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Lacking its orca buzz, SeaWorld still aims to reverse visitor, revenue declines for theme parks

 
SeaWorld Entertainment CEO Joel Manby is trying to restructure the company's SeaWorld theme parks without the benefit of the Shamu brand and its historically popular killer whale shows. SeaWorld's stock price is trading at a high since the new year began but is well below its share prices of 2013. SeaWorld Entertainment owns the Busch Gardens theme parks. [AP Photo/Richard Drew]
SeaWorld Entertainment CEO Joel Manby is trying to restructure the company's SeaWorld theme parks without the benefit of the Shamu brand and its historically popular killer whale shows. SeaWorld's stock price is trading at a high since the new year began but is well below its share prices of 2013. SeaWorld Entertainment owns the Busch Gardens theme parks. [AP Photo/Richard Drew]
Published Feb. 21, 2017

For a theme park company that easily could have been financially mauled by years of bad publicity, SeaWorld Entertainment is showing surprising resilience.

Forced to reinvent itself without its star orca attraction, the theme park company on Tuesday released preliminary performance numbers for 2016 that show a modest drop in both theme park attendance and revenues. The figures are down, but apparently solid enough to ease the fears of investors. SeaWorld shares closed Tuesday at $19.31 apiece. That's close to where the stock price traded at the start of this year.

That's respectable, barely, under the circumstances. SeaWorld's stock trades at about half of what it was in 2013, just before the Blackfish documentary critical of SeaWorld's treatment of orca whales in captivity hit a nerve with the public. That 90-minute film also spotlighted the 2010 tragedy at SeaWorld when, during a $30-a-plate "Dine With Shamu" show, a six-ton orca named Tilikum killed its trainer. (Tilikum, the largest and best known of SeaWorld's killer whales, died in January at the age of 36.)

Now SeaWorld is testing ways to attract enough visitors for $99 or so with more of a Mother Nature theme but without the (literal) splash and pizzazz of Shamu-styled shows.

Moody's, which tracks the financial health of SeaWorld Entertainment, captures the theme park company's challenge in an analysis published Tuesday. "The change of its killer whale show to a natural based encounter and the ending of breeding in captivity has helped reduce negative publicity, but it is uncertain how customers will respond to the new natural based orca exhibit that will be launched in the spring of 2017 at its San Diego park."

SeaWorld Entertainment reported 22 million visitors in its preliminary 2016 results. That's down from the 22.5 million visitors its parks welcomed in the previous year. Last summer, the company blamed a broader decline in Orlando tourism for its drop in attendance.

The company also said it expects 2016 revenues of $1.34 billion compared to $1.37 billion reported in 2015 and $1.38 billion in 2014. SeaWorld Entertainment, whose dozen theme park holdings include Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, is scheduled to report official earnings for 2016 and the fourth quarter next week.

The preview of SeaWorld's quarterly results comes less than two weeks after Walt Disney World said it would raise the price on tickets (they will now range from $99 to $124 for a one-day visit) and annual passes (Floridians will now pay from $559 to $679 depending on the ticket level of access). Disney is powered by several high-end attractions coming online in its parks, notably its soon-to-open Avatar attraction at Disney Animal Kingdom. Disney's two Star Wars attractions at Disney Hollywood in Orlando and Disneyland in California are also in the works but their opening dates (probably after 2017) have not been announced yet.

Comcast, parent of Orlando's Universal theme parks and its wildly successful Harry Potter franchise, soon followed Disney, raising single day admission by $5 to and park-to-park tickets by $10. All of theme parks continue to offer a broader and more complex mix of admission prices depending on time of year and how crowded parks may be on any given day.

SeaWorld historically has closely followed such ticket hikes in Orlando. Not this time. It will no longer mimic the big theme park competitors this time, according to SeaWorld CEO Joel Manby. That means SeaWorld is not likely to budge past its current $99 single-day ticket price anytime soon. Last fall, one-day SeaWorld tickets went from $97 to $99. Ticket prices also rose by $2 in May of the prior year.

Surely, SeaWorld still has some smart salvaging still to go. It better. Until those declines in attendance and revenues come to an end, it's all hands on the theme park deck.

Contact Robert Trigaux at rtrigaux@tampabay.com. Follow @venturetampabay.