Six Flags Entertainment Corp

F:6FE

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Six Flags Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call. My name is [Erika] [ph], and I will be your operator for today's call. During the presentation, all lines will be in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' remarks, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

Thank you. I would now turn the call over to Mr. Steve Purtell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations.

[Steve Purtell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations]

Good morning and welcome to our first quarter 2022 call. With me is Selim Bassoul, President and CEO of Six Flags. We will begin the call with prepared comments and then open the call to your questions.

Our comments will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Federal Securities Laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in such statements. And the company undertakes no obligation to update or revise these statements.

In addition, on the call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures. Investors can find both a detailed discussion of business risks and reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures in the company's annual reports, quarterly reports, and other forms filed or furnished with the SEC.

At this time, I will turn the call over to Selim.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Good morning. Thank you for joining our call. Today, we will focus on three areas. First, I would provide an update on the improvements we are making in our parks. Second, Steve will go into more detail about our financial results and our outlook for the remainder of the year. Finally, I will return to discuss our strategy and why we are excited about our future over both the short and long-term.

Over the past few months, we have been executing quickly to improve the guest experience focusing on our largest part first and implementing the sixth objective I highlighted on our last earning calls. Objective Number 1, improving our ride efficiency and convenience. While it is early, we are very pleased with our progress improving right throughput which has increased our rides per guest per day. A metric that has consistently ranked as the Number 1 determinant of guest satisfaction.

In my first 100 days, I was shocked to learn that nearly 30% of the seats on our coasters are empty every time a train leaves the station. Because groups don't want to split up. This was clearly inefficient and exacerbated our problem with long drive wait times. To fix this issue, we have implemented single rider lanes on our busiest days allowing guests who are willing to ride solo to move quickly through the line and fill the empty seats. This has been tremendously well received by our guests as you can see on the social media.

Our guests have responded favorably to this change. We have also introduced skip the line passes for one ride and each right. Two, creating funds through employee friendliness. One of our biggest guest complaints last year was under staffing of our parks. To fix this issue, this year we began our recruiting efforts earlier in the season than was customary in the past. We are pleased to report our staffing levels are greatly improved versus last year. The improved staffing of our parks together with our enhanced training efforts has empowered our team members to deliver exceptional guest service.

Three, improving park appearance. We have moved quickly to update the front gate experience at several of our large parks, including entirely new entrances with a modern aesthetic. No more ticket boost from the [1980s] [ph. Our new front gate experience allow us to welcome our guests to the new and improved Six Flags with a good first impression. We have also worked diligently to improve our landscaping and renovate many of our restaurants to modernize them and expand their capacity.

Finally, we have given many of our restaurants makeover over by updating their equipment and enhancing their business. This is an area very close to my heart. Four, providing better quality food. Our new Executive Chef and his team have done an amazing job re-imagining our menus. They have created improved version of our top selling item such as burgers, pizza, and chicken tenders. They have created new healthier options like our Asian crunch salad and our rotisserie chicken and they have created delicious new items like our [indiscernible].

The food quality of our new menu is so far superior to anything we've offered in the history of Six Flags and our guests have been excited about this improvement. That being said, I have been in the foodservice business for over two decades and know that quality foodservice is all about execution and consistency.

So, our focus right now is to train the foodservice team at each of our local parks on how to deliver a new menu with speed. We plan to integrate the new menu across our parks on a rolling basis through this operating season. In addition, we are adding select premium brands in our parks like Fat Burger, Starbucks, [Costa Coffee, and NTMs] [ph].

We are also focusing on coffee and we introduced our own brands of coffee shops called Roller Coasters coffee, all of which will further elevate our food and beverage experience and allow our guests to engage with familiar brands that they love.

Five, offering more guest amenities. Indirect response to guest feedback, we have added extra benches and shade structures throughout our parks so guests can sit and relax and parents can experience some quiet time, while their children enjoy the park. We have also added more seating capacity in our dining area and improved the comfort of our dining table with seat cushions and overhead shade.

Again, as I learned from my foodservice days, it's often the little details like this that go along where toward delighting your customers. Small details can [ruin] [ph] 100% of the experience. Another huge amenity we are working on is to upgrade our WiFi and self-coverage in all of our parks.

Finally, objective number six, upgrading our guest facing technology and in particular, our mobile app. We have begun adding digital screens in several of our large parks that displayed current wait times for rides and restaurants. This will help our guests planned activities and navigate our parks more efficiently.

Guest feedback has been very positive and we plan to rule this out across all of our parks by year-end. We’re also working to upgrade our mobile app over the next few months to deliver a more seamless experience, including features such as, providing data for guests to help them plan in the park in advance. So, before you get to our park, you can be planning this whole day for you, your children, your friend, and your grandchildren.

Second, we want to allow our guests to reserve their parking spots the night before. And to know the walking time from one ride or another or a restaurant to another. Improving access to the digital flash pass to skip the line without the need to go through guest services and increasing usage of our mobile food ordering system. This is a huge opportunity for our [Technical Difficulty] today, very few of our guests are using our mobile food ordering system and we believe there is huge opportunities there to make us more efficient and create a better guest experience through ordering food online.

We are also working on an interactive digital map that will help guests seamlessly navigate the park, which should expect to start in 2023. From what you're reading now, innovation is core to the DNA of our new culture, and we are committed to continuously adding new technologies to our parks to create a more seamless and enjoyable guest experience. I am so proud of our park team members for how quickly they implemented these changes.

It is a true testament to the benefits of decentralization and empowering our parks. We are in the very early innings of transforming our impact experience, but the signs of an improving guest experience are already becoming clear. And we are pleased to report that for the first time in several years, our guests satisfaction scores are trending upwards, which is encouraging to see.

Finally, we have refocused our culture to prioritize the guests in everything we do. And we fundamentally believe that by focusing all of our efforts on continuously improving the guest experience, we will drive significant and sustainable earnings growth over time.

I will now turn the call over to Steve, who will provide details about the quarter, as well as the outlook for the remainder of the year. Steve, back to you.

[Steve Purtell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations]

Thank you, Selim, and good morning everyone. Total attendance for the quarter was 1.7 million guests. A 25% increase from first quarter of 2021. Revenue in the quarter was up $56 million or 68% to $138 million. Because of our adoption of a new fiscal calendar in 2021, there are three additional days in first quarter 2021, during which we had attendance of 89,000 guests.

In addition, this year at the Easter holiday, which affects the timing of spring break in many of our markets occurred later in April, shifting approximately 200,000 guests from the first quarter into the second quarter. This increase in attendance was driven primarily by the higher number of operating days in the first quarter of 2022, compared to 2021, which was negatively impacted by pandemic related closures and restriction, particularly our parks in Mexico and California.

