I can see BGW, BGT, and Sea World San Antonio, surviving, even thriving, if sold to a company with strong finances & willing to spend for upgrades, more entertainment etc. But I think that Sea World Orlando (they lost their high spending demographic & doubtful they'll return) & Sea World San Diego are in serious trouble.
I think you're basically both correct here.I think Sea World has primarily become a local and regional park. It’s easy to justify going if you’re nearby and already had your fill of Disney and Universal. If you’re vacationing it’s really hard to justify spending a day there. Obviously there are a few exceptions, especially for people who plan longer trips.
SW San Antonio, BGW/BGT appear to be the healthiest parks and the most easily separated from the troubles afflicting SW Orlando and SW San Diego. With a financially healthy owner (and separated from Orlando and San Diego), I think those 3 parks can survive and thrive. But the problem of course is that it's nowhere near that simple. The main complications are that SeaWorld seems to only want to sell the entire company as a whole (even though there's been at least one bid for BGW/BGT separately), and that separating SW San Antonio from SW San Diego/Orlando could be messy and potentially unworkable.
The other complication of course is figuring out the most logical buyer, or whether they should just continue on their own? If Universal (or Disney but Universal is the one that will potentially build a new park closest to it) wants to get into the fray, really only Orlando makes sense to take; but there's a lot of reasons why neither would want to spend $1bn+ buying SW Orlando (including debt) and then revamping the entire resort into a worthy complement to their existing parks.
The question all comes down to what does the future look like for Orlando and San Diego. There are really only 2 other alternatives here: 1) another operator like Six Flags or Cedar Fair or Merlin with a much healthier balance sheet takes over all of SeaWorld (including BGW/BGT) or 2) SW Orlando and SW San Diego figure out how to become even more regional than they currently are.
In terms of vacationer market share, SW Orlando (and San Diego by extension given its market) are already trending that way with a sizeable decline in guests attending the parks from outside of the 300-mile range (the main $$$ vacation guests) and revenue per capita has faced pressure as a result of that.
If SW Orlando and San Diego differentiate themselves enough on price as regional offerings, there's a way to survive there, but the biggest problem is just that SeaWorld's balance sheet is in poor shape and may not be able to handle that kind of change.