in May and June, I've never been more confident in our strategy to optimize our assets or more optimistic in the long-term value, potential, and opportunities for Six Flags. With that in mind, the board and I have decided that now is the right time to begin the process of finding our company's next leader, someone who will build on the progress we've made so far and propel Six Flags to its full potential. Like I've said, I've been doing this for a long time, and in many ways, my career has already been more satisfying than I could have ever hoped. Being able to offer family experiences that are unique, engaging, and memorable has been incredibly rewarding. And along the way, we have created a powerful new industry leader with incredibly bright prospects for long-term value creation for our guests, our associates, and our shareholders. I want to thank my entire Six Flags team for all the hard work and dedication that's gotten us to this point. We have plenty of seasons still ahead of us, including some of our most popular events and some of our biggest attendance days, and we're going to make sure they go off without a hitch. I remain more committed than ever to Six Flags success, and over the coming months, I will ensure we are executing our strategy and working diligently to achieve our objectives of increasing adjusted EBITDA, reducing net leverage, and delivering on our integration efforts. Before I review the second quarter and the challenges we face, I want to start with where we are right now, because the story has changed. July has been a turning point. As weather is normalized and guests have a chance to experience our new rides and other attractions, we are seeing a surge in demand for our parks, while sales of season passes and memberships are climbing fast. While we know we have ground to make up from a tough May and June, these results send a clear message. When the gates are open and the product is strong, people will visit. Now on to our early season performance. While results over the first half of the year fell well below our expectation, it does not alter our goal of delivering a strong second half, nor our conviction in the long-term potential of Six Flags. Our financial results through the first six months of the year reflect a significant decline in attendance, driven by lower renewal rates and sales of season passes, as well as disrupted demand for single day visits all largely influenced by macro factors including extreme weather conditions coupled with economic uncertainty and not reflective of a loss of consumer interest as a result of these temporary macro headwinds we believe many guests delayed park visits during the early weeks of our operating season making fewer impulse buys delay delaying purchases of season passes and memberships and displaying a more value conscious mindset in our business the impact of short-term macro level disruptions such as weather are amplified earlier in the year when visitation urgency is lower and there are plenty of opportunities to still visit later in the season the second half of the year has historically been the defining period for our business as the saying goes we make hay when the sun shines in 2017 and 18 and as recently as 2023 macro factors weighed on the first half performance at legacy cedar fair yet a return to normalized conditions, solid capital programs, and a heightened urgency to visit, combined to strive strong rebounds in the second half of those seasons. Years like these underscore the resiliency of our model, the strength of our brands, and the importance of our ability to execute during the peak summer and fall seasons, when we generate the majority of our annual attendance, revenues, and adjusted EBITDA. We see a similar opportunity in the back half of 2025. Our job is to manage through short-term disruptions and focus on the things we can control, and that is exactly what we've done and will continue to do. To stimulate early season demand and drive season pass sales, we introduced several attractive limited duration promotional offers during the second quarter. At the same time, we pulled forward advertising dollars from the second half of the year to increase consumer awareness and combat some of the macro headwinds we saw developing. while these initiatives did not offset the combination of inclement weather and softer consumer demand in the first half we expect they will benefit the business in the second half in the longer term we've also added operating hours and staffing were most appropriate making sure all of our rides attractions and revenue centers are fully operational and available to the guests to enjoy when they visit at certain parks this lifted seasonal labor and maintenance costs which we've moved to offset with cost reduction elsewhere while maintaining the integrity of the guest experience. We will continue to look for second-half expense offsets to balance out our full-year spending in these areas, and we remain confident we can deliver on our full-year cost reduction goals. We have also taken decisive actions to address the shortfall in this year's active pass base. The launch of our 2026 Season Pass Program includes a reimagined pass structure that features an offer for an expanded all-park pass benefit for our top-tier pass buyers. This is intended to leverage the appeal of the all-park pass benefit and tap into the strong pent-up demand from customers who have delayed their purchases in the spring. As we get deeper into the new season pass cycle, we will offer additional enhancements as well as we roll into 2026, including regional pass options, the introductions of memberships at legacy cedar fair parks and a comprehensive loyalty program that extends across the entire portfolio these programmatic changes are designed to strengthen annual pass renewal rates attract new customers and create a more robust and consistent recurring revenue stream while we work to improve top line performance cost discipline remains a top priority a significant structure restructuring of our organization completed in the second quarter flattened our layers of leadership, consolidated duplicative functions, and improved the overall agility of our teams. These strategic measures will permanently reduce our full-time labor costs by more than $20 million on an annualized basis and enable us to operate more effectively as a unified company. Significant progress has also been made by our teams to harmonize our technology stacks, including our ticketing platforms, ERP suite, and our safety and maintenance systems. This and other IT refinements allow us to simplify administrative functions, further the organizational structure, and will advance incremental cost savings into the future. Combined with additional cost savings we are uncovering through our centralized procurement and purchasing functions, these collective efforts support our goal of reducing 2025 full-year operating costs and expenses before adjusted EBITDA addbacks by 3% compared to last year's combined cost base with that i'll turn the call over to brian for a more detailed review of our financial results after his remarks i'll return to address guidance and offer some closing thoughts brian thanks richard i'll begin with the balance sheet and a recap of use of cash this quarter in late june we closed a 500 million dollar fungible add-on to our term loan we used
net proceeds to pay off 200 million dollars of 2025 notes while using the balance to repay a portion of our outstanding revolver borrowings following this transaction we have no debt maturing until 2027 when the buyout of the non-controlling interest of our georgia park is due in january and 1 billion dollars of bonds come due in april we intend to address these maturities in the coming months but to start the year underlying business remains solid adjusted EBITDA for the quarter fell well below plan and nevertheless we have ample liquidity with no near-term, covenant, or cash concerns. We ended the quarter with approximately $107 million in cash and cash equivalents and total liquidity of $540 million, including cash on hand and available capacity under a revolving credit. During the three-month period, capital expenditures totaled $168 million, consistent with our previously disclosed expectation to spend $475 to $500 million for the full year in 2025. During the quarter, we used $122 million on cash interest payments and $10 million on cash taxes. Based on outstanding debt, including forecasted borrowings on our revolver, we expect full-year cash interest payments will total approximately $320 million. dollars. We now expect 2025 full-year cash taxes will total approximately 40 million dollars, reflecting the impact of further tax planning efforts by our team as well as the benefit of bonus depreciation deductions provided under new tax regulations. We are working to identify more cost deficiencies within our future capital programs and are now projecting a total capex spend of approximately 400 million dollars for 2026 here are projected to total between 320 and 330 million and cash tax payments in 2026 are projected to be in the 45 to 50 million dollar range touching on leverage accounting for our recent refinancing transaction and revolver borrowings gross debt outstanding at the end of the second quarter was approximately 5.3 billion A net debt to annualized second-quarter adjusted EBITDA was approximately 6.2 times, which is above our target range of sub-four times. Our priority remains reducing leverage back inside of four times as quickly as possible, which we remain confident can be accomplished through the combination of organic growth in the business and the selected divestiture of non-core assets. As we shared last quarter, we are actively pursuing two opportunities, including the monetization of excess land near Kings Dominion in Richmond, Virginia, and the sale of land at Six Flags America in Bowie, Maryland, a park we are sunsetting after the 2025 season. We are aggressively working on