Southern California is getting a new theme park next year — and it’s based on one of the nation’s most enduring entertainment franchises. But will that be enough to make it a success?
The Sesame Street-themed Sesame Place San Diego will open in March on the site of the former Aquatica water park in Chula Vista. It will be the second Sesame Place theme park in the United States, following the original in suburban Philadelphia.
Sesame Street has been teaching and entertaining children on television for more than 50 years. It helped launch what is now Disney’s Muppets franchise, and its characters remain beloved icons for generations of Americans. After growing up with this franchise, who wouldn’t want the chance to visit Sesame Street in real life?
Owner SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment is betting that opportunity will draw families to Chula Vista starting next spring. This new Sesame Place will retain Aquatica’s water slides and attractions, overlaying them with Sesame Street themes. The park also is installing new dry rides, including a family roller coaster, but its highlight will be a recreation of Sesame Street itself — including Hooper’s Store and the 123 Sesame Street front steps.
SeaWorld Orlando installed a similar Sesame Street land in 2019, and that park’s award-winning Sesame Street Party Parade will be coming to the new park in California as well. Like the TV show that inspired it, SeaWorld’s Sesame Street attractions across the country remain sharply focused on young children.
That makes sense, but some fans who grew up with Sesame Street are not only old enough to have children of their own now, some even have grandchildren. This is a franchise that appeals across generations. While SeaWorld owns the theme parks rights to Sesame Street in the United States, other theme park companies that license Sesame Street elsewhere have developed attractions aimed at a broader audience.
Universal Studios built a dark ride called Sesame Street Spaghetti Space Chase at its theme park in Singapore. In Spain, PortAventura in 2019 opened Sesame Street: Street Mission — an interactive dark ride where visitors use remote control-like clickers to retrieve stolen cookies while Detective Grover tries to find out who has been swiping the treats. (If you know the Sesame Street characters, this is not the world’s hardest mystery to crack.)
Plenty of adults love these rides, which give them the opportunity to step back into the world of Sesame Street that they fell in love with as toddlers. But little kids often respond best to rides built especially for them instead of big “family” attractions. That’s why many parents prefer taking their young children to a place like Legoland California instead of Disneyland — or SeaWorld.
With Sesame Place, SeaWorld will have a new gate designed especially for families with small children, allowing it to go harder after Legoland’s market. Still, as a grown-up Sesame Street fan, I would love to see SeaWorld give us a PortAventura-style Sesame Street family dark ride somewhere, some day.
