Paramount Parks

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Paramount Parks was an operator of theme parks and attractions, which annually attracted about 13 million patrons. Viacom had assumed control of the company as part of its acquisition of Paramount Pictures in 1994.

The company once owned and operated five theme parks in North America and managed Bonfante Gardens in Gilroy, California. From late 2001 until late 2004, Paramount Parks also managed Terra Mítica, an amusement park in Benidorm, Valencia, Spain.

1 History
2 Sale to Cedar Fair
3 Former Properties
4 External links
- 4.1 Former Paramount Park Sites

[edit] History

Paramount Communications, previously known as Gulf and Western, in turn had acquired the parks from Nelson Schwab and his management group. Schwab and his KECO acquired the group in a management-led LBO from the Taft Broadcasting Company, which had built Kings Island in Cincinnati using cast off rides from Cincinnati's Coney Island [1] and to this day there is a small area in the Cincinnati park called "Coney Island" (Named "Coney Mall" in later years) still featuring some of those original rides.

The parks were part of Viacom's Blockbuster Entertainment division until 2002 when they were moved back to Paramount Pictures. After another Viacom corporate shuffle in 2004 the parks became part of Viacom Recreation, a division of Nickelodeon and MTV Networks.

In early 2006, as Viacom went through a corporate split (creating a new version of Viacom and renaming the original company CBS Corporation), Paramount Parks was assigned to CBS Corporation.

Each of the individual Paramount parks maintained their own individual names and identities until 1993, when they were each granted the "Paramount's" prefix (Paramount's Kings Island, Paramount's Great America, etc).

[edit] Sale to Cedar Fair

On January 27, 2006, the CBS Corporation announced its intent to sell Paramount Parks due to the fact that it didn't 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 it was announced that regional theme park operator Cedar Fair Entertainment Company had outbid competitors and intended to purchase all five parks in the Paramount chain, including Star Trek: The Experience and the management agreement of Bonfante Gardens.

On June 30, 2006, Cedar Fair announced that it has completed its acquisition of Paramount Parks from CBS Corporation in a cash transaction valued at $1.24 billion. Shortly following the transfer of ownership, Cedar Fair began the process of integrating the two companies by eliminating the Paramount Parks corporate office in Charlotte, North Carolina and transferring all decision-making to Cedar Fair's offices in Sandusky, Ohio.

The individual parks continued to operate under their Paramount names during the 2006 season, however Cedar Fair began removing the Paramount name and logo from the parks in January 2007. The names of the parks were changed back to their original pre-Paramount names with the Cedar Fair corporate logo added.