Hanna-Barberra's Southern California Marineland

[speedy fast]

www.toughpigs.com currently has scans from a 1980 Saturday Evening Post on the Muppets. At one point it mentions that there wrere plans for a Muppet theme park to compete with Disneyland and Hanna-Barberra's Southern California Marineland. Obviously the Muppet theme park was never built (and I haven't read anything about it elsewhere), but this thread is about the Hanna-Barberra theme park.

This article is the first I've read about it, and I never knew that Hanna-Barberra had it's own theme park. Does anybody know if the full title was "Hanna-Barberra's Southern California Marineland" or if it was really just "Southern California Marineland"? And does anybody know anything about it, aside from being owned by Hanna-Barberra (unless the article made a mistake regarding which company owns/ owned it) and was probably located in southern california? And does it still exist (I haven't eer see commercials for it, but then again, I've also never seen commercials for Sesame Place)?

I looked at Wikipedia and couldn't find any articles on it, or any mention of it on the Hanna-Barberra page, but I did find a page for another Hanna-Barberra theme park, Hanna-Barberra Land. This is obviously different, as that one opened in 1984 (the Muppet article mentioning this park is from 1980), and was located in texas, not california. That theme park was mentioned as being short-lived, only around from 1984-1985.

[Daws Butler Jr.]

I believe the official name was "Hanna-Barbera's Marineland" and was located near Palos Verdes, right on the California coast. It was for many, many years called "Marineland of the Pacific" and was a Sea World kind of place, maybe even pre-dating Sea World. (Someone else can Google the dates... I'm just working from memory here). Hanna-Barbera just bought the place, slapped some character cut-outs around it and ran in into the ground. I went there once in 1961 when it was Marineland, and then once after H-B owned the place. It was pretty much the same... dolphin show, sea lion show, performing whales. Other than the cut-outs, I really don't recall anything Hanna-Barbera about it. I don't even remember costume characters walking around, although there might have been.

The other thing I recall is that there was a commercial for it that ran on local L.A. television that DID use the Yogi Bear costume. They couldn't make a deal with Daws to do the voice, so Hal Smith did it. Daws never really forgave him for undercutting him like that.