Legoland Windsor has record year

Seems strange that the company would still want to dump the parks.

That's why I posted this. By itself, it's not that newsworthy of a story, but given the recent announcement that Lego wants to dump the theme parks, it seems a little odd. I understand wanting to stick to your core business, but only if the ancillary businesses are causing you to take a hit to the bottom line.

Would lego sell the rights so that a company planning on buying the parks could use lego theme, or would it be a giant renovation like the one at GL with name changing and such?

*** This post was edited by Word 11/15/2004 9:41:22 PM ***

I'm sure that anything that happens will include the licensing rights for a very long time.

Lego is a privately held company, with a large portion of the stock controled by the family of the founder. There are non family stock holders, and I suspect that they are responsible for the move to seperate the parks from the toy business. The toy business is what is dragging down the business, not the parks. It's just that the parks don't have a rapid enough ROI to suit them.

Regarding the Legoland parks - here is a direct response to an employee's question from Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen - the head of Lego.

SV:LEGOLAND Parks Future

Hi

First of all it is essential to say that the LEGOLAND Parks are very different from the play materials business. In the present situation, it is therefore necessary to divest the parks into a separate company.

This will actually be an advantage to the parks because at the moment we focus very much on our core business, play materials, and are therefore not able to focus as much as we would like to on the parks. So a new set-up will support their business much better.

The ownership of this new company is at present undecided. I indicated yesterday that it can be the family or an external partner or both. An external partner will only be relevant if we are absolutely sure that this can add to the future of the LEGOLAND Parks.

It is our intention to have one company comprising all the four parks - also with a view to advantages of shared competences and knowledge.

We know that there will be interested investors because we get a lot of inquiries all the time. Many investors see this business as a good long-term investment.

Best regards

Kjeld

Looks like the sale will not really affect the parks at all - so thats only good news

*** This post was edited by Chris One Click 11/18/2004 2:10:30 PM ***

I nominate Cedar Fair. :)

Plenty of corporations have dissimilar divisions that concentrate on their core competencies. I still don't understand why they wouldn't want to hang on to it...perhaps restructure the company a bit to isolate it. Profits be profits says I. ;)

But alas, Cedar Fair would be a good choice...especially for the Carlsbad park with Knott's being just a hop skip and a jump away.