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In
this issue:
(To
go directly to a story, click on a blue keyword below):
Singapore's
Sentosa Resort looks beyond SARS; Cypress
Gardens didn't look beyond itself; and Valdosta's Wild
Adventures wants to look at Cypress Gardens;
Wild
Adventures takes to the air waves; Kennedy Space
Center takes time to recover; and Newport Aquarium's owners
take over the New Jersey State Aquarium.
Unsupervised
youths get the boot from Lake Winnepesaukah; and
younger youths ask AZA for supervision;
ACE
sends a message to members for pictures; and Shaggy leaves a message
at Paramount's Kings Island;
We welcome the
arrivals of a spinning coaster at Lagoon, a whirling
Xcalibur at Six Flags St. Louis, two flat rides
at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, a woodie—at
last—at Liseberg, a floorless coaster at
Six Flags Magic Mountain, a dark ride and Delirium
at Paramount's Kings Island, turtles at Newport
Aquarium, a toddler's theater at Disney's California
Adventures, a Pooh dark ride at Disneyland,
the night time at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo, and
a Makoto game at Full Blast Family Entertainment
Center;
We greet the
rebirth of Jazzland as Six Flags New Orleans;
and,
We play our
ACEs.
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a printable version of this column,
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For
more information on the facilities and organizations featured in
this newsletter, visit our Connections Page.
click here
Health
wish
After
a lifetime in the amusement and tourism industry, Darrell Metzger,
the CEO of Singapore’s Sentosa Development Corporation, has
learned to ride out the bumps in the road, no matter how big or
bewildering they may be.
“I wouldn’t have thought a few months ago that terrorism
and war would take the back seat to something else,” Metzger
said. “I was surprised by that one.”
That “one” is SARS, the mysterious Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome illness that has crippled China, Toronto and Singapore
and continues to haunt the global tourism industry. The situation
in the Pacific Rim is such that the International Association of
Amusement Parks and Attractions canceled its Asian Amusement Expo
scheduled for July 16-18 at the Singapore International Convention
and Exhibition Center (See story in Extra!
Extra!).
Metzger understands IAAPA’s decision and supports it, though
he’s certain that by July the SARS epidemic will be an afterthought
in Singapore, where the government’s response to the initial
outbreak was more thorough and up front than that of China. “I’m
in the middle of it, and it’s in the press every day here,
but life goes on,” he said. “You can walk around here
and in a whole day not see people in a mask. But that’s all
you see in the press. Where are the photographers finding all these
people wearing masks?”
Life goes on, perhaps, but all is not normal. His resort island’s
attendance dipped 40 percent last month; “now it’s up
to 25 percent down,” he said. “That’s the good news.
Isn’t that sick that that’s good news?” The corporation
has had to lay off almost all of its part-time employees, which
makes up 30 percent of the work force, instituted pay cuts for all
employees, and deferred all nonessential expenses.
And Sentosa is one of the lucky ones. The Singapore Tourism Bureau
said that tourism was down 68 percent the first two weeks of April.
“That is a huge number,” Metzger said, and it jibes with
the 70 percent drop at Sentosa’s Underwater World Aquarium,
the one attraction on the resort relying almost entirely on tourism.
Yet, there was Sentosa Development Corporation last week announcing
a $20 million (US$11.2 million) redevelopment plan for its Siloso
Beach district to be completed by May 2004 (see story in Extra!
Extra!). There was Sentosa this week announcing a partnership
with MediaCorp TV, one of Singapore’s leading media firms,
to co-produce three events on the island in each of the next three
years, a $12 million (US$6.7 million) deal. Both of these are part
of the resort’s $3 billion (US$1.7 billion), 10-year strategic
plan to revitalize the island. Despite war and disease, Sentosa
Development Corporation is bullish on its future.
“For us it’s the right time to invest, because when these
products start coming on line there will be pent-up demand,”
Metzger said. He is counting on the local market rebounding in two
months, and the regional market returning shortly after. “The
Asian market reacts and responds very quickly,” he said. “They’re
resilient. As soon as they hear it’s OK, they’re gone.
My experience is that when we have these kinds of problems, it always
hits us harder than we thought it would initially, but it comes
back a lot faster than we thought it would.”
As for AAE’s cancellation, Metzger opines that in IAAPA’s
first year of owning the show outright, the association would have
cheated itself if it had only been able to put on an average show.
Now it has a year to gear up for a bigger and better show, and Sentosa
will, by then, be bigger and better, too.
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South
of Eden
Banana
George Blair, the popular octogenarian barefoot skier at Cypress
Gardens, broke down in tears during an interview on National Public
Radio the day after the Winter Haven park closed its gates for good.
The newscaster, though, turned Blair’s tears to anger when
she asked how the park struggled after it was eclipsed by the trio
of theme parks in Orlando. “Cypress Gardens was never eclipsed,”
he said.
He was right, in one sense. Cypress Gardens was a singularly stunning
collection of gardens and gracious Southern living, and the water
ski show remained the Broadway of the genre. However, whether the
park liked it or not, it was in the heavyweight division of Florida’s
attractions, and rather than entering the ring the park knocked
itself out standing on the apron.
When a venerable, prestigious, widely well-known business falters,
it usually sends shudders through its industry. The closing of 67-year-old
Cypress Gardens sent a collective “Huh?” through the amusement
industry and through Florida. Among Floridians the closing created
a public outcry reaching up to the statehouse and Wild Adventures
in Valdosta, Georgia (see story below). Florida
Governor Jeb Bush, in directing state officials to study a state
purchase of the property, (see story in Extra!
Extra!), provided the most telling quote of the whole affair:
“If people aren’t coming, perhaps they’re not coming
for a reason.” That comment touches many depths of truth.
The reason cited by owner Bill Reynolds was the post-9/11 tourism
slump in Florida, the threat of terrorism and the war in Iraq. If
those reasons ring true, Cypress Gardens is a foreboding bellwether
for other Florida attractions. That doesn’t seem to be the
case, however.
“We look at trends every month from 48 attractions around the
state,” said Donna H. Ross, president and CEO of the Florida
Attractions Association, which has 85 member attractions. “Certainly,
business is down. Some have decreased hours of operations, some
have laid off workers, some haven’t staffed up fully. February
was pretty dismal, but most were able to hold on and capitalize
on a good spring break.” In fact, last weekend she said many
attractions reported “gangbuster days,” which she attributes
to Floridians breaking free of cabin fever brought on by addictive
war watching.
One phenomenon of this year was the late arrival of the Snowbirds,
the migrant retirees who annually descend on Florida from points
north, usually making their Winnebago pilgrimages after the New
Year. “When the country went to orange alert (for perceived
terrorism threat), nobody moved,” Ross said. “People just
sat tight. Then we sat tight waiting to see if there was going to
be a war, then we sat tight watching the war.” The decrease
in Snowbird visitation would especially impact Cypress Gardens,
a favorite destination for the seniors market.
Ross also cites the rising cost of doing business as a factor in
attractions’ struggles, something that possibly played a key
role in Cypress Garden’s demise. “We have had a huge spike
in the cost of worker’s compensation in this state,” she
said. “Everybody’s worker’s comp has gone up 15 percent,
and parks with animals are having trouble finding companies that
will underwrite them.” The association has a bill working through
the state legislature addressing the rising insurance costs “that
we hope will bring sanity back to the attractions in Florida.”
