Six Flags Entertainment Corporation/NEW Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Desiree, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the Six Flags Entertainment Corporation 2026 First Quarter Earnings Call. I would now like to turn the call over to Six Flags' management for opening remarks. Go ahead, please.

Good morning and welcome to Six Flags Entertainment Corporation's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Michael Russell, Six Flags' Head of Investor Relations. On the call with me today are John Reilly, President and Chief Executive Officer; Brian Witherow; and Dave Hoffman, Chief Accounting Officer and Interim Finance Lead. Before we begin I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during this call may be forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. Please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings for a discussion of those risks. Today's call will begin with prepared remarks from John followed by Dave after which John will return for closing remarks. We will then open the call for questions. With that I'll turn the call over to John. John?

Thank you Michael and good morning. Before discussing the quarter I want to address the leadership changes we announced this morning. We have made targeted adjustments across key areas of our senior leadership team including finance, administration and marketing to better align our organization with our strategic priorities going forward. We thank Brian for his many years of service and contributions to this company. Dave Hoffman, our Chief Accounting Officer, will step in on a temporary basis to lead the finance organization. I am confident Dave will help make this a smooth transition. Since stepping into the role of CEO I've worked with the team to take deliberate actions to strengthen the company's strategic and financial positioning including the sale of noncore assets, monetization of excess land and refinancing of our balance sheet. These actions, together with the leadership actions we are implementing, position us to execute against our core operating objectives. Turning to the quarter. We delivered meaningful year-over-year improvement driven by higher attendance, increased guest spending and disciplined cost management. While the first quarter is seasonally limited with only a subset of parks open, including our parks in California, Mexico and Texas, the strong first quarter results demonstrate the resilience of our operating model and progress against our priorities. Before getting into the drivers of the quarter, I do want to acknowledge that results benefited from the earlier timing of Easter and spring break as well as more normalized operating conditions in California relative to the disruption that we experienced in the prior year. While these factors helped, first quarter performance also reflects the cumulative impact of the foundational work we have put in place over the past year. This includes the integration of our ticketing platforms, enhancements to our digital and commercial capabilities, and operational improvements across our parks. Together, these efforts are driving measurable gains in consumer engagement and demand. A key component of that progress has been our decision to allocate additional resources to our revenue management efforts, supported by enhancements to our consumer-facing digital platforms. As part of this initiative, we have embedded pricing and revenue management expertise into the organization and redesigned our platforms to better guide guests towards the best value for their needs. In the first quarter, we saw the benefits in higher conversion rates, improved capture and increased migration toward higher-value season pass products. New for 2026, we've introduced regional access benefits across select pass tiers, allowing guests to visit multiple parks within a defined region. This new regional pass offering is gaining traction as guests are demonstrating a clear preference for greater flexibility and broader access, driving product upgrades and increased cross-park visitation. We are encouraged by the early response, including improved pass sales trends, a more favorable product mix and strong guest interest in visiting more than one park. The regional pass has also enabled us to enter the core of the season with a larger and more engaged pass and membership base, which we expect will support visitation and spending through the peak operating period. Once guests arrive at our parks, we saw strong in-park spending trends during the quarter, reflecting the earlier timing of the Knott's Boysenberry Festival, a high per cap event as well as improved food and beverage offerings and higher park utilization driving incremental ancillary spend. To restore localized decision-making, we have reintroduced park presidents at our largest parks. We've done this to improve accountability, accelerate decision-making and drive greater consistency across the portfolio. We remain disciplined in our capital allocation. Our priority is to invest in parks that offer the highest returns, particularly at our larger properties with a focus on enhancing the guest experience through targeted investments in rides, food and beverage, and the overall environment. Residual free cash flow will be directed toward operations and towards debt reduction. As an extension of this strategy, we have completed the sale of select parks and progressed on the sale of noncore land assets. These actions are expected to enhance margins, sharpen focus and improve returns to shareholders. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dave. Dave?

