Busch Gardens, Sesame Place & SeaWorld: How It's All United

I will be going over the history of the theme park brand currently known as United Parks and Resorts.

Now, for anyone who hasn't been following the weird world of theme parks, we have put together a timeline to make some sense out of how we got to the current United Parks & Resorts Incorporated, which if you don't know, today, I'm recording this in 2025, includes two Busch Gardens parks, two Sesame Place water/theme parks and four SeaWorlds, which includes the three marine parks in the US and one mostly indoor park in Abu Dhabi. They also have four water parks and the Discovery Cove experience park in Orlando.

A Note Before We Begin

Before I start, I want to point out that we at Where In The Park know SeaWorld can be considered controversial. And we also know that just putting this episode out will result in two distinct groups finding our podcast: Those who love Sea World, like us, and those who very much do not love Sea World.

Whether you love SeaWorld or not, we're happy that you're here, and we hope you learn something that you didn't already know. We do want to go on the record saying that we support SeaWorld's 2016 decision to conclude their Orca breeding program, as well as their commitment to continue to care for the Orcas that they have. Also, beyond the Orcas, we believe the company when they mention the number of animals they have helped to rescue. We also really do think that current management includes people who truly care about animals and that the company is a net good for conservation, care, and rehabilitation for animals that would not survive without SeaWorld's help.

Now, to that timeline of how SeaWorld Entertainment, Incorporated became United Parks & Resorts. We'll be covering a lot of dates and events. So to keep things organized, you'll see a quick overview of events, followed by additional details and context about those events if you'd like more of a deep dive.

Early Foundations

• 1958 - The Reef Restaurant in Long Beach, CA
• 1959 - First Busch Gardens opens in Tampa Bay, FL
• 1964 - SeaWorld San Diego Opens

Technically, I could start in 1852 when Anheuser-Busch was founded, but instead, we'll skip ahead and start the timeline in 1958, when two guys, one named George Millay and the other David Tallichet, opened a Hawaiian-themed restaurant in Long Beach, California, named The Reef. Tallichet had been a hotel manager for Hilton when Millay met him on a cold call when he was a stockbroker. I should point out that many of the fun facts I'm going to be referencing in this timeline are from George Millay's biography, The Wave Maker, written by Tim O'Brien in 2005.

Continuing on, in 1959, the year after the Reef restaurant opened, Anheuser-Busch (yes, I am talking about the beer company) opened what would eventually become their first Busch Gardens theme park in Tampa Bay, Florida. This was essentially just a small zoo with some pretty gardens that they put in next to their new brewery. For anyone fact-checking us, they HAD used the name "Busch Gardens" for a garden area near Adolphus Busch's home in Pasadena, California, from 1906 to 1937, but we're talking about theme parks here, so we're leaving that off the timeline.

Around 4 years later, in 1963, George Millay tried to figure out how to add an underwater bar to that restaurant in Long Beach. Because of murky water, it turned out the idea wouldn't be worth building, but the people he met trying to figure out that project are who inspired him to create a marine park in Mission Bay, San Diego. He eventually talked a few friends into investing in his crazy idea to build an aquarium, lagoon, and dolphin show experience, which George thought of as kind of an underwater zoo, and in 1964, it opened as the world's first SeaWorld park.

Expanding the Brand

• 1966: Busch Gardens opens in Van Nuys, CA
• 1967: Bayside Skyride opens at SeaWorld San Diego
• 1970: SeaWorld Ohio opens in Aurora, Ohio
• 1971: Busch Gardens Houston & SeaWorld’s Magic Mountain opens

In 1966, Busch opened a second Busch Gardens, this time with a monorail and boat rides, in Van Nuys, California.

In 1967, SeaWorld added its first ride, the Bayside Skyride, which was manufactured by the Swiss company Von Roll. At the time, it was added as transportation from the park to the Atlantis Restaurant. The restaurant closed in 1988 and is currently home to Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute. The ride is still open at SeaWorld, but does not stop at the station, instead returning guests back to the park where their journey started.