Still, to counter these costs and the downturn in out-of-state visitation,
many parks have embarked on new programs, like summer camps, to
entice new business, and the residential market is still formidable.
“We’re blessed in a way that other states aren’t
in that we have a population of 15 million people,” Ross said.
Many parks adjusted their marketing thrusts toward that demographic,
including the Orlando and Tampa heavyweights, as well as Silver
Springs in Ocala, the closest rival of substance to Cypress Gardens.
Clearly, in concept, Cypress Gardens as a theme park could succeed
even in today’s Florida. It could not earn as much money as
Cypress Gardens land development could, but while that’s a
wildly speculated motive for the park’s closing, Reynolds has
not shown any signs of playing that hand, yet. Rather, he has promised
the state’s Department of Environmental Protection that he
wouldn’t do anything about the park for three weeks to allow
state officials the opportunity to nominate Cypress Gardens for
the department’s Forever Florida Program designed to purchase
endangered wildlands and historical entities and keep it in perpetuity.
Meantime, the Winter Haven Chamber of Commerce has formed a task
force charged with formulating a plan to save the park. Chaired
by former State Senator Rick Dantzler, husband of Cypress Gardens
founder Dick Pope’s granddaughter, the task force toured the
park Thursday and hosted a public hearing there. The most obvious
option in the early stages is for the state or local government
to purchase the original 37-acre gardens that Pope created and let
the current owners do what they will with the remaining 160 acres
added in 1974. Much of that acreage lies unused.
Another option would be to find another operator, like the one north
of the border anxiously seeking an audience.
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Cypress
Adventures
Annual
passholders at his park suggested to Kent Buescher that he look
into purchasing just-closed Cypress Gardens. The president of Wild
Adventures Theme Park in Valdosta, Georgia, was a bidder last year
for the bankrupt Visionland Theme Park in Birmingham, Alabama, and
he’s always on the lookout for growth opportunities. “I’m
interested in growing our business, both here in Valdosta and growing
at other locales,” he said. “We’ve explored a number
of alternatives, and continue to do so.”
However, he couldn’t explore Cypress Gardens because his calls
to the park’s owners went unreturned, he said. When he told
Amusement Today of his frustration, a reporter for the paper
mentioned Buescher’s desire to the Orlando Sentinel
newspaper, and overnight the man who built a tiny south Georgia
amusement park into a 1.2 million-drawing theme park in a half dozen
years was seen as the potential Cypress savior.
“I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of calls from people who
want to save that thing and asking me, ‘What can we do to help
you?’ I’ve had good conversations with state officials.
I’ve gotten preliminary commitment from lenders to pursue a
purchase. We have spoken with a lot of folks, but not with anybody
who has a stake of ownership in the park. I’m interested, but
I can’t buy it unless you’ve got a willing seller, and
right now it doesn’t appear there’s a willing seller.”
While noting he cannot adequately evaluate whether such a purchase
would be viable without more research, he believes Cypress Garden
has potential. “You can’t take Cypress Gardens and turn
it into Wild Adventures and get it to fly. Obviously it would have
to build upon the heritage of the park that’s there. One, you
have to preserve the water ski show. Two, you’d have to preserve
the gardens. Three, the project has to have broad appeal that would
include the seniors that make up its historical attendance and bring
families back into the mix in a strong way. Rides would be a part
of it, but it wouldn’t be a hard ride park.”
He cites Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, as a perfect model
of blending a theme park with heritage and nature “in a way
that’s seamless.” “If I can help preserve that park
and keep operating it as a park, I’d be interested in that,”
Buescher said of Cypress Gardens. “I don’t know if I’ll
have the opportunity.”
Even if he doesn’t get the opportunity, he’s accomplished
a marketing coup for his Valdosta park. Buescher has conducted several
news interviews, and Wild Adventures’ Public Relations Coordinator
Sara Sumner spent most of her days this week on the phone telling
the park’s story to dozens of Florida media outlets. “He’s
certainly made my job easier,” she said.
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Airing
out
Sara
Sumner’s job as public relations coordinator is getting easier
in many different directions at Wild Adventures Theme Park. Last
month the Valdosta, Georgia, park went on the air with its own radio
station.
Located at 92.1 on the FM dial, WDDQ offers residents and any travelers
driving down the Interstate 75 corridor in South Georgia a continuous
stream of park information 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Utilizing
the voices of Sumner, the park’s Vice President of Marketing
and Entertainment Jimmy Holmes, and the park’s Senior Vice
President and General Manager Michael Jetter, the radio provides
news and features on the park’s shows, animals, rides and upcoming
concerts. “We do some educational facts about animals, do stuff
that interests the kids,” Sumner said, a ploy to placate travel-weary
children in the back seats of touring cars and vans.
Able to instantly update the broadcasts or go on the air live, the
park also announces weather conditions and traffic reports. “If
traffic is backed up we can give alternate routes,” Sumner
said. Eventually she would like to broadcast skits from the park’s
shows.
The station first debuted as an AM broadcast in the mid-1950s. In
the late ’60s the station added a 3,000-watt sister station
on the FM dial, and when the latter changed hands again in the late
1980s, the signal was boosted to 6000 watts. Adventure Radio Group
purchased the station in February. “We became aware that it
was for sale, and it looked like a perfect fit for Wild Adventures
to inform travelers along I-75 about the park,” Sumner said.
WDDQ reaches as far north as Tifton, Georgia, and west to Albany,
Georgia, but south only a few miles to the Georgia-Florida border.
Billboards along the interstate give travelers the dial location
for Wild Adventures Radio, but south of Tifton the station has something
of a monopoly. “I found out from my aunt who was driving from
Michigan to Florida that when she hit the scan button on her radio
(Wild Adventures) was the only thing that locked in,” Sumner
said.
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Empty
space
All
Florida attractions have suffered the near disappearance of international
tourism, the downturn in national tourism and the delay in Snowbird
visits. All Florida attractions are struggling with rising insurance
and worker’s comp costs, plus other operational costs. Many
Florida attractions endured unusually cold winter weather early
this year.
But only one Florida attraction felt the impact of a disaster occurring
February 1 above the Southwest desert skies and played out over
national television. On the morning of the Space Shuttle Columbia’s
breakup during its descent back to earth, the Kennedy Space Center
Visitor Complex had to switch from welcoming celebration site to
a bereavement center, even as it dealt with its own sense of shock
and loss.
The disaster itself did not impact the Visitor Center’s numbers,
though some people may have thought the complex was closed in the
days following the incident, said Susan Burrell, public relations
manager for the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. “If there’s
a silver lining in the clouds of Columbia, it’s the increased
awareness of the space program and the importance of the space program
and the bravery of the astronauts,” she said.
However, the longer term impact of the disaster has hurt. “The
interruption of the Shuttle program has had a pretty significant
effect on us,” Burrell said. “We do have a lot of visitation
around launches. That definitely hurts us not having those.”
She said the Center’s numbers this year are “running flat
to slightly down” compared to last year, and last year the
complex saw a 15 percent drop from 2001. Running flat is good news
when considering all that the Center has endured this year, but
it is still running behind projections.
