Paramount Parks

In 1984, the Taft Broadcasting Company sold three of its four amusement parks to the newly-formed Kings Entertainment Company (KECO) for $167.5 million. Kings Island, Kings Dominion, and Carowinds were included in the sale. KECO consisted of senior-level managers and executives, led by Nelson Schwab III, that formerly managed Taft Broadcasting's amusement park division, Taft's Attractions Group. In 1987, Kings Island was sold individually to Carl Lindner's American Financial Corporation. KECO purchased Great America in 1989 from the city of Santa Clara, California, and it also owned a 20-percent stake in Canada's Wonderland.

Paramount Communications, previously known as Gulf+Western, entered discussions with KECO in April 1992 to purchase the company. The sale was completed by August 1992, which was part of a larger $400 million transaction that included the purchase of Kings Island from American Financial. Paramount, which did not have any prior amusement park experience, became the fourth-largest park operator in the country. KECO Chairman and CEO Nelson Schwab retained his roles following the acquisition. Paramount also bought out the remaining 80-percent ownership stake in Canada's Wonderland in 1993, raising their portfolio to five parks.

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.

The Paramount Parks were not built by Paramount, but rather were pre-existing and purchased as a whole, rebranded with the Paramount name. Effectively, it seems, Paramount was attempting to enter into the movie-based theme-park business popularized by amusement park and resort companies, such as Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, Six Flags Theme Parks, Cedar Fair and Universal Destinations & Experiences.

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: Paramount's Kings Island, Paramount's Kings Dominion, Paramount's Great America, Paramount's Carowinds, and Paramount Canada's Wonderland.