the steps necessary to close each transaction as quickly as possible, and we will provide further updates as things develop. We are also actively evaluating other opportunities where similar value creation... Now turning to second quarter results given we operate in the outdoor entertainment space we prefer not to use weather as an excuse for soft performance but rather acknowledge that it's an uncontrollable we need to navigate through it's clear however that extreme weather across much of our north american portfolio had a meaningful impact on early season operations particularly over the last six weeks of the second quarter over that six week period combined attendance was down 12 percent from the same time frame last year as severe storms excessive rain and extreme heat disrupted visitation and sales of season passes during the most critical portion of the sales cycle by comparison combined attendance over the first seven weeks of the quarter when weather was not an issue was flat compared to the prior year overall close to 20 of our operating days in the second quarter were impacted by weather including 49 days in which parks were forced to close entirely by comparison we were only forced to close parks on 12 days due to inclement weather during the second quarter of 2024 despite the headwinds around attendance when weather wasn't an issue demand was solid and when guests visited they continued to show a desire and willingness to spend on quality items and unique experiences this was particularly the case at some of our largest and more well-established properties at the legacy cedar fair parks admissions per capita spending was up four percent during the quarter reflecting a two to three percent increase in season pass pricing and a three to four percent increase in single day ticket pricing the cost value proposition at those parks is very high giving us clear line of sight to responsibly take pricing with demand meanwhile per capita spending on in-park products at the legacy cedar fair parks was up three percent in the quarter driven by higher guest spending on food and beverage, extra-charge products, and merchandise. Each of these positive trends underscores our belief that our consumer remains engaged and interested in the entertainment our parks offer. On the cost front, we continue to focus on realizing synergies across the portfolio, while understanding that it's critical to reinvest in our underperforming parks to improve guest satisfaction scores and increase penetration rates over the long term. At the Legacy Cedar fair parks we realized a one percent reduction in operating expenses on an adjusted EBITDA basis. The decrease was primarily driven by lower maintenance costs and a reduction in seasonal labor hours during the quarter. Much of these cost savings were reinvested at the Legacy Six Flags parks as we worked to enhance the guest experience and improve the value proposition of those parks. During the quarter we incurred 11 million dollars of non-recurring merger-related in integration costs, and another $28 million of adjusted EBITDA ad-backs, comprised primarily of $24 million of severance payments related to our recent org restructuring initiative, and $4 million of public liability settlements. Outside of these costs, cash operating expenses in the period were driven higher by two primary factors. First, a shift of approximately $19 million in advertising, originally budgeted for the second half of the year. As Richard noted, this was a real-time strategic decision made to combat attendance pressures we were seeing and to stimulate demand for season passes and single-day tickets heading into the peak summer season and second a pull forward into the second quarter of approximately six million dollars of pre-opening maintenance investments at several or under penetrated parks a strategic initiative to ensure rides were licensed and ready to operate on opening day these decisions resulted in an estimated expense timing difference in the quarter of approximately 25 million dollars which we would expect to fully reverse over the balance of the year while we pulled forward spending on maintenance and marketing and reinvested cost savings we still expect to reduce our full year operating costs and expenses excluding adjusted ebit diet backs by three percent our cost saving efforts are always aligned with our business which is back half weighted meaning the opportunities for reducing costs are the greatest and least disrupted to the business during the third and fourth quarters before i turn things back over to richard let me provide some more color around our recent performance trends and our updated outlook for the full year over the past four weeks attendance is up more than 300 000 visits or four percent over the same four week period last year and demand trends are accelerating we are particularly pleased with the improved results considering the ongoing attendance headwind that a smaller active pass base represents Attendance was up 1%, and preliminary net revenues were down approximately 3%, reflecting the pressure on guest spending due to attendance mix and the impact of recent promotional offerings in the market. At the legacy company level, attendance in July at our Cedar Fair parks was up 3%, or more than 180,000 visits, and preliminary revenues were up 2%, or approximately $7 million, demonstrating the strong consumer appeal of our more established properties. Meanwhile, demand trends at our legacy Six Flags parks improved significantly from the second quarter, but remained down 1%, or approximately 54,000 visits for the month. At the individual park level, we're seeing returns on the initiatives we've implemented and the investments we've made. The recent improvement in attendance has been led by the performance of our 15 largest properties, where our capital programs, those 15 locations, was up 5% over the past four weeks, underscoring our belief that the second quarter headwinds were transient and not reflective of a fundamental change in the business. Case in point, recent demand trends at Cedar Point, King's Island, Canada's Wonderland, Knott's Berry Farm, and King's Dominion have meaningfully accelerated, reflecting the strength of our loyal customer base and the value of the investments we made at those parks this season. On a combined basis, attendance at those five parks over the past four weeks was up 8%, or approximately 250,000 visits. canada's wonderland in the introduction of the new dual launch coaster alpenfury has been nothing short of a standout success story since the july 12th debut of its new coaster the park has seen attendance improved by 20 percent over the prior year during the same time frame which in turn has helped drive a more than 20 percent lift in fast lane sales moreover since the rise opening there has been a surge in season pass sales up more than 100 000 units in the weeks following the coaster's debut. We are seeing similar success at the Legacy Six Flags parts where we concentrated our efforts and our capital investments in 2025, including Magic Mountain, which was up approximately 76,000 visits, or 6% over the last four weeks of July. The green shoots we are seeing emerge from this year's capital program, our 2026 season pass program is off to an outstanding start across the system. We launched the program several weeks earlier this year to take advantage of anticipated pent-up market demand since the end of the second quarter we've seen season pass sales of 700 000 units reducing our second quarter deficit by more than half in only one month the strong start represents the first step in building a solid foundation for the 2026 season and provides meaningful momentum for the remainder of the 2025 season now let me address our updated guidance through the first seven months of the year we've seen both the impact of a very challenging first half and the encouraging rebound that began in July taking this into account along with our outlook for the balance of the year we are revising our full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance to a range of 860 to 910 million from the prior range of 1.08 to 1.12 billion. This revision reflects the impacts of the extraordinary weather disruptions earlier in the year, a smaller active pass base heading into the second half, and a consumer who appears more value conscious than a year ago. It also reflects the strong response we've seen in July and that weather conditions over the balance of the year are comparable to the prior year, and that current macroeconomic conditions maintain. Midpoint of this guide is we expect attendance for the second half of the year to be flat compared to the last year after accounting for the loss of 500 000 visits associated with the removal of lower margin higher risk winter holiday events at four parks this year we expect that in park per capita spending over the second half of 2025 will be down approximately three percent consistent with our most recent trends and reflective of the projected impact of planned promotional offers and attendance mix over the balance of the year and lastly the midpoint reflects the expected reduction of second half operating costs and expenses excluding adjusted EBITDA ad backs by approximately 90 million dollars compared with the second half of 2024. Achieving our back half cost reduction goal of 90 million dollars will bring full year costs and expenses down 3% compared to last year's full year combined spend for the legacy companies. As we noted in this morning's release, approximately one-third of these savings reflect costs that were shifted in the first half of the year and approximately two-thirds representing permanent cost savings. On an annualized run rate basis, the second half permanent cost savings bring our total merger-related cost synergies at the end of 2025 to approximately $120 million when compared with the cost synergies we achieved in 2024. With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Richard.
