Six Flags (SIX) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Six Flags (SIX 1.06%)
Q1 2022 Earnings Call
May 12, 2022, 8:00 a.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Six Flags Q1 2022 earnings conference call. My name is Erica, and I will be your operator for today's call. [Operator instructions] Thank you.

I'll now turn the call over to Steve Purtell, senior vice president, investor relations.

Steve Purtell -- Senior Vice President of 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 will 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 parks first and implementing the six objectives I highlighted on our last earning calls. Objective No. 1, improving our ride efficiency and convenience.

While it is early, we are very pleased with our progress, improving ride throughputs, which has increased our rides per guest per day, a metric that has consistently ranked as the No. 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 ride 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 rides.

Two, creating funds through employee friendliness. One of our biggest guest complaints last year was the understaffing 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 that 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 boosts from the 1980s.

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 restrooms to modernize them and expand their capacity. Finally, we have given many of our restaurants makeover by updating their equipment and enhancing their appearance. 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 reimagining our menus. They have created improved version of our top-selling items 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 empanadas and beignets. The food quality of our new menu is 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 teams 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 Fatburger, Starbucks, Costa Coffee, and [Inaudible]. We are also focusing on coffee. And we introduced our own brand of coffee shops called Roller Coasters Coffee, all of which will further elevate our food and beverage experience and allow our guests to engage for familiar brands that they love.

Five, offering more guest amenities. In direct 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 areas 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 a long way toward delighting your customers.

Small details can ruin 100% of the experience. Another huge amenity we are working on is to upgrade our WiFi and cell 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 display current wait times for rides and restaurants.

This will help our guests plan their activities and navigate our parks more efficiently. Guest feedback has been very positive, and we plan to roll 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 their day 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 us because today, very few of our guests are using our mobile food ordering system, and we believe there is huge opportunity 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 we expect to start in 2023. From what you're hearing 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 in-park 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 guest satisfaction scores are trending upwards, which is encouraging to see. Finally, we have refocused our culture to prioritize the guest 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 of 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 of 2021, during which we had attendance of 89,000 guests.

In addition, this year, 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 restrictions, particularly our parks in Mexico and California. Total guest spending per capita increased $19, or 34%, versus first quarter 2021. 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 from memberships beyond the initial 12-month commitment period. Approximately $5 of the admissions per capita gain was due to a 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 first quarter 2021 from members whose home park was closed due to the pandemic.

So while the admissions per cap we 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 2020/'21 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 and 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 first quarter 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 instructive to also compare our results to 2019, which had a similar operating calendar to 2022. Relative to 2019, our first quarter 2022 revenue increased by $10 million or 8%. This increase is driven by a $15, or a 54%, increase in admissions per capita and a $12, or 58%, increase in the in-park per 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 a leaner 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 of 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 3rd, 2022, compared to three -- 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 3rd, 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 to 2021 due to the pandemic. Total capital expenditures in the 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 3rd 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 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 create a dislocation 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've 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-ons 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 Base 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 2019, we had approximately three million nonpaying guests that attended through one of our various reprograms.

Our paid attendance was just under 30 million. We have now deliberately eliminated almost all nonpaid attendance. 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 operations, which has accelerated over the past two months. While we're 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 and lower attendance.

This will give us a sustainable new base upon which to grow. But we expect this will help us improve our guest experience and maximize our profits 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 -- yes, 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 than we would like.

However, we will 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 season passes at low prices in order to up-sell 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 near term, my optimism is based on a few factor.

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 Flag 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 cost and are diligently scaling our variable costs 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 a unique value proposition. Our combination of solo rides and entertainment for the entire family provides 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 strollers.

This is a fast-growing segment of our strategy as mom with kids, 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 strength of our people is truly why I'm confident that our future is bright. We believe we have the right strategy, right culture, and 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 and increase our profitability. Allow me to share a few -- some recognition we have been bestowed upon recently.

Late in 2021, Forbes ranked us America's best -- among America's Best Employers. In 2022, Forbes again named us one of the best employers for diversity. Recently, USA Today, basically, has an award called Readers' Choice, and we won 10 best roller coasters of 2022. Three of our water parks made Best Readers' Choice of USA Today in 2022.

