Entertainment and Recreation Planning Manager

Most days mix planning work, cross-functional coordination, and analysis — building programming calendars, supporting capacity and resource planning, contributing to capital project planning, working with marketing on attendance forecasting, and partnering with operations and finance teams. You're often working at theme parks, sports organizations, recreation operations, family entertainment companies, or specialty entertainment groups, and the organization's scale shapes daily work.

What tends to be harder than people expect is the cross-functional coordination required. Planning touches operations, marketing, finance, and capital teams, and assumption variance between groups can complicate decisions. Seasonality, weather sensitivity, and event-driven dynamics add planning complexity, and forecasting accuracy matters for staffing and inventory decisions.

People who tend to thrive here are organized, analytically minded, comfortable with cross-functional partnership, and patient with planning cycles. If you want hands-on operations, GM or operations roles offer that. If you like the planning side of entertainment operations and the analytical work behind the scenes, the role offers durable demand and a clear path toward planning leadership or strategic operations roles.