If you pay any attention to theme park news other than specifically Disney-related, there’s been some interesting speculation lately with regards to Anheuser-Busch’s myriad of theme parks and what will happen to them when the company is purchased by the Belgian beer maker InBev. The company had stated that they would plan on partially financing their purchase of Anheuser-Busch itself by “selling off non-core assets” because they have no real interest in the theme park industry, so of course, said speculation now revolves around exactly who might be interested in buying this division, which consists of ten theme parks total including two properties in Tampa (Busch Gardens & Adventure Island) and three in Orlando (SeaWorld, Discovery Cove, and the newly-built Aquatica).
It was hinted at in our local paper today that Disney was one of the corporations in line to bid on the $2.58 billion Busch Entertainment unit, but ultimately even though I could technically imagine something like that happening, I wanted to comment for just a moment today on why I don’t think it actually will. And I’m not even taking into account the sticker price, although I’m sure that’s enough for most financial analysts to chime in with their two cents worth!
For me (i.e. from the Disney fanboy’s standpoint), I don’t see this working out, specifically for use of the Orlando parks, simply due to the physical distance between the two properties. SeaWorld Orlando is about 6 miles from the closest edge of Walt Disney World (Downtown Disney), and all of the land in between is owned by pretty much anyone except Disney, so trying to loop it into their existing parks would make an absolute mess of their existing, one-world footprint that was well planned for over thirty years ago. If it were possible for someone to simply pick up the entire SeaWorld park and plop it down somewhere in the middle of Disney’s current map, I think with some money they could definitely convert most of the existing attractions into something that in five or ten years feels like it’s been a Disney entity all along…
It won’t happen though – the money isn’t in Disney’s best interests, especially not for a property so distant and also containing so many other parks to also have to deal with. Also, while some of Busch’s other parks could certainly be broken off by themselves no harm, no foul (i.e. Sesame Place, Water Country USA, Adventure Island), it would likely be pretty damaging to the brands to break up the others, if for example, Disney wanted SeaWorld Orlando, but not San Diego or San Antonio. Of course, another article that I read mentioned that Disney’s name very well may have been dropped into the discussion simply to drive the bidding up … which honestly makes more sense to me at this point because unless they got a really good price, I just don’t see it in Mickey’s cards.
Which is fine for us, really. I think we can live without seeing Shamu at a Disney park, but it is definitely some interesting food for thought. I have a feeling that this isn’t exactly going to be a deal that gets done overnight, or even over year, so if it’s going to be another year or two before you can make it down to see Shamu or go swimming with the dolphins at Discovery Cove, I wouldn’t worry much about seeing any change whatsoever.