The stormy economy will likely keep SeaWorld San Diego under the umbrella of Anheuser-Busch InBev, at least until conditions improve, analysts say.

It’s been nearly two months since InBev, Europe’s largest brewer, bought SeaWorld’s parent company, St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, for $52 billion and announced its plans to sell off its “non-core” assets.

Expectations were that those assets included Florida-based Busch Entertainment, which owns 10 amusement parks across the country, including SeaWorld Orlando and SeaWorld San Antonio. In early December, the newly merged Belgian corporation, Anheuser-Busch InBev, said it would slash 1,400 salaried American beer jobs and eliminate 415 contractor jobs, but the action did not affect the company’s theme parks division.

Busch Entertainment’s public relations office could not be reached for comment by last week’s deadline, and SeaWorld San Diego declined to discuss the possibility that it would be sold.

Carl Winston, director of San Diego State University’s School of Hospitality & Tourism Management, says he doubts that a buyer would soon surface for Busch Entertainment’s holdings.

Just A Matter Of Time

“Clearly InBev is not a theme park operator,” Winston said. “So there will probably be some kind of play on their part for disposing of the theme park division, but it’s just a timing issue, and I think financing is the boogeyman right now.”

Robert Niles, editor of ThemeParkInsider.com, an online theme park guide, says that while there was a lot of “chatter” initially on who might be interested in acquiring Busch Entertainment, it has since died down. However, he says he heard that Merlin Entertainments Group of England, which owns amusement parks around the globe, including Legoland California, was interested.

England’s Blackstone Group owns Merlin Entertainments, which acquired the 128-acre, Carlsbad theme park along with Legoland parks in Denmark, England and Germany in 2005 and recently announced plans to build parks in Dubai and Malaysia.

“But basically, with this credit market the way it is now, I don’t see the (SeaWorld) parks selling anytime soon,” Niles said.

Merlin Entertainments’ response was noncommittal.

“Merlin Entertainments is the second largest attractions operator in the world to Disney, and as such is constantly looking at potential new opportunities, said spokeswoman Sally Ann Wilkinson. “However, to say any more at this time would be pure speculation.”

Disney is not likely a contender, Niles says, because it develops its own brand of parks, it does not buy them.