Apparently too many nickels....

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/tour...ticle910021.ece

..."We're not interested," said Dick Kinzel, chief executive officer of Cedar Fair, the nation's fourth-largest park operator which owns Cedar Point in Ohio and Knott's Berry Farm in California. "The price tag has too many 'B's' in it."....

Not to mention the fact that the Busch Parks include the Sea World parks which include animals. Something Cedar Fair has shied away from. Plus, they have too much debt right now to realistically be able to make an attempt at acquiring the Busch parks.

On a tangential note, it would be interesting to see if they are going to make a bid on the Hard Rock park. Especially since there are rumors of a bidder that is only interested in relocated the assets of the Hard Rock Park. Could this be Cedar Fair looking to buy some new attractions on the cheap for use in their parks in future years, similar to what they have done with the former GL rides?

This rather well respected gentleman would say Hard Rock Park is most likely to reopen as a park:

http://themeparks.about.com/b/2008/11/18/r...not-so-fast.htm

I think it rather unlikely that Cedar Fair could prevail in an auction basing its bid on the break up value of the park real estate and rides....others with the available cash will see the same possibility. In any event, the buyer had best have the financing readily available...with 10 percent down in cash. I am not totally sure that Cedar Fair, given its debt levels, could get such financing in today's market, or have the amount necessary to make the purchase available in unrestricted funds. After all, look at the reduced 09 cap ex....

Note that Six Flags was not even mentioned in the original article as a possible buyer of Busch. I still see a non-North American company ending up with the Busch parks...unless somehow current management is able to do a leveraged buy-out of the theme parks, which seems very, very unlikely.

Wasn't the last time Cedar Fair managed a heavilly themed park with Star Trek, the Experience?

Not only do I not see them doing a high themed job, but like Mr. Kinzel said, it's more Bucks then they're willing to put in.

And Cedar Fair inherited that....and the license was not renewed....

I heard back when this all started that the Busch family wanted to keep the parks. The thing I didn't hear was how they was going to do it.

At the time, the credit crunch had not yet hit. I suspect it might be easy for them to finance the parks out of their portion of the proceeds of the InBev sale, if they really, really, really want the parks that badly. The question is, do they? And which they?

Like mentioned and rumored in the begining I think the new owner will come from over seas.