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Paramount Parks, Inc. was an American amusement park company headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States, as a subsidiary of the mass media company CBS Corporation. Formed in 1992 through the acquisition of Kings Entertainment Company by Paramount Communications, it was the fourth-largest amusement park operator in the United States, hosting approximately 12 million visitors annually. Paramount Parks operated seven properties, including six amusement parks and one attraction.
The subsidiary became a part of Viacom following its acquisition of Paramount Communications in 1994. When Viacom split in 2005, Paramount Parks was placed under CBS Corporation. In 2006, CBS Corporation sold Paramount Parks to Cedar Fair for $1.24 billion, and the company was subsequently integrated into Cedar Fair.
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.
On December 31, 2005, 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. CBS Corporation, in order to "toss overboard" any unnecessary company assets, sought to sell the parks during the 2006 season, planning to continue their operation until a buyer was found. Cedar Fair, owners of more well known Cedar Point and Knott's Berry Farm theme parks approached the company in 2006. Within the acquisition, there was a license for ten years of use of the Paramount prefix on the parks and Paramount properties at the former Paramount parks, and a four-year license for the use of Nickelodeon names and properties. Cedar Fair opted to remove all mentions of Paramount and Paramount intellectual properties by mid-2007. The only references to a Viacom property remaining were the characters and titles used in Nickelodeon Universe (Kings Island) and Nickelodeon Central (Kings Dominion, Carowinds, Great America, and Canada's Wonderland), all of which were rethemed to Peanuts for the 2010 season, to match the children's areas of Cedar Fair's other parks.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Taft Broadcasting created a division called KECO Entertainment (King's Entertainment Company), which was formed in order to build theme parks nationwide. In 1972 and 1975, KECO built Kings Island and Kings Dominion respectively. In 1975, KECO led a forced purchase on the Carowinds Corporation, a bankrupt company, leaving them no choice but to sell Carowinds theme park in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 1981, KECO opened Canada's Wonderland in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada.
In 1984, hotel company Marriott, owner of two parks named Great America, was looking to divest itself of its parks. One of the parks was located in Silicon Valley in the exurbs of San Francisco and the other was located in the North Shore suburbs of Chicago. The California park was purchased by KECO, while the Illinois Park became part of the Six Flags chain.
In 1992, after 22 years of international operations, KECO Entertainment sold five of their parks to Paramount Communications (which was later purchased by Viacom). The remaining property, Australia's Wonderland, was not fully owned by Kings Entertainment and the minor stake they owned was sold to various Australian investor groups as the stake was not opted to be purchased by Paramount. Subsequently, in 1993, the "Paramount's" prefix was added to the parks, excluding Canada's Wonderland, which was renamed to "Paramount Canada's Wonderland", to avoid the use of a double possessive noun. Thus, the first five parks of the Paramount Parks were established: Kings Island, Kings Dominion, Paramount's Great America, Carowinds, and Paramount Canada's Wonderland.
In 2000, Paramount Parks purchased the majority of shares in Spanish theme park Terra Mitica (Land of Myth), branding it Terra Mitica: A Paramount Park. In 2004, Viacom dropped its shares in the park, and the name was reverted without the Paramount suffix.
Following Cedar Fair's purchase of the Paramount Parks' properties, each park began removing Paramount branding from their rides and attractions. In many cases, this only required a name change, although heavily themed rides would need to undergo more significant changes to remove special effects, including musical scores that would play during the ride or in ride queues.
One of the most notable changes happened to Kings Island's $20 million indoor Tomb Raider: The Ride, which needed to have its special effects removed, including its highly themed pre-show based on the film. In addition, its water effects, lasers, Hollywood lighting, musical score, artificial fog, and flame effects were all removed and not replaced. On the other hand, The Crypt at Kings Dominion, which was more lightly themed to the film, retained many of its effects including lighting, fog, and flames.
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