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Six Flags (NYSE:SIX) CEO Mark Shapiro announced last week at the National Association of Broadcasters that he was going to move the company to become more of an entertainment company like Disney (NYSE:DIS).

Part of that strategy will be to develop branded characters consumers would connect with Six Flags.

Shapiro, who took over the company in December 2005 when it was losing money, said the former strategy of counting on revenue from its roller-coaster hardware has to be changed.

"Approaching Six Flags is like building Disney, backward," he said. "The focus and the root of all and everything we do is the storytelling itself."

He continued that the strategy would be to "build the characters, build the story around it, build the emotion, the drama ... as opposed to just putting rides up on cement."

I like that, because in a certain way Disney does that with its theme parks, where people coming there, in many ways, consider themselves being inserted into the Disney story when entering the park grounds.

This could create a much more emotional connection by consumers with Six Flags, rather than simply being a place to get rides.

For me it's similar to a good Sci Fi story like Battlestar Galactica, and the usual lower-level offerings. For good storytellers, it's not the genre that's important, but the story connected to the genre.

I think that's what Shapiro and Six Flags are saying they're attempting to do: create a narrative and the resulting emotional connection that make is a more "magical" experience like it is with Disney. This should be a good move if it's executed properly.

In their latest quarterly results, Six Flags reported fourth-quarter revenue at nearly $112 million, up from $104 million in the same quarter last year. It also was able to decrease its losses from $195 million to $132 million during the same period.

Six Flags operates 21 theme parks in North America and Mexico. There are current plans to build one the fast-growing Dubai market via a partnership with Tatweer for a ride section in Dubailand.