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Cedar Fair to Sell California's Great America

Cedar Fair to Sell California’s Great America

Joel
Theme Park News

Cedar Fair Sells California’s Great America for $70 Million
Cedar Fair to Sell California's Great AmericaTheme park chain Cedar Fair has struck a deal with JMA Ventures LLC to sell its Santa Clara theme park California’s Great America for $70 million. There have been rumblings for quite some time that Cedar Fair was looking to sell the park. The San Francisco area park has received very few new rides and new attractions in recent years. It’s hard to believe, but Great America has not received a new roller coaster since 2001!

A few weeks ago Cedar Fair confirmed that it was going to relocate the park’s Invertigo roller coaster to Dorney (Allentown, PA). This is a familiar move as Cedar Fair moved a number of Geauga Lake’s rides before closing that park. Only this time Cedar Fair may have only moved Invertigo so that they could get a good price for the park.

California’s Great America was one of the former Paramount Parks purchased by Cedar Fair in 2006. If you’ve been watching theme park news at all for the past few years, this news shouldn’t be a complete shock. I’ve never been to the park so I can’t speak to my own experiences or begin to guess why it has seemed to struggle. As NewsPlusNotes pointed out, it’s interesting that the new owners, JMA Ventures, do not currently operate any amusement parks. Hopefully, they’ll be able to make this park prosper.

Read the full press release from Cedar Fair.

What’s Your Take?
What do you think of this news? Do you think California’s Great America will be better under new management or not? Leave a comment below and vote in this opinion poll. Image courtesy of flickr user bryce_edwards [poll id=”55″]

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Joel
Founder of CoasterCritic.com. My favorite coasters are B&M hypers and gigas. I'm also a huge fan of terrain roller coasters.

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9 Responses

  1. It is about time CF sold this. This park looks like it has very little to offer to thrill seekers, except for flight deck. CF moved invertigo to DP, a better park, and sold CGA. This is good for CF because now they have more money to spend on rides and improving their other parks. As for CGA's future, some might argue now that it is unchained from the great cedar fair chain that it will be worse, but I think that the new owners will make it maybe better because they have no other parks and will put all their time and effort into this park.

  2. Seems like the consensus on a lot of sites is: they bought the park to tear it down in a few years (as soon as 2013?) to build a new 49ers stadium. I hope they relocate the B&Ms before that!

  3. I expect it will become a shopping maul and parking lot for the football stadium, assuming that the taxpayers can still be fleeced to pay for the stadium (the only way it could be built).

    Cedar Fair's removal of Invertigo was removing the only good coaster that could easily be relocated. Flight Deck would require much more site preparation since it's on slightly uneven terrain. I hope if the new owners turn it into an extension of the stadium they will be able to relocate that coaster to a place that will run it well. It's one of the better B&M inverted coasters (and the only coaster at CGA worth a re-ride). Short and intense.

  5. This park has a good location, but bad lineup of coasters. If this independent company has a success story similar to the original owner of Kentucky Kingdom did, this park might show some promise. But it may be scrapped to build the new 49ers stadium.

  6. I think that this is a step in the right direction for Cedar Fair. They could use some extra money to build new rides. As for the shopping mall or football stadium idea, I don't think that's a good one. I hate to see any park turned into something like that, even if that park is one like Great America.

  7. Cedar Fair obviously showed no interest in a park with a lot of potential but I fear the owners they sold it to may just want the land it sits on. Hopefully I'm wrong, as the only real issue was that it lacked good coasters (Flight Deck the exception), but had a good assortment of flats and water rides.

  8. The new 49er Stadium is already a done deal and would benefit the Amusement Park in the long run. I'm sure there will be people who would shoot over to the park before or after a Niner game, or they can sell combo tickets and packages. The NFL and 49ers offered to purchase the park a while back when Ceder tried to derail the new stadium plan. That would have been cool to have a sports themed park. I used to go to Great America all the time, but the lack of new thrill rides killed my interest. I hope the new owners take the park in a new direction with more coasters and less kiddie rides.

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