In 1968, SeaWorld, Incorporated, went from being a privately held company to a public company.

With the money from their stock sales, SeaWorld opened another park in Aurora, Ohio, in 1970.

Busch Gardens, meanwhile, opened another location in Houston, Texas, in 1971. 

Also in 1971, and a surprise to me while researching this, SeaWorld opened Magic Mountain in Valencia, California. A few years earlier, in 1968, after learning about how much money Disneyland and Cedar Point were making with their ride parks, SeaWorld's George Millay decided that he wanted to create a park without animals as well. SeaWorld then partnered with the Newhall Land and Farming Company to open the Valencia, California, theme park. The first year of that park did not go well, and SeaWorld ended up selling its shares back to Newhall. It wasn't until 1979 that Six Flags purchased the park, but that's a whole other timeline for us to cover in a future episode.

Growth and Transitions

• 1973: SeaWorld Orlando opens
• 1974: George Millay steps down
• 1975: Busch Gardens Williamsburg opens
• 1976: Avoiding a Universal takeover – sold to Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
• 1979: Busch Gardens Van Nuys closes
• 1980: Sesame Place in Pennsylvania opens

Back to what we were talking about, in 1973, SeaWorld opened in Orlando, Florida. That same year, Busch Gardens Houston closed, just two years after it had opened.

In 1974, the SeaWorld board decided to give George Millay a "promotion" to a chairman role, which made it so that he could no longer manage the company. The board referred to the failure of Magic Mountain and SeaWorld Orlando going over budget as their reasoning for doing so. He resigned soon after.

By 1975, the beer company had started adding attractions to their zoo, and had opened the most recent of their parks in Williamsburg, Virginia, which, along with the original Tampa Bay location, are the only two that are still operating today.

The following year, 1976, MCA Universal attempted a hostile takeover of SeaWorld ($22/share) but they avoided that by instead selling to Harcourt Brace Jovanovich ($28.75/share), a publishing company from New York that was trying to diversify their holdings.

In 1979, Busch Gardens closed their California park, but in 1980, after working with the Sesame Workshop, they opened the original Sesame Place theme park, located near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Busch Entertainment Era

• 1988: SeaWorld San Antonio opens
• 1989: Busch Entertainment acquires SeaWorld Inc.
• Early 1990s: Expansion of attractions - Mission: Bermuda Triangle & Wild Arctic
• 1997–1998: The Great White & Journey to Atlantis

Harcourt Brace took on a bunch of debt in 1987 to fend of their own hostile takeover from Robert Maxwell's British Printing and Communication Corporation, but they still finished and opened a new SeaWorld in San Antonio, Texas in 1988.

In 1989, Busch Entertainment, 30 years after opening the first Busch Gardens park, acquired SeaWorld, Inc by purchasing the Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Park Group, after Harcourt decided to focus on their core publishing and insurance businesses instead of theme parks. This deal also included two other destinations. Cypress Gardens, which they ran until 1995, but is now owned by Merlin Entertainment and is where you will find Legoland Florida today. And the other was an amusement park named Boardwalk and Baseball, which had been built around a park previously named Circus World, but it would be closed within two months of being purchased. 

In 1992, SeaWorld Orlando opened its first ride, Mission: Bermuda Triangle, a version of the attraction was also added to SeaWorld San Diego in 1994. Both of which were replaced with Wild Arctic motion simulators in 1995 and 1997 respectively.

It wasn't until 1997 that a roller coaster was added to a SeaWorld park, when The Great White opened at SeaWorld San Antonio.

The following year, Journey to Atlantis opened in SeaWorld Orlando in 1998.

Navigating Changes in Ownership and Public Opinion

• 2000: Discovery Cove Orlando opens
• 2001: Sale of SeaWorld Ohio
• 2004: Journey to Atlantis at San Diego
• 2009: InBev buys Anheuser-Busch, Blackstone purchases parks
• 2013: SeaWorld goes public, Blackfish fallout

In the year 2000, SeaWorld Orlando opened Discovery Cove, an all-inclusive resort with animal interaction experiences.

