General Chat / Cedar Fair buys Paramount

From Screamscape:

Breaking News - Cedar Fair LLC that announced today that they have signed an agreement to purchase the entire Paramount Parks chain. This includes Paramount’s Carowinds, Great America, Kings Island, Kings Dominion and Canada’s Wonderland. No mention was made of Paramount’s management contract to run Bonfante Gardens however. The total purchase price was stated at $1.24 billion. As I’ve stated before, the chains to compliment each other well in virtually every area. In 2005 Paramount Parks made $423 million and hosted 12.2 million guests. In 2005 Cedar Fair parks made $569 million and hosted 12.7 million guests.
Lots of questions will soon follow I believe... such as will we now see SpongeBob walking around Knott’s Berry Farm or will Snoopy soon run wild around Kings Island? Perhaps both... since agreements are existing for the Paramount Parks to use the Paramount / Nickelodeon characters and would be sold along with the parks unless for some reason Cedar Fair didn’t want to use them at all, but that would just be silly. So I wouldn’t count on Top Gun or Tomb Raider being renamed anytime soon. More details as I find out!

Oi!

Maybe this is why FoF is down...

-ACE

Prepare for the kids areas to be Camp Snoopiezed.

Edited by SU182, 23 May 2006 - 03:31 PM.

Prepare for the kids areas to be Camp Snoopiezed.

I think Nickelodeon/Hanna-Barbara is a bigger monopoly than the Peanuts.

Oi!

Maybe this is why FoF is down...

-ACE

FoF?

Flight of Fear? Well I went on the PKI Flight of Fear on Sunday...

I think Nickelodeon/Hanna-Barbara is a bigger monopoly than the Peanuts.

isnt that owned by universal?

Interesting, many on other sites have been predicting this happening for some time now. Though everyone at the time seemed a little more certain that Six Flags was going to start shedding parks like crazy after the sale of Six Flags Worlds of Adventure and that Cedar Fair would go around buying all of them up. Actually I'm kinda shocked that Paramount has given in...

I'm sure this could have some major implications if Cedar Fair plays their cards right. Think about a hotel/ticket package involving season passes and 2 days at both Kings Island and Cedar Point... On top of that Kings Island has tons of unused acrage that could quickly turn into some hot new rides. I'm not certain that Cedar Fair would be willing to have Kings Island become they're main park with Cedar Point's reputation and all but they just might in the long run because the Point is landlocked and Kings Island has approxmently 500-600 acres, less than half of which is developed.

Ride6

isnt that owned by universal?

nope, nickelodeon is paramount's.

They've really got Ohio locked down. I can't see anything bad about this move. I wonder how profitable PCW is.

Except that Paramount parks' guest service will slowly become crap, as evidenced by park operations at some of CF's past acquisitions (Dorney, Knott's Berry Farm, et al...).

FoF?

Flight of Fear? Well I went on the PKI Flight of Fear on Sunday...

PKD's has been closed all season.

-ACE