And Amusement Today, a leading trade magazine, recently in 2022 gave us the Golden Ticket Award 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 a Readers' 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 we are reimagining our company. With this, I would like to open the call for any questions.

Thank you.

Questions & Answers:

Operator

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

Steve Wieczynski -- Stifel Financial Corp. -- Analyst

Hey, guys. Good morning.

Selim Bassoul -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Good morning, Steve.

Steve Wieczynski -- Stifel Financial Corp. -- Analyst

Good morning, Selim. So, Selim, you were at the helm now for, let's call it, six months or so. And I'm wondering if you put any more thought into how you're thinking about the long-term EBITDA growth potential of this company. It seems like -- you guys are now saying that '22 EBITDA should be higher than 2019 and that -- now that makes sense and that should set a baseline moving forward.

But once we kind of get that baseline offset, 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, what 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 to spend an hour here. I have 20 minutes to get into the restrooms, 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 there 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 tickets, 29.5 million to 30 million attendees a year. It was 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 dining -- all seasons dining meal that brought a certain type of people on our park and clubbed our park 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 we have an optimum number where I gave you roughly a little bit where 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 would like to have.

Steve Wieczynski -- Stifel Financial Corp. -- Analyst

OK. That's great color, Selim. And then second question would be, you mentioned in your prepared remarks, you have gotten some pushback from certain guests as you started to push prices higher. I'm just wondering, was that pushback material? Or is the pushback coming from some of your lower-yielding guests? So honestly, you're not -- I don't want to say this the wrong way, but you're not overly upset if they leave or don't come back as this is 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 guests 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, it had too many things attached to it; too heavy discounting, meal plans, free parking, no blackout dates, heavy discount on retail, heavy discount on food.

So we stopped it. We grant further 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 catered to that segment of our guests 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 that -- of those people we lost just because they would rather pay on installments. We will reintroduce that. [Inaudible] solved.

We had a lag. We'll get -- we will recapture a big portion of those people. The second part of our customers are customers who like to come and eat at our park that meal -- all seasons dining meal, which is attached with the season pass. 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 like 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 drinks, free meals, free snacks. Very, very expensive to run and choked everything, because 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 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 revisited. 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 -- we know 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 choke. And those are the three components of where we've seen our attendance go down. Now we 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 nonexclusive. 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 spend per guest have gone up significantly.

The guest satisfaction scores are fantastic. And we are reimagining the industry, not only Six Flags, because the whole industry is about attendance. So, unfortunately, Wall Street and analysts -- I think everybody, investors saying how much -- how many people came to your park? And I think there was a condition to create that, 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 Financial Corp. -- Analyst

OK. Thank you. That's that is terrific color. Really appreciate it.

Selim Bassoul -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

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

James Hardiman -- Citi -- Analyst

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 the 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 caps were up more than 50%, margins were up pretty dramatically versus '19. I think I heard how you sort of layout 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 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's 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 to tell you what we've done in beautification in specific details.

And there's a lag between people who say, "OK, 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 park. 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 -- give an 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 of 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 it 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 can hear the full recording.

To go to your specific question, James, if you're looking at the -- over the year a layout, 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 is -- of that growth is due to the membership accounting. So the Q1 per cap does represent what we will see going forward, assuming that we have the same membership profile a year from now.

But the growth rate over last year is exaggerated. So if you take $5 off, that's probably more representative of a 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 an 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 a $40 million impact. We have the bonus and we have the other inflationary increase of another $20 million, which we're going to work to offset. We were able to do that in Q1 successfully.

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

Selim Bassoul -- President and Chief Executive Officer

James, let me now -- thank you, Steve. Let me come back and give you some more flavor 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 remain around 25% to 30% below them across -- on average across every one of ours.

Whether it's single-day ticket to season pass, they are -- 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 in -- maybe this summer or maybe beginning of 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 this year. Maybe if we're 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, ultimately, 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 their pricing. So we have room, another 20% to 30% just to catch up to them.