SeaWorld Ohio was sold to Six Flags in 2001, which later sold it to Cedar Fair in 2004, but it was eventually closed down for good in 2016.

It was in 2004 that the first roller coaster at SeaWorld San Diego opened, their own unique version of Journey to Atlantis.

In 2009, the Belgian brewer InBev purchased Anheuser-Busch and then sold the theme park properties to an investment company named The Blackstone Group.

SeaWorld Entertainment went public on the stock exchange in April 2013. Seven months later, the film Blackfish was released, causing backlash against SeaWorld for its treatment of Orcas and their trainers. That year, Blackstone began selling their shares off, and by the end of 2016, it only owned around 21 percent of the company.

Shifting Ownership Stakes

• 2017: Blackstone sells stake to Zhonghong Zhuoye Group
• 2019: Shares defaulted & returned
• 2022: Sesame Place San Diego opens (from Aquatica rebrand)
• 2023: SeaWorld Abu Dhabi opens (licensed, not owned)

In 2017, Blackstone sold their stake in the parks to Zhonghong Zhuoye Group of China, a company that had hoped to have SeaWorld advise on concepts and designs for parks in China, but in 2019, they had to surrender those shares after defaulting on loans.

In 2017, Sesame Workshop announced that a new Sesame Place park would open by mid-2021, and in 2019, it was revealed that Aquatica San Diego was going to be rebranded as Sesame Place. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, plans were delayed, and the park wasn't ready until 2022.

Also in 2022, a new theme park was added to the roster named Sesame Place San Diego, which had actually started as a waterpark in Chula Vista in 1997 named White Water Canyon, but it went bankrupt the following year and was sold to Cedar Fair at the end of 1999. They reopened it as a Knott's Soak City U.S.A. waterpark for the 2000 season. At the end of 2012, the waterpark was sold to SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, and they opened it as Aquatica San Diego in 2013, which followed the branding of Aquatica waterparks that had opened in Orlando and San Antonio in 2008 and 2012, respectively. 

And finally, SeaWorld Abu Dhabi opened in 2023, and like I had said earlier, it's mostly indoors, except for their version of a Manta roller coaster that goes outside of the building. We should point out that this park is not owned or operated by United Parks; it is located on Yas Island and is licensed by the Miral Group, similar to how the announced Disney park is going to be when it opens there in the future.

Rebranding and Company Today

• 2024: SeaWorld Entertainment becomes United Parks & Resorts
• Current Holdings: 2 Busch Gardens, 2 Sesame Place, 4 SeaWorld Parks, Discovery Cove, multiple water parks
• CEO Marc G. Swanson, CPA (since 2021)

And that's how we got all of the parks under one company. Like I said at the beginning, in 2024, SeaWorld Entertainment changed its name to United Parks. Likely to prevent confusion with the Busch Gardens and Sesame Place parks being considered "SeaWorld" parks, but also likely to distance those parks from the SeaWorld name, which we pointed out earlier is considered controversial to some people.

The current CEO of United Parks is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) named Marc G. Swanson. He has held that position since May 2021, but has worked in many positions within the company since 2004, mostly in finance-related roles.

And, well, that brings us to today. Like I started off with, there are now two Busch Gardens theme parks, two Sesame Place water/theme park hybrids, and four SeaWorlds.

And that's where the timeline currently ends. I know I didn't cover every ride and attraction added to the parks; some have been successful, and others not as much, but the parks are continuing to add wildlife exhibits and modern attractions every year. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 caused some disruptions with the parks, and several indoor exhibits have still not reopened to the public, but we look forward to what the company has in store for us guests in the future.

So, how many of these parks have you been to? Do you have any memories and/or photos of the parks from over the years? Please join us on our private Facebook group, Where In The Park Explorers, to share your experiences!

Until next time, we'll see you somewhere in the parks.

✨Articles referenced in this blog ✨

The Wave Maker: The Story of Theme Park Pioneer George Millay and the Creation of Sea World, Magic Mountain and Wet'n Wild (Sea World Education) - by Tim O'Brien (Affiliate Link)