Thanks, John. For the first quarter, attendance increased 4%, per capita spending increased 6% and net revenue increased 12% compared to the prior year. Through April, which normalizes for the Easter shift, trends in attendance and revenue remain positive. Our teams also delivered strong cost control with first quarter operating costs down meaningfully year-over-year. Taken together, we drove a $48 million improvement in adjusted EBITDA, reflecting improvements across demand, guest spending and cost discipline. Performance was driven by pricing and product structure changes, improved marketing and messaging and strong in-park operations. Consistent with John's remarks, we are seeing the impact of our pricing and revenue management initiatives contributing to improved pricing and product mix. This is reflected in the 3% increase in admissions per capita and the 10% increase in in-park product per capita spending achieved alongside attendance growth, underscoring the quality of demand. We strengthened our balance sheet during the quarter through refinancing, improved liquidity and extending maturities. May and June are key selling periods for our season pass and membership products, and we expect greater visibility into full season trends as we move through those months. Finally, we completed the sale of select noncore parks during the quarter and have provided additional details within the earnings release to assist with modeling those disposals. As we think about the first quarter, it's important to keep a few factors in mind. Results benefited from timing and more normalized operating conditions in California. It's also important to remember that only a portion of our parks are open in the first quarter. As such, the quarter represents approximately 6% to 8% of full year attendance and revenues, and the company usually operates at a loss in the first quarter because most of our seasonal parks are closed. As a result, we would caution against extrapolating first quarter performance to the full year. Lastly, we are not providing formal earnings guidance or long-term targets at this time. Instead, we are focused on consistent execution across the operating levers that drive long-term value. We believe investors are best served by transparency around demand trends, per capita spending, cost discipline, liquidity and capital structure, areas where we have strong visibility and are already seeing progress. While we're not providing guidance, we remain committed to regular transparent communication. As the season unfolds and visibility improves, we will continue to provide clear qualitative context around performance trends, key initiatives and progress against our strategic priorities. With that, I'll turn the call back over to John.

Thanks, Dave. Before we move to closing remarks, I'll ask Brian to share a few brief comments.

Thanks, John. As this is my final earnings call, I want to say what an honor it has been to serve as the CFO of Six Flags and our predecessor company, Cedar Fair. Over the last 31-plus years, I've had the opportunity to work with an incredible group of colleagues, execute numerous M&A transactions, including the most important merger in our industry and lay the foundation for the future of the new Six Flags. I'm proud of everything we've accomplished during that time, and I'm confident that Six Flags is well positioned to continue to succeed and provide engaging and entertaining experiences for our guests for years to come. John?

Thank you, Brian. We appreciate your contributions, and we wish you our best. Turning to the quarters ahead. We are entering the most important part of our operating season with encouraging early momentum, particularly around consumer demand, and we're excited about our new park offerings. Our 2026 capital program was highlighted by the addition of Tormenta, the world's tallest dive coaster at Six Flags over Texas as well as the return of MonteZOOMa at Knott's Berry Farm, one of the park's iconic attractions. Meanwhile, we're focused on the family market at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey with the first phase of a new boardwalk area and at Six Flags Magic Mountain north of Los Angeles with the introduction of Looney Tunes Land, a fully reimagined themed area that will be the home of our Looney Tunes characters, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and others. These park enhancements are aimed at expanding our addressable audience and complementing the park's core thrill business. At Kings Island, our new Phantom Theater experience blends immersive storytelling, animatronics and multisensory effects to create a highly engaging indoor attraction. And earlier this week, we announced plans to expand the entertainment offerings at 3 parks, including a reimagined lineup of summertime shows at Kings Dominion and the return of Holiday in the Park at Six Flags Great Adventure and Six Flags over Georgia. These are strategic decisions based on thorough analysis and consumer research. Strategically, these types of offerings broaden our reach. They allow us to attract guests who may not typically visit during our traditional operating season, while reinforcing the value of our season pass and membership programs by extending the number of meaningful use opportunities throughout the year. As our seasonal parks have begun to open, we're encouraged by the positive trends we're seeing in both consumer demand and operational execution. While we are still early in the season, the momentum we are building reflects the actions we've taken across pricing, product design and park-level execution. As we move through the year, we're mindful of several dynamics, including more competitive comparisons related to last year's marketing activity, promotional cadence and early cost synergy benefits. These are factors we understand well and have planned for, and they are embedded in how we are managing the business going forward. Against this backdrop, we remain focused on disciplined execution. We believe the underlying improvements we've made across demand generation, monetization and cost control position us well to navigate these dynamics and continue building momentum through the balance of the season. More importantly, we believe these actions are strengthening the foundation of the business in a way that supports sustainable growth, margin expansion and long-term value creation. Operator, that concludes our prepared remarks. Dave and I are ready for questions.

Our first question comes from the line of Ben Chaiken with Mizuho.

Brian, best of luck. It's been great. On the operating days strategy, operating days year-to-date are down year-over-year, which I would imagine is part of the strategy to help control costs. How do you think about operating days for the remainder of the year and other opportunities to control costs? And then one quick follow-up.

