Australian company buys Hawaii water park

Australia's largest theme park owner and operator is buying Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park for $27 million.
Melbourne-based Village Roadshow Ltd. expects an early-May closing of the transaction to acquire the popular water park in Kapolei, the company said Wednesday in Australia.
"The acquisition of Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park is in line with our strategic focus on theme parks," said Managing Director Graham Burke. "The existing park will provide the fundamental infrastructure around which to create a world-class, family-oriented water park experience in a spectacular 30-acre tropical setting, to which we can apply our highly successful Gold Coast formula that has created one of the world's most successful water parks."
Village Roadshow owns the Warner Bros. Movie World, Sea World, Wet 'n' Wild Water World and Australian Outback Spectacular theme parks on the Queensland Gold Coast. Since the company acquired Wet 'n' Wild Water World in 1989, attendance has jumped from 137,000 to more than 1 million in 2007.
Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park, which opened in May 1999, can accommodate up to 6,000 people per day, according to the company's Web site.
"We like the water park space because it is for families what a day at the beach was when we were kids, but there is more to do and there aren't nasty stingers or sharks," Burke said of Hawaiian Waters, which is owned by Waters of Kapolei LLC. "In that context, Hawaii is a terrific market with a wonderful all-year-round climate attracting a large tourist base, including the significant U.S. Mainland interstate travel market, as well as drawing on a significant local population."
Village Roadshow also owns the Village Roadshow Pictures film production studio in Los Angeles, which produced the 2007 film "I am Legend;" a film distribution business with operations in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Greece; an international movie chain of approximately 670 screens in 68 separate sites; and a majority shareholding in Austereo Group Ltd., which operates Australia's leading radio networks, Triple M and Today.
credited by: bizjournals.com