Operator
Operator
Good day, and welcome to the Cedar Fair's Third Quarter Conference. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Stacy Frole. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Six Flags Entertainment Corporation (FUN)
Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Fri, Nov 6, 2015
$18.22
+0.22%
Same-Day
-0.70%
1 Week
-4.16%
1 Month
-8.60%
vs S&P
-6.36%
Operator
Operator
Good day, and welcome to the Cedar Fair's Third Quarter Conference. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Stacy Frole. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Stacy Frole
Management
Thank you, Anna. Good morning and welcome to our third quarter earnings conference call. I am Stacy Frole, Cedar Fair’s Vice President of Investor Relations. This morning we issued our 2015 third quarter earnings release. A copy of that release can be obtained on our corporate Investor Relations website at ircedarfair.com, or by contacting our Investor Relations offices at 419-627-2233. On the call this morning are Matt Ouimet, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Brian Witherow, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I need to caution 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 materially from those described in such statements. You may refer to filings by the company with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of these risks. In addition, in accordance with Regulation G, non-GAAP financial measures used on the conference call today are required to be reconciled to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. During today's call we will make reference to adjusted EBITDA as defined in our earnings release. The required reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA is in the earnings release and is also available to investors on our website via the conference call access page. In compliance with SEC regulation FD, this webcast is being made available to the media and the general public as well as analysts and investors. Because the webcast is opened to all constituents and prior notification has been widely and unselectively disseminated, all content of the call will be considered fully disclosed. Now I’ll turn the call over to Matt Ouimet.
Matt Ouimet
President
Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. I'd like to start by reminding all of us that the record results and positive guest reviews we plan to discuss are produced by the operating teams at each of our parks as well as our corporate associates. It is a privilege to work alongside these teams and I want to congratulate them on their success of producing our sixth consecutive year of record results. We are proud to what we have achieved during the past six years. Our 2015 results reflect the combination of current season initiatives along with the contribution from decisions and investments we've made over the past several years. These include investments in our people, in the guest experience and our commitment to the growth potential of all of our parks. While we have accomplished a lot in a relatively short amount of time, we believe there is still considerable upside in front of us. Beyond the third quarter we can now report that our record results continue through this past Sunday, November 1st. Through this period net revenues increased to a record $1.2 billion up 7% from the same period last year. The improvement in net revenues reflects improved results across all areas of our business including record levels of attendance and guest spending. We credit our broad winning success to the [indiscernible] of our FUNforward strategy to make every park a place to be for fun not just a place to ride rides. This expands our audience, increases length of stay and has a direct impact on our guest impact to return to our parks in future years. Our record attendance of 23.6 million through November 1st reflects significant increases in both the season pass and advance sales categories as well as continued attendance led…
Brian Witherow
Management
Thank you Matt and good morning everyone. As Matt mentioned we are very pleased with our strong operational performance till this past Sunday, November 1st, which puts us on track for our sixth consecutive year of record results. As detailed in our earnings release, for the third quarter 2015 we reported an 8% increase in net revenues to a record $645 million. This was the direct result of a 6% increase in attendance in the quarter and a 2% increase in average new park guest per capital spending as well as 11% increase in out of park revenues including resort accommodations. For modeling purposes during the quarter we entertained 12.5 million guests and out of park revenues totaled $65 million. We are pleased with our balance growth we had experienced across all areas of our business. Increase in attendance of 6% or 697,000 visits is a direct result of our strong capital program for the 2015 season. This includes Fury 325, a world record breaking roller coaster at Carowinds, and Voyage to the Iron Reef, our new interactive digital dark ride at Knott's Berry Farm. Both of these parks are expected to report record full year attendance this year. Canada's Wonderland our amusement park near Toronto and Valleyfair our park near Minneapolis have also contributed nicely to the year-over-year lift in attendance. The 6% increase in attendance is attributable to broad strength across the majority of our core ticketing channels with the largest growth coming from the very important season pass channel. The 2% increase in guest spending in the third quarter when compared to the same period a year ago came from increases in both admission per capita spending and pure in-park guest spending. Our average admissions per cap to the quarter increased again this year as our guests…
