Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Holy Bat Rollercoasters, that's what I call a merger

For 4 summers I worked at Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, OH. Despite the shitty pay it was an incredibly fun job. That being said I've kept up on the new news of the park and of their parent company, Cedar Fair L.P. After reading the below article I wish I had money invested in their stock (their stock ticker is appropriately: FUN):

The Paramount Parks include:
Canada's Wonderland (near Toronto)
King's Island (near Cincinnati, OH)
King's Dominion (near Richmond, VA)
Carowinds (Near Charlotte, NC)
Great America (Santa Clara, CA)

The Cedar Fair Parks include:
Cedar Point (Sandusky, OH)
Knott's Berry Farm (Buena Park, CA)
Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom (Allentown, PA)
Valleyfair (near Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN)
Geauga Lake & Wildwater Kingdom (near Cleveland, OH)
Michigan's Adventure (near Muskegon, MI)
Oceans of Fun/Worlds of Fun (Kansas City, MO)

10 comments:

Bar L. said...

I LOVE Knott's! That place was around when I was a kid and didn't have a lot of fancy rides back then but it was really cool, it was just like going back into the old west! My son loved it when he was a kid too.

Snooze said...

I read that they were taking over Wonderland. I wonder if they will make changes. Not that it really matters to me. I'm too chicken to go on anything beyond the lazy river raft ride.

St. Dickeybird said...

Wow, that would be a fun conglomerate to get staff discounts at!

Jay Noel said...

I feel like I'm missing out. I've never been to ANY of those parks.

Susan as Herself said...

I've never been to any of those either... but I bet I'd like 'em, as long as I could go when there were no people pushing strollers.

Perplexio said...

Barbara: Cedar Fair acquired Knott's in the late 90s, but I've heard they've done quite a lot of improvements over the past few years.

Snooze: Cedar Fair has been generally proactive in improving upon well established parks. At many of the parks they've acquired they've added Waterparks.

dickeybird: When I worked at Cedar Point, my employee ID could have gotten me into any of the other parks owned by Cedar Fair for free. Season Pass holders at any one of the parks could also get free admission at any of the other parks owned by Cedar Fair. So, if you were to get a season pass to Canada's Wonderland, and you happened to be visiting Ohio you could get into Cedar Point on that season pass.

Phoenix: I've only ever been to Cedar Point, one of my older brothers used to regularly go to King's Dominion in Virginia and always spoke highly of it.

Susan: Honestly the best time to go to any of the seasonal parks is on a weekday in early May. Although, if you were to ever make the 4 1/2 hour trek to Sandusky to go to Cedar Point, I'd recommend NOT going on a Tuesday (Physics Day) as that's the one weekday that was consistently busy throughout May. But generally Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in May were pretty slow.

dantallion said...

Next, they'll be buying out Six Flags (who own La Ronde in Montreal). Season passes for a conglomerate that large would be great justification for quitting the job and spending all my time going from park to park to park.

Perplexio said...

dantallion: Interestingly enough they DID buy out 1 Six Flags Park. Back in 2001 Six Flags bought the independently owned park Geauga Lake and the Annheiser-Busch owned Sea World Ohio and combined them into "Six Flags Ohio" and then changed the name to "Six Flags Worlds of Adventure" in 2004 Cedar Fair L.P. bought Six Flags Worlds of Adventure and changed its name back to Geauga Lake and added a waterpark making it "Geauga Lake & Wildwater Kingdom."

I don't think Cedar Fair would buy out Six Flags outright, but they might slowly acquire 1 or 2 of the Six Flags acquired parks at a time. I don't think they'll ever take over the parks that have always been owned and operated by Six Flags though, just the various parks that Six Flags has acquired over the years (including LaRonde in Montreal; The Great Escape in Lake George, NY; and Darien Lake near Buffalo and Rochester, NY-- to name a few).

Anonymous said...

It's been several years since I've been to Kings Dominion, but IIRC, it was a pretty nice place.

Keshi said...

parks galore ha...wow never been to any of those :(

Keshi.