The Visitor Complex is hoping for a boost in June when the Mars
exploration rovers launch from Kennedy Space Center for an early
2004 rendezvous with the planet, and the Astronaut Hall of Fame
inducts several new members, among them Sally Ride.
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On
the water front
The
trend in commercial entities taking over not-for-profit, government-subsidized
aquariums continued with last week’s announcement that Steiner
+ Associates would acquire the New Jersey State Aquarium in Camden
(see story in Extra!
Extra!).
The deal, 3 1/2 years in the making, is not finalized; all the parties
involved still must sign off on all the documents, which David Wechsler,
vice president of Steiner + Associates, expects to happen by the
end of June. Last week the plans won the approval of the Delaware
River Port Authority, the proposal’s largest hurdle.
Steiner + Associates is the managing partner of the Newport Aquarium
in Newport, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. The
company also owns and manages Newport on the Levee, a retail/restaurant/entertainment
complex adjoining the aquarium. While Steiner plans to pump a total
of $135 million into Camden’s waterfront development—focusing
more on entertainment and dining venues than retail— the primary
piece of the puzzle is the state’s relinquishing its aquarium
to this for-profit group, which will spend $35 million on an expansion
and renovation.
“We’re taking it private, and we will integrate a lot
of things they do into our model that we use at Newport,” said
Wechsler, who also is the executive vice president of Newport Aquarium.
“We will attempt to bring things inherently done in nonprofits
that lose a lot of money and eliminate those programs.” He’s
referring to public programming which has to be subsidized. “Any
programming we do for the public we charge enough to cover costs.”
Newport Aquarium addressed the issue of providing public programming
without eating into the business profits by forming the Wave Foundation,
a non-profit arm of the aquarium’s operation that raises funds
for educational and public service programs. Camden’s aquarium
had been managed by the Academy of Aquatic Science, which Steiner
will retain in the same capacity as the Wave Foundation, Wechsler
said.
The $35 million expansion, which will increase the aquarium size
by 50 percent, and a facelift of existing exhibits are intended
to give the aquarium and its exposition more vibrancy. “Aquariums
have to create a dynamic environment, which is harder for aquariums
than zoos,” Wechsler said. “Animals engage people better
than fish do. Aquariums have to do a number of different things
other than throw a fish in a tank; you have to connect people to
the fish.”
Creating
such a dynamic environment inside the aquarium coupled with the
development of neighboring entertainment venues and restaurants
should spur repeat visits among locals and pick up more tourism
business out of Philadelphia across the river from Camden, Wechsler
said. “The aquarium does about 560,000 in attendance, which
is relatively low given the market size,” he said.
The expansion should be completed by the summer of 2005, whereupon
Steiner will take over full management of the facility. As with
Colorado’s Ocean Journey in Denver (THE
LOOP March 14, 2003), the private firm acquiring the aquarium
does so without assuming any of the existing debt; and once Steiner
takes over the operation, the state will no longer subsidize the
aquarium. That gets the state off the hook without losing its gem.
“Cities and states don’t want to lose these things; they
are precious,” Wechsler said.
But cities and states have difficulty finding the resources to keep
their aquariums. With Ripley Entertainment successfully operating
profitable aquariums, Landry’s Restaurant opening its own aquarium
in Houston and buying the Denver facility out of bankruptcy, and
Steiner + Associates going on four years at Newport and taking on
Camden, public entities and non-profit operations have a choice
of commercial saviors. “We’ve talked to a bunch of people,
we’ve been contacted by other folks,” Wechsler said. “But
we’re taking things slowly. We want to make a success story
out of Camden.”
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Making
Saturday night alright
Of all
the parks in North America, one of the least likely you would expect
to see a riot is Lake Winnepesaukah in Rossville, Georgia, just
over the state border from Chattanooga, Tennessee. The park exudes
wholesome family fun, and its operations are as genteel as you please;
that made the “Riot at Lake Winnepesaukah” headlines all
the more jarring,
“A bit of a ruckus is a more accurate way to put it,”
Talley Rhodes, Lake Winnie’s public relations director, said
of the altercation last Saturday that ended with officers from nine
different Georgia and Tennessee law enforcement agencies responding.
Press reports about the incident ranged from a rumor of a stabbing
that prompted the park to close early to a fight involving 50 to
100 youths causing a rush of patrons for the exit to a gathering
of up to 700 youths who battled each other and police in the parking
lot after the park closed 90 minutes early.
“We had some unsupervised youngsters acting as unsupervised
youngsters have a tendency to do,” was the only explanation
Rhodes would give. “We decided to close the park early for
the benefit of the families that were in the park, because these
unsupervised youngsters were interrupting their fun.” None
of these youths were threatening the families, she said, but they
were engaging in ruckus-like behavior, i.e. fighting. “There
were no serious injuries,” she said.
Rhodes is doing more than choosing her words carefully for public
relations purposes. She is pinpointing a trend that was beginning
to seriously alter the atmosphere at this 78-year-old family amusement
park. With a $3 admission fee to the pay-as-you-go park, many parents
were dropping their teen-age children off and letting them spend
the day and evening unsupervised. With no money to buy ride tickets,
the kids milled about aimlessly, trouble looking for itself to happen.
The altercation with police in the parking lot after the park’s
early closing generally involved teens with no immediate transportation
home, according to news reports.
Within three days Lake Winnie had instituted new policies aimed
at removing the “unsupervised activity,” Rhodes said.
— All guests under age 21 must be accompanied by a parent or
adult chaperon age 21 years or older, or they must be a member of
a chaperoned group pre-registered with the park and sponsored by
a church, school, camp, club or business;
— All guests under age 21 will be required to purchase either
a combination $3 gate admission and value strip of 14 ride tickets
for $9.50, or a combination $3 gate admission and unlimited-ride
arm band for $18;
— The $3 gate admission by itself will be available only to
persons over age 21.
Lake Winnie has begun a public education campaign to head off any
further ruckus that might arise this weekend over the new policies.
They will be announced in the park’s weekly Chattanooga
Free Press advertisement today, they will be posted prominently
at entry gates and the parking lot, and flyers will be distributed
to all patrons entering the park, Rhodes said. .
It’s a bold move done on the sudden, but park management is
not concerned with consequences, only the end result. “Lake
Winnepesaukah has enjoyed a reputation as a place for family fun
for 78 years,” Rhodes said. “We’re not a teen park
and we’re not a theme park and we’re not a rock ‘n’
roll park. We’re a family amusement park, and maintaining that
tradition is at the forefront of what we do. As the public becomes
educated on our new policy, the policy reinforces our objectives
of family fun. That’s what it’s designed for and that’s
what Lake Winnepesaukah is all about.”
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Poll
vaunting
To gauge
children’s feelings toward the environment, Proprietary Media,
the firm promoting the American Zoo and Aquarium Association’s
image campaign with the Aza mascot (THE
LOOP, March 8, 2002), had hoped one million children would log
onto Aza’s web site and take the “Poll for the Planet”
posted there. Two years on, only 60,000 have taken the poll, but
that’s a significant jump from the 10,000 who had responded
by this time last year.
It also was enough to discern some important trends in the responses:
namely, that children care deeply about the environment, that children
want to help save the environment, and that children feel most adults
care little about the environment and are doing too little to save
it. With enough responses now to provide statistical merit, the
data was compiled into the AZA White Paper which former U.S. Senator
Bill Bradley will present to political, business and foundation
leaders.