Matt Ouimet
President
Thank you, Brian. As I mentioned in my opening remarks the quality of our business model has never been better. While I am pleased with the strong results we have achieved this year, I am increasingly confident in what we have in store for 2015 and beyond. Earlier this week we issued a news releasing summarizing our lineup of new rides and attractions at our parks for 2015. These capital projects should make next year a memorable one for our guests as we introduce a world record breaking roller coaster at our flagship park Cedar Point, a major water park expansion at Carowinds where we continue to aggressively invest and many other new attractions at our other parks. We are also looking forward to celebrating the 75th Anniversary of Ghost Town at Knott's Berry Farm. Ghost Town Alive will be an interactive entertainment experience which immerses guests of all ages in new stories and adventures each day in the familiar town of Calico. In addition we have partnered with Electronic Arts to introduce two new digital attractions next season. A new interactive digital experience at Carowinds based on the popular Plants vs. Zombies online gaming platform and all new 4D Holographic experience at California's Great America based on the Mass Effect video game series. Growing our unique guest base in a cost efficient manner is important to us. We believe our partnership with Electronic Arts will help us tap into a new audience and leverage marketing channel but that has not been easily available to us in the past. As these innovative digital concepts prove successful in the parts where we are introducing them, we will be ready to expand this platform to other parts in the near future. We also expect additional growth in 2015 from our all season…
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] We will move first to Afua Ahwoi with Goldman Sachs.
Afua Ahwoi
Analyst
Good morning. First on the -- I think at the Analyst Day you had mentioned some parks in your system could grow in size, any update here and what would the implications be for CapEx especially as we are coming off the Carowinds sort of spent? What can we expect going forward? And then, just two other questions. Generally how do you think weather helped your attendance this year and we know you were lapping some easy comps last year, so was this average weather or above? And then just finally, I was -- in your comments on expanding the season was pretty interesting. How far do you think that can go? Obviously you can become a 355 day a year resort or park, but how far do you think you can go in terms of how many days of the year you can operate?
Matt Ouimet
President
Good morning Afua, this is Matt. I will hand off to Brian a little bit on the CapEx, but let me see if I can address each of these. I will give him in a little bit in order, it’s okay. I think what we were to conclude on the year is we had average weather. It started off a little slow, a little less, got nice in the summer and by the time we got in, we closed a couple of parks on a couple of days because of some storm and by the time we got to the end I think we would tell you that weather averaged out. Not spectacular but certainly not unfavorable either. From the park growth standpoint, the way I've been characterizing internally to the Board is, I probably did a poor job on Carowinds because I think we underestimated the potential of that park. And even given what we had assumed going in with our new CapEx it is exceeding our expectations and has for the first time jumped over the hurdle of 2 million plus in attendance. We are doing the same type of exercises that we did for Carowinds, as we had mentioned before for Valleyfair and for Great America and to some degree for our other parks and I am optimistic. I don’t know that the opportunity will be the same size as Carowinds but I think that given our success at Carowinds it makes us beyond curious for what might happen at Valleyfair and Great America. I should say in those cases by the way, we may have more tight restrictions than we have at Carowinds and that may ultimately prove to be a limiting factor. Although we recently filed a re-zoning application for Great America which will expand our opportunity for what we can add to that park. And Stacy just reminded me it would be I would be remiss because I am sitting here today, we still believe that Knott's Berry Farm has a long way to go. It has for the first time in its history exceeded more than 4 million in attendance and we don’t think that's going to stop any time soon. Brian why don’t I let you address the CapEx.
Brian Witherow
Management
As it relates to the CapEx I think the max point we still need to get through some of those hurdles around the re-zoning of Great America and some more of our internal analysis and modeling for Valleyfair is two examples before we will know what the impact will be on CapEx. But it would be our goal to as we have in the past prioritized our existing capital dollars accordingly. So I can't say at this point that there will be incremental CapEx but there is still more work for us to do on our side before we know if the true opportunities lie at those other parks.