Thanks, Brian. While we are disappointed by the need to lower full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance, we believe it is a prudent and realistic measure given uncertain market dynamics and a slower first half than we expected at the outset of 2025. Importantly, we would anticipate much stronger second half results with normalized weather conditions, improved demand trends, a positive response to our 2025 capital program, and disciplined expense control. We are mindful of our company's leverage and remain committed to paying down debt as quickly as possible. As Brian noted, we are evaluating an opportunity to monetize non-core assets, which could significantly accelerate deleveraging. The near-term headwinds we faced in the first half of 2025 were ill-timed, just as we were coming off an outstanding fourth quarter and hitting our stride as a combined company. But exogenous factors do not change the long-term trajectory or the outlook for Six Flags. We've already seen demand return as weather has improved and believe the strategic actions we are taking will result in the performance we are targeting for the second half of 2025 as well as set us up for a breakthrough 2026 season as we move through the second half of the year we're focused on executing the opportunities over which we have control building upon the momentum we've seen in july and delivering the kind of guest experiences that drive loyalty and sustained growth a key part of this work is our systems integration project which is on track to deliver a new ticketing platform a fully re-engineered in-park mobile app and a more interactive e-commerce site all scheduled to launch in november to close let me bring everyone back to the bigger picture we are building a better business with a more stable cost structure an expanded suite of products and an unrelenting drive to create unforgettable moments for every guest who visits our park our strategy is clear invest in value enhancing profitable growth, rapidly reduce leverage, and create value for our guests, our associates, and our shareholders. Let me leave you with this. Our company is strong, our strategy is sound, and the opportunities are real. We will continue to manage this business with discipline, with an eye on the long term, knowing that along the way there will always be difficult cycles, unanticipated surprises, and unexpected volatility.
Operator
What matters, however, that we continue to stay focused on our guests, execute with excellence, invest where we see durable returns rob that concludes our prepared remarks please open the line for questions thank you we will now begin the question and answer session if you would like to ask a question please press star one in your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue if you would like to withdraw your question simply press star one again we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up your first question comes from the line of steve bosinski from Stiefel. Your line is open.
Yeah. Hey guys. Good morning. So Richard O'Brien, I guess to start, I'm kind of confused in terms of your macro pressure comments. When you refer to macro pressures, are you referring to weather or are you indicating that you've seen a material change in customer spending patterns because of macro fears, which aren't weather related? I just can't figure out what you guys are referring to. Weather headwinds make sense to us. But if you're saying your customer base has slowed or become more cautious in terms of spending, I guess that would be, you know, somewhat confusing given spend patterns across a lot of other consumer verticals have, you know, remained pretty healthy at this point. So any color there would be helpful. Thanks, guys.
Steve, let me jump in here and Brian can weigh in. You know, when we talk about macro factors, weather's clearly a dominant factor, as you said. And, you know, when we look at that, clearly that impact was significant. The other thing that we look at is we look at, you know, the spending. Once people come inside the gate, we've commented on that. We are seeing a little bit of pressure on our lower income consumer. As we look at our demographics and folks who are coming, we think that there are segments of our markets that are feeling pressure in different ways, market by market. Brian?
Yeah, the only thing I would add, Steve, is, you know, as Richard noted, we're watching closely the difference between the lower end consumer and the higher and consumer. As you notice, Steve, we haven't seen a significant pullback in customer behavior at the parks. When they're there, they're spending, particularly at our more established and largest properties. What we did see in the first half is something I think we've talked about previously, which is the urgency around visitation in the front half of the year is is much lower than it is as we get deeper into the year. So I think, you know, one of those macro trends, not necessarily a change in consumer mindset or, I'm sorry, consumer behavior, but maybe more in consumer mindset in the comment that the value proposition needs to be really high. And so, you know, we're focused on that lower-end consumer and monitoring where that moves, but we're not seeing significant change in our guest behavior once they're at the pace.
Okay, gotcha. Yeah. And then second question, just trying to understand where we sit today versus, you know, back in a couple of months ago, back in May, when you guys provided those 2028 financial targets. So, you know, guess what I'm trying to figure out is obviously, yes, weather has been a massive headwind here in May and June. But wondering why, you know, why that would have such a material impact on these goals that were kind of put in place for over three years out. Maybe saying that a little bit differently, I would have thought your 28 targets would have embedded, you know, some pretty, you know, significant, unperfect weather, macro headwinds, something along those lines that would still kind of allow you to get close to that $1.5 billion target. So I'm not sure if maybe you guys are kind of walking that target back now, given the change with Richard, you know, and a new CEO coming. I guess I'm just a little bit confused there.
