Sesame Street characters have appeared at SeaWorld and Busch Gardens parks for decades, with SeaWorld also owning and operating a Sesame Street-themed park, Sesame Place, north of Philadelphia. The new deal calls for SeaWorld to build a second Sesame Place theme park somewhere in the United States, as well as to add a Sesame Street land to SeaWorld's largest park — SeaWorld Orlando, the one park in the chain that has lacked any Sesame Street presence up until now.
Sesame Street provides SeaWorld with its most powerful outside IP — something the chain has lacked in competition with IP-rich Disney and Universal. Once Universal's equal, or superior, in annual attendance, the SeaWorld parks have slipped toward the attendance levels of the Cedar Fair and Six Flags parks the chain's leaders once considered a step below them, ever since SeaWorld left the protection of the Anheuser-Busch corporate umbrella (and lost the free beer) and rival Universal dropped Harry Potter on the industry.
SeaWorld and Busch Gardens have been struggling to find a marketing hook that will allow them to appeal to theme park fans who seem to love the wizards, princesses, and superheroes available to them at competing parks. Even among the preschool and early elementary set that Sesame Street targets, SeaWorld has been losing ground to Legoland, which has undercut SeaWorld's family business in San Diego and now started to do so in Central Florida, too.
Will another Sesame Place park be able to compete with Legoland's ongoing expansion? Compared with Legoland, or any other theme park, the Sesame Place in Pennsylvania in tiny. Located on 14 acres tucked between shopping malls, the park offers a lightly decorated collection of standard kiddie rides: spinners, waveswingers, play areas, and water slides. It's a bulked-up version of the Sesame Street lands you would find at SeaWorld San Diego or Busch Gardens in Tampa or Williamsburg. Compare that with Legoland California and Florida — which offer robust collections of multiple themed lands, offering dozens of attractions with a wider range of ride and show experiences, including interactive dark rides, tours, robocoasters, and hands-on Lego building opportunities — and it's easy to understand why a kid rather would go to Legoland instead.
Ultimately, having a license to an intellectual property isn't as important for a theme park as what the park does with that IP. Sesame Street built its brand on educating preschool children as it entertained them on TV. It took the time to develop its human and Muppet characters, allowing young viewers to feel a relationship with them. While the Sesame Street IP fits perfectly with SeaWorld's stated corporate goal of inspiring and educating its guests, none of SeaWorld's Sesame Street attractions manages to recreate that intimate, educational experience that defines the Sesame Street TV show.
If all SeaWorld does with this expanded license is to dupe another Sesame Place in a suburban mall parking lot somewhere and rebrand Shamu's Happy Harbor in Orlando to Sesame Street Bay of Play, I would expect the market to yawn with indifference. For SeaWorld to get the jumpstart it's seeking with the public, the company needs to throw out its existing Sesame Street designs and work on creating a new experience that more closely reflects what made Sesame Street so powerful among generations of American children.
Whether it is with a ride, show, character meet, or some hybrid of all three, SeaWorld needs an experience that puts young visitors and their families in connection with the beloved Sesame Street characters — breaking the fourth wall of the television screen — so that they can discover and learn something together. And SeaWorld needs to deliver that experience within a themed environment that physically recreates the urban, Greenwich Village-look of the actual Sesame Street from the show. If you're not going to visit the "real" Sesame Street at a SeaWorld park, then what's the point of having the IP?
SeaWorld has bought itself an opportunity it sorely needs by doubling down with Sesame Street. Whether SeaWorld takes advantage of that opportunity remains to be seen.
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SeaWorld should license more popular IP. I suggest the Aquaman IP from DC Comics as an SeaWorld exclusive. Of course, the other DC Comics featured at Six Flags like Batman, Superman, and the Joker should not be available to SeaWorld so there will be a split on what shows up. LEGOLAND still wins because they get all popular IP as Lego incarnations like Star Wars and Batman.