Matt Ouimet
President
And then your third question or your fourth question I guess it was, was about the fairly operating season and I guess because we are coming off a hugely successful Halloween season it makes us think more thoughtfully about what is available to us particular in markets where the climate is more favorable. So we will start with Great America this year, I am sorry, in 2016 this coming year and we have high hopes for that particular property and obviously if that proves successful you can expect to see it at multiple parks, maybe not at all parks but at multiple parks. And that would be the primary growth driver when we talk about expanding the season. I should point out again, since I am sitting here, we already have an extremely successful Merry Farm program here at Knott's Berry Farm and so we are going to take a lot of lessons, keep learning there, about what entertainment works, what food product works and how to market that product in order to leverage the attempt that we are making up at Great America.
Brian Witherow
Management
The other thing, Afua just to follow on Matt's line that I would highlight is, we view expanding the season at almost in a little bit of different light and we are looking to expand the season within the existing calendar we already operate in. You have seen us this past year introduce a number of spring time events to drive the incremental growth. So it doesn’t mean necessarily adding more days as it does adding more urgency around the existing days and we saw a lot of success this past year as well as like a couple of years here at Knott's with their Boysenberry festival, at Carowinds we introduced something called Taste of the Carolina. So you will see us do more of those and that's a little bit of a blend as to maybe some CapEx investment but probably more OpEx dollars. So some of that is reflected within the operating expenses that you see sort of on the year-to-date numbers.
Afua Ahwoi
Analyst
Okay. Thank you.
Operator
Operator
We will now take our next question from Tim Conder with Wells Fargo Securities.
Tim Conder
Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities
Congratulations to the whole team for ongoing great execution of the strategy. A couple of things here. Matt and Brian, you commented that year-to-date through November 1, that the results continue as we saw through Labor Day. But SeaWorld just on their call prior to yours mentioned that they were impacted by some of the remnants of Joaquin and obviously that would have impacted your Carowinds Park and then some of your other parks up the East Coast to a degree. Any way to quantify how much that limited was extremely good results here?
Matt Ouimet
President
Yes, Tim, the honest answer is we know we had to close for a couple of days but we think the vast majority of that attendance loss was recovered in the balance of our Halloween season. So I don’t know how we would quantify that but I would say to you qualitatively we didn’t think -- by the time we got to the end of the year that we lost much associated with those days. You are going to have those days occasionally whether they be in June or October.
Tim Conder
Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities
Then two other questions by me, the mobile app, again you commented that you have tested it and it sounds like it's going to pretty well. Kings Island you are going to roll it out at a total of five parks in 2016. Do you have any additional color you can give other than the integration going digital with the season pass, any other things that you can share with us on that? And then the last question is Matt, on looking at the expand resorts and the combinations and things that you have done with the upgrade at the Hotel Breakers, maybe areas that you could be targeting over the next one to two years there and any additional color please?
Matt Ouimet
President
Let me -- I will give you a little correction, Tim. So we are rolling out the Wi-Fi to five of our parks this year. We are going to continue to test the mobile app at Kings Island and then expand beyond that as we get more traction. The real benefit of the mobile app ultimately is to give the consumer better experience, so right way times and other benefits associated with that. But it allows us to communicate on a real time basis with the consumer in the park and make incremental purchase behavior. And so we are trying to find the right bells and whistles associated with that Tim. So I would tell you I expect the path which we refer to as TE2 to roll out to other parks this year, but we still got some testing to complete at Kings Island before that happens. Brian you want to talk about the resort strategy?
Brian Witherow
Management
Yes, sure, Tim. We said in our prepared remarks we are extremely pleased with the guest response to the Hotel Breakers renovation that took the past couple of years to complete, and it has in 2015 delivered all of the qualitative and quantitative measures we had put in place. And as Matt said on the call, quite frankly quantitatively exceeded what we anticipated. Based on that we are taking a harder look across the system, even though we have resort accommodations of some scale in other five or six of our properties a number of them are more of a campground, high end cabin orientations. We will look at the opportunity to expand those existing facilities as well as cab facilities like that to other parts. I don’t know as we look at the portfolio that we have kind of 11 parks where hotels make sense. Clearly the majority of our hotels are at Cedar Point with another here at Knott's Berry Farm. Those two parks, Cedar Point and Knott's are probably the only two parks in our system that you would say qualify as a regional resort destination. So the looks at the other parks of ours are focused more along the high end campground cabin setups. Other than I will Carowinds presents an unique opportunity that we are going to look at across the couple of different platforms, hotel, cabins, boats and so that's going to take a little bit of time. But we are saying now that we do think that the scale and quality of the accommodation offerings that we have in our portfolio differentiate us from just everybody else in this space.