Total guest spending per capita increased $19 or 34% versus first quarter 2021. And admission spending per capita increased $10 or 31% and in-park spending capita increased $9 or 39%. The increase in admission spending per capita compared to 2021 was driven primarily by higher realized ticket prices for both single day tickets and the active pass base, as well as by higher revenue for memberships beyond the initial 12-month commitment period.

Approximately $5 of the admissions per capita gain was due to higher realized ticket prices, driven by early progress on our revenue management initiatives, including our new premium pricing strategy. The remaining $5 in admissions per capita was driven by higher membership revenue. This is due to the fact that membership revenue was not recognized in the first quarter 2021 from members whose home park was closed due the pandemic.

So, while the admissions per capita reported in the first quarter of 2022 is representative of our normalized first quarter performance going forward. The year-over-year growth is exaggerated due to the negative impact of membership accounting on the [first quarter 2021] [ph] admission per cap.

The increase in in-park spending per capita, compared to 2021 reflected our improved assortment of in-park offerings. Our in-park pricing initiatives and strong consumer trends. We experienced higher spending across all categories, including sales of food, FLASH pass, and retail.

On the cost side, cash operating SG&A expenses versus 2021 increased by $23 million or 19%, primarily due to the fact that several of our parks were not operating in the first quarter of 2021. Excluding the parks that were not operating in the first quarter of 2021, our cash operating and SG&A expenses were lower year-over-year in the quarter as we have eliminated fixed costs through streamlining our organization and our park operations have become more efficient.

Since our park operations were impacted during the first half of 2021 by pandemic-related closures and capacity limitations at certain parks, we believe it is instructed to also compare our results to 2019, which had a similar operating calendar 2022. Relative to 2019, our first quarter 2022 revenue increased by $10 million or 8%. This increase is driven by a $15 or 54% increase in admissions per capita and a $12 or 58% increase in in-park capita. This higher spending was offset by a 22% decline in attendance and a reduction in sponsorship and international licensing revenue.

Our first quarter cash operating expenses and SG&A decreased slightly versus 2019, largely due to the optimization of seasonal labor at our parks to adjust for lower attendance levels. Less dollars spent on advertising and the linear corporate overhead structure. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was a loss of $16 million, compared to a loss of $46 million in the first quarter 2021, primarily due to the higher attendance in our parks, higher per capita spending, and our efforts to operate more efficiently.

Compared to first quarter 2019, adjusted EBITDA improved by $16 million as a result of higher revenue and lower costs. Our active pass base as of April 3, 2022 comprised of 3.6 million pass holders, representing a decline of 12% versus the same time last year. This included 1.8 million members and 1.8 million traditional season pass holders. We have discontinued selling new memberships, a topic we will discuss shortly.

For that reason, going forward, we will only report the total active pass base. Deferred revenue as of April 3, 2022 was $185 million, down $60 million or 25%, compared to first quarter 2021. The decrease is primarily due to the deferral of revenue last year from guests whose benefits were extended from 2020 into 2021, due to the pandemic. Total capital expenditures to quarter, net of insurance recoveries were $29 million.

We expect our full-year 2022 capital spend to be slightly higher than 2021 with a balanced approach between several exciting new roller coasters and an increased emphasis on implementing guest facing technology and amenities in our parks. Our liquidity position as of April 3 was $712 million. This included $406 million of available revolver capacity, excuse me, $460 million of available revolver capacity, net of $21 million of letters of credit and $252 million of cash.

We expect to use cash from our balance sheet in July to pay down a portion of the 7% secured notes due in 2025. Over the next 12 months to 18 months, we plan to further pay down debt and look to opportunistically refinance our 2024 maturity. However, we may also engage from time-to-time to buy back shares opportunistically if market conditions created dislocations in our stock price.

Before I pass the call back to Selim, I would like to provide an update on our pricing strategy and current trends. We recently introduced a new season pass offering with three pricing tiers. As a result, we discontinued selling new memberships. Our membership offering was made redundant by our new season pass offering, so we consolidated the two programs to simplify our overall product architecture.

While our existing members can maintain their memberships as long as they continue making monthly payments, the new season pass program provides new pass holders the opportunity for a truly premium experience at the highest tiers, as well as the ability to purchase add-on and to enhance each visit. Because we are no longer selling memberships with their monthly payment plans and we are charging higher price points for our new season passes, we expect our active pass days to decline over time.

We continue to test our new pricing and promotional programs with the ultimate goal of maximizing our profitability. It is still quite early in the process, and most of our parks are not yet open full-time. However, we are pleased with the early results. Based on our initial learnings, we have decided to lean even more heavily into pricing and expect this will further lower our attendance.

To put this into context, in [2018] [ph], we had approximately 3 million non-paying guests that attended to one of our various free programs. Our paid attendance is just under 30 million. We have now deliberately eliminated almost all non-paid attendants and year to date, our attendance is trending down approximately 20% from the paid-attendance levels achieved in 2019.

In addition, we are facing approximately 80 million in cost headwinds in 2022 relative to 2019. About 40 million of these headwinds are related to labor wage rates and $20 million relates to our annual bonus accrual, both of which we called out on previous earnings calls. The remaining $20 million relates to inflation and other input costs throughout our park operation, which is accelerated over the past two months.

While we were able to successfully offset these cost headwinds in the first quarter through cost savings programs, we expect to see some impact on our cost structure in the subsequent three quarters of the year.

Finally, we continue to expect our 2022 adjusted EBITDA to be higher than our 2019 adjusted EBITDA driven by higher per capita spending on lower attendance. This will give us a sustainable new base upon which to grow. So, we expect this will help us improve our guest experience and maximize our profit over time.

Overall, we are encouraged by the initial improvements we are seeing in revenue and profitability and the value creation that will come from implementing our premiumization strategy. We feel we are well-positioned to delight our guests and to reward our shareholders over the long-term.

Now, I will pass the call back over to Selim.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you, Steve. On our last call, I talked about our decision to pursue a premiumization strategy, which entails improving the guest experience and charging prices that are in-line with the value we deliver our guests. For years, our primary objective was growing attendance, while attendance is an important performance metric for our business, it's only one of many different variables that impact our bottom line.

Going forward, we are changing the way we think about our business. We will no longer prioritize any one individual metric such as attendance, per capita spending, or Active Pass Base. Instead, our primary objective will be optimizing profits. Let me repeat, we made a conscious decision of trading off attendance for yield. We feel very good about this strategy and we are encouraged by the momentum, but there are many ways to achieve short-term profitability and that is not our goal.

Our goal is to deliver sustainable earning growth over time. And we believe the way to optimize profit in a sustainable manner is to continuously improving the guest experience. So, that will be our main focus. This is a transition year for our company. As a result, we are running less efficiently then we would like.