The idea of another Sesame Place in either Southern California or Orlando doesn't work either. What Sea World fails to note with the Sesame Street IP is that it has an extremely narrow audience base (kids from 0-5, maybe 6). Once kids get over 5 or 6 they tend to shun Sesame Street as "too kiddie", meaning Sea World Parks and Entertainment get one crack at each family in America. Once a family has kids over 6, Sesame Street characters quickly lose their appeal (even to families with a younger sibling in the target range), and some older children may even be embarrassed to spend time in a park themed around such "childish" characters. That's where Legoland would bury Sesame Place, because the Lego IP appeals to demographics from 3 all the way up to the early teens, meaning families with multiple kids (even if some are in the 0-5 target range) will instantly choose Legoland over Sesame Place because of the wider appeal. If I'm a parent of a tween, an 8 year old and a 3 year old, there's no way I'm subjecting the older kids to Sesame Place for the sake of their youngest sibling.
For Legoland, a bigger net means more fish, but even so, the Florida park is not lighting the world on fire, mostly due to its out of the way location in Winter Garden (nearly an hour from WDW and UO). Even with a location closer to the other theme parks, a hypothetical Sesame Place Florida would be fishing with the equivalent of a slotted spoon and directly against the worldwide leader in attracting ages 0-5 (Magic Kingdom).
Sesame Place north of Philly works because it is really small and does a great job catering to their very narrow target audience near an extremely dense population center (NYC Metro). They also have some of the most friendly policies in the industry to guests with disabilities.
There's also little competition for that demographic with Dorney Park, Hershepark, and Six Flags Great Adventure catering more towards older kids and teens. If a similar park were to open in Orlando, it would face a similar challenge to target to this narrow demographic without the luxury of a large population center to support it against the stiffest competition in the world (Southern California may work). Tourists don't travel to Sesame Place in PA, and I doubt tourists are going to seek out Sesame Place in Orlando or Southern California.
Although AB makes lousy beer, they were very good owners of the SeaWorld brand, continuously pouring resources into all the SeaWorld parks to open fresh exhibits, upgrade existing shows and open new rides that made them very rewarding experiences every bit as compelling as the Disney parks. The current managers haven't figured out what made SeaWorld work under AB's deft leadership and haven't made the changes necessary in senior management to pursue a different path forward.
It's too bad, because SeaWorld has a very compelling theme that's being grossly underutilized in the theme park world. With a return to good leadership, I strongly believe it can become a world-class brand once again.
- Brian from Florida
Now, if Sea World Orlando wanted to go all out and make an immersive land, that takes the Sesame Street people know and/or remember, and enhance it for a live audience and park guests, I'd be all for it. I just don't think they have the capital or foresight to do something that big.
As for Aquaman, it could work if they go with the orange and green costumed, clean-shaven blonde guy. But if they go with the bearded and tattooed Jason Mamoa, dark and gritty DC Universe version, it would be an epic fail on so many levels.
I think DC would sell Sea World the rights to the character in a limited capacity, as there are no Six Flags parks anywhere near Orlando, and Six Flags IS a park that would work with the upcoming movie version. It's almost like it's not the same character.
But I digress. I'd love to see Sea World create a colorful, fun, and immersive miniland based on Sesame Street. I just don't see it happening to the level that they'd need, in order to compete with the big boys up/down the road.
However I think we can all agree it won't change anything regarding their fortunes.
Probably didn't cost Busch Gardens a ton of money to convert the land to Sesame Street but it is definitely a big hit with the kids. Kids of all ages by the way. There are as many kids in the 6-12 range playing there as there are under 6. So the notion that Sesame Street will only appeal to a very narrow audience of ages 1-5 or 6 doesn't ring true in my experience.
SeaWorld has publically stated that they plan to take a "more with less" approach in terms of attractions. So I would NOT expect a complete replacement of the current Shamu's Happy Harbor. It seems this will also coincide time-wise with the replacement of One Ocean (AKA the Shamu Show.) This also serves to decouple the connection between animals and entertainment within SeaWorld, something they have stated will be a big part of their strategy moving forward.
Sea World should really double down on this, until at least they can come up with some new showstopper like Shamu. The Sesame License does have a big problem admittedly - its only going to appeal to familes with an under 5, and you need something else for the other kids to do. But for those with an under 5 it is an international must-do.
This should be the keystone in their post-shamu transition plan.
Oscar's World of Trash. Ride vehicle takes you down into Oscar's trash can and shows how what you throw away impacts the oceans, and what you, as a 5-year-old, can bug your parents to do about it.
Oscar's World of Trash ... give that man a contract!
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