Should Disney Buy Cedar Fair?

[Ezra]

A very interesting article at The Motley Fool:

Should Disney Buy Cedar Fair?

[Executioner]

What an interesting article. Disney playing small time..... Hmmmm... Here is the thing I am not too sure about though. Disney has never bought out another park and made it it's own before. All of the parks Disney has were built to be Disney parks. With that in mind, it could be damaging in the long run to people cause they see Cedar Fair with a Disney name. See what I am saying? Disney stands better off designing their own parks then buying other people's failures and trying to clean that up for the mouse to enter. Sure it could be lucrative. Possibly. But like it said in the article, diluting the market with smaller ones can harm the bigger ones. Sure it would be nice to have a Disney park nearly everywhere, but that would take away from the mystique and magic of the Magic Kingdoms that are out there already. Very difficult to say what Disney is going to do or if they will do anything. They could even make a subsidiary company that runs the newly bought parks so they aren't exactly Disney parks. Catch my drift? But I really don't see Disney doing this, especially now that they have finally started to see better ticket sales and revenue of merchandise. That would be an idiotic maneuver for anyone to do. But we'll see. Thanks Ezra for that tidbit.

[ah92us]

Or, maybe they should buy it, yet keep its name?

[CostaFreak]

Ha ha ha ha...no.

[uscfan7690]

The biggest issue with Disney acquiring Cedar Fair is that on the whole, Cedar Fair tends to focus primarily on the rides, not their theming, and in many of their parks (cough Cedar Point cough) they have areas where roller coasters are stacked three tall. That's not to say that some of their parks have anything short of wonderful theming and cleanliness (rank right up there with IOA in some places); Disney parks, however, are built AROUND it's theming.

If Disney did acquire these parks, there's no way that they would brand them prominently. It's a huge long shot, in any case. Thanks for the link, Ezra!

[MVP]

NO, one why would they sell it and two why would Disney want them? spend the money to build a new park in cali or change DCA!

[PeoplemoverMatt]

Cedar Fair just bought the Paramount parks and now they put themselves up for sale? Well, whoever buys Cedar Fair is going to make a big splash on the theme park scene. Cedar Fair owns close to, if not more parks than Six Flags.

-- PMM

[uscfan7690]

Originally Posted by PeoplemoverMatt

Cedar Fair owns close to, if not more parks than Six Flags.

Theme Parks-
Cedar Fair, 12
Six Flags, 14

Water Parks-
Cedar Fair, 6
Six Flags, 12

Six Flags might have them by a nose on quantity, but the majority of Cedar Fair parks I've been to flat out demolish them in terms of quality (I can't vouch for SFGA, which is the only major SF park I haven't visited... heard it's in better shape than some of the others).

[PeoplemoverMatt]

Six Flags might have them by a nose on quantity, but the majority of Cedar Fair parks I've been to flat out demolish them in terms of quality

For now anyway...the Cedar Fair parks are gravitating more towards the Six Flags way of running a park these days. But, sometimes new ownership can mean a total overhaul of everything. Stay tuned!

-- PMM

[DisneyParksFan]

Originally Posted by uscfan7690

Six Flags might have them by a nose on quantity, but the majority of Cedar Fair parks I've been to flat out demolish them in terms of quality (I can't vouch for SFGA, which is the only major SF park I haven't visited... heard it's in better shape than some of the others).

Six Flags Great America is my hometown park.
The park itself still has some pretty good theming in it. Six Flags did a much better job at running this great america than parmount did with their great america while they still ran it. Six Flags even built a new land in the late 90's that actually fit into the america theme...Southwest Territory.
There are a few places where the theming is a little iffy (mostly when they tried adding new family rides and stuff for kids), but its not terribly bad. I mean, its no Disney theme park...but its nice.
I wouldnt want Disney to buy this six flags park because they would probably destroy the original theme and history of the park dating back to when it was owned by Marriott.

~DPF

[PeoplemoverMatt]

To me, Disney Co. are the LAST people I would even consider buying Cedar Fair or any theme park group IMO. Disney wants to go in a totally different direction.

Someone's going to come out of nowhere and buy Cedar Fair, like Mark Shapiro and Red Zone came out of nowhere to buy Six Flags, and we'll go from there. Shapiro's strategy of becoming more family-friendly has done a lot of good for Six Flags. It has a long way to go, but it has done noticeable good. So where will Cedar Fair's new ownership take that group? Stay tuned.

-- PMM

[ShrunkenNed]

The way he's been talking of wanting to buy things, Mark Cuban can buy it.

Never having been to any of the Cedar Fair parks, I can't imagine Disney buying anything like that that they couldn't build from the ground up. Not to mention, keep the imagineers where they are - there's lots of improvement that needs done at the current parks. But, just like the article said, it's very unlikely anyway.