02.13.09
Hershey Park Profile
Our first park review is up! It’s kind of a basic review of the park and rides, and we’ll be adding more to it, but the basics are there. If you’ve been to Hershey Park, leave your review of the park in the comments on the profile page!
Theme Park Profiles
As we grow this site, we are always looking for more ways to drive traffic. A new feature we’ll be starting is ‘Theme Park Profiles’. Each week we will be picking at least one theme park (located in the US) and provide a profile on that park. We will include highlights of the parks, pictures, hotels, and things to do outside the park as well. If there is anything else you would like to see added, let us know!!
02.07.09
New Entertainment Company Loaded
We’ve added a dedicated page for Merlin Entertainment Group, which owns legoland among other brands throughout the world.
Check out their page!
3rd Hotel For Legoland California
Legoland California is adding a third hotel to it’s property, but this one is owned by the park. The hotel is supposed to be themed, but there hasn’t been any specification as to what the theme will be other than the obvious lego theme. It would be cool to see the hotel broken into theme areas, star wars, pirates, rescue, etc. It could keep people with young kids coming back and requesting a certain themed area.
The hotel will also have a dedicated entrance to the park as laid out in the plans, but nothing is rock solid yet and details are subject to change. We will keep you updated!
View the Legoland California website or Merlin Entertainment website
Disney & Universal making cuts
Disney has offered a buy out package to 600 managers at various US theme parks. If not enough managers take the offer, the company stated they may begin layoffs.
Universal Orlando has also layed off 70 employees.
And it begins. I was wondering how long the park operators would go before they started making cuts to staff.
Busch Cancels Dubai Plans
Not really a surprise here (see previous post), Busch Entertainment has cancelled plans to build four parks in Dubai. Reasons include the poor credit market, lack of market potential and of course, the rumored sale of Busch Entertainment by InBev.
Busch Entertainment For Sale?
Rumors are InBev, which bought Anheuser-Busch, is putting Busch Entertainment up for sale, or possibly spinning it off into it’s own company.
Busch Entertainment is sitting on $7 Billion in assets, drawing up to $4 Billion if put up for sale.
At this point, all theme park operators are potential bidders, but the tight credit market may push out the weaker companies.
In our opinion, they could get more money by spliting the different park companies up and selling them.
Source: View the full article
Disney coming to Shanghai China
Early designs for the park
In a deal that would see a park open in 2014, Disney would have it’s fourth park outside of the US and it’s second in China. Disney would own 43% of the park and the govenment of Shanghai would own the remainder through a holding company. Nothing has been announced by either party at this point.
The first phase would include a theme park, a hotel and a shopping center.