Steve, you know, as we noted in our prepared remarks, we believe the challenges we faced in the first half of the year are largely transient and not reflective of a fundamental change in the consumer that would disrupt, as you said, the long-term potential of the business. With that said, we're going to reassess our long-term guidance after the season has closed and following the release of our full year 2025 financial results. You know, when I look at the recovery we've seen, let me go back to what we've seen in July, 1% for the five-week up in attendance, 4% on the four weeks, more recently in the last two weeks of the month up 8%. When you look at the acceleration, you know, we are seeing tremendous response and people coming back. As a matter of fact, in the first two days of this week, we were up 80,000, almost 90,000 visits on Monday and Tuesday that just concluded. So as we think about the long-term potential, we still believe that the strategies we're laying in place will drive and let us get to that long-term potential. But we do want to make sure that we take a look at how the second half unfolds. What I've said to the team, and I want to be very clear, while I'm the CEO, we're going to focus on finishing 25 strong and building the strongest possible momentum for 26. And I think that'll give us an ability to really focus on those long-term targets and address those once we get to the end of the year and into the first part of next year.
Okay. Gotcha. Thanks, Richard. Thanks, Brian. I appreciate it. Thanks, Steve.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Arpina Kacharia from UBS. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So you mentioned accelerating divestitures. Could you give a broader sense of what you're looking at and the timing of those divestitures, fully understanding that some of that is more tied to sort of the transaction markets? But sitting here today, how would you size that opportunity beyond what we already know? And what could that mean for leveraging targets that you have medium term? Thank you.
And I have a quick follow up. yeah i'll jump in again brian can weigh in as we look at the portfolio we're clearly taking a strategic look at it working closely with our board um and we'll have more to share as we go through that we're trying to execute very quickly on the two non-core asset sales that we talked about uh and have a process underway for each of those we're also engaged in evaluating the rest of what we think is potential given market conditions and how quickly we can move to potentially divest other things that we would consider non-core. Brian?
Yeah, I guess I would just, you know, with the lion's share of our EBITDA, 90 plus percent of the EBITDA coming from our largest 15 or 16 locations, we've set all along our priority when it comes to thinking about optimizing the portfolio lies in several core objectives. One is narrowing management's focus, reducing risk, and simplifying our capital needs to those most key and strategic assets. Deleveraging will be a benefit of that, but those remain the priorities when it comes to our focus on optimizing the portfolio.
Okay, thank you. And then a quick clarification question um you know you highlighted acceleration in cost safe for the backup of about 90 million from what i think was closer to 70 million before today but then there is about 25 million of pull forward of cost that moves from the back half to the to q2 but to q2 so what's sort of the upside to actual synergies outside of that pull forward of cost i'm trying to understand a little bit better on a full year basis what's the upside today versus what you were looking at it what what you were looking at in terms of cost energy thank you yeah coming into
the year uh you know i'll remind you uh and we realized uh between the two combined companies uh you know close to 55 million of synergies uh in 2024 um as we roll into 25 our goal was to finish realizing the original 120 million target. And so we had set an objective of 65 plus million of synergies for this year. The 90 million target for the second half of this year, if you look at what we would consider the permanent cost savings, as I said, of the 90 million second half reduction, close to two thirds of that is permanent cost savings. When When we annualize on a run rate a few of those items, like the full-time headcount reductions as one example, we get close to that 65-plus million of permanent cost synergies in 2025, getting us to that full 120 million. We will continue to look for more cost savings, and there are additional synergies as we roll into 2026. We'll provide more of an outlook on that as we get to the end of this year and we focus on next year. But for this year, we'll have checked the box on realizing the $120 million of original merger-related cost synergies once we execute on the second half of objectives and targets.
Thank you. That's helpful.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of James Hardiman from Citi. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. So maybe let's just do a little bit of math on the guidance. If we look at the midpoint previously versus today, I think we're talking about a $215 million cut versus the prior guide. Now, obviously, you don't give us explicit quarterly guidance, but I get to maybe, I don't know, $160 million miss versus Q2. And ultimately, I'm getting to maybe an implied sort of 50 to 60 lower in the second half. Maybe if you could share how we should be thinking about that math. Ultimately, what of the guide down is 2Q versus the back half of the year? And particularly as we think about the second half reduction in expectations. How much of that is just the lost season pass revenues that it's pretty difficult to make up, right, if people weren't there in May and June buying those season passes? And how much of it is sort of everything else? That would be helpful. Thanks.
Yeah, James, it's Brian. I'll try it this way and you can tell me if I answer it or we can go down another path. I mean, when we came into this year and the midpoint of our guidance range of 1.1 billion was largely tied to volume, right? Attendance growth of close to three plus percent. A big chunk of that was through the expectation and the goal of driving a significant increase. As you noted, and as we said in our prepared remarks, Things were significantly disrupted. We lost a significant amount of passes, more than 300,000, you know, again, all sort of tied back to, you know, the weather disruptions that we spoke about. So that is the biggest and most significant headwind that we've seen. In terms of the cost side of the business, you know, I think we're going to, you know, execute on not only the cost savings that we had identified coming into the year, there will be incremental savings beyond, but those are the lower volume, you know, responding to the lower demand levels or the lower attendance levels that we've seen this year. So as we think about, as we've laid out, you know, in the prepared remarks, and we think about the second half of the year, you know, achieving attendance of flat, you know, given that shortfall in the season pass space or the active pass space, and the elimination of approximately a half a million visits associated with the four winter events that we're unplugging, that's reflecting growth of one to two percent in the balance of the of the business, again, in spite of a season pass space or an active pass space that is still down on a year-over-year basis.
That is helpful. And then maybe a question about costs. We talked about the fact that you really leaned into advertising spend and I guess maintenance spend is going to be a little bit different than that. But But maybe walk us through the timing of that spending. Obviously, if it's raining and cold, you know, advertising might not, you know, really move the needle. So I'm guessing that this was more once weather got a little bit better that you sort of leaned into that. But I'm trying to just figure out how much of that OPEC spend was incremental and, you know, what that ultimately looks like next year. Because even when I sort of back out the $25 million of costs that you've laid out, it seems like a lot of growth in terms of operating expenses. So just trying to think through that.
