New Marketing Look Planned : Harcourt Confident of Reviving Marineland

Despite failures by others to bolster attendance at Marineland, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich officials insisted Wednesday that the marketing prowess used for their Sea World attractions will make a whale of a difference at its newly purchased park on the Palos Verdes peninsula.

Attendance at the picturesque park--acquired on Tuesday for an undisclosed sum by Orlando, Fla.-based Harcourt Brace Jovanovich--has admittedly been “in the doldrums,” according to Jack Snyder, Harcourt’s parks division president.

Marineland, the nation’s oldest marine and aquatic park, “needs a new look in terms of marketing,” Snyder said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “It has facilities that need to be fixed up and it needs (work on) its food, merchandising and entertainment.”

Attendance Problems

Harcourt, a publishing company that also operates Sea World aquatic parks in San Diego, Orlando and Cleveland, now owns Southern California’s two largest aquatic parks.

Attendance problems have dogged Marineland since the 1970s, when the park was owned by Taft Broadcasting’s Hanna-Barbera entertainment division and Kroger Co. Those companies absorbed an undisclosed loss in 1982, when the park was sold to Hong Kong-based Warwick International for cash, notes and stock.

Attendance has remained flat since the late 1970s, hovering between 800,000 and 1 million visitors a year, according to Harcourt.

Amusement industry analysts credit HBJ with overcoming the same kind of attendance problems in 1985, when HBJ’s parks division acquired Cypress Gardens, a 50-year-old, privately held aquatic and botanical attraction in Orlando.

Using internal staff, Harcourt revamped Cypress Gardens’ water shows, upgraded the park’s appearance and packaged the revitalized park along with its very successful Orlando Sea World aquatic park.

Marineland “should fit in nicely” with Harcourt’s other parks, according to Bert L. Boksen, an industry analyst with Raymond James & Assoc., a St. Petersburg, Fla.-based brokerage firm. “It is consistent with their previous expressed (desire) to expand the theme park business.”

However, if Harcourt fails to bolster attendance, “the real estate value alone will make up (for the acquisition price) down the line,” Boksen said.

As part of the deal, Harcourt acquired an undisclosed amount of “unused acreage” that could be used for park or unrelated development, Snyder said.

Deal Makes Sense

“The acquisition seems to make a lot of sense,” according to Dave Schmitt, a Tustin-based amusement industry analyst. “But I’ve got to believe they’ll take a hard look at their total product mix to see how it fits in terms of their Southern California offerings.”

Snyder said Harcourt won’t simply recast the home of Orky and Corky, the killer whales, in the mold of its successful Sea World aquatic parks in San Diego, Orlando and Cleveland. A fourth Sea World is to open in San Antonio in 1988.

Harcourt’s Orlando Sea World park drew 4 million visitors during 1985, while Sea World in San Diego attracted more than 3 million.

“This is not a Sea World park, it’s a Harcourt Parks division park, and that’s an important distinction to make,” said Snyder, who also oversees Cypress Gardens, and Boardwalk And Baseball, an Orlando amusement park that will open in the spring.

Resources Available

Snyder, who began negotiating for the park on the day after Christmas, sealed the deal Tuesday afternoon and returned to Orlando on Wednesday morning.

“We know the Los Angeles and Southern California markets, we know the media costs and the promotional opportunities available to us,” said one HBJ executive. “And, unlike previous owners, we know that park very well. We know their people and how all the attractions are assembled--and we have the financial resources that they haven’t had in the past.”

HBJ’s publishing division in October paid $500 million to CBS for most of its CBS Educational and Professional Publishing division, which consists of Holt, Rinehart & Winston, a textbook publisher, and W. B. Saunders, a medical books publisher.