Tim Conder
Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities
Then it would seem like the cabin campground obviously within your existing CapEx parameters and then if you do anything beyond that could be more of a one-off type of little blip if you would do that longer term?
Matt Ouimet
President
I think that's mostly fair Tim we got to complete our analysis. I will tell you and I just want to emphasize it. I think the differentiator element that it provides the direct returns it provides along with the strategic value it provides in terms of defining our properties as multi-day business et cetera. We are exceeding our expectation and I want to make sure we take that lesson and apply it and Carowinds is clearly high on our radar in that regard.
Tim Conder
Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities
And then just one clarification on the mobile app Matt. You said Wi-Fi, how many parks have you got that fully rolled out?
Matt Ouimet
President
Five parks will get installed free Wi-Fi this year Tim. Part of what -- it’s a basic consumer expectation these things but also it is an infrastructure for which we hang a lot of what we want to do with the consumer. And the best example is our new digital picture initiative will be much more effective when its implemented in the parks with the Wi-Fi allowing us to communicate with the consumer and the consumer to instantly share that message. Going forward I expect Wi-Fi will be in all of our parks over the next two to three years. It's just becoming a consumer expectation.
Tim Conder
Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities
Great. Let’s see you at our conference this week.
Matt Ouimet
President
Yes, looking forward to it Tim. Thank you.
Operator
Operator
We will now take our next question from James Hardiman with Wedbush Securities.
James Hardiman
Analyst · Wedbush Securities
So a couple of questions for me. Obviously Labor Day helped certainly based on my math it wasn't the entirety of the strength that you saw, obviously it's difficult to quantify Labor Day, but can you help us to dimensionalize how much of the strength that you saw was Labor Day versus some of these other items?
Brian Witherow
Management
Sure James, this is Brian. As we did say 57 incremental operating days in the third quarter because of the timing of Labor Day, that was generated at six of our parks where their natural operating calendar [indiscernible] with the Labor Day as to those extra days. About the seven, we know that maybe we are not going to lose all of the attendance generated on those incremental days is wholly incremental attendance. There is shift in visitation, a meaningful portion of the attendance that come from our day guests as well as our season pass visitors is a migration from another day that they were planning to visit. As we go through on trying to estimate the impact of that what I would say is it is likely somewhere in and around 100,000 to 150,000 visitation from those extra 57 days. On the flip side, it's important to note and as we said in the prepared remarks those incremental operating costs that are entirely incremental to those 57 days, so having extra 57 days this year or any extra days in an operating calendar it’s a balancing act for us because now the attendance you are going to generate is wholly incremental and all of the costs are. That said we are very pleased with the results we saw post Labor Day and through the end of October.
James Hardiman
Analyst · Wedbush Securities
That sort of dovetails into my next question, with respect to EBITDA margin. Love to see the 60 basis points of expansion. But just help me understand a Labor Day was that a net positive to that EBITDA margin number neutral or negative and then how did FX affect that? Ultimately is this sort of a turning point for margin, obviously the prior couple of quarters of margin growth have been somewhat anemic. This is really good. How should we think about that going forward?
