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Garden Grove finds an investment firm to help lure new theme park

2006-11-30

By Robert Niles: The Garden Grove, Calif., city council has voted to begin a 90-day negotiation with a firm representing Korean investors, in the hopes that the firm can develop a theme park in the city. We've plowed this ground before, but the firm, TL Properties painted an amibitious picture for the LA Times, of a $4-billion theme park and hotel development, along the lines of Universal Orlando and its Islands of Adventure.

A TL consultant also name-dropped Universal, Paramount and MGM as potential partners they "contacted" about the park.

Fat chance. Universal's already in the market; Paramount just got out of the theme park business and I can't imagine that MGM would want to elicit a war with Disney, given their history with the Disney-MGM Studios theme park in Orlando, and MGM's previous, failed attempt at branding a west coast theme park.

Best case scenario is getting Asian interests to fund an Everland-type park, aimed at the SoCal Asian-American market. But given that most Asian theme parks' appeal lies in sampling and recreating U.S./European culture, the idea of a U.S. park recreating an Asian park recreating a U.S. park just makes my head spin.

Readers' Opinions

From Phillip Florendo on December 1, 2006 at 12:45 AM
Was this expected? Or is this just news coming from out of nowhere? But whichever, I'm all for it since I'm 30 minutes away. It would be nice to have some more major coasters close-by.

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