Lego acquires Merlin entertainment

[florida2010]

Just spotted this on the news:

bbc/news/business-48797245

Lego have acquired the whole of Merlin Entertainment for £4.8 billion.

In the theme park sector this will create an interesting rival to Disney. We have speculated over the years why Disney have not acquired Lego but they are a hugely defensive privately owned family business with strong corporate values. With Lego now taking control of what must be 90% of the UK theme park business it will be interesting to see how things develop.

After the issues the likes of Alton Towers have had in the last few years it will be very interesting to see how future investment and growth in the UK theme park sector works out in addition to how Lego will continue to expand in Florida for example.

[Moorlandman]

Great news. Alton Towers and Thorpe Park offer some of the best thrill rides in the world - they just need some additional investment to extend their operational hours and improve their hotel offerings.

[Nimbus]

Wow. Thanks for that.

Merlin Entertainment were/are the second biggest theme park group in the world - higher than Universal.

Originally Posted by florida2010

With Lego now taking control of what must be 90% of the UK theme park business it will be interesting to see how things develop.

See more...

Well, it's not like Lego will be in charge of any more parks than Merlin Entertainment used to have. Merlin Entertainment owned the Legoland parks - it bought them about a dozen years ago. So it already had control of what was 90% of the UK theme park business.

What it does mean is that Lego has effectively bought back it's own parks.

I'm not sure what difference it'll make really. Kirbi Invest (the people who own Lego) already owned about a third of Merlin. It will own the whole lot going forward and as they say in the BBC article "it does not expect the deal to lead to any significant changes". The size of the theme park group will remain the same. I guess it depends on how much Kirbi Invest decides to invest in the theme parks in the future.

[simker]

Hopefully it will result in improvements in the UK parks. We went to legoland Windsor yesterday. They had 2 rides closed for scheduled maintenance, I know rides need this but they have months when the parks closed and it closes 2 days a week in the spring after it opens for the season.
They also had multiple rides breaking down all day it happened twice to us yesterday again I know these things happen. They also had issues with the displayed wait times being very wrong .

[Twiga6]

This has made my day because it now means we can have a Lego London Eye! So much potential!