Why do PE firms like theme parks?

Some of these places are actually pretty poorly run which leads to significant opportunity for your standard PE operational improvements. Some of it is pretty basic like just modernizing their social media presence. Huge ability to leverage tech to better track and monetize user data.

Sea World, for example, used to not be able to tell when season pass ticket holders come and what they buy (sure, were swiping in at different locations, but that info wasn't being tracked), had a non-existent email program, no real CRM database - essentially no idea how to collect or manage data, let alone gather insights from that data for higher monetization.

And depending on the park, a very high % of customers are local / regional - most parks other than like Disney World are mostly attended by people who live fairly close by. So some parks actually fare pretty well in a downturn because instead of flying to a different country / state or doing a big blowout vacation, people still want to have fun and take time off, so theme parks are a relatively affordable way to do that.