Sure. Ben, this is John and I'll start out here. So we approach this issue market by market and some of the efficiency we saw in January benefited us on the cost side and then we were pleased with the results the attendance per day as we talked about earlier. So we'll approach this with agility as we go forward. And even in Q1 for example we were adding days in Mexico City while we were adjusting the other way for some of the parks. Part of that dynamic in the first quarter is the loss of the winter events just to carry over the first week in January. And then going forward I'll turn this over to Dave and he has the numbers for you for the year to go.

Ben this is Dave. So you read the 24-day reduction in Q1. We expect to remove another 16 days in Q2 and then add 60 days in the balance of the year. So overall we expect to add 20 days to the calendar. You know that that is subject to change as we get deeper into the year but that's what the plan is.

Okay. That's very helpful. And then just one question on kind of the 1Q and the year-to-date. I know you mentioned in the prepared remarks that Easter I believe you said was a benefit to 1Q. I think just stepping back and thinking historically I would imagine that Easter being earlier was a marginal headwind to the year-to-date attendance numbers just given the seasonality around park openings I guess. Is that correct like that logic? And then if so how much can you give us to kind of have a ballpark or a round number of what that impact was on a year-to-date standpoint recognizing that you said it was a benefit to 1Q specifically?

Yes. I don't know that we would characterize the timing of it as a headwind at all. I think it can be a headwind when it's very early, like in March. But it just happened to be very late in 2025. So the April comparison gives us comfort that we navigated through the March and April comps favorably.

Next question comes from the line of Steve Wieczynski with Stifel.

So, John, I want to ask about the cost structure. That was a pretty big surprise in the quarter. I understand there are gives and takes in year-over-year comparability, but can you help us think about the longer-term margin opportunity and what you see as you work your way into that role, especially now that the lower-margin parks have been removed from the portfolio?

Yes, thanks Steve. The cost work we've executed is part of a company-wide plan with several levers, including organizational changes in our corporate offices in Charlotte and Arlington while supplementing the parks. We benefited somewhat from changes made in 2025 in Q1, and since then we've implemented additional changes that reduce central overhead and increase resources at the park level for a net reduction. We see considerable opportunity on the procurement front. We've engaged in calls and negotiations with our top 75 vendors and have begun outreach to the next 400 to remind them of the scale we offer as North America's largest regional operator, the benefits of working with us on contracts, and to ask for help and efficiencies. Early returns have been encouraging, and we believe there's a lot of opportunity to mine in procurement. We also have a number of other initiatives we discussed last quarter around automation, efficiency, and field-sourced ideas that we are now executing on and that should yield cost savings going forward. The structure with park presidents will help accelerate the impact of those initiatives. To conclude, in 2025 we finished at a 27% EBITDA margin. It was a difficult year, and while having that scale at 27% is not something we accept, we're working hard to improve it. Comparables in the industry show regional operators can achieve 30%-plus margins, so we see opportunity. We won't put a specific number on it today, but we are unhappy with 27% and have a plan to improve it over time.

Okay. And then second question, I want to ask about the entire park portfolio at this point. I mean, obviously, you guys have sold a number of parks over the past couple of months. And I'm wondering as you kind of look across the portfolio at this point, John, if you see other opportunities to whether sell or shut down underperforming parks. And then maybe help us think about what, in your mind, the optimal number of parks is eventually going to look like over the longer term.

Yes. Thanks. So we executed on what we said we would, which is the sale of six parks that have been closed in the U.S. that were some of our smaller parks. We also have Montreal, which we expect to close in the second quarter. So we've executed on what we said. The first thing I think is important to say is that we've told our consumers, our pass members and our prospective visitors that we have no other plans in 2026. If you're buying a pass or thinking about a pass, the portfolio is the portfolio, and we're focused on the summer and on execution. I think that's a very important message for people who want to come and experience the summer in our parks. That said, we are seeing the benefits of focus since the disposal of the six parks and the pending sale of Montreal. We're seeing the benefits of focus in our strategy, and we're really focused on execution, demand generation, pricing and operational execution. The more we can focus that on the highest-yield, biggest parks, the better off we'll be. We'll approach this with flexibility, and we'll be willing to look at it again in the future.

Next question comes from the line of James Hardiman with Citi.