However, we would learn how to operate in this new environment and make improvements that will benefit us in the future. Our new premiumization strategy is a big departure from our historical strategy of selling seasons passes at low prices in order to upsell guests from single day tickets to season passes.

Raising price is no easy task for a company that has trained customers for decades to expect big discounts. And there has already been some pushback from guests who are reluctant to pay our higher prices, but we strongly believe that if we execute on our goal to dramatically improve the guest experience, over time, we will recapture a portion of our lost attendance despite the higher prices.

There will be certainly bumps along the way, but we are confident that this approach will position us to deliver higher long-term profitability in a sustainable manner and to increase the value of our Six Flags brand. Based on what I've seen in my first six months on the job, I believe Six Flags is well-positioned to delight our guests and to create significant value for our shareholders.

In the mid-term, my optimism is based on a few factors. First, growing consumer demand for local, out of home entertainment. U.S. consumers are eager to get back out and enjoy real world experiences with their families and friends. And we believe Six Flags sits squarely in the middle of everything a consumer is looking for right now.

Our venues are extremely safe. They are outdoors and provide ample room for social distancing and they offer great value for the time you spend in our park versus any other entertainment out there. Second, our guest satisfaction scores are trending upward and are now exceeding pre-pandemic levels. The elevated guest experience will allow us to sustain higher guest spending levels as we move through 2022 into 2023 and beyond.

Third, we have reduced our fixed costs and are diligently scaling our variable cost based on expected attendance. This will allow us to increase our EBITDA margin, despite the cost headwinds that we face today with inflation and wages. Over the long-term, I am optimistic for several reasons.

First, we have unique value propositions. Our combination of solo rides and entertainment for the entire family provide a truly unique experience and an affordable form of entertainment that is resilient even in difficult economic periods. I spent a lot of time visiting our parks.

Over this past weekend, I was in the park for hours and I was thrilled to see the number of families and stroller. This is the fast growing segment of our strategy as [mom with kids] [ph], parents, and grandparents are known to spend more dollars in our parks with their kids and grandkids.

Second, our parks are located in each of the Top 11 markets in the U.S, giving us access to the most lucrative markets around the country. Several of these markets are also in some of the fastest growing regions of the country, expanding our addressable market, and providing a healthy economic backdrop for our business.

Third, and most importantly, it's about our people. We have a talented and dedicated team to execute our strategy. Since I became CEO in November, our team has really stepped up to the challenge of reinvigorating this company and together we have created a customer obsessed culture.

In addition, our team exhibited tremendous resiliency during a very challenging period over the past two years. The strengths of our people is truly why I'm confident and our future is bright. We believe we have the right strategy, the right culture, and the right team to take our performance to the next level.

There are many exciting opportunities ahead and I look forward to updating you on our progress as we improve the guest experience increase our profitability. Allow me to share a few, some recognition, we have been bestowed upon recently.

Late in 2021, Forbes ranked us Americas best – among Americas best employers. In 2022, Forbes again named us one of the best employers for diversity. Recently, USA today, basically has an award called Reader’s Choice, and we won 10 best roller coasters of 2022. Three of our waterparks made Best Reader’s Choice of USA today in 2022 and Amusement Today, a leading trade magazine recently in 2022 gave us the Golden Ticket Awards of Best of the Best.

For this, I’m very proud of not only the recognition that our customers and our guests have selected us as the Reader’s Choice and the fact that we are ranked among the best companies to work for year-after-year, but I’m very happy of being recognized for our diversity and that our guests and our employees are stepping up as you are reimagining our company.

With this, I would like to open the call for any questions. Thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Steve Wieczynski with Stifel.

[Steve Wieczynski, Stifel]

Hi guys. Good morning.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Good morning, Steve.

[Steve Wieczynski, Stifel]

Good morning, Selim. So Selim, you [indiscernible] helm now for, let's call it six months or so, and I'm wondering if you’ve put any more thought into how you're thinking about the long-term EBITDA growth potential as a company. It seems like you guys are now saying that 2022 EBITDA should be higher than 2019, you know that makes sense. And that should set a baseline moving forward, but once we kind of get that baseline, all set, wondering maybe if you can help us think about how we should think about EBITDA growth moving forward based on the changes you're making to your operating strategy? Thanks.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Steve, let me address that. I can think about it in several ways. I think about what is the maximum guest experience we would like to provide? Because it's a direct relationship and correlation to what the guest is willing to spend. So, I'm going to take this question a little bit more because on the mind of all of us is to say, where do you see the future? So, allow me to take a few minutes on this.

One, the issue is, today, if you're going to be spending an hour waiting to get your food in any of our food outlets, you're not going to order food again. You're going to say, I didn't come spend an hour here. I have 20 minutes to get into the restaurant, 45 minutes to get into the parking lot, 45 minutes to get through the entrance, it ruins everything and the spending goes down.

We believe that is at a certain level a number, when we share all our parks, we believe there is a number that we believe is the highest optimum attendance we would like to see across the park in a year to maintain the highest guest experience. Now that number can vary. Today, if you think about the past few years, we've been running roughly at 30 million, a little bit short when you take the freebie ticket, 29.5 to 30 million attendees a year.

It was our suffocating our parks. Our guest score were down. We believe that short of that should be a number that will be more comfortable. And I don't have that number, but it's going to be, I believe at least 10% to 15% short of that number to create that ultimate experience that people want to have.

So, as I walk the park today, and you saw how quickly our guest experience, I'm not talking only our internal. I can share it on Facebook on Yelp, on Tripadvisor, on Google Reviews, all have trended up very quickly because we have limited our attendance in our park by raising the price of the ticket and eliminated the freebies and the discount and the all seasons dining meal that brought a certain type of people on our park and clogged our part and created choking points everywhere.

So, I believe, we don't know yet that number exactly what it is, we're testing it. I think this year is going to tell us, but you have an optimum number where I gave you roughly a little bit what it's going to be. And we believe that our customers are willing to pay more for that experience. So, give me most probably by a few more quarters, I will be able to tell you roughly what is our optimal attendance we’d like to have.

[Steve Wieczynski, Stifel]

Okay. That's great color, Selim. And then second question would be, you know you mentioned in your prepared remarks you have gotten some pushback from certain guests, have you started to push prices higher, I'm just wondering, was that pushback, you know, material or is the pushback coming from some of your lower yielding guest? So, you know, honestly, you're not – I won’t say this the wrong way, but you're not overly upset if they, you know, if they leave or don't come back because this is, you know, essentially part of your strategy change?

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

So, let me give you, I can address that. The pushback has come back from basically three areas. Specifically, one, we have a big, not a big, I would say a number of guest had once a monthly plan. Meaning they want to pay monthly and we have eliminated that monthly plan. And we are rethinking about that and we want those people to be able to enjoy that park.

