In February 2024, a publicly traded company did something companies almost never do: it deleted the most recognizable word in its own name. SeaWorld Entertainment, a business built on the image of a leaping killer whale, told the New York Stock Exchange to change its ticker from SEAS to PRKS and started calling itself United Parks & Resorts. The parks kept their names. The orcas kept swimming. But the corporate identity had shifted, and the shift was the point.
The rename was not a marketing flourish. It was a company describing itself more accurately than it had in years. United Parks & Resorts is not a single marine park. It is a collection of seven brands spread across thirteen parks, from a Sesame Street playground for toddlers to a hypercoaster that drops riders more than 200 feet. Chief Executive Marc Swanson framed it plainly: the new name "better reflects that we have been, and will continue to be, a diverse collection of park brands and experiences."
01What the company actually does
Strip away the branding and United Parks & Resorts runs two businesses that most operators would never put under one roof. The first is a theme-park company: roller coasters, water slides, seasonal festivals, character meet-and-greets, funnel cake. The second is a zoological operation - one of the largest animal collections in the world, staffed by veterinarians, aquarists and marine biologists, with a rescue team that has helped more than 43,000 stranded, sick and orphaned animals over the company's history.
Those two businesses are not kept in separate buildings. At a SeaWorld park, the coaster and the manatee-rehabilitation pool share the same admission ticket. That combination - thrill ride plus living animal plus rescue mission - is the thing competitors find hard to copy, because you cannot bolt a 60-year zoological program onto a park in a single capital-expenditure cycle.
It is worth being specific about what a guest can actually do inside these gates, because the range is wider than the "amusement park" label suggests. In a single visit you might ride a launch coaster in the morning, watch a rescue veterinarian talk through a sea-turtle recovery in the afternoon, snorkel a reef of rays at Discovery Cove, and end the day at a seasonal food-and-wine festival. That spread is why the company can sell an annual pass to a household with a five-year-old and a teenager who only cares about airtime, and have both feel the price was fair.
02The seven brands, one balance sheet
The portfolio is deliberately varied, and each brand is aimed at a different guest. Sesame Place chases families with young children. Busch Gardens leans into thrill rides and themed lands. Discovery Cove sells a capped, reservation-only day of dolphin swims and snorkeling - the opposite of the crowd-maximizing model everywhere else in the company. Put together, they let United Parks sell to a toddler's parents and a coaster enthusiast without either brand getting in the other's way.
| Brand | What it is | Where |
|---|---|---|
| SeaWorld | Marine-life parks with rides and animal habitats | Orlando, San Antonio, San Diego |
| Busch Gardens | Thrill-ride and wildlife theme parks | Tampa Bay, Williamsburg |
| Discovery Cove | Reservation-only dolphin-swim day resort | Orlando |
| Sesame Place | Sesame Street parks for young families | Philadelphia, San Diego |
| Aquatica | Water parks with animal encounters | Orlando, San Antonio |
| Adventure Island / Water Country USA | Regional water parks | Tampa, Williamsburg |
| SeaWorld Abu Dhabi | Licensed marine park, run by partner Miral | Yas Island, UAE |
03How it makes money
The model is simpler than the park count suggests. Guests pay to get in, then pay again once they are inside. Admissions - single-day tickets plus a growing base of annual passes and memberships - are one revenue stream. In-park spending on food, drinks, merchandise, cabanas and premium animal encounters is the other. The company watches per-capita spending closely, and in fiscal 2025 in-park spending hit a record $36.81 per guest even as attendance dipped slightly.
That single number is the strategy in miniature: get fewer people to spend more, and keep them coming back on passes rather than one-off tickets. There is a third, quieter line too - licensing. SeaWorld Abu Dhabi is owned and operated by the Emirati developer Miral, not by United Parks. The company collects fees for the brand and expertise without carrying the capital cost of the building. It is the asset-light version of expansion.
Attendance and revenue hold near record levels
04Who shows up
The customer is, broadly, the American family on holiday - plus the pass holder who lives within driving distance and treats the local park as a recurring outing. About 21.2 million guests passed through the gates in fiscal 2025. The geography skews to warm-weather states, which keeps the parks open longer each year and smooths out some of the seasonality that plagues northern operators.
The rescue work also gives the company a second, non-paying constituency: wildlife agencies. SeaWorld's teams respond to strandings alongside government partners such as NOAA Fisheries, taking in manatees, dolphins, sea turtles and seabirds. Many are rehabilitated and returned to the wild. It is a genuine public service, and it is also, not coincidentally, the strongest answer the company has to critics of keeping animals in parks.
The rescue program is often described as a cost. It is more useful to read it as a moat. Building the animal-care capability took decades and a permanent staff of veterinarians, aquarists and biologists, plus the accreditation and government relationships that let the parks respond to strandings at all. A newcomer with a checkbook cannot recreate that in a season, and a pure amusement-park operator has no reason to try. The result is that the least "commercial" part of the company is also one of the hardest for rivals to answer.
05Where it sits in the market
In the U.S. theme-park hierarchy, Disney and Universal occupy the top tier on scale and spending. Below them sits a group of regional operators, and United Parks & Resorts is one of the largest - competing more directly with the combined Six Flags and Cedar Fair for the enthusiast and family day-trip market. What separates it from all of them is the living inventory. Six Flags cannot rescue a manatee, and a zoo cannot build a hypercoaster. United Parks does both under one gate.
That is also the company's structural bet. The rides drive attendance and give pass holders a reason to renew; the animals and the rescue mission give the brand a story that outlasts any single ride season. The rename to United Parks & Resorts was the company saying, out loud, that neither half is optional.
The bet is not without pressure. Fiscal 2025 showed attendance and revenue slipping modestly from the prior year, and net income fell as costs and consumer caution weighed on results. The company's answer has been familiar for the industry: keep the capital flowing into new rides and events to pull guests back, lean on passes and memberships for steadier revenue, and squeeze more value from each visit rather than chasing raw headcount. The record in-park per-capita figure in 2025 suggests that last lever is working even when the turnstile count is not.
06From one San Diego tank to a public company
The story starts in 1964, when Milton Shedd, Ken Norris, David DeMott and George Millay opened the first SeaWorld in San Diego, pledging a venture dedicated to education, entertainment, research and conservation. Orlando followed in 1973. The Busch Gardens parks, older still, joined the family through Anheuser-Busch. Blackstone bought the collection in 2009, took it public in 2013, and a decade later the parks stood on their own as United Parks & Resorts, with roughly 3,300 core employees and a much larger seasonal workforce.