I wanted to start by saying, Brian, it's been a pleasure working with you and learning from you over the years. You'll be missed and good luck with the next chapter. Following up on the previous line of questioning about the slimmed-down portfolio, it looks from the disclosures that you're losing about 10 to 11 percent of attendance but only about 6 percent of EBITDA. Can you help us think through the cash flow implications of that slimmed-down portfolio, both quantitatively, if you can provide updated numbers for CapEx, interest and taxes, and qualitatively, with the renewed focus on the assets that really move the needle? I assume you can now dedicate more of the CapEx budget to what's left, which could generate incremental returns and ideally drive upside. Can you walk us through those items?

So James, this is John. We did provide a table in the earnings release that walks you through, quarter by quarter for the year, the revenue and the EBITDA impact because we know that's something that will be important as you model our performance. You're correct, and I think we mentioned it in the earlier question too that it can help drive margin improvement because these are generally lower-margin parks than our higher-scaled parks. Additionally, with CapEx allocation, the way you characterized it is generally accurate — this gives us more flexibility to allocate CapEx toward parks with higher returns. We see it the same way. If there's a specific cash flow or tax question, I think Dave can take that.

I guess I would just reiterate, it's really more about reallocating to higher return parks. So just kind of calling out some of the numbers, James. We're still expecting $425 million to $450 million of CapEx for the year. The first quarter CapEx was a little bit lighter than that, just given the cadence of some of the projects, but we still expect to get within that range. Cash interest is still expected to be $300 million to $320 million, and that includes the impact of the refinancing, of course. And we expect cash taxes to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 million to $30 million for the year, and that's before consideration of a significant income tax refund that we claimed on the most recent tax return.

Got it. That's all really helpful color. And then, I guess, specifically, as we think about the second-quarter opportunity, looking back to last year, that's really when sort of the wheels fell off. Obviously, on the attendance side, you had impossibly difficult weather in late May and into June. But also on the cost side, if memory serves, you really leaned into marketing with a significant amount of discretionary spending in the second quarter. Is there a way to think about, once we lap those two items, although we won't really know what the weather will be until we get there, the operating costs year over year in the second quarter or as a percentage of sales, however you think about it? What's the cost opportunity in the second quarter? And where would you like to see the active pass base heading into the second half? That was another big part of why the second half of last year was such a struggle, being so far behind in active pass base.

Sure. James, this is John, and I'll take that. Although we aren't going to provide a cost number for Q2 or for the remainder of the year, I'll make a couple of points. First, as we mentioned in the context of Q1, we have a cost savings and efficiency program underway. I've been very encouraged by the receptivity of our team, their execution, and their willingness to embrace targets with guardrails in specific areas. We are executing on that and will continue to do so in Q2. On the marketing question you raised earlier, there was a big spend in marketing last year and in Q2, and we've listed that as one of the factors we need to sort out as we think about the comps going into Q2, and we'll be agile in our approach to that. I would also mention we have some pressure in maintenance costs. From our park-level reviews, we expect some maintenance cost pressure in Q2. It's an important spend because we're committed to improving ride uptime and increasing the number of trains and cars available on all our rides, so when we see a need we'll execute against it. So marketing and maintenance are probably good factors to consider. As we think about the summer and the active pass base, we continue to be encouraged by the Gold Pass, the regional pass that has been rolled out and that has really accelerated sales since the rollout. People are enjoying the ability to cross-visit parks, which helps sales and increases attendance within regions like Texas, the East Coast, and California. We're encouraged by that. For the summer we will continue focusing on the regional pass. We are also seeing a benefit from the reintroduction of membership and the higher renewal rates, which is part of the reason for the increased pass base we discussed.

Next question comes from the line of Patrick Scholes with Truist Securities.

Question for you regarding pass sales. When I look at the comparable 1Q earnings release from a year ago, I'm trying to match things up apples-to-apples to figure out how they're doing. The KPI in that year-ago press release was that the five-week period ending May 4, 2025, season pass sales were up 6%. I don't think saying in this most recent quarter the active pass base is up 6% is an apples-to-apples comparison. Do you have an apples-to-apples metric we can compare to that five-week period from a year ago to help us understand how pass sales are trending? And I apologize if I interrupted. Go ahead, sorry.

Yes. We don't have a prepared five-week view on that. But to return to the point, the positive impact we're seeing from both membership and the regional pass is important: membership has a higher renewal rate, which helps grow our pass base. As we lap the reintroduction of membership last year, we should see more people staying in the fold. That's a combined factor, along with the sales rate on season passes.

Okay. Going back to CapEx, correct me if I'm wrong, I think you said there will not be much change this year. How should we think about the run rate? I believe you're running about $400 million. After this year, once those passes expire and those parks are no longer operated or used by your pass members, how should we think about the CapEx run rate going forward?