We like this type of customers, but for whatever reason, our monthly plan the way it was done before, which is through our membership, we had too many things attached to it. Too heavy discounting, meal plans, free parking, no blackout date, heavy discount on retail, heavy discount on food, so we stopped it.

We [indiscernible] whoever is in it, and we said we're going to stop that. But I think we need to rethink about a monthly plan that is, it's catered to that segment of our guest that would like to continue paying monthly. And we are rethinking about that and I think we're putting plans together to introduce something this summer.

So that will most probably take care of those people who will ask just because they would rather pay on installments. We’ll reintroduce that. [That's an easy solve] [ph]. We had a lag; we will recapture a big portion of those people. The second part of our customers are customers who like to come and eat our part at that meal, at its all seasons dining meal, which is attached with the seasons path. That dining meal was highly unprofitable. Very unprofitable for us. And it was choking everybody else.

So, we had a part of our population that I can name around 10% of our guests liked the dining plan. And I can tell you the numbers, it was around $80 for the full-year for the full season, and it’s included lunch and dinner for the full season and free drink, free meals, fries snack, very, very – very expense to run and choked everything.

Those people would come in and they can have several of those and sometimes they will most probably abuse the system as you've seen online and it created a lot of choking point for those people coming in and regulars who came to eat in our park all day long and then ruined the experience of somebody who came in on a single day ticket with their family who paid a lot of money to come and paid parking and came in and now they have 45 minutes to an hour waiting to get a meal, while those other people are choking the line for $80 for the whole season.

So that's gone. And on those people are most probably upset. I see it on the social media and are upset about that. So, if we want to introduce a dining plan, it has to be totally re-visited. Third is a number of people who came on a freebie. Meaning, bring a friend along. And we had a lot of those. In 2019, there were over 3 million free tickets. I don't want free tickets. Free tickets, people [indiscernible] data, those people don't spend any money in our parks.

They come for free. They come in. They don't even buy a bottle of water. So, from that perspective, I don't want to have them choked. And those are the three components of where we've seen our attendance go down.

Now, we’ll address one of them, because I think it's fair to address the monthly plan. We will most probably rethink whether we introduce a dining plan, a season dining plan or not or an all-exclusive, but it's going to be completely changed from what people expect, because I want to avoid the choking points.

So, from that perspective, we are tweaking where we're going, but I will tell you the spent per guest have gone up significantly. The guest satisfaction score are fantastic, and we are re-imaging the industry, not only Six Flags, because the whole industry is about attendance. Unfortunately, [Wall Street] [ph] and analysts and everybody, investors saying how many people came to your park?

And I think there was a condition to create that need to show higher attendance. And it complicated the business. It complicated the way our employees were delivering the service. It complicated our accounting. It complicated our security and safety. So, anecdotally, I'm going to leave you with the last note on this. Our safety incidents compared to last year are down by 80%. I'm talking security item where people would get into argument in the parks, by 80%.

[Steve Wieczynski, Stifel]

Okay, thank you. That is terrific color. Really appreciate it.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of James Hardiman with Citi.

[James Hardiman, Citi]

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. And I appreciate all the new color, right. This is such a new strategy. I think a lot of us have been sort of struggling to put the pieces together. And so, we have a full quarter of results, albeit, sort of an incomplete time of year seasonally, but then all of the anecdotal commentary is really helpful, but I want to make sure I understand at least some of what you've given us today.

So, if we compare first quarter results to 2019, attendance was up more than or down, I should say, more than 20%, per capita are up more than 50%, margins were up pretty dramatically versus 19%. I think, I heard how you, sort of lay out the shape of things to come over the course of this year is that you're going to lean into pricing even more. And so, you know, attendance might come down by even more, per caps might go up by even more, but that maybe, sort of margins are going to be tougher to grow at the same rate that you did in the first quarter, but then maybe beyond this year, you get back some of that attendance and you get back some of that margin. So, I guess the first question is, is that a decent summary of how you see things going in the next few quarters and then the next few years?

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

James, I'm going to turn it over to Steve, but I'm going to add a few things. One, there is a lag as you mentioned between people recognizing the beautification. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to most probably hopefully talk about beautification on one of your questions. And I'm going tell you what we've done in beautification in specific details. And there's a lag between people who say, okay, Selim raised the price, what am I getting for?

So first, I told you, I will talk about the number of new rides we have coming in the parks. I'm going to talk about all the things that we've been winning and then I'll tell you anecdotally what I'm seeing given the fact that I am very, very extremely pushing on the last 5% of excellence, and we'll talk with example of that. But I'm going to turn it to Steve first to address specifically what we see from a little bit of forward-looking. Steve, back to you.

[Steve Purtell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations]

Thank you, James. Thanks for the question and I just have to mention, I understand that the web link didn't work at the beginning of the call and maybe went live 10 minutes late. If you missed any portion of the first part of the call, it's available on our website where you could hear the full recording. To go to your specific question, James, if you're looking at the way [indiscernible] as you said, we're going to lean more into pricing and yield versus attendance and the per capita gain we see in Q1 is quite dramatic growth over last year.

Just remind you, $5 of that growth is due to the membership accounting. So that the Q1 per cap does represent what we'll see going forward assuming that we have the same membership profile a year from now, but the growth rate over last year is exaggerated. If you take $5 off this probably more representative of the growth rate.

Going forward, you typically do see per caps decrease from Q1 because the membership accounting impact is less pronounced in the higher attendance quarters and we have water parks opening up. So, while we do expect them to remain at elevated level, not quite to the same degree. On looking at costs, we did call out that we have these cost headwinds. We have taken the wage increases over 2019, which we call that to be about $40 million impact. We have the bonus and we have the other inflationary increases of another $20 million, which we're going to work to offset.

We were able to do that in Q1 successfully, but it is likely that we will see those impacts in the next three quarters that would not be able to fully offset. But I think if you look at that, if you look at the attendance being down from so far this year it’s 20% on a paid basis. That's the trend we're seeing early in the year and we still have 85% of the attendance left after April, but that kind of shows how that the year might shake out.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

James, let me now – thank your Steve. Let me come back and give you some more flair about pricing. I have to congratulate SeaWorld and Cedar Fair for how they have maintained better pricing integrity than us. So, even with our new premiumization strategy, we’ll remain around 25% to 30% below them across – on average across every one of our – whether it's single day tickets to seasons pass, we are below them. And I need to most probably get to that gap that I need to close.

So, we didn't close all that gap already with our price increase and we anticipate to close the gap maybe somewhere and maybe the summer or maybe getting off next year because we have most probably taken a huge increase on all our guests and we are a little bit coy of taking another price increase maybe the shift. Maybe if we are bold, we'll do it again a second time this year, if not for sure, toward the end of the year we're going to take and catch up with our competitors or our other, I don't want to call them competitors, because ultimate we don't compete in many of the markets, but against our industry peers who have done a tremendous job in getting the integrity of that pricing. So, we have room, another 20% to 30% just to catch up to them.

