History of Involvement in Theme Parks
Taft Broadcasting purchased Hanna-Barbera Productions, a television animation studio, in 1967. Two years later, it purchased Cincinnati's Coney Island amusement park, moving it and expanding it on a larger allotment of land, reopening it in 1972 as Kings Island. The company partnered with Top Value Enterprises to create Family Leisure Centers in 1973, opening Virginia's Kings Dominion in 1975; the company purchases Carowinds the same year. In 1979, Taft purchases 20% of the new Canada's Wonderland theme park in Toronto, Canada, which opens in 1981. The year prior, Family Entertainment Centers was dissolved, making Taft the sole owner of Kings Dominion.
By 1984, a grouping of senior executives from Taft's Amusement Park Group and some park managers purchase Taft's theme park division. The group names the resulting company Kings Entertainment Company (KECO). Taft gives KECO a perpetual license to use Hanna-Barbera characters at all of their current parks. Australia's Wonderland, which opens in 1985, also licenses the characters, but 1989 KECO purchase Great America doesn't opt receive the license, or opt to separately license. In their first year of incorporation, KECO opened a short-lived Hanna-Barbera Land in Houston, Texas.
The Kings Entertainment Company theme parks all had Hanna-Barbera sections, some having The Flintstones sections, and Smurf sections, after the popularity of the 1980s television series The Smurfs. Through the years, these parks have largely removed or rebranded the areas into other children's sections (under the Nickelodeon brand and the Paramount Parks-created name "KidZVille"). Any of the still operating parks are part of Cedar Fair Entertainment Company; Australia's Wonderland and the stand-alone Hanna-Barbera Land parks are both defunct.
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