Overview

• Disneyland’s urban Anaheim site is boxed in by commercial and residential development, leaving it little room to expand compared with Disney World’s sprawling Central Florida campus.
• Jim Shull suggested on August 17 that Disney purchase Six Flags’ nearby Knott’s Berry Farm—a 57-acre complex that includes a theme park, water park, hotel, and retail marketplace—to serve as a third gate.
• Six Flags disclosed a $100 million second-quarter revenue decline, a nine percent drop in attendance and an eight percent decrease in season-pass sales, and announced that CEO Richard Zimmerman will step down.
• Industry analysts emphasize that no public talks have begun and warn the plan would face significant regulatory, zoning, labor and valuation hurdles before it could proceed.
• If adopted, the acquisition could redistribute visitor traffic across Southern California parks and signal a new era of strategic asset sales in the struggling theme-park sector.