James Hardiman -- Citi -- Analyst

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, a, is that just making sure that math is right. But, b, what does that allow you to do on the cost side? It seems with that many fewer customers, there should naturally be some meaningful cost offsets that allow you to sort of dig into some of the cost inflation that Steve talked about.

Steve Purtell -- Senior Vice President of 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 enables us to scale back on security because we're having less incidents in the parks.

We're able to look at restaurants and 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 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 here 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 upgrades as we upgrade our experience. I'll 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, which 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 will talk about my strolling and what my guests told me because they recognize who I am. As I walked in the park, I've been there quite a bit. People know me. They start 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 has shade.

It has fans. It has misting 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 are 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 mojito, a margarita, a beer and enjoy in the shade, being misted, enjoying and sitting, which we did not do before.

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 they would impulse buy on our merchandising, impulse buy on our Flash Passes.

So on Sunday, there was a group of four, two brothers and two friends. They were four sitting in our All Star Cafe. And I sat with them to ask them how did they rate their 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 park, and they told me what they like at the park. They came in, Sunday is their only day, and they all are partnered 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 can buy a Flash Pass. They bought the Flash Pass. They said, Selim, I want a Flash Pass. 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 a 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 fries 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 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. He had bought tons 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. Thank you very much. I know I'm running too long on this, but I want to give the flavor.

James Hardiman -- Citi -- Analyst

No. That's great stuff. And I think everybody appreciates the picture you're getting here so much. Appreciate it.

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 Jefferies.

David Katz -- Jefferies -- Analyst

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

Steve Purtell -- Senior Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you, David.

David Katz -- Jefferies -- Analyst

Pardon me. 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 of Investor Relations

So this is Steve. We're not -- 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've seen from Q1, we are able to grow revenue faster from the cost and we expect that to be the case going forward.

Selim Bassoul -- President and Chief Executive Officer

I think, David, I don't -- we don't want to elude 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 quarters because we are, like you, moving too many pieces right now. The only thing I can tell you that cap -- the spending per guest is up -- significantly up. But let us see where we get. We're still working on attendance with loss 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 flavor of what's going to happen. What's going to 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 to go three, four times a summer to a water park, I want to have a reserved 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. Because now if I don't put that, I don't have a chair at the pool.

While 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 where we're going to make sure we give you the experience that you would like. You come in and you want to be there, you're going to -- we uptrade 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, we've already paid -- have paid cabana, but we've increased them significantly. We're elevating the experience on our 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 in 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 on 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, too.

So we change 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 a new POS system that's being launched in the next months.

So I can take orders while you're sitting in your chair 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're changing almost every paradigm shift we're doing in this company.

David Katz -- Jefferies -- Analyst

Understood. Is there -- it's -- it is -- you do take the 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 be? 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've 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 none, but I don't know if --

Steve Purtell -- Senior Vice President of Investor Relations

I think -- I don't think 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 one to 10 that we have inside our parks where we've been doing the same surveys 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 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 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 -- Jefferies -- Analyst

That's great. Thank you so much.

Operator

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

Ian Zaffino -- Oppenheimer and Company -- Analyst

Hi. Great. Just very quickly, I just wanted to kind of key in on some of the food. You talked about the empanadas and the beignets.

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.

Selim Bassoul -- President and Chief Executive Officer

I think about our value. At the end, everybody understand value. Value comes with very simple things. At the end, we still offer, mostly our businesses, fair food.

I think you're not -- still, people go to a park, they don't expect a filet mignon, OK? They expect a very decent burger, a good hotdog, 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 swinger food, they can get back on the ride 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 ballpark 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 -- we will never be able to offer a $2 hotdog the way Costco does it. I wished I could.

We're not set up infrastructurally and cost-wise to do that. And people don't expect that coming to our parks or any parks or any ballpark for that reason. But they expect if you're going to come there, it should be consistently good hotdog. It should be fast.

It should be hot. It should be all beef and very sizable. We expect our pizza -- if I'm going to 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's, the Burger King offering a decent burger.

