On Sunday I met my visiting cousins and their families at Six Flags Magic Mountain, one of the three major theme park complexes in Southern California.

Now, I knew that Six Flags (NYSE: PKS) had put itself up for sale and that things might not be in the best of shape, but I was astounded at how bad the current management has let things get.

Huge swaths of the park are closed due to capital projects currently underway. Several major rides are closed, for no apparent reason. Many of the others are running at only partial capacity. On a somewhat chilly October weekend, lines were still so long that we decided to forgo several of the major attractions we had gone up there for in the first place.

As if that weren't enough, bathrooms were dirty with paper towels and toilet paper often nonexistent. The park itself is confusing and its map and signage don't help much. [Hint: A picture of a roller coaster on the map does not tell me where the entrance is!] The tilt-a-whirl was probably not unsafe, but the old paint and rust didn't inspire confidence. The staff milling about at many of the rides made me wonder if anybody was actually working. And the metal detectors and security sweeps at the entrance are a reminder from the very start that this place has been the scene of gang violence.

[They might solve this problem if they took a page from Disney's rulebook and simply excluded anybody who even looks like they're in gang colors, along with the variety of other miscreants in obscene t-shirts, etc., of which we saw plenty.]

I'm guessing much of the neglect comes from management's desire to make the numbers look better. Charge the same prices and cut back on service. Always good for a temporary earnings pop.

But if the grumbling in the lines is any indication, they're doing so at the cost of alienating many local customers, precisely the people who keep it going year-round. Maybe in other locations, where there aren't two alternatives in the same metro area, this could be acceptable. But here in SoCal the damage is being done, and whoever buys this thing is going to end up with a damaged brand name that will need an awful lot more than just operational restructuring to bring back.