Six Flags CEO Mark Shapiro on the Summer Ahead

A CEO in his late thirties may be a tad too old still to be called a boy wonder, but it's hard to stop thinking of Mark Shapiro in those terms. That's because the CEO of Six Flags (SIX) first made his mark as a wunderkind at ESPN, where he began as a production assistant right out of college. By 32, Shapiro was running all programming and production and was responsible for creating hit shows such as . Then in late 2005 another onetime boy wonder, Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder, hired Shapiro to remake theme park operator Six Flags, over which Snyder had just won control after a proxy battle. For the past couple of years, Shapiro has been busy trimming the list of properties to 20 parks and reducing some $2 billion in debt. Will those efforts be complicated by a consumer recession? I asked Shapiro how the summer is shaping up.

If Americans stay close to home this summer, does that benefit Six Flags?