But look the growth what happened of Five Guys, Shake Shack, In-N-Out Burger, Hobdaddy, I can name many burger chains that have grown up; Fatburger, Johnny Rockets, all come up and been able to price a lot more than what a 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 approach is coffee and 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 stalling, 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 putting all that technology so I can go to you. So if you are sitting in a line -- in a ride, I can come to you. And while you're sitting, 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 with a POS system and labor and cart. 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 and Company -- Analyst

OK. Great. Thank you very much for the color.

Steve Purtell -- Senior Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you.

Operator

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

Chris Woronka -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst

Hey, good morning, guys. I appreciate all the details and color so far. What -- first quarter, really impressive per cap spend, understand the attendance strategy, the pricing strategy. Question is, as you get into peak summer and you open all the parks and 1Q maybe skews a little bit to the Sun Belt, right? Do you think the strategy -- is there any way to get any kind of early indication whether the strategy of pricing resonates with some of the parks and 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 the 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 smaller parks, you might be right, we might have to do a little bit more dynamic pricing. But then we can offset it by a lot of costs 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 in our biggest parks.

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 a 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 we're committed to the strategy. So I think one thing we should not be doing is suddenly stop short after a couple of quarters 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 to continue 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 in the small park the same way we're investing in the big park. We're doing the beautification of all our smaller parks. We're doing all the work we're doing in our water parks across board. We're doing all that restaurant -- restroom and restaurant upgrade and food upgrade in 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 -- Analyst

OK. Very helpful. Thanks, Selim. And I guess if we just look at first quarter, and again, that's really not the [Inaudible].

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 of 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 it's 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 -- Analyst

OK. 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 -- Analyst

OK. I guess one thing that I wanted to get your opinion on the -- 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 substance to that or not?

Steve Purtell -- Senior Vice President of Investor Relations

Hey, Barton. It's Steve. So I think if you're thinking about fears of a recession, our industry -- the regional theme park industry has been shown to be very resilient. I think if you look at the '08, '09 time frame, our attendance went down only 6%.

And if you look at what people are tending to cut back in that type of environment, it 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 vacation, you do have that trade down effect because they still want to do things with their kids in the summer. And then if you look at the -- 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.

And I think all 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 concerned that will go away because a lot of our parks have already been opened for the past year. Only in some markets that we kind of weren't open this time last year. So I do think we feel really good about the way we're set up for basically any scenario that may happen this summer.

Barton Crockett -- Rosenblatt Securities -- Analyst

What about COVID? I mean does that -- the cases are up. Does that have any impact in some markets in California that have been sensitive to that in the past?

Steve Purtell -- Senior Vice President of Investor Relations

I think --

Selim Bassoul -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Go ahead, Steve. Go ahead.

Steve Purtell -- Senior Vice President of Investor Relations

I say I think that we're learning to live with the virus and that if you look at the case counts up, you see the severity is quite low, and I think people are just -- are learning how to live within that environment, and they're still going out and you do see people wanting to have experiences. They're coming off of COVID where they kind of turned their focus to buying goods for their homes, but now you see kind of a reversal of that and people wanted to get back out and enjoy 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 -- apart from saying it from a different perspective. If you look at two things, trend 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 were not going to be on a plane because masks are off, you are not going to be -- we are in a perfect environment to be outdoor and calm. 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 outdoor.

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 airfare 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 benefit. Just, we haven't seen it.

I mean I don't want to say there is data predicting that. But I believe that if I have to bet, we should be seeing an uptick given those 2 trends. Outdoor, if COVID comes back strongly with outdoor and gasoline prices and airfare tickets and not traveling, we say, let's come spend a day in the park.

Barton Crockett -- Rosenblatt Securities -- Analyst

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

Steve Purtell -- Senior Vice President of 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 impact.

Barton Crockett -- Rosenblatt Securities -- Analyst

OK. All right. 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 Group -- Analyst

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 then I have a follow-up.

Selim Bassoul -- President and Chief Executive Officer

So let's start first with the breakdown what monetizing opportunities are. Parking, we're now -- we're putting a lot of preferred parking that before we wish to give parking for free throughout 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 single-rider lane with the QR code is another area for us of monetization, other than tickets and admissions and season passes. Third, 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. 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 will be a good driver for us.