Brian Witherow
Management
James, margin on our expansion is something that we are focused on if not the only metric if there was there are a lot of other initiatives that we have put in place over the last couple of years that either immediately put pressure on margins or over the long term take a little bit of time for generating the returns. On the 60 basis points of expansion we are seeing through the third quarter we are very pleased with. Part of the quality is exactly how much that Labor Day, those extra days played in, I will say all over our field is at a high level. That both the incremental attendance and the incremental days was well worth it and so from a cross perspective as you will take it every day of the week. As we look towards the end of the year, due to some caution there is going to be some pressure on EBITDA in Q4 and indirectly or directly on margin as we have got some anomalies in the fourth quarter of last year that benefited us nicely. Most notably the $2 million to $3 million of insurance proceeds we received on the business interruption claim at Cedar Point, all of that falls in right at the bottom line. So we don’t have that coming in this year. And then ultimately where we end up is going to depend on a large part to how Knott's fares over the last two months of the season. They are coming off of two straight record Decembers with their Knott's Merry Farm as Matt alluded to. If we can get that kind of performance again this year it will go a long way to holding on a good chunk of that margin expansion that we see through the end of the third quarter. But we have had some pressures like El Nino, the threat of El Nino is also that we are paying close attention to. So what I will tell you at this point is we are going to have margin expansion. By the end of the year we will be 60 or more or be inside of 60 that's probably rough margin say we would be inside of -- a little bit inside of 60 based on what I know today.
James Hardiman
Analyst · Wedbush Securities
Then I guess two more for me. So the distribution, maybe just walk us through that decision making process. Remind us once it upon a time it was based on debt covenant factors, now this is essentially entirely up to you guys. Remind us if you are looking at trailing versus forward numbers. Are you kind of tied into a payout ratio. How should we think about your rainy day fund in terms of the balance of cash on the balance sheet? And then last question if I may, just the tax adjustments that you have made remind us had you not done anything what your tax burden would look like and ultimately how much savings you are driving by reorganizing the business?
Matt Ouimet
President
So I will start with distribution, Brian feel free to jump in and then I will defer the tax kind of to Brian. I think James what we can say definitively is that the distribution is core to the investment thesis so far. We understand that for our investors and we pay a lot of attention to it. As we spoke of in the past years, as you indicated we are no longer restricted by covenants and principality would pay out in any rational basis and the balance sheet is to the point, both from a rainy day fund and a degree of leverage standpoint where we no longer feel like we need to build up a bank of liquidity any further. So it remains a priority for us, over the last several years we have done what we have said we are going to do which is grow it aggressively vis-a-vis once we understood our operating performance and this year is another good example of that. So we are not looking to specific payout ratio but I will say we are not looking to build a larger rainy day fund at this point.
Brian Witherow
Management
Yes. One follow-up comment. I think as it relates to distribution and Matt alluded this, it's a decision that's not made in complete isolation, its bounced -- any other decision on the use of cash is bounced up against it and a little bit of both of those. So we are very pleased with and I think our investors I hope are pleased with that. We have shown the ability not only aggressively in fact we did most of the several years that also grow the distribution aggressively. So I think you will continue to see us with the support of the Board take that approach which is more of an discussion from a use of free cash flow. So then as far as James, as far as tax reorg, we haven't given any guidance really beyond 2015 in terms of absolute dollars as to where cash taxes were headed. But I think what we have talked about publicly was that on a rough effective tax rate basis I found that in my prepared remarks was that we would be more in the 20% to 25% range. That previous range had we not done anything was probably more in the 25% to 28%. So you can see from that the shift in the effective tax rate going forward, there is savings there. The other thing though that I think was a focus for us was trying to create a little more predictability and so we feel very comfortable that that $55 million to $65 million range is a range that will be in place for the foreseeable future and that we don’t see it escalating like it would have under the previous structure.
James Hardiman
Analyst · Wedbush Securities
Thanks for the color guys.
Operator
Operator
We will now move to our next question from Joel Simkins with Credit Suisse.
Christie Fredericks
Analyst · Credit Suisse
This is Christie on for Joel. Brian, in your prepared remarks you mentioned that you'll continue to increase pricing. I was just hoping you could give some more color there and how you're thinking about pricing in 2016 compared to 2015.
Brian Witherow
Management
From a pricing perspective it's probably a different answer for each one of our parts and its often tied back to where the capital problem is. We went into '15 as we were very open about with maybe taking the foot a little bit off of the gas pedal when it related to pricing. I would say we were a little bit more focused on volume. That wasn't to say that we felt that we had gone [indiscernible] broadly anywhere. I think as we look towards '16 we are focused again on pricing. I don’t know that we will see broad pricing increases across the spectrum but again where we feel we have got strategic opportunity to fair pricing we will. As we talked about there still is a very heavily bifurcated economy that we are operating in and so we are also at the same time very focused on trying to create the value proposition for those folks that maybe are struggling to figure out how to afford those hotels. I think you will continue to see us take pricing in the peak period where we have demand and then in the shoulder periods where demand is a little softer we will continue to go after discounting on a very discrete basis.