Yeah, so let's break it into some pieces. Your comments about the advertising. So the lion's share of the pull forward, as we noted, is advertising. And I agree with your comment that, you know, the advertising, the decision to pull forward advertising, you know, a little bit different animal than the pull forward of maintenance because maintenance expense, you know, can fluctuate just based on, you know, things that happen sometimes unpredictably during the course of a year. But the advertising pull forward, when we made those decisions to pull forward advertising, it was before, you know, necessarily the bad weather really kicked off or really accelerated in the latter half of May, right? You don't just turn advertising on overnight, right? We made that decision as we were turning into Q2, the beginning of the quarter, and put those things in motion. So, you know, we can look back with hindsight and say if you'd have known the weather was going to be what it was for six or seven weeks, would you or wouldn't you have done it? But I think in the moment it was the right strategic decision. And while we didn't see the near term or the immediate lift, I think we still believe that it's benefiting us in July and the results we were putting up over the past four or five weeks and will benefit us going forward. In terms of other costs or the cost savings, our cost savings objectives coming into this year, as I said in my prepared remarks, we're always more back half loaded. You know, the business, I think, you know, as you know, James, following it as long as you have, is that we're a second half business, right? The biggest months are July, August, and October. You know, between those three months, you probably do about, you know, based on historical patterns, you know, as much as 80 plus, 80, 82 percent of your full year EBITDA is generated then. And that's where the lion's share of the biggest days are, your highest staffing levels, where you have the most ability to, as I said on the call, meaningfully impact the cost structure without disrupting the guest experience. And so we were always more back half weighted in terms of our goal of realizing cost savings. That has accelerated, though, with the with the pull forward of, you know, if you remember in the first quarter, we talked about pulling forward close to 10 million dollars of advertising and maintenance and now another 25 in the second quarter. So the first half costs are up somewhere in the 30 to 35 million. And some of those advertising dollars that we pulled forward in the first quarter likely were second quarter. so I'll call it 30 to 35 million overall. So the second half of the year is going to be where the opportunity is the richest to mine the cost savings. And we've already put in place or in motion the decisions to realize the largest chunks of that 90 million.
Yeah, James, let me go back to the advertising question. It's Richard. And when we look back on 2024, we knew coming into 25 that a lot of our growth is going to be tied to season pass. We want to make sure we supported that program in the spring strategically. We did. If you go back and look at 2024, we put in the market more advertising in the late July through August timeframe to try and drive a stronger second half of the summer. Didn't see what we wanted to see out of that, but it did, to Brian's point, really help drive a 20% increase in the October attendance. So there's always residual impact from the advertising when you put it out there remind consumers that you're still there so always difficult to to always look at it one for one but we wanted to make sure coming into the year that we gave ourselves the the the firepower we needed to really chase the season passes now what we're seeing now is that there may be some residual impact from what we put in the market because we were off to a really strong start really strong start to the 2026 season which will also help underpin our second half performance so we're pleased with that but we've got a long ways to go that's helpful thanks guys your next question comes from the line of ben shaken from mizuho
your line is open hey good morning um maybe just a clarification on maybe just a clarification on cost i don't totally um follow the variables so i guess your guide prior to this quarter was for cash cost to be down three that's kind of like what we were talking about on one q but then attendance was materially lower with incremental park closures. I think you kind of suggested the prepared remark somewhere around 30 incremental park closure days year over year. So why is minus three still the right answer? Shouldn't that be an opportunity for cost to be much lower?
We're going to continue to look, Ben, for incremental savings beyond. But at the same time, as I mentioned, the need to balance investing in the parks that are underperforming and establishing the momentum that we need going into 26, that becomes sort of the trade-off, right? So as we think about the biggest areas to take costs out of are always labor, maintenance costs. Those are, and we've already addressed the advertising. You know, labor, seasonal labor most notably, and maintenance are our biggest areas to have impact. So as we evaluate the opportunities to take more costs out, that weighs into that decision. Now, where there will be incremental savings opportunities, what's not reflected in that 3% target is cost of goods. So to the extent that fluctuates up or down with demand, that will provide some incremental tailwind around the cost savings. But the cash operating costs that we're talking about, our goal is to still deliver close to that 3%, which would be close to a $60 million reduction from the combined spend last year.
Yeah, I guess I'm just trying to figure out if the parks were not even open. Like, what's the offset? If there's, again, these are round numbers, but 30 incremental park closure days. Can you help us with the offset of what other costs went up, maybe, that are keeping you at that minus three?
Well, so you're talking about within the second quarter. Yeah, I mean, listen, within the second quarter, we had more park closure.
I'm talking about for the full year. For the full year, cash costs, the goal is still to be down three, which is the same as the original goal, which is minus three. But you had 30-part closures.
Yeah, we are adding more days in the second half of the year. So there's a year-over-year comparison issue that goes the other way, to your point about the more closed days in the second quarter this year. We're adding, you know, 30 to 35 incremental days in the fall as we look to tap into the strong demand for the Halloween events that we offer, Fright Fest, Haunt, et cetera. And so that puts pressure on that number going the other way, but still in line with achieving the original target of 3%.
Okay, and then as you've seen demand come back in the last few weeks, does that give you any confidence and ability to push price? Maybe you could kind of expand on your price thought process in the back half of the year under different demand scenarios, right? You talked about the last four weeks being up four, the last five weeks being up one, and the expectation that pricing will be down three.
Maybe you'll help us wash that out. Ben, we're looking closely at pricing. Yes, when we see demand, we're taking price. We're looking at the parts that are doing extremely well and being able to do that. as we've always said Halloween in particular is the gift that keeps on giving we've added days because we think not only can we drive attendance but that's where we've got our most pricing power you know so when we look at the pricing on on the pure admission side we think we've got ability to be careful with the value conscious customer drive that season pass but particularly take price on our bigger days we've been particularly aggressive on our front of line experience and it's seen tremendous response at the parks been able to lean into pricing for that so we're taking pricing where we can and where we see that demand the other thing that i'll say that that brian touched on is if you look at the last year comparison the second quarter very choppy schedule operating schedule uh last year as well with some parks not being open quite as long and we've extended as i said in my prepared remarks we've added some incremental operating hours to the parks to get longer length of stay and give the guest a little more value when you compare that year over year.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Ian Zafino from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.
Hi. Great. Thank you very much. I wanted to just drill a little bit into the in-park spend and I guess the decline you're talking about of 4%. percent um what is basically driving that i know you talked about some promotions but then you kind of said the the customer is okay so what why do we need the promotions at this point um is that just for the low end and then also when you talk about mix you're talking about um explain that a little bit to me because if season passes are down you'd be expecting more um daily passes right as far as attendance. So is that the opposite effect? And I have a follow-up, thanks.
