Paramount Parks
(2006-2007) |
Paramount Parks was the operator of
On June 30, 2006, Cedar Fair acquired the company, and the deal included a ten-year license to use the Paramount Parks name and theme, and a four-year license to use Nickelodeon names and themes.[1]
Cedar Fair declined to exercise the Paramount licenses and they dropped Paramount and CBS-licensed names from the parks after the 2007 season, but opted to retain Nickelodeon names and themes until after the 2009 season when this license expired.
Holdings
The company once owned and operated
History
Paramount Communications, previously known as
The parks were part of Viacom's
On December 31, 2005, as Viacom went through a corporate split (creating a new version of
In June 2007, it was revealed that a Paramount Theme Park was to be developed and opened at the Dubailand complex (which itself is currently on hold) in the United Arab Emirates. No further developments were made, and the project was abandoned in 2016.[2]
In October 2011, plans for a new Paramount theme park to be developed in Alhama, Murcia were revealed in Madrid. The resort to be called Paramount Park was to be the second-largest theme park in Europe after Disneyland, Paris. Projects to continue with the construction of the park have been scrapped.
In December 2018, it was announced that Paramount Pictures signed a deal with Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment to install the first Paramount-branded theme park in Incheon, South Korea. It is slated to open in 2025, three years after Inspire Integrated Entertainment Resort's opening. Paramount and Daewoo Motor Sales previously announced in 2008 that it will build Paramount Movie Park Korea in Songdo near Incheon, but the plans was never announced due to financial problems of Daewoo Motor Sales.[3]
In December 2019, it was announced that Paramount Pictures with London Resort Company Holdings Paramount-theme in London United Kingdom The London Resort will open in 2024 and start construction in 2021.
Acquisitions
The Paramount Parks were not built by Paramount, but rather were pre-existing and purchased as a whole, rebranded with the Paramount name. Effectively, it seems, Paramount was attempting to enter into the movie-based theme-park business popularized by amusement park and resort companies, such as
In the 1970s and 1980s,
In 1984, hotel company
In 1992, after 22 years of international operations,
In 2000, Paramount Parks purchased the majority of shares in Spanish theme park
Theme
Paramount Parks were one of the few remaining seasonal park operators to exclusively use themed layouts and rides (a practice usually observed only by annual park operators such as
For example, while Cedar Fair's flagship park
When Cedar Fair acquired the Paramount Parks, they revolutionized their own season pass system using Paramount's as a blueprint, and also absorbed some of Paramount's theme-focused entertainment, combining it with their own well-proven thrills to create some of their most famous attractions:
Without the Paramount Pictures film licenses, many of the rides at the Paramount Parks were renamed to more generic names so as not to infringe on Paramount's copyrights. Many of these changes were "in name only", having no actual bearing on the ride's appearance. Because of the level of theme involved in Paramount's later rides, though, (such as The Italian Job: Stunt Track and Tomb Raider: The Ride) some rides did lose core elements, such as synchronized musical scores, special effects, and pre-shows (thereby eliminating story lines).
- Drop Zone: Stunt Tower was renamed Drop Tower at all five former Paramount parks.
- Top Gun was renamed Afterburn at Carowinds and Flight Deck at Canada's Wonderland and California's Great America. The ride at Kings Island was also first renamed Flight Deck from 2008 to 2013 then renamed The Bat (in honor of a previous suspended roller coaster at the park) in 2014.
- Face/Off at Kings Island was renamed Invertigo.
- The Italian Job: Stunt Track at Canada's Wonderland, Kings Dominion, and Kings Island were all renamed Backlot Stunt Coaster.
- Tomb Raider: The Ride and Tomb Raider: FireFall at Kings Island and Kings Dominion respectively were both renamed The Crypt. Both have since been removed as of 2020.
- The roller coaster at Canada's Wonderland was renamed Time Warp.
- Days of Thunder go-kart tracks were renamed Thunder Alley.
- Paramount Action-FX Theater was renamed Action Theater.
- The Paramount Theatre was renamed after each park it was located in (e.g. Kings Island Theatre).
- BORG Assimilator at Carowinds was renamed Nighthawk.
- Cliffhanger was renamed Riptide at Canada's Wonderland.
- Scooby Doo and the Haunted Mansion at Canada's Wonderland, Carowinds, Kings Dominion & Kings Island was renamed Boo Blasters on Boo Hill with the Scooby Doo theme removed.
- The Nickelodeon and Hanna-Barbera children's areas in all of the parks remained dormant until after the 2009 season, when they rethemed to Cedar Fair's Peanuts characters, under the name Planet Snoopy. In 2018, Carowinds rethemed their Planet Snoopy area to Camp Snoopy.
- There were two "Wayne's World" themed lands at Kings Dominion and Carowinds.
Perhaps the most notable change between park owners, Kings Island's $20 million indoor Tomb Raider: The Ride had its water effects, lasers, Hollywood lighting, pre-show, synchronized musical score, film props, artificial fog, and flame effects removed. Notably, The Crypt at Kings Dominion, similar to the ride at Kings Island with the exception that it was outdoors, retained all of its original theming, music, film props, lighting, fog, and flames.