“This is not a scientific poll, and we never claimed it was,”
said Janet Weiss, senior vice president and managing director for
Proprietary Media, Inc. “It’s just a great way to gauge
what young people are thinking.”
Sixty percent of young people are thinking that not enough was being
done to prevent pollution, and 49 percent felt that not enough was
being done to clean up the environment, according to the poll. More
importantly, children are ready to jump in to the cleanup campaign
themselves. “The biggest surprise, and the greatest news, is
that not only do kids think there is a problem and they want to
help, but they believe that they can help, which is wonderful,”
Weiss said. “That is something we absolutely now have to tap
into.”
Publication of the 31-page white paper, released Tuesday to coincide
with Earth Day, brings to fruition the centerpiece of the Aza campaign,
which also includes the digital mascot appearing in comic strips
and making personal appearances. While promoting the existence and
mission of the AZA, Aza was supposed to entice children to take
action, first by visiting its web site and then by voicing their
opinions or becoming involved. When Aza didn’t seem to be generating
much traffic to the web site, Proprietary Media turned to AZA member
institutions for help in promoting the campaign. The institutions
obviously stepped up. Of the 60,000 respondents to the poll, more
than 45,000 completed the survey at 83 zoos and aquariums across
North America, while just 12,374 completed the on-line form.
The mere fact that the children took the survey at zoos or by voluntarily
going to the Aza web site skewed participation toward kids who are
environmentally minded in the first place. Nevertheless, Weiss said,
the survey results show “a message of hope, that these kids
feel that they can make a difference.” Now it is up to Bradley
to take this message and use his eloquence to convince government
officials, corporate CEOs and foundation leaders to partner with
AZA in providing children a means to engage in conservation activities.
Bradley also has the comfort of knowing his own eloquence can be
bolstered by some equally poignant commentary from the children
themselves. One girl commented on the poll that her house lies near
a “bad river” that “smells like poop, and living
a road away from it can’t be as bad as living in it.”
To download the white paper, visit www.azaswecom.
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Poster
people
As part
of this year’s 25th celebration of the American Coaster Enthusiasts’
founding, the organization will be producing a commemorative poster
containing 300 to 400 individual photographs highlighting events,
members and rides of the past 25 years.
Founding member Richard Munch, a New York City architect and roller
coaster historian, is spearheading the effort with graphic designer
Terry Lind and ACE’s Publication Director Tim Baldwin. Munch
is now soliciting prints, slides, digital images in color or black
and white that offer “exciting and colorful views that will
represent the full history of the club between 1977 and 2003,”
he said in a memo to members.
Specifically he is looking for photographs of significant people
“who have been instrumental in the foundation and operation
of ACE” including “unique characters;” events such
as ride openings, marathons, publicity stunts and ACE conventions
and meetings; and coasters, new, classic, closed and demolished.
Munch wants at least one representative photo from each event and
says the collection is currently weak in the years between 1983
and 1993. As for rides, “at a minimum we want to represent
preservation efforts, as well as significant rides.”
Each image, which will be no smaller than 1 inch wide by 1 1/2 inches
tall, will be identified by place and date and be fully credited.
The deadline for submissions is May 2.
For more information or a checklist of needs, contact Tim Baldwin,
tbaldwin@amusementtoday.com.
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Voice
over
If you
call Jeffrey Siebert, marketing communications manager for Paramount’s
Kings Island, and get his voice mail, you will hear Shaggy of Scooby-Doo
fame, tell you that Jeffrey is away from his desk and can’t
answer the phone. Shaggy also informs callers to Karen Mickelson,
the park’s marketing manager, that she is not available because
she is getting a pizza.
That voice of Shaggy—and Scooby, too—belongs to Scott
Innes, who was the featured celebrity at the media day for Scooby-Doo
and the Haunted Castle at the Kings Island, Ohio, theme park
(see New Arrival). “He was a great pleasure
to have,” Siebert said. “The guests loved him and we thoroughly
enjoyed having him.”
It was Innes who offered his Shaggy voice for voice mail use, and
Siebert and Mickelson took him up on it. Siebert has found that
having a celebrated voice mail does have have its hang ups. “People
are calling just to hear the voice message,” he said. “I
dial in the message center and it says, ‘You’ve got 17
new messages,’ and I’m going, ‘Whoa.’ But they’re
all click, click, click, and occasionally I’ll hear, ‘Oh,
that was great!’ click.”
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Eric's
Turn
Photo
by Eric Minton
ACE
of diamonds
They
are revered. They are reviled. Often by the same people.
They are coaster enthusiasts.
Our industry has a love-hate relationship with enthusiasts. Enthusiasts
are perfect PR fodder for media days, make great models for video
shoots of new rides and are the primary perpetrators of good buzz
for a ride or a park. All you’ve got to do is feed ’em
and give them some ERT. Many enthusiasts also behave like over-demanding,
spoiled brats, grow oversized chips on their shoulders and tend
to regard the “GP” (general public) as flotsam to be skimmed
out of their way, ignoring the fact that buzz is nice, but GP’s
pay the parks’ bills.
Say what you will about individual enthusiasts, but you cannot deny
the huge impact the American Coaster Enthusiasts, ACE, has had on
our industry in the club’s 25-year history. Is it coincidence
or correlation that the industry’s post-Roaring 20’s heyday,
spurred by the steel “coaster wars” and the resurgence
of classic woodies, came about during ACE’s lifetime? I think
it’s correlation, though determining which spawned which is
a chicken-and-the-egg argument.
True to its name, though, ACE bred enthusiasm for coasters among
the paying public during the coaster war years. At the same time,
the organization held dear one of the primary tenets of its charter:
to preserve classic coasters and celebrate the amusement industry’s
history. Even as its members were looking for the latest, greatest
thrill, they were campaigning to keep many of the traditions of
amusement parks intact and, in some cases, campaigning to keep traditional
amusement parks alive. Not only did they generate some business
for these parks, but their ideals were eventually embraced by the
cyclic nature of consumers who now desire traditionally Americana
experiences.
ACE is in the middle of celebrating the 25th anniversary of its
founding after a coaster riding marathon at Paramount’s Kings
Dominion in Doswell, Virginia, to promote the just released Hollywood
thriller Rollercoaster. The celebration began at last year’s
annual Coaster Convention at Six Flags Magic Mountain (THE
LOOP, June 28, 2002), where one of the club’s founders,
Richard Munch, rode the Revolution coaster with Rollercoaster
star Timothy Bottoms (photo above). The yearlong celebration concludes
this June when the annual Coaster Convention returns to Kings Dominion
as well as Busch Gardens Williamsburg June 15-21.
Meanwhile, the organization is moving forward on establishing the
National Roller Coaster Museum and Archive. It already has a large
collection of coaster cars and amusement park memorabilia and is
raising money to find a permanent home to exhibit these items for
the public (THE
LOOP, November 26, 2002). The fund-raising campaign, run by
a separate not-for-profit entity but launched with a $250,000 contribution
from ACE itself, aims to raise $500,000 over the next three years.