Yeah, Ian, when you look at the attendance mix, I'll start with that one first, and particularly in the second quarter. You know, season passes will come and you can get their visits in, as we've always said. And when you have a higher percentage season pass, that puts pressure on the per cap. But when you get extreme weather events like we had through those seven weeks when we were down significantly, you lose almost all your demand tickets, your one-day tickets. So as we think about that, that puts a lot of pressure on the per cap. As we look at it now, when we talk about promotional offers, we're making sure that we're trying to target the – get the customer to come, give them an opportunity to visit lower price on a Tuesday versus a Saturday. We're leaning more and more into the demand that we're seeing and changing prices on the fly, as our business intelligence team and our revenue management team looks at the trends each week, they're taking prices up during the week. So we continue to do what we can to try and drive as much. Brian, you want to comment on the downfall? Anything you want to add on that?
Yeah, I mean, I think I'll just go back to what you were saying in terms of mix. Ian, mix cuts a few different ways. You touched on one, which is channel mix. Within the channel mix, we're also seeing, as an example, season pass, a little bit more migration this year as we harmonize the legacy programs to align with one another. We're seeing, in terms of the 25 pass mix, a little bit of a migration down at our Six Flags parks to some of the lower priced products in that mix. So that's putting a little bit of pressure. It's not only mixed between season pass and single day tickets, but it's also within the individual channels as well. As we think about promotions, as Richard said, you know, going forward, you know, our focus is to try and add value. As we said, the consumer seems much more value conscious this year than the last couple of years. And what we've tried to do historically is instead of discounting tickets, provide more value in products, whether that be season pass or single-day tickets, to get people to move. And we do that out of the goal of not eroding our price integrity of our ticketing structure, right? And so things like the Allpark add-on as a benefit for those migrating up to the highest tier passes in our system for next year, the objective there is to test that, again, what has proven successful historically and get folks migrating back up to those higher-priced products that maybe they had in 25 bought down as we harmonized the products. So that's the mix comment that we're talking about.
Okay, thanks. And then just quickly, you know, there's just been, there's a lot of noise as far as cost in the quarter. What would you kind of point us to as a decremental margin or like a normalized decremental margin if there kind of wasn't all these moving pieces in this quarter? Thanks.
Yeah, so I guess as it relates to margin, I'll try and answer it this way for you, Ian. The impact of pulling forward some costs into the second quarter in 2025, certainly without getting the return in incremental demand, has put pressure on margin. The loss of just, I mean, again, this is a volume-driven business, right? And so the first attendance that we lose is the highest margin attendance, particularly as we're staffing our parks these days. You know, the staffing model today is very different than it was five or six years ago because the cost of labor is so much higher. So we staff our parks at more of a base level and then increase staffing as needed and as might be available. Historically, it used to be the opposite. You'd staff higher and pull staffing out as you didn't need it. That's changed over the last four or five years. So when we lose attendance, losing 1.4 million visitors over the last six weeks of the second quarter, that's all very high margin attendance lost. You're talking about attendance that's falling out, depending on the park, at a level that could be as high as 55% to 70% margin attendance that's falling out of the system.
Okay, thank you very much.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of David Katz from Jefferies. Your line is open.
Morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. We've sort of had a lot of discussion about the quarter in the back half of the year. I wanted to maybe just focus on the analyst meeting forecast, which it would seem is called into question or however we would classify it, which wasn't that long ago. Can you just walk us through sort of what, you know, what's changed or, you know, what aspects, you know, could have been, you know, different within that, you know, guide, right? The weather's the weather, you know, but that was a little longer-term vision. Yeah, I'll take a shot.
You know, David, when we talk about longer-term guidance and we look at what we think the full profit potential of our portfolio of parks is, I don't think our view of that has changed. I think we think there's still that potential. I strongly believe that. When you look at that and we look back at the building blocks of that, and Brian touched on this in his answer, we always said this is a volume business and that our goal was to recover the 10 million of visits. Eight million of those visits were going to come from season pass. So our view of the world hasn't changed from that perspective, which is why we're going to wait to reassess the long-term guidance until early next year. When we say that we're up 700,000 in our active pass base in July, double the amount that we were up last year when you look at 2024, same month of July, then we're starting to see what we would want to see and traction in the areas we want to see traction. So yes, weather is weather. Yes, we've had a tough, second quarter is a tough quarter, particularly those seven last weeks. That doesn't change our view of the longer term potential or the profit potential of the parks. As Brian said in his remarks, where we've invested capital and the weather has cleared out and normalized, we're starting to see the consumer reaction we would expect. So all of those things underpin our view of the world as we saw it, when we're with you on May 20th. And as we look forward to what we think the potential of this business is, those are the building blocks that are still the right building blocks for us to focus on and to keep sharing with you our progress on that.
Yeah, the only thing I was going to add, Richard, and just underscore what you said, is that a transient disruption like we've seen here in the second quarter of 2025 doesn't change our outlook, long-term outlook for the business. What I think is responsible is waiting to see how the balance of the year performs, not so much for what it means to 2025. This is a challenging year, and the results are going to be disappointing, no matter what, compared to what they were coming into the year. But what's important is to see the momentum that we've built, the base that we've established in terms of those long lead indicators, most notably season pass sales or the active pass base, group business, resort bookings, to have an outlook going into 26 as much around the pacing going forward to those long-term targets. I think we're not walking away from our long-term objectives, but I think it's important to understand coming out of this year what it means to the near-term pacing of getting to those long-term targets.
I think that's fair. And, you know, just to follow up, is it also fair that we should think about, you know, much of what's occurred within the six legacy parks, more so than the Cedar Fair legacy parks? So the implication being, you know, that that, you know, those have maybe turned out to be a bit of a different animal than, you know, what was expected. Is that is that something we should take away here, too?
