Six Flags official touts impact, upgrades coming to south Cobb park

Mar. 4—SOUTH COBB — Since 2019, Greg Fuller has been general manager of Six Flags White Water in Marietta. But before that, he spent his entire career at south Cobb's Six Flags Over Georgia, reaching the position of operations manager.

"Is that not insane?" he joked, speaking to the South Cobb Business Association this week. "I know you people are all thinking 'Oh, my God, 33 years at that place? Are you kidding me? ... I visit for four hours and I'm ready to go home and lock my kids up."

Ahead of Saturday's opening day at Six Flags Over Georgia, Fuller delivered a jocular talk about the park's impact on the local community and outlined new additions coming.

Workforce

Fuller started working at the park when he was 16, and said he worked in just about every job.

He is a product, then, of what he sees as one of Six Flags' greatest benefits to the community — providing jobs to teenagers.

Six Flags, Fuller said, is the top employer of teens in the state, and hires roughly 3,000 seasonal employees every summer.

About 30-40% of their seasonal employees are rehires, many of whom move up the ladder each year. Most don't stick around as long as he did.

"I just never got ready for a real job. So I stayed there," Fuller said.

Six Flags plays an important role in hiring and mentoring teenagers, preparing them for the workforce, Fuller said. The parks have workers as young as 15. Managing the parks is not unlike running a high school.

"Has anyone had a 15 year old? Try 1,000 of them on the same property, it's only 200 acres," he said. "A thousand 15-year-olds are enough to make me want to retire 20 years ago, but 15-year-olds are the lifeblood of our workforce, our summer workforce."

Natalie Rutledge is the executive director of the Marietta/Cobb chapter of Communities in Schools, a national organization that supports youth and works to improve graduation rates and achievement.

After the talk, she said she agreed about Six Flags' role in developing the workforce.

"Six Flags has been partnering with the schools that we're in with our programming and doing job fairs ... And they (students) need jobs and have these experiences for workforce development," Rutledge said. "So while they may not have a 33-year career at Six Flags, they are going to have a job one day."

A summer job teaches young people "to be accountable, show up, have a job ... feel that value that you get when you have a paycheck and do a good job," Rutledge added.

Upgrades

Fuller ticked through a host of capital improvements the park has planned. Perhaps the biggest change coming is a new roller coaster set to open this summer.

The morning of Fuller's talk, Six Flags announced its name: the Kid Flash Cosmic Coaster.

Kid Flash, as the name implies, is a comic book character — the Flash, but a kid.

The Kid Flash is a "dueling" coaster, meaning it will have two trains running concurrently. Meant for families and young kids, it will be just 28 feet off the ground at its highest point.

"Warner Brothers is really pushing Kid Flash now, that's coming into Gotham City," Fuller said, referring to the area of the park which is also home to Batman: The Ride and The Riddler Mindbender.

The track will have a series of LED panels to give it the appearance of having sparking lightning on it.

"It's like (Dahlonega) Mine Train on steroids," he said.

In recent years, the park overhauled Blue Hawk, formerly known as The Ninja, which got a $3 million upgrade that finished in 2018. The coaster was rebranded, but also given a smoother ride.

When Fuller spoke about the head-pounding sensation the ride used to produce, one woman shouted, "It was awful."

"I rode it 17 times in one night," Fuller recalled of the ride's first opening in 1992. "And I had six concussions. Just kidding."

Also completed in 2018 was an overhaul of Twisted Cyclone, formerly known as the Georgia Cyclone. Once a wooden coaster, Six Flags spent $3 million to convert the aging ride to a steel-hybrid structure. More recently, another $150,000 was spent on other upgrades and replacements.

This year, the Log Jamboree (55 years old) will be getting a facelift, and next year, Thunder River (41 years old) will get one, Fuller said.

This year, Six Flags is also adding an e-gamer lounge, a VIP lounge and an exit gift shop, plus a new funnel cake building, and renovations to stores near the entrance.

They're also working to remodel the front gate. The gate was designed in 1998, when metal detectors were not as prevalent.

"Believe it or not, we catch guns all the time. But it's typically not what you think. ... it's typically the soccer moms that have their gun in their purse, and they just forgot," Fuller said.

At White Water, a new play structure is being built, and other infrastructure such as walkways will be updated.

The two parks continue to tweak their programming, too.

This year the park is adding "scream break" during spring break, based on the popularity of their Halloween programming. A series of festivals are planned throughout the season.

At White Water, the park will bring back the practice of screening movies at the wave pool, for the first time since pre-pandemic.

The business of fun

During a question-and-answer period, attendees asked Fuller about the economics of running the two theme parks.

Supply chain issues have affected the way Six Flags updates its parks, Fuller said.

"Used to be in the old days, you shut down in December, you do all your work in a couple of months and then reopen in March," Fuller said. "It just doesn't work like that anymore. You basically do your work when you can get the stuff to do your work with," he said.

Fuller was asked about the park's preparations for potential economic trouble. In the old days, the conventional wisdom was that local parks weathered recessions fairly well, he said, since families would forgo trips to Disney World and the like.

"We used to say that regional theme park destinations were recession proof, prior to 2008," Fuller said.

The Great Recession was different, he said, and it may go down an anomaly in history. The company is preparing for potential economic trouble either way.

Six Flags is dealing with cost increases across the board, Fuller said, like everyone else.

On the business side, 2021 was a record year for Six Flags Over Georgia, and 2019 was the second best, he added.

The parks experiment with pricing to try and find the right balance between volume and yield.

This year, for instance, Six Flags Over Georgia is lowering its season pass prices to try and sell more of them.

Another attendee asked Fuller what the parks do to support nearby small businesses and organizations.

"We do what we can when we can and where opportunities present themselves," he said.

The park hosts food drives to support local nonprofits, he added. It also employs local contractors and vendors for its construction and renovation projects.

Ray Thomas, president of the Mableton Improvement Coalition, was excited to hear about improvements coming.

"I really believe Six Flags is one of our most under-appreciated assets," Thomas said. "And in Cobb County, that we should be doing everything that we can to take advantage of this phenomenal asset that we have."

Thomas would like to see Six Flags used as an economic development tool for the surrounding area, saying it should "be on par with Disney in Orlando."

He hopes the area around the park, which suffers from crime and blighted housing stock, can be improved by the new city of Mableton. The Six Flags area, he said, is "ripe for redevelopment."