from the middletown ohio journal newspaper

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New owner: no changes now at Kings Island

By John Nolan

Staff Writer

Monday, May 22, 2006

The sale of Paramount's Kings Island and four other amusement parks to the company that owns the Cedar Point park in northern Ohio won't mean any immediate changes in operation of the parks, an executive overseeing the deal said Monday.

 

With daily operations starting this weekend at Kings Island, near Mason, and the other parks, it is too late to make changes for this season, said Dick Kinzel, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Cedar Fair LP, the Ohio-based amusement park operator which owns Cedar Point in Sandusky.

 

"There will be no changes at all that the public will see in the parks," Kinzel told financial analysts during a conference call Monday to discuss his company's $1.24 billion purchase of the five parks nationwide.

 

After the season, Cedar Fair will decide whether to make any changes for the 2007 season, he said.

 

Cedar Fair, based in Sandusky, said it will pay the purchase price in cash to acquire the stock of Paramount Parks Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of CBS Corp. The deal requires regulatory approval and won't be closed until the third quarter of this year, Kinzel said.

 

CBS Corp. had been looking to sell the parks business, which didn't fit with its media holdings. CBS Corp., which split up with Viacom Inc. at the beginning of the year, owns the CBS network and a group of affiliated television stations, a large radio business and an outdoor advertising company. Viacom, which owns MTV and VH1, kept the Paramount movie studio.

 

The parks being sold to Cedar Fair, along with Kings Island, are: Canada's Wonderland, near Toronto; King's Dominion near Richmond, Va.; Carowinds, near Charlotte, N.C.; and Great America in Santa Clara, Calif.

 

Cedar Fair is a publicly traded partnership that operates seven amusement parks and five water parks.

 

Its amusement parks are Cedar Point, on Lake Erie between Cleveland and Toledo; Knott's Berry Farm near Los Angeles; Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom near Allentown, Pa.; Valleyfair near Minneapolis/St. Paul in Minnesota; Worlds of Fun in Kansas City, Mo.; Geauga Lake & Wildwater Kingdom near Cleveland; and Michigan's Adventure near Muskegon, Mich.

 

The partnership's water parks are located near San Diego and in Palm Springs, Calif., and adjacent to Cedar Point, Knott's Berry Farm and Worlds of Fun. It also owns and runs the Castaway Bay Indoor Waterpark Resort in Sandusky.

 

The new parks will give Cedar Fair entry into warm-weather markets, although none of the parks stay open year round, Kinzel said. The additional parks won't contribute much additional revenue to Cedar Fair's bottom line for at least three years, while the partnership figures out how to reduce operating costs by spreading purchasing expenses among the larger number of parks, he said.

 

 

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

 

 

 

 

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