THE LOOP is joining in both of these endeavors, and invites you,
both industry supplier and operator, to participate. We will be
publishing our pre-Coaster Con issue May 23 containing features,
tips and schedules to assist not only Coaster Con participants but
anybody who may someday descend on the Virginia parks. We will publish
our post-Coaster Con issue June 27 containing a report on the convention’s
news and events plus a first-for-the-industry survey on rider and
patron preferences. We are offering special advertisements for these
issues—hot-linked to web sites, of course—and for every
ad we sell, 20 percent will be donated to the National Roller Coaster
Museum and Archive Fund.
This is an opportunity for you to congratulate ACE and support their
worthy efforts, a chance for you to build your future and your past.
For more information on the advertising special, click
here.
Clarification
In the
April 11, 2003,
edition of THE LOOP, a story about George Mason University’s
new tourism degree program and internship opportunities prompted
a letter from George Mason alumnus Mark Riddell, the public relations
manager at Paramount’s Kings Dominion. He recalled his alma
mater being located in Fairfax, Virginia, not Manassas, Virginia,
as reported in our story. He’s right, the main campus is in
Fairfax. The university also has a campus in Arlington, Virginia,
and in Manassas. The Department of Health, Fitness and Recreation
Resources' Tourism and Events Management Program offers their major
and minor degree on both the Fairfax and Manassas campuses. The
HFRR's main office and all five tourism faculty are located on the
Manassas campus.
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Volume
3, No. 8. APRIL 25, 2003
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Lake
Winnie ruckus prompts new chaperone, pricing policies
Disney
announces new Animal Kingdom coaster, resort openings
IAAPA
cancels Asian Amusement Expo
Gold
Coast's Warner Village purchases farm park
Sentosa
unveils beach redevelopment plan
Disneyland
closes Space Mountain for renovations
Sandusky
tax adds 8 percent to Cedar Point parking
Camden
aquarium strikes deal with private managers
State
of Florida considers purchasing Cypress Gardens
Survey
indicates attendance surge at parks during war
Water
feature part of Dutch Wonderland expansion
For
these stories,
click Extra! Extra!
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New
Arrivals
An
iron spider welcomed Lagoon guests (above), but it was The Spider
(below) that spun an irresistible enticement to enter its web. Photos
by Eric Minton.
It’s
a spinning coaster!
Lagoon in Farmington, Utah, announces the arrival of The Spider,
April 19, 2003. Measurements: 53 feet high (16 meters), 1,414 feet
(431 meters) of track, 11,388-square foot (1,058-square-meter) footprint
not including queue and exit areas, eight four passenger cars. Delivered
by Maurer Soehne.
This was a troubled birth. Maurer Soehne’s first spinning coaster
in North America opened on its due date, April 12, but it was late
that Saturday afternoon and ran only 15 minutes before being shut
down. The next day, it ran for three hours and shut down again when
problems developed with some of the wheels on the cars. Maurer Soehne
overnighted new sets of wheels, and after nearly 72 hours of almost
continuous work the coaster was ready for its second opening day
last Saturday. At 2 p.m. on a clear, sunny day (much better weather
than the windy cold of the previous weekend) when The Spider
was deemed ready, a queue numbering in the hundreds cheered and
ran to the ride’s entrance.
They came off the ride nattering amid giggles and laughter. It’s
that kind of ride, like hanging onto a pinball in action or, more
to the theming, riding a foraging housefly on caffeine. It’s
fun enough just watching the wide-eyed passengers on the ride. Even
if he hadn’t seen this reaction, André Meacham, Lagoon’s
ride division operations manager, knew he could count on The
Spider’s success. On a day when about 3,000 people passed
through Lagoon’s front gates, about 3,000 people passed through
The Spider’s turnstile, and the queue was still about
an hour long as closing time approached. However, many of those
3,000 riding The Spider were obviously repeats as several
people ran from the exit back to the queue. Not that they would
repeat the experience; because the seating platform free-spins from
the second drop to the final brake block, The Spider gives
a different ride every time.
Repeat visits is why Lagoon engages in an annual capital improvement
and is especially aggressive in getting “state of the art rides,”
Meacham said. “Most of our guests are the same guests year
after year, so we really want to be doing something nice and something
new.” One such new ride was the Maurer Soehne Wild Mouse
seven years ago, and the ongoing success of that coaster prompted
Lagoon to return to the manufacturer for this year’s addition.
“We really like working with Maurer Soehne,” Meacham said.
“They build a really good product and more than anything else
stand behind it,” as evidenced last week when the company sent
the replacement wheels in time for the park’s second weekend
of operation.
Newfangled rides mesh with clever decor at Lagoon. Of The Spider’s
$4 million price tag, about $1 million went into theming and landscaping.
“We’re to the point where we realize you can’t just
buy a ride and put it in, it needs to be themed,” Meacham said.
“We could have poured cement and put a ride in the middle of
it, but all this stuff adds to it.”
“This stuff” includes a 16-foot-tall (5 meters) wrought
iron spider under which guests pass entering the ride’s plaza,
a castle-themed station house with metal spiderwebbed windows and
baby spiders hanging on walls and fences. “I found some metal
balls and gave them to our welder to turn into spiders,” said
Lori Capener, director of Lagoon’s art and sign shop. The spider
at the entrance was accomplished by a local fabricator and will
eventually hiss blasts of air through its mouth while the red hourglass
on its belly lights up. Park officials were so pleased with the
$50,000 sculpture, they ordered another to be placed inside the
coaster itself reaching out as if snatching at a passing car.
Which is what the ride psychologically does to spectators; with
all the squeals and peals of laughter going on in there, its hard
to resist entering The Spider’s web.
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Six Flags St. Louis experienced knight time at the morning opening
of Xcalibur. Photo
courtesy of Six Flags St. Louis.
It’s
a flat ride!
Six Flags St. Louis in Eureka, Missouri, announces the arrival of
Xcalibur, April 18, 2003. Measurements: 113 feet high (34.5
meters), 46-foot (14-meter) diameter of wheel, 96-foot (29-meter)
radius of the wheel, 6,400-square-foot (594.5-square-meter) footprint,
16 gondolas carrying four passengers each. Delivered by Nauta Bussink
Baily.
Something about bagpipes.
Because Six Flags St. Louis’ new Britannia section ride is
themed as a battering ram inside a medieval wood fort, and because
it’s named for King Arthur’s famous sword, the park adopted
a decidedly Olde English flavor in the opening ceremony for Xcalibur.
A knight in shining armor sliced through the ribbon with his sword,
and bagpipers provided the fanfares and soundtrack.
True, bagpipes are Olde Scottish rather than English, but they struck
the right tune with the crowd. “When the ride was opening,
there was quite a line,” said Carrie Wenos, the park’s
public relations coordinator. “Every time the bagpipers finished
playing, everybody would cheer. It was a very pumped-up crowd.”
Along with the public crowd were local professional journalists
and 38 student journalists from high school and college papers.
“They’re very professional when they come out,” Wenos
said. “They take it very seriously.” Radio station contest
winners from as far away as Springfield, Illinois, made up the official
first riders, after which the pumped-up crowd started boarding the
pumped-up ride. “The people I’ve spoken to said they didn’t
know what kind of ride experience to expect,” Wenos said. “Some
people rode several times in a row, which for a spinning ride was
quite a task.”
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Fireball
gave the Boardwalk a lift in time for the spring break crowd. Photo
courtesy of Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.
It’s
a flat ride!
Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, California, announces
the arrival of Fireball, April 14, 2003. Measurements: 24-seat
gondola rotating at 15 RPM, 60-foot-high (18-meter) swing. Delivered
by Chance Rides.
The goal was to get the second of its two new rides opened by spring
break, and Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk barely did so, opening Fireball
on the first Monday of local schools' recess. With cool temperatures
following a rainy weekend, a line formed at the ride even as the
maintenance crews accomplished their final checks. “That always
happens,” said Jan Bollwinkel-Smith, the Boardwalk’s communications
manager. “People will stand there saying, ‘When is it
going to open? When is it going to open?’ and if they think
it will be soon they stay in line to be among the first on.”
Fireball is the Boardwalk’s second installation of the
year. On February 16 Cliff Hanger opened, a Dartro Industries
product on which riders circle in hang glider-themed conveyances.
Positioned on the beach side of the Boardwalk, the ride gives guests
the impression they are taking off over the Pacific.
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Sweden's
government minister Messing liked what she saw when she opened Balder.
Photo courtesy of Liseberg.
It’s
a roller coaster!
Liseberg in Göthenburg, Sweden, announces the arrival of Balder,
April 12, 2003. Measurements: 36 meters high (118 feet), 1,080 meters
long (3,543 feet) , 90 km/h (56 mph), two 30-passenger trains, 2:08-minute
ride. Delivered by Intamin.
Fifteen years is a lifetime for many amusement park patrons, and
that is how long Liseberg had been without a wood coaster. The park
opened in 1923 with Berganan, but the ride was demolished
in 1987. “Ever since then we have been longing and planning
for a new one,” said Pelle Johannisson, Liseberg’s marketing
director. “We feel, and everybody in the business feels, that
a wooden coaster is a crucial thing to have in the park. We had
to wait about 15 years to get a new one.”
The desire for a wood coaster was so strong that for the official
opening ceremony instead of cutting a ribbon the park had Ulrika
Messing, the Swedish Minister of Communications and Regional Policy,
saw through a piece of wood to open the gates.
Liseberg picked its 80th anniversary as the appropriate moment to
return a woodie to its ranks, and the park cleared out work buildings
in a backstage area to make room for the wooden structure named
for the Norse god of light. After two years of construction the
ride opened to a patronage both nostalgic and new. “Young kids
had never gone on a wooden coaster,” Johannisson said. “Old
people remember the old coaster, and this is a completely new experience
for them.”
Many of the journalists attracted from all over Scandinavia to a
March 19 media event likewise had never ridden a woodie, but members
of the European Coaster Club in attendance had, and they could tell
the press Liseberg had a winner. “They classified it as one
of the top five in the world,” Johannisson said of the ECC
feedback. “I don’t know if they always say that, though.”
A couple weeks later the park invited delegates from a tourist trade
show in Göthenburg for a private preview of Balder,
spreading the ride’s name through the travel industry.
Finally, the ride’s public opening arrived on an “awful”
day, Johannisson said. “In this period of the year in Sweden,
it can be really awful, and it was on opening day.” Nevertheless,
more than 15,000 people visited the park that day, and eight out
of 10 rode Balder, Johannisson said. “The other attractions
had quite a slow weekend.”
Balder heralded several other changes in the park. Gone is
a the Vekoma boomerang HangOver, removed from the middle
of the park to allow for more amenities like cafes and shops. “We
wanted to smooth out the area in the center of the park to make
it more for families,” Johannisson said. With a steel Schwarzkopf
Lisebergbanan from 1987 and the Zierer family coaster Cirkusexpressen,
Liseberg officials now feel they have a suitable offering of coasters
among their 35 rides.
Despite its speed, a 70-degree first drop and enough camel humps
to cause 10 moments of negative G’s, Balder is positioned by
Liseberg as a family coaster. “It’s much more a family
attraction than a teen-age coaster,” Johannisson said. “The
feeling you get afterwards is not something scary but something
fun. You’re laughing all the time.”
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Scream!
put on a show for those riding and those watching. Photo by
Eric Minton.
It’s
a roller coaster!
Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California, announces the
arrival of Scream!, April 12, 2003. Measurements: 150 feet
tall (46 meters), 3,985 feet long (1,214.5 meters), seven inversions,
65 mph (104.5 km/h), three 32-passenger trains. Delivered by Bolliger
& Mabillard.
The media day for this park’s 16th coaster—and first floorless—was
pretty typical. At least the first one was.
On a Thursday two days before the public opening, members of the
local media, coaster enthusiasts and 50 children from the Santa
Clarita Valley Boys and Girls Club serving as the official first
riders, descended on the park for a 10 a.m. (10,00) press conference,
a skit featuring a Dr. Scream, fireworks and VIP rides until 1 p.m.
(13,00).
The next day, Six Flags Magic Mountain hosted college and high school
media. More than 300 student reporters and photographers showed
up for their own press event, giving the park a tremendous publicity
outlet directly into its primary market. “This is something
we’ve always wanted to do, and this was the first opportunity
we had to do it,” said Sue Carpenter, Magic Mountain’s
public relations manager. “And I can tell you we’ll definitely
do it again.”
The day the public finally got to ride dawned partly cloudy and
California spring warm. With the gate’s opening, the bulk of
the crowd sprinted to the far end of the park, where Scream!
was placed on what had been an employee parking lot. Breaking from
a tradition of putting its coasters up among hills or behind themed
facades, almost the full run of Scream! lies beyond a plaza
that could serve as an amphitheater for people watching the coaster.
Within an hour of opening, the ride’s queue stretched out into
the plaza and beyond, even with an efficient three train operation.
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Kings
Island took aim at the family market with its new Scooby ride. Photo
courtesy of Paramount's Kings Island.
It’s
fraternal twin rides!
Paramount’s Kings Island in Kings Island, Ohio, announces the
arrivals of Scooby-Doo and the Haunted Castle and Delirium,
April 12, 2003. Measurements: Scooby-Doo and the Haunted Castle,
568 feet (173 meters) of track, 18 scenes, 103 targets, 104 animated
props, 27 three-passenger vehicles, five-minute ride; Delirium,
85-foot-high (26-meters) tower, 137-foot-high (42 meters) swing
of gondola, 50 seats, eight revolutions per minute, 1:40-minute
ride. Delirium delivered by Huss. Scooby-Doo and the Haunted
Castle delivered by D.H. Morgan Manufacturing, Paramount Parks
Design & Entertainment and Sally Corp.
Usually on opening day at Paramount’s Kings Island, the crowds
waiting in the entry plaza when the ropes lower run en masse to
that year’s new attraction. This year, the crowd divided to
conquer: “It was a mad rush of strollers and wagons and moms
and dads running to Scooby, and every teen on the planet
running to Delirium,” said Jeffrey Siebert, Kings Island’s
marketing communications manager.
The pair of new rides, aimed at two different audiences, shared
a media day the previous Thursday, but with two separate events.
The morning was devoted to Scooby-Doo and the Haunted Castle,
placed in a fully remodeled Phantom Theater ride, including
new construction of a 60-foot (18-meter) castle. Two members of
the park’s entertainment staff played Shaggy and Velma looking
for Scooby, who ran out of the mansion to invite the media members
and VIP guests in for the ride. Scott Innes, the voice of Scooby
and Shaggy on the cartoon series, was the event's featured celebrity
and proved a favorite for both journalists and park staff, Siebert
said. “He was fun to work with and gives great interviews.”