[James Hardiman, Citi]

That is all really good color. And then just maybe one more follow up here. Selim, you talked about sort of the optimal attendance. And if I'm doing the math right, I mean you're talking down 10% to 15% versus the 2019 number adjusted for the free tickets, right? So, if it was 33 million in 2019, 30 million paying and then 10% to 15% lower than that, so, we're in that sort of down 20% range, I guess that, just making sure that math is right, but what does that allow you to do on the cost side? It seems with that many fewer customers, you know there should naturally be some meaningful cost offsets that allow you to, sort of dig into some of the cost inflation that Steve talk about?

[Steve Purtell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations]

Yes. I can take that question as well. So, we are definitely looking at our labor hours in the park, which is the staffing levels we can adjust based on attendance. So, when we have this more manageable volume of attendance, it enabled us to scale back on security because we’re having less incidents in the parks. We are able to look at restaurants, the stores that are open, and also the hours that they're open because the attendance pattern is also changing with the different guest profile.

So, the parks may empty out early or late earlier in the evening and people may arrive at different times during the day, which has enabled us to scale back that biggest cost we have, which is the seasonal labor and then you see the impact from it during in Q1.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

I think the other part I would like to talk about is, literally providing a few upgrade as we upgrade our experience. I start with a couple of things. One, let's start with beverages. Our beverage program, I'm talking beyond Coke and Sodas. I'm talking about Alcohol. We just now – I was in the park again on Mother's Day, and I spent five hours in the park with our team. The park looks fantastic.

We’ll talk about that – I’ll talk about my strolling and what my guests told me, because they recognize who I am, as I walk in the park, been there quite a bit. People know me. They started knowing me as I walk with our team members and I tell them, improve this and pointing to this and all that they start coming at me and telling me how they enjoy the park. So, on Mother's Day, what was fantastic, it was a hot day, we have just put in a fantastic new bar. Fantastic.

It looks fantastic. It's has shade. It has fans, it has to [misting] [ph] to it. And it's opening up by Memorial Day weekend. This bar can fit most probably 40 people sitting there, and you're watching the roller coaster going, you’re under the shade, we are doing a lot more alcohol serving where adults can come in, let their children run around. You can get a mojitos, a margarita, a beer and enjoy in the shade being misted, enjoying and sitting, which we did not do before.

Well, we did not do this. I talked about coffee. We are putting coffee and pastries and we know that coffee and pastries is a good thing that attracts our people. We've seen the growth of coffee and we need to embark on a complete coffee and upgraded hot and cold drinks that gives us a better experience.

So, for me, I see those are tremendous opportunities to grow. The other opportunity to grow is the ability to move people around to give them an experience where did it improve by on our merchandising, improve by on our flash passes. So, on Sunday, there was a group of four, two brothers and two friends, they were four sitting in our old star cafe. And I sat with them to ask them how did they experience. They had just moved from Denver.

It was their first time in the park and they just opened an exotic car dealership to sell exotic car dealership. And they came to the park and they told me what they like at the park. They came in, Sunday is their only day and they all are partner in that business. They wanted to take an escape and they came. And they enjoyed the fact that immediately, whether the park had 6,000 people or 20,000 people, they going to buy a flash pass.

They bought the flash pass. They said, Selim, I want a flash. I said how was your experience on the flash pass? Delightful. We will not come to your park without a flash pass. I think flash pass, it was easy for them, it was only QR Code. They got the QR Code then they were eating. And they ordered chicken tenders and burgers. And some of them had beer, one of them had a shake, and I asked them how was the food? They said tremendous. Tremendous.

They said, I love the burger, it's fresh. The price are exceptional. The chicken tender, they raved about the chicken tender. And those are I think what I call very foodie type people, and I was very proud of what they said. This is the type of clientele I want. They come in, they bought the flash pass, they came in, they ordered the food on our table, they had milkshake, they had a beer, they had all of that, and they ate.

And then one of them showed me his bag. And he had both [indiscernible] of our new T-shirts, we have tremendous retail merchandising that has done a great job and they were excited about that. This is the type of customers I want. For friends and brothers and grandparents and mom and young family to enjoy our park and spend money. And I think we have a huge propensity to extend the money if the experience is good.

Those people they came and they were choked in line, I bet you, they will most probably run away. They said, I'm not coming back. And I was delighted to see those type of customers coming in. And I think it's yield. I want people to be able to spend more money, you only spend more money in a park if your mood is good.

If you're not frustrated and struggling and fighting other people and people pushing you to get their food and teenagers coming in and shoving between you and cutting lines. This is the thing we have to change. And we're doing it very fast, but this is not the way Six Flags used to be. I'm sorry to say, So, it might take us a few quarters to get there. Thank you.

[James Hardiman, Citi]

Thank you very much.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

I know, I'm running too long on this, but I want to give the flair.

[James Hardiman, Citi]

No. That's great stuff. And I think everybody appreciates the picture your [painting here] [ph]. So, much appreciated. Thanks guys.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you, James. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of David Katz with Jeffries.

[David Katz, Jeffries]

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for all the detail. Appreciate you taking my question.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you, David.

[David Katz, Jeffries]

So, do you have a, I'd like to just talk about margins and whether there might be, sort of a target notionally that you have as to where we could land, right? Because there's so much change on the one hand, there's obviously cost pressures that Stephen talked about a bit on the other. Where should this be sustainably long-term some aspirational target?

[Steve Purtell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations]

Hey, this is Steve. We don't have a target margin, but I'd say our growth, our target is to grow revenue faster than cost each year and we expect our margins to be higher than 2019. As you're seeing from Q1, we’re able to grow revenue faster for the cost we expected to be the case going forward.

[David Katz, Jeffries]

Right.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

I think David, we don't want to allude this question, but certainly for us it’s still too early. We might need a couple of quarters. We know that we've given you somewhat of an indication that our EBITDA will be higher than 2019, give us a couple of more quarter because we are like you moving too many pieces right now. The only thing I could tell you that cap, you know the spending per guests is up, significantly up, but let us see where we get.

We're still working on attendance with those program in terms of the monthly plan that we need to institute and we need to understand also as the season goes into full swing. We want to understand, some of our parks have not yet opened. So, I need to get a flair of what's going happen. What's going happen in our water park? What's going to happen to – because in our water parks, let's take an example, in our water parks, we just bought and it was very difficult to get 2,000 brand new lounge chairs.

So, for me, I don't know about all of you, for me, if I'm going go three, four times a summer to water park, I want to have a reserve seat. I want to be able, if I have my daughter who’s six-year old, I want to be able to watch her and have a seat and not fight with everybody putting their towel. It's similar to a hotel. It used to drive me crazy when I go to a very expensive resort. And now I have to get up at six in the morning so I can put a book or put a towel on the chair.