No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't say that. What I would say is, I think we've talked about underpenetrated parks on both sides of the legacy portfolios. We've had and we've commented on the parks that performed well on both sides. We're happy to see 6% on the Legacy Six Flags, 8% on the Legacy Cedar. But there's also other parks. Dorney Park, a year after Coaster, you don't expect them to maintain their attendance level. That's the way we invest. You've got other parks that are underpenetrated with opportunity on both sides of the portfolio. So in any given year, you try and really optimize where you're driving the demand while you're managing where you're not investing and make sure you're being really disciplined on delivering on free cash flow and doing other things at those other parts. The other thing that I'll say is we've strategically, we talked about this on Investor Day as well, really invested a lot into food and beverage and continue to get great feedback from the guests on both sides of the portfolio with all the things that we've done on food and beverage and how we've reconfigured that program or continue to reconfigure it. So that both drives revenue, but it also drives higher guest satisfaction. And as we've always said, when we get higher guest satisfaction, we see repeat visitation from season passes. We also get higher renewal rates, which is one of the things we're really focused on, making sure we start to see convergence and increasing on the renewal rates of season passes on both sides of the portfolio. So I do think there's opportunity on both. We see that this year with a strong performance out of Canada and out of Cedar Point and a few other places. So when you look at where the opportunities are, I don't think they're specific to either side of the portfolio. But obviously, we want to go get, as we said, those 10 million visits back over the next few years.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Lizzie Doe from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Hi there. Thanks so much for taking the question. I just wanted to ask on the CAPEX side of things, Firstly, just to clarify, I think you said $400 million. I just want to check if that was, I think it was $26 or whether it was $25. And then how you think about that, because you mentioned, you know, when you do add new rides into the parks, you know, like you mentioned with Canada's Wonderland, you do see attendance grow. But, of course, you know, there's cash considerations and leverage considerations. And so with pulling back on that capex, how do you kind of balance that and think about, you know, the attendance opportunity as a result?
Good question, Lizzie. Thanks for the question. When we think about making sure we've got what we need from a marketable capital perspective, you want to get full benefit out of the strong program we put in this year. We don't think we've gotten full benefit. We think we can lean on that a little bit next year as well. For instance, Canada's having a great month of July, but they only opened their coaster on July 12th. And typically on the bigger products, we see a little bit of carryover into the following year. So when we think about that calendar year, $400 million, that'll be the spending on two or three programs, certainly on 26, also a little bit of 27. We've already spent on 26 because we've signed contracts and done things like that. We're going to continue to invest in food and beverage. We've got a lineup of some really impactful products. But we're coming off a year where we really didn't get as much traction as we wanted, in part because of the ill-timed weather. and we think we can lean into getting benefit of some of what we added this year and next year while continuing to invest in the amenities in the park, while continuing to invest in food and beverage and other things that will drive our demand. Brian, anything you want to add?
No, I'd just clarify to your question at the beginning, Lizzie.
You know, the CapEx spend for this year is still in the $475 to $500 million range, and we'll continue to update that as we get closer to year end. um next year's is is the 400 2026. got it and then just to um kind of follow up on david's question a little bit on the legacy six parts you know the attendance decline was somewhat similar at legacy six and legacy cedar but you know the ebitda result or the pressure was a lot worse at legacy six i think the margins are about 16 and so i'm curious just like how you think about like reinvestment needs in those parks and how kind of quickly those kind of initiatives can kind of come through over the next few years yeah as we look at the lizzie good question i think back
to where we successfully revived under penetrated parks certainly that i've been involved with we've talked at length about the knots example the carowinds example it's as much about consistent investment in things that the guests see and touch the amenities the food and beverage the other things we've referenced along with making sure when you put something in that it really drives demand so we try and balance that in every year but in particularly on the underpenetrated parks and in some legacy six couple in the legacy cedar uh consistent investment in in the amenities touching a section of the park letting the guests know that you're taking care of and you're giving them more value. We see that over time, that's as important as the level of investment.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Brent Montour from Barclays. Your line is open.
Good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. So just one for me. Can you hear me?
Yeah, we can hear you, Brent.
Thanks. Okay, great. Thanks. So for the July stats, and I know you gave a lot of stats, I was hoping for a sort of a system-wide look at July attendance, excluding hurricane-affected markets, because I know hurricanes created a really easy comp somewhere throughout the month at various parks and various regions. And obviously, the point is that, you know, with attendance up 1% for that month, we want to get confidence against that, you know, 1% to 2% implied second-half guide that you kind of gave, X to winter events.
Yeah, Brian. So I'll answer it this way. You're right. I mean, last year, July's numbers were impacted by some hurricane events. By comparison, the first week of July was sort of that last week of the really bad weather we saw at the end of the second quarter. So the six weeks that finished up the second quarter, there was that seventh week, the week of July 4th. It was really sort of a slow start um you know that's why we talked about you know the last four weeks of july the strength we saw you know up four percent versus for the whole month only one percent so when you push those two things together um you know the weather comps actually this year um uh aren't really all that aided by what happened last year you know the other part that was that more of our small parks our standalone uh water parks and some of our smaller parks were more impacted last year while this year we saw some of our largest parks in the system that were impacted parks like Cedar Point, Canada's Wonderland, Great America in Chicago, to name a few. And so, you know, it's always a question of when and where, and the where was much worse this year for the first week of July than what we saw last year with the hurricane challenges we faced.
Okay, thanks for that. Actually, I do have one more, if I may. You guys pulled forward, you opened up past sales earlier this year, you pulled forward advertising. I think the benefits or the potential benefits you're aiming for there are pretty self-explanatory. The question I have is, you know, what are the opportunity costs of those moves? I mean, you know, just presumably if it was super obvious and there were no costs associated with that, you would kind of do that every year, right? So I guess, are there any sort of knock-on effects or sort of pull forward that we need to think about that maybe like in terms of 26 attendance that those moves perhaps might create on the negative side?
No, I think it's a fair question. Most of the impact, Brent, is really situated in this year, not next year. I'll go back to my prepared remarks. When we have a really strong second half season pass sales in the fall and through the winter, it sets up a really strong first half to the next year. You know, one of the things that we've always said is when we open new product, we want to tie that to the sales cycle. One of the reasons we went earlier with Canada's Wonderland is we didn't want to open the coaster and not give the people, not give the consumer an ability to buy something they really saw value with. We know that you're in the wind down phase of a season pass launch. When you get to July, you're about to launch the new one. Our customers are trained to know that. I think the knock-on effects could be a little bit pass in a single-day ticket. We like that. That's a trade we'll take every day. Go back to our investor day presentation. Season pass holders worth $250, $275 over the course of a year in terms of spending versus an $80 to $90 on a single-day visitor. So when you put all those things together, I think the benefit of increased volume typically leads to a really strong back half of the year and a much stronger front half of the following season.
All right. Thanks, everybody.
Operator
Your next question comes from a line of Chris Waronka from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for hanging in there with our questions. So this will be another season pass question but um maybe in a slightly different way you know i think you guys said in the past you know you're adding something like 20 or 25 percent of your of your visits from from passes and knowing that you can't predict the weather you're somewhat similar to the ski industry right and you know i think i think there's at least one ski company out there that is consistently saying they're now getting 70% of their lifting revenue from past sales. And I'm curious as to whether you guys have done the math. And if they had to take a price and cut initially to get there or they launched the big pass, have you guys done the math on whether something like that works for you? Is there a consideration to creating some kind of epic path, longer paths and maybe getting more commitment up front, albeit at a lower price. Can you get to that level, do you think?