Sale to Cedar Fair
On January 27, 2006, the then-newly minted CBS Corporation announced its intent to sell Paramount Parks due to the fact that it did not fit well within the company's core business (producing and distributing television content). A number of groups expressed interest in purchasing the company, several placed bids, and on May 22, 2006, Cedar Fair announced it had outbid competitors and intended to purchase all five parks in the Paramount Parks chain, including Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton and the management agreement of Bonfante Gardens. On June 30, 2006, Cedar Fair announced that it had completed its acquisition of Paramount Parks from CBS Corporation in a cash transaction valued at US$1.24 billion.[4][5] Shortly following the transfer of ownership, Cedar Fair began the process of integrating the two companies. With the purchase of the Paramount Parks, Cedar Fair LP announced that it would do business under the name Cedar Fair Entertainment Company. Cedar Fair LP remains the legal company name.[6]
Removal of references
The individual parks continued to operate under their Paramount names during the 2006 season. After 14 years of operation under Paramount, Cedar Fair began removing the Paramount name and logo from the parks in January 2007. The names of the main parks were changed back to their original pre-Paramount names (the Paramount's prefix was removed) with the Cedar Fair corporate logo added. Bonfante Gardens was changed to Gilroy Gardens. Cedar Fair began removing references to Paramount Pictures from all parks.
Although the acquisition granted Cedar Fair a ten-year licensing deal for Paramount names and icons, such as Star Trek and Tomb Raider, Cedar Fair opted to terminate the agreement and not pay an annual licensing fee for all properties besides Nickelodeon as the deal included a four-year license for the latter brand's associated names and icons, which was terminated during 2009.[1] The process of removing references to Paramount/CBS properties began in the parks during the beginning of the 2007 season and by the 2008 season most of the major references were completely removed from the parks, besides some minor remnants and logos occasionally found in the park.[7]
Europe
On October 10, 2011, it was reported that Paramount would develop a theme park in Murcia, Spain with work set to start in 2012. The $1.5 billion Paramount Murcia park was hoped to rival Disneyland Paris as a European tourist destination. The resort would have featured 30 attractions with an adjacent shopping center, hotels and casino.[8]
Following further set backs such as the death of the promoting companies CEO (
London Resort
In the summer of 2017, a deal between Paramount and developer London Resort Company Holdings to build a resort collapsed, partly for the latter's wish to work with other media and broadcasting companies alongside Paramount.[11] In June 2019, they relaunched the project, named London Resort and scheduled to open in 2025.[12]
Proposed properties
- Paramount Murcia (Murcia, Spain).[13]
- Paramount Movie Park Korea[14]
Former properties
Amusement parks
- Vaughan, Ontario) (renamed Canada's Wonderland)
- Paramount's Carowinds (Charlotte, North Carolina) (renamed Carowinds)
- Paramount's Great America (Santa Clara, California) (renamed California's Great America)
- Paramount's Kings Dominion (Doswell, Virginia) (renamed Kings Dominion)
- Paramount's Kings Island (Mason, Ohio) (renamed Kings Island)
- Bonfante Gardens (Gilroy, California); (renamed Gilroy Gardens)
- Terra Mítica: A Paramount Park (Benidorm, Valencian Community, Spain)
Water parks
- Boomerang Bay (California's Great America, Carowinds, Kings Island)
- Splash Works (Canada's Wonderland)
- WaterWorks (Kings Dominion)
- Raging Waters (San Jose, California); bought by Ogden Corporation in 1999[15]
Star Trek experience
- Star Trek: The Experience (Las Vegas, Nevada) (closed)
References
- ^ a b c "Meeting with potential lenders re: acquisition of Paramount Parks from CBS". www.sec.gov. Retrieved 2023-05-17.
- ^ Sylt, Christian. "How Dubai Earned Its Wings In The Theme Park Industry". Forbes. Retrieved 27 August 2020.
- ^ Kil, Sonia (December 14, 2018). "Paramount Inks Deal for Theme Park in South Korea".
- ^ "Cedar Fair, Form 8-K, Current Report, Filing Date Jul 7, 2006". secdatabase.com. Retrieved Mar 21, 2013.
- ^ "Cedar Fair to Acquire Paramount Parks". The Point Online. 2006-05-22. Archived from the original on 2007-08-14. Retrieved 2007-12-20.
- Toledo Blade. October 25, 2006. Retrieved October 9, 2012.
- ^ Jon Chavez (May 23, 2006). "Cedar Point's parent firm buys 5 additional parks for $1.24 billion". Toledo Blade. Retrieved October 25, 2017.
- ^ Paramount theme park set to debut in Spain in 2015 LATimes. By Brady MacDonald. Los Angeles Times staff writer. October 10, 2011, 3:54 p.m.
- ^ "ARCHIVED - Paramount theme park project in Alhama suffers another blow". murciatoday.com.
- ^ "ARCHIVED - Paramount land set to be reclassified as agricultural". murciatoday.com.
- ^ "Paramount theme park development deal collapses", BBC, 21.06.2017
- ^ "Paramount Pictures signs new deal with theme park". 27 June 2019.
- ^ PARAMOUNT PICTURES TO BUILD BIGGEST THEME PARK IN SPAIN IN MURCIA By Sally Bengtsson. TheLeader.info. 2010-03-18 15:33:47
- ^ Paramount to build $1 bln Korea theme park Reuters.com SEOUL. Thu May 10, 2007 2:57am EDT
- ^ "Ogden Corporation To Acquire Raging Waters Park". March 23, 1999. Retrieved March 21, 2021.