Carowinds (Charlotte, NC)
Located directly along the North Carolina/South Carolina border, Carowinds was originally the brainchild of local businessman Earl "Pat" Patterson Hall. Supposedly inspired by a visit to Disneyland, Hall conceived a park that got its roots from the history of the Carolinas. With themed areas like "Plantation Square," "Indian Thicket," and "Contemporary Carolinas" as well as original attractions like a monorail and a speedway, the Disney inspiration couldn't have been more apparent.
The park opened in 1973,
just in time to have their attendance estimates completely shot down by the 1973
oil crisis. The investors were, understandably, pretty wigged out when the park
didn't produce the revenue expected of such a large investment. Expansions
plans were shelved, and after two years of lackluster figures the park was sold
to the Taft Broadcasting Company, a media conglomerate based out of Cincinnati,
Ohio. At that point, Taft was having great success with
their own parks, King's Island and King's Dominion.
The following two decades featured numerous changes in ownership. First, a joint venture between Taft and Top Value Enterprises took the reins (operating as Family Leisure Centers). Later on some top executives at Taft started their own company, Kings Entertainment Company (or KECO), and took control for a while. In 1992, Paramount Parks stepped in and bought all the holdings of KECO which of course included Carowinds.
Carowinds (now officially Paramount's Carowinds) continued operations for 13 years. In 2006, however, everything changed. Now, try to keep up with this one: Paramount Pictures was purchased by the media conglomerate Viacom in 1994. That same year, Viacom also picked up the Blockbuster corporation. They lumped Paramont Parks in as part of the Blockbuster Entertainment division of their company. After many years, they changed everything around and Paramount Parks was returned to Paramount Pictures (still owned by Viacom, of course - this was just some divisional changes). In 2004, they shuffled the deck again and Paramount Parks was now affiliated with Nickelodeon and MTV under the Viacom Recreation umbrella. Confused yet? Okay, 2006 rolls around and Viacom goes through a massive corporate split that results in a "new" company, CBS Corporation. CBS Corporation gets the Paramount Parks/Viacom Recreation/whatever they called it this week division and, well, they don't really want it. They're quick to announce that the parks division is for sale.
In May of 2006, Cedar Fair LLC won the bidding war, purchasing all the Paramount Parks for the princely sum of 1.24 billion dollars (that's nine zeros). This increased their number of parks from seven to twelve, which makes Cedar Fair the second largest operator of amusement parks in the world (based on number of properties, that is).
The 2007 season brought many changes to the parks, although many are cosmetic. Paramount theming has slowly been removed, although many aspects still remain at this point. The actual themes of many of the rides remain untouched, although the licenses to utilize these properties will expire at some point in the future (it was reported that Cedar Fair retained the rights to the Paramount properties for ten years. The rights to the Nickelodeon properties, however, will expire after four years). It's a safe bet that Cedar Fair is going to have their hands full when it comes to rebranding the existing attractions.
Carowinds is also home to the Boomerang Bay water park. We're not terribly big on water parks, so you'll forgive us if our coverage of that area amounts to, well, pretty much this sentence. Do you know how weird it feels when you're taking pictures in a water park? People look at you like you're a total freak. Only people I know are supposed to think I'm a freak, darn it!
Overall, Carowinds is a pretty nice little park. While it features several high quality rides, there's nothing terribly extraordinary here to warrant making this a focal point of a trip. The park is clean, the staff is pretty nice, the rides are well maintained - I can't say anything bad about anyone who works for the park - but ultimately, the park is slowly slipping into generic mediocrity. The removal of theming is only going to exacerbate this situation. The park is absolutely worth a visit, even if you're not a credit whore, but there's not a lot of call for repeat visits (Top Gun notwithstanding).
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Click Here for the Carowinds Main Park Directory
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