Six Flags President and CEO Richard Zimmerman will step down at the end of the year, although he will remain with the Charlotte-based amusement park operator until the board names a successor. Six Flags, the largest regional amusement park operator in the country, is the parent company of Carowinds, located on the border of North and South Carolina.
It has 27 amusement parks, 15 water parks and nine resort properties across 17 states in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
Additionally, Six Flags shares declined by 20.75% on Wednesday after the company missed Wall Street estimates for second-quarter revenue and reported declining attendance.
Shares closed at $24.33 on Wednesday, representing a decline of $6.37. Shares have traded as high as $49.77 in the past 52 weeks. Six Flags reported net revenue of $930 million in the second quarter, compared to Wall Street estimates of $1 billion.
Park attendance was 14.2 million in the second quarter, a decline of 9% or 1.4 million visitors. Declining attendance was blamed on “unfavorable weather across most of the company’s key markets, including prolonged periods of rain, extreme temperatures, and severe storms,” according to the filing. Overall, 379 days out of a planned 2,042 total operating days in the second quarter were weather-impacted days, including 49 days in which certain parks were forced to close entirely.
Of the weather-impacted days, approximately 60% occurred on the typically higher attendance days of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, according to the report.
Zimmerman described second-quarter reports as “disappointing,” but added the company believes them to be “transient.” He noted combined attendance in the first four weeks of the third quarter was up more than 300,000 visits or 4% on a year-over-year basis.
Six Flags trimmed its 2025 EBITDA projection to a range of $860 million to $910 million, citing weaker-than-expected season pass sales and ongoing economic uncertainty.
As for Zimmerman, the company will use a search firm to find his successor, and both internal and external candidates will be considered, according to the company.
Zimmerman has served as legacy Cedar Fair’s president and CEO since 2018, and remained CEO after the 2024 merger with Six Flags Entertainment. The merger resulted in Charlotte becoming the company headquarters. Cedar Fair and Six Flags had been based in Ohio and Texas, respectively. Zimmerman lived in Charlotte at the time of the merger.
Zimmerman joined Cedar Fair in 2006, when it acquired Kings Dominion, where he had been a vice president and general manager since 1998. He is also a senior adviser at Velocity Capital Management, a private equity firm that invests in the sports, media and entertainment sectors.
He earned $9.1 million in compensation last year.
As of Dec. 31, the company has about 5,000 full-time employees, about 3% less than the two separate companies had before the merger, according to its most recent annual report. It also has about 93,000 seasonal and part-time employees.