Lane Merrifield, Dave Krysko and Lance Priebe are going to Disneyland! The founders of popular kids site Club Penguin just got acquired by Disney as announced today. Check out Disney’s home page to find out happy the Magic Kingdom is about the deal. The site will now be called ‘Disney’s Club Penguin’, but will continue to operate out of Kelowna, BC, Canada. Way to go boys! Club Penguin hosts with us at PEER 1 and it’s amazing and incredibly satisfying to see another one of our clients hit the big money. Back in October 2006, startup client YouTube was acquired by Google in a billion dollar blockbuster deal.

The Club Penguin founders will receive $350 million, with an additional $350 million available to them based on the performance of the site. Lane will also become the executive vice president of The Walt Disney Internet Group (WDIG), reporting to WDIG President Steve Wadsworth. Disney plans no immediate changes to the operation or business model of Club Penguin.

The site generates revenue through subscribers and online merchandise sales, rather than the popular advertising revenue model adopted by most of today’s sites.