Now, if I don't put that, I don't have a chair at the pool. Well, I came to a resort to be on the beach, there is no chair. So, what we're doing now, we are basically saying, we're going to charge for our chairs at the prime location. So, we're going to institute a new program with, we're going to basically give you the experience that you would like. You come in and you want to be there, you're going be [indiscernible] reserve chairs, which we've never done before.

You're going to come in and pay for chairs and pay for cabana. We increased our cabana. So all is moving. Is the guests are going to accept paying for chairs? I don't know, but you're not going to be sitting in that area unless you pick up your chair, and cabana’s we've already paid – have paid cabana, but we've increased them significantly.

We're elevating the experience on water park, but all this is dynamic activities and pricing that we are testing things that's never been tested. We've never charged for chairs and our season pass can come in and done, you can put – somebody can put 10 towels and never use the chair, but then we had rules, we can't take the towels away, and it created a lot of issues in our park.

Today, we're putting chairs and you're going to be paying for those or reserve, you reserve them in advance. So allow us a few more quarters to be able to give you a much better idea of where we are. But everything we're trying to do is monetized in a fair way in the way you and me and our family expect to go to our water parks, for example. And we'll have attendance coming to.

So, changing our POS system, so I can go to you. You're sitting in your chair, watching your children, enjoying the park in your own chair and then I'm going to have an attendant come and say, how can I serve you with the new POS system that being launched in the next months. So, I can take orders while you're sitting in your chairs comfortably and we're renting umbrellas, umbrellas for rent. So, it's new for us. It's all dynamic.

I'm sorry, I'm not being able to give you specific numbers, but it's all been done in the last, believe me. I've been here six months and we are changing almost every paradigm shift we're doing in this company.

[David Katz, Jeffries]

Understood. Is there – it is, you did take a unusual step of referencing a couple of your other competitors in the marketplace, is there some reference you might be willing to make with respect to where their profitability might ? Is that maybe an aspirational level we could talk about? And I, frankly, I wanted to sneak in one other detailed question, which is I know you talked about the satisfaction scores. Have you given us a relative progress as to how much they have gone up?

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

We have not, but I don't know if…

[Steve Purtell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations]

I don’t we could comment on our peers with their profitability. I think we expect to be growing our margins over time. When you look at our guest satisfaction scores, I could tell you that they are above pre-pandemic levels now. We have a scale from 1 to 10 that we have inside our parks where we've been doing the same service year-after-year. So, we have a very consistent baseline to look at.

So, that's very encouraging. But we're also managing to look at the social media and all the different sites and looking at the sentiment, and we have seen the positive sentiment grow each month since January. And in fact, the positive sentiment has gone over 90% in April when you look at the positive versus of negative comments, and that's quite a bit higher than it was even just six months ago. So, we feel really good about that.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

So we can use Facebook, for example. In December 2021, it was 73% positive, 27% negative. Today in March 2022, it's 91% positive, 9% negative. A huge change just in Facebook. 18% improvement just in the few months. And in by March, we were not yet fully implemented with all the changes. So, I can give you that. I can tell you also on Twitter, Twitter was 59% in December positive, 41% negative, we are now 87% positive, 13% negative.

[David Katz, Jeffries]

It's great. Thank you so much.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Ian Zaffino with Oppenheimer.

[Ian Zaffino, Oppenheimer]

Hi, great. Just very quickly. I just wanted to, kind of, you know, key in on some of the food. You know, you talk about the [indiscernible], you know, how are we going to be thinking about the food business? Is this going to be increased take rate, is it going to be increased price? I mean, that's probably going to be both, but how do we think about that as far as take rate versus price and any other kind of color there as you try to premiumize the food offering? Thanks.

[Steve Purtell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations]

I think, I think about a value. At the end, everybody understands value. Value comes with very simple things. At the end, we still offer mostly our business is [fair-fold] [ph]. I think you're not, still people go to a park, they don't expect a Filet mignon. Okay. They expect a very decent burger, a good hot dog, a good chicken tender, a good pizza. Those are most probably remain our major components of what people want to eat. Because it's fast. It's finger food, they can get back on the rides, and enjoy the ride, enjoy the park.

So, the components of food is going to be the following. Of course, when you go to a ball park or you go to a game or you go – food is not cheap. We are trying to create value. Value comes in many ways. Value comes, you know we will never be able to offer a $2 hot dog the way Costco does it. I wished I could. We are set-up, infrastructure and cost wise to do that. And people don't expect that coming to our park or any parks or any ball park for that reason, but they expect, if they're going to come there, it should be consistently good hot dog.

It should be fast. It should be hot. It should be all beef and very sizable. We expect our pizza. If I'm going give you a pizza, it has to be a very good sized pizza, real cheese and the best tomato sauce you're going to get. People understand value. So, and it has to be fresh. And from us, I know that people will buy a good food if it has value. And I've seen that happen in the chain business.

In the chain business, you still have what I call the quick serve, the McDonald, the BurgerKing offering a decent burger, but look to the growth what happened of Five Guys, Shake Shack, In-N-Out Burger, Hopdoddy, I can name many burger chains that have gone up Fat Burgers, Johnny Rockets, all come up and been able to price a lot more than what regular burger and people paid it. Even though it's not a gourmet burger, but the value was there to offer a burger that costs $7, $8. I think we are talking the same approach to elevate the game.

Now, the other approach is alcohol. The other oppose is coffee in beverages. Desserts is part of our business that gives people – it's hot in the summer, I want to have more ice cream. And we have not optimized the ice cream. People love ice creams. The other thing we need to do is put carts. We don't have – we don't go to you. You are in-line or you're strolling. I don't have those standing location because we did not have the POS system, the handheld device that allowed us to take orders.

So, we're doing all that technology, so I can go to you. So, if you are sitting in a line in a right, I can come through you and while you're sticking, you can get a stick of an ice cream. But today I could not do it. We are constrained by our technology to be able to go through the park where POS system and label and cut. And now we're putting that together. So, I'm putting a lot of technology in our food to create that value.

[Ian Zaffino, Oppenheimer]

Alright, great. Thank you very much for the color.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you.

[Operator]

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

[Chris Woronka, Deutsche Bank]

He, good morning guys. Appreciate all the details and color so far. First quarter, really impressive per cap spend, understand the attendance strategy, the pricing strategy. Question is, if you get into peak summer and you open all the parks and 1Q maybe squeeze a little bit to the Sunbelt, right? Do you think the strategy, is there any way to getting any kind of early indication whether the strategy of pricing resonates with some of the parks in the more markets where maybe population growth has changed a little bit and general demographics are maybe a little bit less favorable?