Well, the way, Chris, let me answer it this way, and Brian can weigh in. You know, the way we structure our program, the lowest price is always in the fall, and then we take price and step up price to drive urgency. But one of the reasons we wanted to – we talked about the potential of this merger, just like with Epic Pass. The value is in all the mountains you can go to if you step to Epic Pass. Brian touched on his prepared remarks. We've layered in the all-park access to this early offer to really test what kind of demand we can derive, and not just in unit sales, but how much interest is there, and how can we strategically reinforce the value of all 42 of our parks. So we're trying to tap strategically the same thing that I think others have done, veil or icon in the number of mountains that they have and whether or not you visit the other mountains you can and it's the appeal of the product so i think that's really what we're testing and we're pleased so far with what we're seeing i also think you know we're going to be pleased with with what were the early response we're getting in terms of renewals already right yeah i would just i would add i mean i think the decisions around past pricing uh chris are always you know made it at the individual park level because they vary park to park uh you know i i understand you know the scenario that you sort of laid out i as i look across the system and usually
you know what we've tried to migrate to is a good better best uh in terms of of pricing and benefits associated with with the the past program um we really don't have you know any passes or park level programs out there that at this point are you know uber priced at least at the core gold product which is where the majority of the buyers uh slot to and where we really sort of steer them we i think maybe just to provide you know a little history um we did you know execute a very similar playbook to what you described at cedar point we installed at that park um around 110 120 000 season passes uh and we really only had one product it was a it was a at the time called platinum now would be the equivalent of prestige um that pass was over a couple hundred uh dollars and you know more than double most of our other parks passes could never get ourselves uh confident to to chase more volume eventually through a lot of analysis got there and cut the pass price basically in half and saw 120 000 passes become 400 000 passes where and you know the park has has remained for the last half decade. So, you know, we execute that at a park level where appropriate. I don't know as I look across the system right now that that opportunity lies anywhere, but, you know, we'll continue to evaluate. I think the bigger goal here is, and what Richard laid out, is driving more volume, right?
You know, add more value to the pass, drive more volume, and the tradeoff for the, you know any perceived revenue risk is is easily overcome by that incremental volume that you drive guys thanks for all that color a quick follow-up if i can um it you know and it's a follow-on question to that which is do you think is there is your past product lineup stance today and the tweaks you're planning to make you think there's enough kind of direct attachment to ancillary i mean or sometimes it sounds like ancillary is almost you kind of get it and you say, we wish we had more. Is there a way to tie more of that into the season pass? I'm not suggesting you go back to the unlimited dining plan at all, but are there maybe ways to encourage more ancillary spend attached to that pass product?
Yeah, we always focus on the all-season add-ons. And one of the reasons we're coming out with our new e-commerce site and our new mobile app will be to really make that path to purchase a lot easier and a lot more engaging with our guests. We've seen over time that those penetration rates have consistently gone up as the consumers realize the value in all those. So I think it's part making sure we're conveying the value they can get, part making it a little bit easier on the path to purchase. But the other piece is as those penetration rates go up, we've always said this, the more people that buy the all-season and dining all season beverage, the higher the renewal rate. So I think it all feeds together, Chris.
Okay. Fair enough. Thanks, guys.
Operator
Your final question today comes from the line of Thomas Yee from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Thanks for squeezing me in. Just to clarify on the 2026 past cycle, on an apples to apples gold or prestige basis, is the initial pricing you're launching with starting at a lower level versus last year, and how much of that is promotional versus a reaction to the incremental pressure that you flagged on the low-end consumer?
Yeah, Thomas, in terms of pricing, again, going to vary a little bit park to park. In general, and what you're comparing to, right? Are you comparing to where we let off, in which case, as Richard noted, fall is always much lower than where the previous season is letting up with its peak summer pricing so from that perspective if you're if you're comparing there you're going to see all the parks uh down um but if you're comparing back to last fall for the parks where the comparison is easy um and it's a little bit more challenging um as we weren't necessarily fully harmonized um on some of our six flags parks you know last year to the program we're offering now i would say on the cedar side the price is flat to up on the sixth side it's going to vary a little bit across the good, better, best menu, but I would say at the gold and prestige, more of the incentive, if you want to call it incentive, is in the value add, not in a price reduction.
Okay, understood. And then maybe I could just follow up on the second half guidance for attendance, assuming a normalized weather environment, obviously, you know, a crapshoot to predict weather, but is a normalized comparison against last year? I believe October was a great weather month for you. Is there some expectation that you are assuming that that replicates the same way or a more normalized version would be kind of like over a longer period of time? Thank you.
Yeah, I think as it relates to weather, you're exactly right. We're not, well, we spend an unending amount of time focused on it. It's not something that we're experts in or can predict with 100% accuracy. And so, you know, as we think about, you know, the comparison or weather over the balance of this year, it's more so, Thomas, to last year on a comparable basis, meaning, you know, last year we had some good weather. As you noted in October, we had some challenging weather, particularly the last, you know, seven to 10 days of September and a little bit as we got into deeper into the fourth quarter. You know, we would expect that there's going to be good and bad, um, this year. It's not that we're looking for ideal or we're expecting, you know, the five weeks of October last year to replicate itself exactly this year, helping to offset it. As I mentioned earlier on the call, you know, we're adding some days and, and even in the process of reviewing the opportunity for more days here or there, if, if demand levels, uh, warranted. Uh, and so, you know, that provides us a little bit of insurance to the downside if weather were to be marketably worse during a key week or weekend than it was last year.
Appreciate the color. Thank you.
Operator
And that concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Richard Zimmerman for our closing remarks.
Thanks, everybody, for joining us on today's call. For those of you who are unable to visit Cedar Point during our investor day, we hope you'll have a chance to visit one of our parks in your area before the end of the 25 season excited see for you to see many of the improvements we've made since the completion of the merger on our next earnings call in early november we'll update you on our performance of our parks during the busy halloween season which should produce once again some of our biggest days of the year meantime keep you posted on other developments as things develop michael thanks richard please feel free to contact our ir department at 419-627-2233.
As Richard mentioned, our next earnings call will be in November after the release of our 2025 third quarter results. Rob, that concludes today's call. Thanks everyone.
Operator
Thank you everyone for your participation. You may now disconnect.
