{"id":544,"date":"2019-06-29T13:53:51","date_gmt":"2019-06-29T13:53:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=544"},"modified":"2019-06-29T13:54:03","modified_gmt":"2019-06-29T13:54:03","slug":"legoland-florida-in-winter-haven-to-get-new-owner-after-lego-strikes-deal-to-buy-legoland-theme-parks-madame-tussauds-wax-museums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2019\/06\/29\/legoland-florida-in-winter-haven-to-get-new-owner-after-lego-strikes-deal-to-buy-legoland-theme-parks-madame-tussauds-wax-museums\/","title":{"rendered":"Legoland Florida in Winter Haven to get new owner after Lego strikes deal to buy Legoland theme parks, Madame Tussauds wax museums"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Merlin runs eight Legoland parks and 20 Legoland Discovery\nCenters \u2014 including Legoland Florida in Winter Haven \u2014 as well as other sites\nlike Madame Tussauds museums across the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The owners of toy maker Lego are teaming up with a group of\ninvestors to buy Merlin Entertainment, a British company that operates theme\nparks like Legoland and the Madame Tussauds wax museums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kirkbi Invest said Friday it is joining forces with private\nequity firm Blackstone and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to offer 60\ncents per share for Merlin, valuing it at $6 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Merlin runs eight Legoland parks and 20 Legoland Discovery\nCenters \u2014 including Legoland Florida in Winter Haven \u2014 as well as other sites\nlike Madame Tussauds museums across the world. It estimates that about 67\nmillion people visit its sites every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Legoland Florida spokesman Shawn Mikus didn\u2019t offer\nimmediate comment on the sale report Friday. He provided a statement from\nMerlin Chairman John Sunderland that said in part:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFollowing an unsolicited approach by a Consortium of\ninvestors, and after rejecting a number of their proposals, the Merlin\nIndependent Directors believe this offer represents an opportunity for Merlin\nShareholders to realise value for their investment in cash at an attractive\nvaluation. We are therefore unanimously recommending it to our shareholders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Legoland Florida opened in 2011 as the second such theme\npark in the United States. A third is being built in New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Merlin said it accepted the deal, its share price\njumped 14%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The investors will create a company that will own 50% of\nMerlin. Kirkbi already owns a stake of nearly 30%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first Legoland opened in 1968 near the Lego company headquarters\nin western Denmark. Lego sold the Legoland parks to Merlin in 2005<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Merlin runs eight Legoland parks and 20 Legoland Discovery Centers \u2014 including Legoland Florida in Winter Haven \u2014 as well as other sites like Madame Tussauds museums across the world.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}