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

I think that a premiumization strategy works everywhere. So, let's talk about literally what drives our business. What drives our business is our top six to seven parks. Those six, seven parks have already been out and open and we're seeing the premiumization working. Now, when you talk about a smaller park, you might be right, you might have to do a little bit more dynamic pricing, but then we can offset it about a lot of cost down, but think of our business 70% to 80% of our business is run by our biggest parks. And so far, we have been seeing the premiumization work on our biggest park.

Now, there might be one or two parks where we're not going to be able to get to where we are exactly, but that's less of concern because they are not as big of a driver, but I think premiumization will work everywhere. Maybe not to the same extent as it could work in Los Angeles or in New Jersey or in San Antonio or Dallas, but I would say, we are pushing premiumization and we're willing to take the brunt of having lower attendance to create the brand, and the willingness to come there. That will come into the strategy.

So, I think one thing we should not be doing is suddenly stop short after a couple of quarter and start discounting again. So, we're not going to do that. We're going to continue saying, we are a premium brand, we act like a premium brand and we're going continuing across all our parks to do that. There might be some dynamic pricing, but everything is going to go up and the value is going to go up. And we're investing on small park the same way we're investing in the big park.

We're doing the beautification in all our smaller parks. We are doing – all the work we're doing in our water parks across the board. We're doing – all that restroom and restaurant upgrades and food upgrade on all our parks. So, I think we’re going to see people willing to pay more to be in our parks.

[Chris Woronka, Deutsche Bank]

Okay. Very helpful, thanks Selim. And I guess, if we just look at first quarter and again that's really not the full example yet, but when we think about per caps in park, is there any way to break that down between what was pricing on menu items or retail and what was just, kind of transaction count?

[Steve Purtell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations]

Chris, I could take that. It was mainly pricing revenue management initiatives in the parks. The one caveat I'd say is, we did introduce the one day flash pass with the QR Codes. So, as a new product offering, which enhanced our revenue, but by and large the other items are pricing and premiumization of our offerings.

[Chris Woronka, Deutsche Bank]

Okay. Very helpful. Thanks guys.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Barton Crockett with Rosenblatt Securities.

[Barton Crockett, Rosenblatt Securities]

Okay. Thanks for taking the question. I guess one thing that I wanted to get your opinion on your stocks and the stocks in the sector are really trading like there's one or maybe all of three things coming at you. First, would be that there's some type of COVID pull forward that's unsustainable either in the amount of money that people are spending in parks or the number of people coming to parks; two that maybe there's some type of recession coming; and three that maybe there's some type of COVID wave coming back that could affect attendance? I was wondering if you could talk about your perspective on that? Do you see anything that would lend any subsets to that or not?

[Steve Purtell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations]

Hey, Barton, it's Steve. So, I think if you're thinking about fears of recession, our industry, the reason our theme park industry has been shown to be very resilient, I think if you look at the 2008, 2008 timeframe, our attendance went down only 6%. And if you look at what people are tending to cut back on in that type of environment would be vacations, air travel, hotels and we're really a regional destination that people drive to.

So, the people don't go on their vacations, you do have that trade down effect because they still want these things with their kids in the summer. And then, if you look at what we've seen in our parks, as far as in-park spending being up as much as it is, there's really no indication that people are feeling the pinch from the recession. I think all of the stimulus money and those types of things have kind of drawn their course.

I don't see that we're seeing the pent-up demand that might be a concern and that will go away, because a lot of our parks have already been open for the past year, only in some markets that we kind of open – weren't open this time last year. So, I do think we feel really good about the way we're set up for basically anything that may happen this summer.

[Barton Crockett, Rosenblatt Securities]

What about COVID? I mean, does that, you know, the cases are up? Does that have any impact in some markets in California that happened sensitive to that in the past?

[Steve Purtell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations]

I think that we're learning to live with the virus and that if you look, if the case counts up, you see the severity is quite low and I think people are just learning how to live in that environment and they're still going out and you do see people – while they have experiences they're coming off of COVID where they kind of turn their focus to buying goods for their homes, but now you see, kind of reversal and people wanting to get back out and enjoying experiences, and we don’t think that will change.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

I think the combination, if that's the case, I have no data on that. I'm just saying it from different perspective. If you look at two things, trends this summer that I believe we haven't seen it yet, so it's not something, it's just anecdotally from me. If you believe gas prices have gone up and you're worried about COVID, you’re not going to be on a plane. Because masks are off, we are in a perfect environment to be outdoor and come and again as type of entertainment spend eight hours in our park for what you spend, per hour, we are among the cheapest entertainment you will get out there. And people are going to go out and I think they're going to go to outdoors.

So, I believe if that's the case, we should be benefiting a lot from people coming to the parks. Just because if you don't want to drive because of gasoline prices and air fare have gone through the roof, and airlines have cut back a lot of flights, and driving more demand to fewer flights and more money, I would say, we have a big chance this summer to reap a lot of benefits, just we haven't seen it.

I mean, I don't want to say there is data predicting that, but I bet, if I have to bet, we should be seeing an uptick given those two trends. Outdoor, if COVID comes back, strongly we're outdoor and gasoline prices and air fare tickets and not traveling they’d say, let’s come spend a day in the park.

[Barton Crockett, Rosenblatt Securities]

Okay. That's helpful. And then just separately, just curious, was weather notable as an impact of positive or negative in the quarter?

[Steve Purtell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations]

Barton, we always have weather. So, it's never perfect the way we'd like it to be, so we don't really call out the weather impacts.

[Barton Crockett, Rosenblatt Securities]

Okay. Alright, thanks guys.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Paul Golding with Macquarie Capital.

[Paul Golding, Macquarie Capital]

Thanks so much and thanks so much for the color. I was wondering if you could remind us a bit about what the new yield opportunities will be through the app enhancement? You mentioned QR Code for taking orders and we've heard about mobile food ordering pilots, just wondering if you could highlight what new e-commerce opportunities might be as you enhance the app? And the I have a follow up. Thank you.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

So, let's start to first with breakdown what monetizing opportunities are, parking, we're now – we put in a lot preferred parking that before, we used to give parking for free [indiscernible] our system. Parking has become a coveted item. So, we have preferred parking. So, parking is a new item for us that becomes a driver. Flash passes and signals ride the lane with the QR Code is another area for us of monetization, other than tickets and admissions and seasons passes.

So, food becomes our third monetization, as we introduce more menu items better menu items and we've raised prices. Number four is, retail. Our retail stores are beautiful. And our retail merchandise, I have to give credit and commend our procurement for our retail, the merchandise looks superb. So, from that perspective, those are truly the areas I see beyond admission that we're focusing on. And I think we're hitting on four areas that would be a good driver for us.