Yes. So in terms of the pass, I think we mentioned we've guided to $425 million. It could be at $450 million for this year. We're not going to guide long range on it, but the visibility we have for now is in that $425 million range. And as Dave mentioned before, it would be a reprioritization, reallocation of the CapEx that would have gone to the parks that were sold to parks with higher and better returns.

Next question comes from the line of Lizzie Dove with Goldman Sachs.

I want to echo that, Brian. It has been great to work with you and I really appreciate your help over the years. Good luck with the next chapter. I would like to touch on the consumer for a second. There have been a lot of cross-currents over the past few months. Consumers are facing higher gas prices, yet your pickup trends have looked very strong over the last two quarters, perhaps partly because of shoulder-season comparability. Could you tell us what you are seeing on the ground with consumers?

Yes. This is John, Lizzie. Thanks for the question. We're focused on what we can control, the levers in the business. And for us, we're not really able at this point to attribute performance trends to those kind of external factors. And the reasoning is we think there's a lot of opportunity in the business to execute. And so the work that we mentioned before that we're doing in our commercial area with revenue management, with pricing, with upgrading our visitors to higher pass products that have a lot more value to them, that's where we see the real opportunity. And our belief is to execute well against that, increase our capabilities going forward in that area. That's some of the reason for the marketing changes that we mentioned today that the opportunity there is a good one for us. So our focus is execution, focusing on what we can change, what we can do, and we've got our heads in the business. And of course, we'll monitor external factors, and we'll be agile, and we have other levers in the business that we can go after if we need to. But our focus is on what we've laid out so far.

Got it. And then I appreciate you're not giving guidance at this point for the year, but high level, it would be great to just get a refresh on how you're thinking about the kind of building blocks for this year and in terms of particularly like the attendance, recapture opportunity and how you're kind of balancing that in terms of per caps.

So yes, demand generation is a real key for us, and we want profitable attendance in the parks. There is excess capacity in the business to grow attendance, but we want to do it profitably. The initiatives we have underway thus far are working in that area. The regional pass that provides access to parks, the increase in cross-park visitation, and the appeal that has driven sales have been positive for demand generation. We believe there is further opportunity there, and the leadership structure we announced, with someone dedicated both to demand generation on the CMO side and to our commercial operation covering conversion, pricing and yielding, is supporting that as well. So demand generation is important to us going forward, as is pricing, which thus far we are seeing good results from due to the trade-up over the past years.

Next question comes from the line of David Katz with Jefferies.

Brian, I appreciate all the time and attention, and all the best. I wanted to dig just a little bit deeper into the regional pass, which is interesting in a good way, I mean, to ask. What data you've looked at or what trends you looked at? And can we potentially interpret this as a step in the direction of a more specific set of passes across the system over time?

Yes, this is John. In terms of the regional pass program going forward, the regional pass we currently offer at the gold level across the parks presents considerable opportunity to expand. We're also developing a membership program and other initiatives. The pass has just been introduced, and we see a chance to continue building on it. Cross-park visitation is much higher. For example, a guest in San Antonio who is a Gold Pass member at Fiesta Texas can ride Tormenta in Arlington this summer. Similarly, a pass member at Knott's can visit the new Looney Tunes area at Magic Mountain, which has tremendous appeal. There are implications for how we think about catchment areas, media spend, pricing, and other areas as we move forward. We will pursue this, but we are still in the early stages and see considerable opportunity to optimize it.

Okay. And then one quick follow-up. The park presidents, can you just provide a little more color on those? Were those people who had worked with the parks before, people within the parks who were elevated? Did they come from other parks? I'm just curious. And I imagine the answer is some version of all of the above, but I'm curious just a little more color on that.

You're right. It's all of the above. We're really pleased with the talent level we have there at the parks with park presidents and also our parks with park managers. It's one of the things that I found to be very encouraging as we travel around, we visit the parks and we work with them on their plans. We have people who are committed, entrepreneurial and understand the imperative of execution right now. So in some parks, we have people who rejoined us. In some parks, we have people that have come over from a competitor. But in most cases, these were internal promotions and the talent level internally was very good to feed these promotions.

Our next question comes from the line of Arpine Kocharyan with UBS.

This is Rob Henry on for Arpine. I wanted just to go back to the pass product. It seems like you might have kind of turned the corner there with units up 6%. Can you just give any color on pricing and maybe mix shifts that you're seeing within the pass product?