Matt Ouimet
President
The only thing I will add is when we separate from the foreign currency impact, per caps across the board admissions at in park peer were up between 10% and 12%. And I think that is a very good balance given what we have seen in terms of driving attendance and in park spending in terms of the larger season base.
Christie Fredericks
Analyst · Credit Suisse
Great. Thanks.
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] We will move next to Barton Crockett with FBR Capital Markets.
Barton Crockett
Analyst
Thanks for taking the question. I was curious about the momentum in Carowinds relative to the CapEx. So you had a big program this year. Fury 325 helped the park. Next year, I think you've announced an expansion of a water park there. Does this feel like the type of CapEx that's kind of drive the type of returns you got this year or is the CapEx profile less and maybe we should assume a deceleration of the trend there at Carowinds?
Matt Ouimet
President
First of all there is a major expansion. It’s the largest water park expansion we have ever made and also we will make it the largest water park available in North or South Carolina. Barton, Carowinds continues to exceed our expectations. We are going to continue to invest strongly behind that. We think it’s a market that ultimately can match what we do in Cincinnati and maybe beyond. I am not looking towards a slowdown but when you see such a big jump in a single year you have to be a little [cautious] of what you might achieve in the second year. So therefore we are anticipating growth. But I don’t know that it would be responsible for me to tell you, we had get equal growth for this year. But it is a great market for us. It was a great decision by management and we are going to continue to strongly invest behind that product until we see the curve bend over there. The biggest part of our capital next year by the way is that our biggest park which is Cedar Point and so as I watch that go up and with the strong results we have seen from Hotel Breakers this year I think the [indiscernible] portfolio next year although I got to tell you Carowinds is getting a lot of attention, I think Cedar Point has got something under the radar for next year that will make a big difference and I hope we are right.
Barton Crockett
Analyst
And to that point, if you look at the portfolio of attractions that you've outlined relative to the big kind of initiative you have in 2015, does it feel similarly impactful overall or maybe somewhat less impactful? How would you characterize it?
Matt Ouimet
President
I think it's going to be great Barton. I hope you guys realize on these calls we tend to moderate our comments a little bit, but I am most excited about 2015 as anything I have seen since we got here. I like the mix of traditional steel basically the Cedar Point clearly has done an anchor for us in a good way over the last decade, several decades. But the digital interactive I think is going to tap into a new audience. My favorite line that was posted online about our product which Mack attracted Great America was a guy that said I don’t know what Great America is but I am going. So I think the collection of that, Knott's Berry Farm with the 75th Anniversary of Ghost Town plays very strongly to the legacy that's worked so well for us in a highly competitive market. So '16 for me is really well positioned from a capital standpoint and we got some of the older stuff behind us. The Breakers Hotel behind us is good and the reputation its built this year because of how the job the team did in restoring it have to beat the better results next year as well. So look I got stop there, it's not my usual approach, but I am really solid about 2016.
Brian Witherow
Management
Barton one follow-up question as it relates to Carolina, the addition of the water park and the major expansion that is going on there is very strategically placed. For Carowinds to ultimately get to those levels and Matt has alluded to Kings Island, Canada's Wonderland level of attendance. It means to grow a season pass base beyond where it's currently at. It had a nice lift this year, but it's got to get to a much bigger number to get to the overall attendance numbers. We know from prior experience that a water park expansion of this level particularly in this kind of climate is what will drive season pass sales. It's the water park visitors and much more repeatable visitors and client volume. Kings Island is probably our best example when we expanded their water park the lift we saw in season pass was huge and so that's the reason to follow up the big coaster with this kind of thing. It will have an attendance lift. To Matt's point there are a lot of factors at play, can we assume it will have quite the same impact that at Fury 325, that will be a big bet but at the same time it’s not out of the question.