[Paul Golding, Macquarie Capital]

Great. And in terms of any costs you may be incurring as part of the transformation, I was wondering if there was anything meaningful in the cost base that we should be keeping an eye on or expect to come out at some point as you deploy and settle on some of these enhancements? Thank you.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

So, part of it is CapEx. Part of it is OpEx. So, in terms of OpEx, okay, our biggest headwind is truly inflation and wages. Those are most probably the one that Steve talked about. In terms of a few items, as you know, we are rolling out a ERP system. We are trying to make sure that it rolled out correctly. We are putting all POS system in all our parks and our being ability to hold handheld devices. We're in the process of putting sensors through our parks so we can do real time.

We just installed all those digital, unique digital screens, outdoor screen that gives you real time in our park on rides and restaurants rolling that up. But I think a lot of them is CapEx that we've already incurred and we're going to continue incur some of OpEx. So, I don't see much major things in 2022 that will most probably be surprised beyond the headwind of inflation. Straight inflation on buying catch up cups water [indiscernible] well you talked about that.

So, we have food cost and waste utilities – utilities have been up and wages. I think there’s nothing else that we have not expressed in this and we have talked about. I think Steve gave those numbers and what would they be.

[Paul Golding, Macquarie Capital]

Great. Thank you.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line with Ben Chaiken with Credit Suisse.

[Ben Chaiken, Credit Suisse]

Hey, how is it going?

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Hi, Ben.

[Ben Chaiken, Credit Suisse]

On the cost side, you listed kind of three areas of optimization in the quarter, I think seasonal labor advertising and then leaner corporate overhead? And then you also called out the 80 million of headwinds that you feel in 2022 versus 2019, I guess conceptually why would it make sense that you could offset those in 1Q, but not for the remainder of the year? I guess it's just a very large range of outcome. So, if you could help us to bracket it a little bit.

[Steve Purtell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations]

Hey, Ben, it's Steve. If you look at the Q1, that's our seasonally smallest quarter. So, the overall costs, there's only five parks opened for the whole quarter. As you go into the year and all of our parks are open, the amount of parks, with the wages become a bigger component of our overall cost base. So, the fixed cost changes we made will be less pronounced.

We also don't spend that much on advertising and that type of thing in Q1. So, I think it's just, we're looking ahead and saying that as our volume of cost the goods go up and our labor hours go up, it could be more difficult to offset all of those inflationary increases.

[Ben Chaiken, Credit Suisse]

Okay, that's helpful. And then on the price side, I think Selim you mentioned, if I heard you correctly, potentially taking another price hike this year, can you just kind of dive into the data points you're looking at that make you comfortable doing that either whether they're internally with your current customer base and kind of the elasticity or external, I think you maybe mentioned potentially what peers are doing, but wanted to explore that? Thanks.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

I think honestly there’d room to grow top pricing. The question is, when? Do we do it again in – one thing helping us is, all our customer and guests understand that inflation is everywhere. Do we do it again? Remember, we've done a four Six Flags significant change for our guests in the pricing. While we still are still below our competitor – other industry players, not competitors, industry players for our guests is a big leap of what we've done.

The question is, do we go ahead in the midst of inflation for our guests from gasoline prices going up, everything going up in the [indiscernible] specialty income to take another pricing. So, it's just a decision of when. We're going to do it, but we don't know when. So, the question is, we're thinking saying, should we go through the year, let people enjoy the beautification.

Let them come to the park, enjoy and see what we've done, and enjoy strolling through France. Let's talk about that. I wanted to talk about that and give me up an [opening bench] [ph] to talk about that. France is a section in the park in Dallas. That's beautiful. And there are many of them around all our parks. They are different names to them, but they've been invested not taken care of and it was just a passageway way.

In Dallas, this in the park, France is initiated shaded area with beautiful trees. It has a makeup all Fort, French Fort and there was nothing there. So, what we've done, we've put in a lot of flowers put those French Flags, we reinvigorate the Fort. We went and put cannons on top of the Fort and then we ended up putting flowers, benches, and French music and we're opening up now a French Pastry Shop, French latte and [indiscernible].

I was there on Sunday, and people were sitting enjoying this significantly. The question is, and I enjoyed it. I sat there with them and talked to many of the guests sitting in France and they said, Selim thank you for bringing it back. This is fantastic for us. So, the question is, should we, today, again go take a price increase which we can. We can. We're facing inflationary pressure like everybody else or should we let people enjoy all of those and say, now, I'm willing to come back and do that.

So, what do we do first? We've done it first without beautification. So, we raised prices without beautification, now we are letting people enjoy. I am more leaning toward doing it more in, most probably sometime in later summer to take prices. If you're asking me, maybe it's a long way to answer the question, but I'm giving you what's going on in my mind and the mind of how senior leadership team and our park President is to say, opportunistically we can, this is dynamic prices we can take day to day, but our biggest opportunity now and then is to focus on our operating hours, our efficiency, our seasonal labor.

And then pricing will occur again this year, but the timing I'm – we're leaning toward more later in the year. Just to let you know what we’ve done.

[Ben Chaiken, Credit Suisse]

That's super helpful. One last one that might be helpful. I don't know if you guys have the data at your fingertips, but there's kind two things going on, one is, a channel mix shift. You know, you mentioned not, those 3 million freebie in the park in 2019, the other is, kind of a like-for-like increase in ticket pricing. If we look versus 2019, how much of the per cap uplift and whatever data you have whether that's total spending or admissions, but how much of that is, kind of mix from removing different channels and how much of that is pricing growth taken on a customer? If that makes sense?

[Steve Purtell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations]

The growth we see is all from pricing. The channel hasn't changed that much, I'd say the park mix, the mix between single day tickets and season pass holders has not changed. It's purely pricing that you're seeing.

[Ben Chaiken, Credit Suisse]

If you have 3 million freebie, I mean, isn't that, almost a thousand basis points of price, right there on the per cap, if you take out 3 million people who were paying [Multiple Speakers]?

[Steve Purtell, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations]

When I was talking about price, I was talking about the price of the ticker itself, not the yield, but, yeah, you’re right. If you have a free ticket that brings on your average, yield.

[Ben Chaiken, Credit Suisse]

Right. So, of the mix, the people that you don't. Okay. Maybe we can catch up offline. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you, Ben.

[Operator]

And there are no further questions in queue at this time. I'll turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

[Selim Bassoul, President and Chief Executive Officer]

So, I want to thank everybody for the time and the questions and the engagement with us. Thank you very much. I want to thank you for your continued support and I remain very pleased that Six Flags is uniquely positioned to create fun and thrilling memories for all. Take care and we hope to see you at our park this summer, and we hope to have an Investor Day sometime in the next few quarters to show you all what you've done at the park. And again, thank you for all. Have a blessed day. Bye-bye.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.