If you look at the mix of our pass products, we have the Silver Pass, the Gold, the Elite, and memberships. As we've said, the real power is a trade-up into Gold, and we are also seeing people trade up into the premium categories. We constantly monitor and adjust pricing and promotional strategy to optimize distribution across those tiers. The program's strength right now is driven by two factors. First, the availability of visits to nearby sister parks is encouraging people to drive and visit. Second, having revenue management expertise embedded in the organization and the talent on our team, including Chris Meyering, whom we promoted this morning, is improving our website performance. That team is delivering on merchandising, consideration, and conversion on our website, and we are seeing improvements alongside the appeal of the product architecture.

That's really helpful color. And then just kind of as a follow-up, on the specified parts, it looks like it's a bit of a tailwind here in Q1 given that there was a bit of a drag on EBITDA. It seems like given kind of the table that you've laid out, kind of the rest of the year might be a bit of a headwind with the lost EBITDA there. And so is that still kind of fair to think about in that way? Or how should we consider that as we move forward?

That cost is included in the Q1 results. I mean we've mapped out the impact for you over the course of the year. So the tailwind would presumably be in Q1 of 2027.

Next question comes from the line of Chris Woronka with Deutsche Bank.

Brian, I appreciate all the guidance and insights over the years. So all the best. I was hoping we could maybe talk for a minute about marketing. And I know that your plans are fluid and they're long term and you're going to adjust and adapt. But John, maybe just a thought or 2 on kind of where you are this year versus where you think you can get to in terms of reach and effectiveness of some of the marketing changes, things like going to more social media and bringing in some partners and some sponsors, like where you are in that process? And do we get more benefit this year or next year, do you think?

Yes. I would answer that by saying, one, we've applied learnings from lessons that we identified from 2025, including how we were presenting our retail message, how we were marketing our passes, how we're merchandising them on the website. And also in terms of our creative, we've made big changes in our creative. That said, this is the key growth lever for this company, at least in the near term in terms of demand generation, in terms of evolving our brands. And as you say, in terms of properly leveraging emerging channels to drive demand. And that's precisely the reason that we're bringing Amy Martin Ziegenfuss on board to work to evolve our marketing program. We're in the early innings.

Okay. Okay. That's great to hear, John. And then just as a follow-up, when we think about your properties, you've obviously gotten through a slug of noncore sales. You're working on some land parcels, it sounds like. But question is on hotels. You have 2, what I would think would be very core hotels at Knott's and Cedar Point. Then you have kind of a handful of other smaller hotels in the surrounding areas. Should we think about those as being core longer term or possibly not?

We like the synergy of the lodging business, especially in terms of bringing people in from drive markets. We have research that supports that. But even in regional parks, there's a market for people who want to come in from a longer drive. The model that we have, as you said, at Cedar Point and Knott's Berry Farm is very powerful. The hotels are fantastic. They're updated. They're modern. And that's working for us. So we don't see any reason to walk back from the lodging programs that we have elsewhere.

And our last question today comes from Eric Wold of Texas Capital Securities.

I guess two questions. The first kind of going back on the question a couple ago on pricing. I know you mentioned that kind of the pricing on the passes and daily is kind of dynamic and kind of you're driving it based on demand. But as you start the season, can you give us a sense of kind of what's embedded in kind of the pricing of the daily and pass prices versus last year to start the season?

So on pricing versus last year, much of the growth we're seeing comes from trade-ups within the tiers and from movement into membership because it's a higher-yield product for us. It's not necessarily an increase at the pass level. We want to bring people back to our parks and are focused on providing good value and a compelling suite of benefits, like the regional pass. As we said earlier, we want to grow profitable attendance and visitation to the parks, and that's the balance. But the principal lift we're seeing comes from the trade-up within the tiers and from membership.

Got it. And then as you kind of enter the core season, maybe give us a sense of the hiring environment you're seeing out there in terms of availability, wage rate compared to last year and how that plays into your plan to staff appropriately as demand ramps?

Our team is doing an excellent job staffing the parks. As we move into Memorial Day weekend, our stats tell us where we need to be, 90-plus percent of target. So we don't see any significant headwinds in that area. Like many other things we've mentioned, we take an agile approach. And if there's one position like lifeguards in one park, we make an adjustment and we address that. But we don't see any global issue.

That concludes the question-and-answer session. I'll now turn it over to Michael Russell for closing remarks.

We appreciate you joining us today. Our next earnings call will be in August when we report our financial results for the 2026 second quarter. That concludes our call today, Desiree. Thank you, everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.