(See Voice Over in this issue.)
Delirium got the attention in the afternoon, featuring 50
coaster enthusiasts wearing underpants outside their clothes that
read “Don’t be scared, come prepared (Delirium
logo) a full load of thrills.” Siebert admitted it was one
of the park’s more bizarre stunts, but the ride, Huss’
first Giant Frisbee, proved to be full of surprises, too. After
installing the ride Huss clocked it at 76 mph (122 km/h), making
it the second fastest ride in the park behind the Son of Beast
roller coaster which surpasses 80 mph (129 km/h). Delirium
also gives its passengers an unusual perspective of the park. “It’s
bizarre because while you’re riding it, the rest of the world
is pointing at strange angles,” Siebert said: “The Eiffel
Tower is at 70 degrees, Son of Beast is at 3 o’clock.”
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It’s
a turtle exhibit!
Newport Aquarium in Newport, Kentucky, announces the arrival of
Turtles: Journey of Survival, April 12, 2003. Measurements:
23 species of turtles, 17 exhibits, one new gallery with nine tanks
and nine plasma screens, 11 audio crystal turtles. Delivered by
COSI Studios.
Turtles can be shy creatures. “We didn’t want people to
just walk by and say, ‘There’s a turtle in his shell,
what does he do?’” said Tim Mullican, executive director
of the Newport Aquarium. For its new Turtles: Journey of Survival
exhibit threading throughout the aquarium’s footprint, the
Newport staff placed videos and audio cues to show guests how turtles
behave in the wild. Some of the videos staff shot in the aquarium's
quarantine center, some videos shot in the wild the aquarium purchased,
but all relate to a particular species residing in a nearby tank.
That way, guests can look for the Mata Mata turtle imitating a leaf
at the bottom of a stream, or watch the snakeneck turtle use its
long neck for effective foraging in rocks.
Using turtles borrowed from other institutions, turtles rehabilitating
for reintroduction to the wild and some of its own turtles, the
Newport Aquarium plans to keep the temporary exhibit open until
Thanksgiving. One section of the exhibit featuring nine tanks and
accompanying plasma video screens will remain as a permanent fixture
in the River Bank gallery.
Newport Aquarium is limited in its ability to stage temporary exhibits
because the building is laid out as a directed tour through themed
galleries. However, the Turtle exhibit utilizes not only gaps in
the permanent displays but ceiling space as well, most effectively
in a replica of an archelon, the largest turtle known to have lived,
and a thousand Lucite turtles glowing in black light leading guests
to a hatchling tank with a single loggerhead. “Only one in
a thousand loggerheads will survive,” Mullican said. “You
get this idea walking under the thousands, and then coming to the
one hatchling that’s alive. That’s how many turtles die
for the one to survive.” Two grown loggerheads swim the waters
of the aquarium’s signature Surrounded by Sharks exhibit, adding
even more awe to that gallery.
Two days before the Saturday public opening the aquarium hosted
some 500 teachers and members of the media for a preview. The next
night donors and VIP’s received a sneak peek at the exhibit,
and on Saturday enough of the public showed up to keep a steady
line at the aquarium’s ticket window, Mullican said. One measure
of the new exhibit’s drawing power came from the collection
boxes where guests could make donations to turtle conservation programs.
The first week the boxes at the coat check collected $700, Mullican
said.
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Bear
and Jamie brought their act to an appreciative California audience.
Photo
by Eric Minton.
It’s
a puppet show!
Disney’s California Adventure in Anaheim, California, announces
the arrival of “Playhouse Disney—Live On Stage!”
April 11, 2003. Measurements: four casts of one live actor or actress,
one bear and five puppeteers manipulating 15 characters, four technicians,
21-minute shows presented six times a day, and room for an audience
of 550 sitting on the floor.
He had seen the show at Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, and John
Addis knew it would fit Disneyland Resort’s plans to offer
more kid-friendly fare at its California Adventure park. Then Addis,
an entertainment and show director for Disneyland Resort, was tapped
to direct the California edition. The 18-year Disney veteran had
four months to put the show together, including training raw puppeteers
to play some involving characters with television progenitors. For
that, he got valuable help from master puppeteer Jeff Conover who
worked the original show. “Jeff had to take character performers,
green unknowns who had no idea what puppetry was, and transform
them into these wonderful puppeteers,” said Addis, who himself
worked for Sesame Street Live with the Henson Corporation before
joining Disney.
Once “Playhouse” was ready, the show ran for a week and
a half of previews, mainly to Disney cast members, a few of whom
brought their children. “The response was great,” Addis
said, “But I’ve been waiting for children.” This,
after all, is a show aimed squarely at the preschool set. Finally,
on the eve of the official opening, he got a true test audience,
about two-thirds of which were children. “And the room rocked,”
Addis said. “It’s like a Beatles concert.”
That’s exaggerating only a little, judging from the opening
day shows where impatient children and their barely patient adults
formed long lines most of the day waiting to get in the theater
that originated as the ABC Soap Opera Bistro. Inside, children sat
or kneeled on the carpeted floor, but most were on their feet the
moment Bear from the Big Blue House made his entrance. Every new
character who appeared on the stage—from Rolie Polie Olie to
Stanley—elicited pointing fingers, cheers or gasps of wonder
that their TV favorites were REALLY THERE! The children danced all
the dances, screamed at the light show, pogo-bounced when the moon
began singing and bounded up to catch bubbles floating down from
the ceiling.
The children get so into the production that the show’s tech
crews have a hard time concentrating, Addis said. “It’s
so funny seeing adults loving a children’s show. Usually the
tech crews are the most jaded. However, with this show, they sit
up there and watch these kids and I’m like, ‘Hey, keep
your eye on the stage, stop watching the kids.’”
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Disney's
trademark magical touch gave Pooh plenty of buzz among an
adoring public. Photo
by Eric Minton.
It’s
a dark ride!
Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, announces the arrival
of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, April 10, 2003.
Measurements: 836 feet (255 meters) of track, 11 scenes, 25 animatronic
figures, 22 vehicles carrying 6 to 10 passengers on a 3 1/2-minute
ride.
The critics were not kind. Disneyland’s newest dark ride elicited
little more than yawns from press pundits and yaps from Disney-baters
who complained that the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
was a step backward from the park’s rollicking, technology-rich,
thrill-giving Indiana Jones Adventure.
Pooh IS a step back, which is precisely why it should earn
the park kudos, and in fact does earn smiles and wide-eyed wonder
among the younger set. This ride is in a class of the dark ride
genre that Disney pretty much has to itself. “It’s a classic
Disney dark ride long overdue for Disneyland,” said John Stone,
senior show designer for Walt Disney Imagineering who was art director
for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
The ride in fact has been 12 years in the sketch books, but only
when the Country Bear Theater was removed did the park make space
for a new version of Pooh which already was operating in
Tokyo and Orlando. The Disney World Pooh served as the Disneyland
version’s genesis, altered significantly to fit in an existing
building. Disneyland’s Pooh uses the original building’s
three big rooms for its various scenes; guests move from scene to
scene with only acoustic walls providing the transition. Guests
ride “hunny beehives” through Hundred-Acre Wood, Floody
Place, Pooh’s cottage and the psychedelic Heffalumps and Woozles
dream sequence.