Paul Golding -- Macquarie Group -- Analyst

Great. And in terms of any costs you may be incurring as part of this, the transformation, I was wondering if there was anything meaningful on 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, OK, 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 an ERP system.

We are trying to make sure that it's rolled out correctly. We are putting all new 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.

We're rolling that up. But I think a lot of them is capex that we've already incurred and we're going to continue to incur, some of the 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 ketchup, cups, water, mayo, you talked about that, so we have food cost.

And waste, utilities, utilities have been up, and wages. I think there is nothing else that we have not expressed in this, and we have talked about. I think Steve gave those numbers and what do they be.

Paul Golding -- Macquarie Group -- Analyst

OK. Thank you.

Selim Bassoul -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

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

Ben Chaiken -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

Hey, everyone.

Selim Bassoul -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Hey, Ben.

Ben Chaiken -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

Hey. On the cost side, you listed kind of three areas of optimization in the quarter, I think, seasonal labor, advertising, and then your corporate overhead. And then you also called out the $80 million of headwinds that you feel in '22 versus '19. 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 outcomes, so if you could help us like bracket it a little bit.

Steve Purtell -- Senior Vice President of Investor Relations

Hey, Ben. It's Steve. Well, I guess if you look at Q1, that's our seasonally smallest quarter. So the overall cost, there's only five parks are open 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, that type of thing in Q1. So I think it's just we're looking ahead and saying that as our volume of cost of goods go up and our labor hours go up, that we could have -- it could be more difficult to offset all of those inflationary increases.

Ben Chaiken -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

OK. 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 are 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 would love to explore that.

Thanks.

Selim Bassoul -- President and Chief Executive Officer

I think, honestly, there's room to grow to our pricing. The question is when? Do we do it again in -- one thing helping us is all our customers and guests understand that inflation is everywhere. Do we do it again? Remember, it was done -- for Six Flags, it's a significant change and for our guests and the pricing. While we're still below our other industry players, not competitors, industry players, for our guests, it's 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 their -- and hurting their discretionary 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. Enjoy strolling with friends. Let's talk about that. I wanted to talk about that and give me a proper event 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. There are different names to them. But they've been underinvested, not taken care of and it was just a passageway.

In Dallas, this in the park, France is shaded area with beautiful trees. It has a makeup old fort, French fort, and there was nothing there. So what we've done, we've put in a lot of flowers. We've put in those French flag.

We reinvigorated the fort. We went in and put canons 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 beignets. 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 it's what do we do first? We've done it first without beautification. So we did prices about beautification. Now we're 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 our senior leadership team and our park president is to say, opportunistically, we can. The 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 people know what you've done.

Ben Chaiken -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

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 of two things going on.

One is a channel mix shift. You mentioned not -- 3 million freebies in the park in 2019. The other is kind of a like-for-like increase in ticket pricing. If we look versus '19, 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 at your customer, if that makes sense?

Steve Purtell -- Senior Vice President of Investor Relations

The growth we see is all from pricing. The channel hasn't changed that much. I'd say the price 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 -- Analyst

If you had 3 million freebies, I mean isn't that almost 1,000 basis points price right there on the per cap if you take out 3 million people who weren't paying?

Steve Purtell -- Senior Vice President of Investor Relations

Yes. When I was talking about price, I was talking about the price of the ticket itself, not the yield. But yes, you're right. If you have a free ticket, that brings down your average yield.

Ben Chaiken -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

Right. So of the mix, the people that you don't -- maybe we can catch up off-line. I appreciate it. Thank you very much

Steve Purtell -- Senior Vice President of Investor Relations

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 their 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 we've done at the park. And again, thank you for all. Have a blessed day.

Bye-bye.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 84 minutes

Call participants:

Steve Purtell -- Senior Vice President of Investor Relations

Selim Bassoul -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Steve Wieczynski -- Stifel Financial Corp. -- Analyst

James Hardiman -- Citi -- Analyst

David Katz -- Jefferies -- Analyst

Ian Zaffino -- Oppenheimer and Company -- Analyst

Chris Woronka -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst

Barton Crockett -- Rosenblatt Securities -- Analyst

Paul Golding -- Macquarie Group -- Analyst

Ben Chaiken -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

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