The owner of Dollywood and Silver Dollar City is not coming to California.
Earlier this year, Heschend Family Entertainment announced that it would acquire the Palace Entertainment chain from Parques Reunidos. That deal would give Herschend ownership of Raging Waters in San Dimas - California's most popular water park - was well as Castle Park in Riverside and two Boomers family entertainment centers, in Vista and Palm Springs.
Today, Lucky Strike Entertainment announced that it has acquired those properties from Herschend, along with Palace's Wet ‘n Wild Emerald Pointe in North Carolina.
"This acquisition accelerates our vision to build the leading platform of location-based entertainment destinations in North America," Lucky Strike Entertainment Founder, Chairman, and CEO Thomas Shannon said. "Each of these properties has deep roots and established guest loyalty in their communities. We see tremendous opportunity to elevate the guest experience and continue our playbook of strategic investment in high-return opportunities to expand our portfolio, create network economies between the assets, and reshape the future of entertainment."
Lucky Strike is best known now as the owner and operator of hundreds of bowling centers across the country, under the Lucky Strike, Bowlero, and AMF brands. It also owns the Professional Bowlers Association.
Southern California is the nation's most competitive theme park market. It's the only market with parks from Disney, Universal, United Parks, Six Flags, and Merlin. The entry of Herschend into the market would have meant that Southern California would have had representatives from every major theme park chain in America.
Some theme park fans long have shipped Herschend with Knott's Berry Farm, which is now a Six Flags park. Knott's is closer in theme and tone to Herschend's Silver Dollar City and Dollywood than to any other Six Flags park. However, Knott's deep history with its Scary Farm haunt event makes it an impossible fit for Heschend, which is a family-owned company that does not promote horror-themed or haunt attractions.
However, Castle Park was planning another run of its Castle Dark haunt event this fall. There's even a preview presentation for it scheduled on Sunday, August 17, at this year's Midsummer Scream convention in Long Beach. Given the presence of Castle Dark on Castle Park's schedule, either Herschend was planning on ending its long-standing practice, or that was the tell that Herschend was not going to be hanging on to Castle Park.
So, for now at least, Herschend is staying out of California, expanding its portfolio to the east and north, with former Palace properties such as Kennywood, Lake Compounce and Iowa's Adventureland.
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