Matt Ouimet
President
The only thing this would pile on is we are taking the opportunity here at Carowinds to look at what I would call the next generation water park and the biggest part of that how do you drive per caps once they are in the water park. It will have the largest dining facility we have ever put in the water park. It will have shaded walkways to keep people there longer that like to stay. We will have bigger areas for young families. I mean it's designed in a way that I think you can take advantage of when you go to scale on an expansion like this. So I think it will make a big difference and we will look forward to see what happens.
Barton Crockett
Analyst
Okay. That's great color. Thank you very much.
Operator
Operator
We will take our next question from Ray Cheesman with Anfield Capital.
Ray Cheesman
Analyst · Anfield Capital
Congratulations on a very good year, Matt. Your team did a terrific job. I wanted to ask you your thought process since you have I think some pedigree from this company in the past, this whole argument about variable demand pricing. I don't know if your technology supports it. I don't know if you think it's a great idea. Obviously, adding 1 million people a year must mean that you get some days that are pretty busy and I'm wondering how you can benefit from it.
Matt Ouimet
President
Ray I will tell you our technology absolutely supports the ability to do dynamic pricing. Not only through the front gate pricing but also through the products inside the park where we -- the best example from the dynamic pricing standpoint is literally changing on a daily if not an hourly basis for Fast Lane passes based upon the demand we see in the park. So we can do it. I think there has to be a balance to it, because I think in a lot of cases consumers need to know what the band of the portability is. So in our case we will do it. But I also I don’t know that we will change it on a daily basis. We clearly will mix it up ultimately between weekday and weekends. The biggest emphasis for us in terms of that I think is to continue to educate the consumer that the early season for our regional parks is not the most affordable time to come and also one of the bad times to come because the water park's crowded. So I think ultimately the systems will allow you do it. I think you got to be careful but it doesn’t ultimately confuse the consumer. But there clearly is an opportunity from a revenue management standpoint.
Ray Cheesman
Analyst · Anfield Capital
Second question was macro oriented. There was some write ups in the Wall Street Journal recently about another movie studio deciding it's going to take its library of themes and concepts and create more amusement parks. And since you guys are in that business, I'd be very pleased to learn about the difficulties of making more amusement parks out of Hunger Games.
Matt Ouimet
President
I find it very -- an amusement park of scale, we have said this before the barriers to entry and we are seeing it in the regional amusement park are very substantial in the United States. So I continue to believe that you won't see a regional park still being built other than maybe a Lego park here and there in this country in the foreseeable future. Some of the concepts that Brian gave and others have talked about I am not all that familiar with but I can state they are ultimately going to be much more successful trying those overseas than they are in the U.S.
Ray Cheesman
Analyst · Anfield Capital
Matt, if you have an opinion, can you share, why did the Hard Rock Park fall on its face in such a high visitation area, not that far from your Carowinds, actually.
Matt Ouimet
President
We have studied it Ray because we want to make sure we are smart about it. I suspect there is another reason. The part of the challenge is when you -- by the time you get the road built and the infrastructure and all those stuff that it takes to open up a piece of land it’s hard to have money left over to build the scale. So with not a full day of experience you can’t charge a full day price and those economics break down very quickly. And so I think that's exactly a validation of what we see in terms of our barriers to entry.
Operator
Operator
And that does conclude our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to today's presenters for any additional or closing remarks.
Matt Ouimet
President
I only want to thank you for your questions this morning and your ongoing interest in Cedar Fair. As I hope comes across I am proud of our team and their commitment to the guest experience and I am proud of our world-class properties. The decisions we make today are grounded in our desire to ensure we will still be proud of those decisions 10 years from now. Although I have done more today than I usually do I want to emphasize it again, we have accomplished much in the short period of time. For we believe there is still considerable upside in front of us. We appreciate the open dialog we have in support of our unit holders and we remain committed to executing strategy that creates maximum value in both the short and long term. With that, Stacy?
Stacy Frole
Management
Thank you everyone for joining us on the call today. Should you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to contact me at 419-627-2227. We look forward to speaking with you again in about three months to discuss our fourth quarter and year end results.