|
SeaWhirled (continued)
And what do you know: the market is littered with theme park consultancies
these days, courtesy of the neverending cycle of hire/fire at Universal Creative
and Walt Disney Imagineering. In other words, it just might be viable to
consider outsourcing your creative efforts if you bought SeaWorld and Busch. And
theme park management groups abound. I've seen a group comprised of the top
executives, and I mean the very top, from Disneyland in the early 1990s. Just
about all former Disney executives do consulting now.
High-level theming at Busch
Gardens Africa (Tampa) includes a Tut's Tomb walk-through.
Example? The $1 billion DCA makeover was put together with some help from Bob
Weis, a theme park consultant who was once a senior VP at WDI (if it strikes you
as illogical and a bit weird they would spend big money just to harvest ideas
from someone they used to have on payroll, well, you're not alone. Why not pay
people more to keep them on payroll in the first place? Or why not get ideas
from the folks you DO have on payroll still?)
When all is said and done, perhaps InBev itself will be that "outside owner"
who merely wants diversification and income. Maybe they will keep the park after
all. It's so early in the buyout announcement that we just don't know their
motivations. Perhaps the parks were part of what they wanted for their $50
billion. And just maybe, they want to leverage the exposure into advertising for
their own products. That might mean they would keep the Hospitality Centers and
free beer, but next to Budweiser we might see their own InBev brands like
Beck's.
It could be that InBev wants to make their brands recognizable to the
American market. You know Beck's, but do you know Stella Artois? (Some of us do;
I did!) My mouth is positively watering at the idea that we'll be introduced to
their other brands, like the Belgian white beer Hoegaarden or Brazilian pale
lager Brahma.
Goodbye American cultural
icon?
The real crux of the matter for me will be to what extent the new owner will
maintain the existing culture of the business, or change it around. If InBev
keeps the parks, will it allow things to operate as before, or will Shamu have
to learn French (metaphorically speaking, of course)? Wall Street tends to like
acquisitions because the combined company often garners more market share and
also because combining offers the chance to shave costs by reducing overlap. And
that's where job cutting comes in, which is making the workers of St. Louis very
nervous (though InBev so far promises St. Louis would be the hub of North
American operations).
But job cutting could happen in unrelated lines of business, like the theme
parks. What if InBev decides that the parks could still be run on only 80% of
the current workforce? Lines might be longer, but if that would be acceptable in
their minds (maybe it's the norm in Belgian theme parks?) they might push such a
change through. Note: this scenario is hypothetical. In fact the reverse could
be true, that they wouldn't want lines at all and would mandate additional
workforce. I haven't been to Belgium, and I don't know this company or its
management, so it's hard to know what's coming, culturally speaking.
If the culture of SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, Aquatica, and Discovery Cove stay
the same, then the impact of a new owner might well be minimal, perhaps even
invisible. We could see increased funding for new projects, since there's a new
owner with his own ideas about how to maximize profits, or we could see the
exact opposite, a draining of money for new development. Either one would impact
not only the Busch parks, but also competitors like Universal and Disney. "If
Busch isn't building anything new," the Disney managers might say to each other,
"then maybe Disney might not need to, either." And that kind of decision has
consequences even for those of us who have Mouse-centric vacations and don't
stray off property.
I'm sure it's my
imagination, but it looks like there are more fish
at Busch Gardens Africa than
at SeaWorld Orlando.
Even the small details about corporate culture and theme park decorum could
be effected. If conservation is less important to the future owner, look for
more rides and fewer animal shows. The Orlando park already has fewer animal
exhibits than the San Diego park; for instance, I keep scratching my head that a
park called "SeaWorld" has no fish aquarium. For some, more rides will be
nirvana. For others, it could be disastrous. Much depends on the way rides are
built. At Knott's Berry Farm, historic and highly-themed locales like the
Haunted Shack were just ripped away for bare-metal thrill rides like a
SkyCoaster. Would making SeaWorld thrill-oriented be good or bad for its income
statements? (my heart and my experience suggest it would be bad; the Orlando
theme park market is very much dominated by families with small children)
The upcoming Manta
rollercoaster will open in Summer 2009, continuing the tradition at
SeaWorld to
move into thrill rides (Atlantis, Kraken) and away from more sedate exhibits.
So far, the news from Belgium is neutral; neither good nor bad for SeaWorld
or for Disney/Universal. But the acquisition of Anheuser-Busch is pregnant with
possibilities, making this an exciting time. If certain things occur, the
aftershocks of this purchase could be large indeed, even down at Disney. But for
now, we all just wait and see. |