Disneyland Resort officials had long planned a media event for the
opening of Pooh and "Playhouse Disney—Live on Stage!,"
but in the wake of the war in Iraq they decided to cancel the ceremonies.
Media that had already made plans could still come for the official
openings, and it turned into a typical Disney-catered day for dozens
of reporters and broadcasters. Part of the press privilege was use
of the Fast Pass line at Pooh. Good thing; on this overcast,
chilly Friday, the park was packed, and Pooh was popular.
The critics that count most seemed pleased.
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It’s
a nocturnal exhibit!
Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska, announces the
arrival of Kingdoms of the Night, April 2, 2003. Measurements: 42,000
square feet (3,902 square meters) including exhibits and back-of-house
support, five themed exhibit halls, 75 animal species, a 160,000-gallon
(605,666-liter) swamp and 2,400 stalactites in one of two caves.
Henry Doorly Zoo knew it couldn’t top its own geodesic dome
housing the world’s largest indoor desert (THE
LOOP, April 12, 2002). But it could add some significant depth.
The Kingdoms of the Night, which the zoo is billing as the world’s
largest nocturnal exhibit, lies in the dome’s basement beneath
the trio of deserts.
The zoo was so intent on making the experience fully immersive for
its guests that it actually puts patrons in the dark. “It takes
people awhile to get their eyes adjusted and get used to looking
for things in the dark because it’s truly dark,” said
Sean Putney, assistant curator. “Some places are really dark,
you have to slow the pace down.”
Once their eyes adjust, visitors experience a wet cave with about
1,000 short-tail bats, a 70-foot-tall (21-meter) shaft that houses
“most of our bats,” Putney said, a Eucalyptus forest,
a Baobab tree and a Louisiana swamp. “The swamp area is one
of those awe-inspiring centerpieces,” Putney said, referring
to the trapper’s cabin, old cypress trees and old oaks “that
make you feel you’re really there.” The alligators are
really there, just a few feet below a floating boardwalk, and because
it’s night they are more active than the still-as-logs gators
the public usually sees sunning in most zoos.
The most frightening element of the exhibit, though, is a “bottomless
pool” in the wet cave, which contains a real stream. The pool
has an acrylic sheet five inches below the surface, but in the dark
“Some concerned mothers think their kids could fall in,”
Putney said.
An opening day crowd of 4,500 people visited the new exhibit. The
night before the zoo unveiled the exhibit in a ribbon-cutting event
for donors and government officials, where it was officially dedicated
as the Eugene T. Mahoney Kingdoms of the Night. The naming surprised
Mahoney, a member of the board and one of the zoo’s most avid
fund raisers. Recalled Putney, “He said he would have gone
after somebody else to raise more money to name it.”
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Makoto
has marshaled plenty of interest among Full Blast guests. Photo
courtesy of Full Blast Family Entertainment Center.
It’s
an arcade game!
Full
Blast Family Entertainment Center in Battle Creek, Michigan, announces
the arrival of Makoto, April 1, 2003. Measurements: 32-square-foot
(3-square meters) footprint, three 6-foot-tall (2-meters-tall) towers
with 10 targets each. Delivered by Makoto USA.
Thomas Frame, general manager of Full Blast, is a prudent man.
He saw Makoto at a trade show and was enamored of the game
based on martial arts stick-fighting in which contestants stab at
intermittently lighted targets on three towers placed in a triangle.
However, he didn’t want to commit to an untested product, so
he set up a 30-day trial with the suppliers.
Those 30 days look like they will extend to quite a long lifetime.
“From my office I can hear the unit running in the building
right now,” he said. “I’ve heard it being played
since we turned it on.” The first days he played the game for
six hours himself. “I was training the staff,” he explained.
He also said, “I was puffing,” thanks to the workout.
“You get this thing jacked up to (skill) level five or six
and you’ll challenge anybody who walks through the door. This
is a random unit, the lights never follow the same pattern. It’s
spooky how you think the lights are going to come on, and you’re
never right.”
The difficulty hasn’t limited the game’s popularity. He
has seen three toddlers in the arena, each responsible for one tower.
He has seen youngsters, tweeners, teens and adults take a stab at
the game. “Usually, parents have a tendency to sit in the chair
and let the kids have fun,” Frame said. “With this one
I’ve got the parents up playing it. It’s interesting how
it locks in folks.”
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Rebirths
Shade,
and crowds, were among the new treats at New Orleans' rejuvenated
theme park. Photo
courtesy of Six Flags New Orleans.
It’s
a theme park!
Six Flags announces the rebirth of Six Flags New Orleans, nee Jazzland,
April 12, 2003. Measurements: 2 new coasters—100-foot-high
(30.5-meter), 2,700-foot-long (823-meter) Batman: The Ride
inverted coaster and 79-foot-high (24-meter), 1,936-foot-long (590-meter)
The Jester steel coaster; three new flat rides—44-foot
high (13.5-meter), 30-passenger Lex Luthor's Invertatron,
40-passenger Catwoman’s Whip, and the 30-car Joker’s
Jukebox; one new kiddie ride—the Technocolor Tweety
Balloons; a kiddie area re-themed as Looney Tunes Adventures,
10 new shows, 50 newly planted mature oaks and southern magnolia
trees, shade structures and a Pop Jet water fountain. Delivered
by Amusement Rides & Parts Service/Wieland Schwarzkoph, Bolliger
& Mabillard, Soriani & Moser,Vekoma and Zamperla.
New Orleans had to wait a week longer than they anticipated to finally
see the much ballyhooed changes Six Flags was intending to bring
to their 3-year-old Jazzland theme park. The park experienced construction
delays, and some overseas shipments were held up, said Ann Wills,
public relations manager for the now-named Six Flags New Orleans,
and as the scheduled opening day of April 5 approached Six Flags
president and COO Gary Story decided to delay a week rather than
open unfinished.
“A transformation of this magnitude takes time, and we wanted
to get it right,” Wills said.
For
a city growing accustomed to broken promises at the theme park,
the decision carried some risk. In the end it was proved wiser than
even Story could have imagined. Rain poured on April 5, while the
following Saturday saw “gorgeous, beautiful, blue skies and
mild-for-New Orleans temperatures,” Wills said. Even before
the park opened newscasters were hailing Six Flags’ wisdom,
and once the press and public saw the park, they were hailing the
company’s takeover of the park’s management.
After an opening ceremony that featured the titular star of the
park’s new "Batman Thrill Spectacular" stunt show
riding a motorcycle through pyrotechnics, the gates swung open to
allow guests the chance to witness what’s new. “You always
have a group of people who run to the new rides immediately,”
Wills said, referring to the sprinters heading for the B&M inverted
Batman and The Jester. “Other people just wanted
to see the park and how the park is transformed.” Most impressive
of the transformation is mature oaks and magnolias offering more
shade in the park, and additional shade structures along the midways.
Six Flags spent more than $1 million on landscaping alone.
Of course, at the end of the day, a favorite had emerged among the
new attractions. “Batman: The Ride,” Wills said.
“It was a huge hit. It still is.”
The crowds that arrived for the opening day, Wills said, “were
beyond what we hoped, exceeded our expectations. We were thrilled.”
So, too, it seems, were the people of New Orleans.
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