SeaWorld has put in an offer to try and buy Cedar Fair. How did this happen? How Did SeaWorld recover from its massive issues regarding the treatment of its animals to become a successful theme park chain once again, and potentially capable of massively expanding? And will this purchase actually happen?
First a disclaimer, for the rest of the article. There is a significant chance that this offer does not end up amounting to anything and that both companies are going to stay separate as they currently are. Portions of this article are going to entertain the speculation that this is real and does happen.
How did SeaWorld get here?
Knowing that requires looking back at the recent history of SeaWorld. The company in the recent past has struggled since allegations of cruel treatment of its animals, specifically the orcas, surfaced through a documentary (Blackfish) and the chain has struggled to overcome this ever since.
Following these allegations, they started to try and move away from animal exhibits and more towards nautical themed rides. They are even in the process of ending their signature orca program, taking care of the current animals and not breeding or acquiring any new killer whales. They stopped putting trainers in the water with the orcas, and they stopped using their Shamu character for the most part. They've done a lot to rebrand and move away from a lot of the criticisms that the company has gotten.
2020 was supposed to be their big year of starting this rebrand across all of their American parks in the SeaWorld and Busch Gardens chains. The company was intending on opening a major new roller coaster in every park they owned. That did not happen due to the pandemic, with only one of the rides opening prior to the March 2020 amusement park closures.
Even without the new rides, when the parks were able to reopen from the pandemic they fast with high attendance numbers. Now in the next year SeaWorld parks have Emperor, Pantheon, Ice Breaker, and Iron Gwazi opening, so barring some other world changing event, it's looking like 2022 is going to be another record-breaking year for SeaWorld.
Meanwhile Cedar Fair has not fared as well.
Their most visited park, Knott's Berry Farm was closed for over a year, and they didn't have the same level of success in their parks that did open. Also there's really no major attractions on their way to any Cedar Fair parks, nor are their significant rumors outside of their two major parks (Knotts and Cedar Point). SeaWorld meanwhile has significant rumors for two of their parks, and they are a much smaller chain.
So at this point let's entertain the idea that this happens. What would this mean?
This would probably go more into helping SeaWorld re-establish their brand image not as a chain of animal parks but as a chain of more traditional amusement parks. None of the Cedar Fair parks have animals as a significant part of the park experience. Some might feature them in one ride (for instance Knott's Berry Farm features horses) but nowhere near the scale that the SeaWorld parks feature animals.
This would also give both chains more characters to use, as SeaWorld holds the rights to Sesame Street characters, and Cedar Fair holds the rights to Peanuts characters.
Also worth noting is there isn't a lot of overlap between these two chains, meaning that their parks really don't compete with each other. The only major instances of two of the parks even slightly conflicting with each other are Knotts Berry Farm and SeaWorld San Diego as well as Busch Gardens Williamsburg and King's Dominion.
SeaWorld has a chance to massivley expand by buying Cedar Fair. Only time will tell if they will be able to do so.
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