In this issue:
(To go directly to a story, click on a blue keyword below):

Dollywood sets up a division to handle special events;

Philip Morris reminds a certain movie producer that he was the original Dr. Evil;

Children let their imaginations run wild at Brookfield Zoo;

The sale of Hershey Foods comes near, but not over, Hersheypark;

Cedar Point weight guessers learn you CAN go back again;

Six Flags Darien Lake makes a name for itself;

We welcome a Play & Spray addition to Davis Farmland, and we welcome Joliet’s Splash Station;

And we pay tribute to the best of the best.

For back issues of THE LOOP,
click here

For a printable version of this column,
click here

For more information on the facilities and organizations featured in this newsletter, visit our Connections Page.
click here

The big Event
One unmistakable trend in the amusement industry is the move among parks to stage multi-day thematic events; festivals centered on a genre of entertainment, crafts or other activities. The trend has now attained a key milestone: its own bureaucratic entity.

Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, has just formed a new Special Events department dedicated solely to improving the park’s current annual events and creating new ones. Heading the new five-person division is Dave Anderson, who for 15 years served as Dollywood’s Director of Attractions, which had special events under its purview.

“We see special events as a significant growth opportunity for the company,” Director of Special Events Anderson said. “It’s grown too big to be part of another team.” Currently Dollywood hosts the Festival of Nations in the spring, the Fall Harvest Celebration in October which includes an annual Woodcarvers Showcase and the Southern Gospel Jubilee, and the Smoky Mountain Christmas in November and December. “We’ll be able to expand on all three of those and add new events,” Anderson said.

One of Anderson’s Special Events Managers, Jane Groff, moved over from the Attractions Department where she was in charge of coordinating the show elements of special events. That is the only position transferred into the new department; the other three—a second special events manager (Cyndi Padgett), an administrative/production assistant (Carol White) and a special events production coordinator (Rolando Camacho)—are newly created positions. The new department answers directly to Dollywood General Manager Ken Bell.

“Our job is to define what events we want and help develop the initial concepts,” Anderson said. “Then we will facilitate the park management team to bring all elements of the park together to support the event and hopefully deliver an entertaining product that contains a wide range of elements including shows, food, merchandise and street entertainers.”

Dollywood has capably staged festivals because its disparate departments and talent pools willingly contribute themselves to the event. Given the sense of teamwork that already exists, creating a Special Events team might seem redundant, but Anderson credits that existing cooperation for spawning the team. “On the surface special events look like they just appear; in reality, we’re working events well in advance, and it’s an intense type of business. Just getting the lead time is an issue. We need to book events further in advance and give the marketing folks time to build the marketing plan and create awareness for something that lasts for just a limited time.”

Looking to grow its events is in part an answer to another development at Dollywood; or, rather, a restriction on development. “We’re in a position where we can’t add a new ride or attraction or area to the park every year,” Anderson said. “For the in-between years we can add what we call software elements. It’s another motivation for our season pass holders and would give the local market a reason to come back to the park.” Furthermore, in those years when the park makes a major capital investment, the events team can appease the non-riders with smaller-scale new events, he said. “Our audience is pretty evenly divided. It’s hard to please them all every year.”

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Morris must have been a hit with his stage character to earn a long-running TV gig. Photo courtesy of Philip Morris.

Evil twinned
Here is a trivia question for you Austin Powers fans who helped boost the film Goldmember sequel to a record box office take the past two weeks: Who played Dr. Evil and has a son named Scott? One answer would be Philip Morris, owner of Morris Costumes in Charlotte, North Carolina. Morris, who got his start in the haunt industry in 1959 when he created a character he called Dr. Evil, filed a trademark claim last year against the producers of the Austin Powers franchise.

The movie producers argue that Mike Meyers' creation, the bald, pinkie-sucking, gray suited Austin Powers arch-nemeses, could not be confused with Morris’ long-ago magic and horror-show act. Morris counters that his character is very much in the cultural conscience. Among haunters, at least, who competitively bid for his show posters at annual International Association of Haunted Attractions auctions, Morris is a revered pioneer (not to mention one of the industry’s leading suppliers of costumes and props).

Morris toured his stage show, “Dr. Evil and his Terrors of the Unknown,” nationally for 22 years, performing by his estimates almost 5,000 shows throughout the United States and Canada. A Charlotte television station hired him in 1962 to host Horror Theater as Dr. Evil, a show which outdrew NBC’s The Tonight Show in its market and ran until 1969 when Morris decided to return to full-time touring. The show played on the Turner Broadcasting Company for one year in the mid-80s, too. His company subsequently currently sells Dr. Evil merchandise, and his Charlotte haunted house uses the name. “The creation and use of the title for over 43 years gives me common-law rights to the character,” Morris said.

Granted, Powers’ Dr. Evil looks or acts nothing like Morris’ Dr. Evil, who wore a dark, single breasted suit with a long, black tie and a red fez with a black tassel. However, one of the henchmen in the first two Austin Powers was a character named Mustafa dressed similarly to the original Dr. Evil. “It is interesting that Mustafa does not appear in this current film following our complaint,” Morris said. Scenes featuring Mustafa were cut from Goldmember to trim the movie down from three hours, Entertainment Weekly reported. Morris has also pointed to another strange connection: the movie’s Dr. Evil has a son named Scott. In real life, Scott Morris is now his father’s business partner at Morris Costumes.

The elder Morris/Dr. Evil said the legal wrangling has been going on for more than a year, and the lawyer’s fees have been mounting. But he said he sees a mutual agreement in sight. “We’ll probably end up jointly taking the trademark,” he said.

“I wish New Line Cinema all the success in the world with their new film,” Morris said. “And I only hope that the audience will remember that the original Dr. Evil is that hometown Charlotte boy, yours truly.”

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

A pretend zoo needs a pretend director for a very real experience at Brookfield. Photo courtesy of the Brookfield Zoo.

Powerful play
This world has two places where you can be the veterinarian, zoo director, keeper and lemur all at once: in your imagination, and in the Hamill Family Play Zoo, a free play complex at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, Illinois. Opened in June, 2001, the Play Zoo takes the successful free play models of children's museums and gives it a zoo setting. Brookfield’s is the zoo industry’s first such Play complex; surely, more will follow.

Few community outreach programs can accomplish what the Play Zoo has. It engages children in wildlife conservation by tapping into children's’ most abundant resource: imagination. “At first glance you go, ‘Oh! It’s like a children’s museum,’” said Dave Becker, manager of play programming who came to the Hamill Family Play Zoo staff in December after working at the DuPage Children’s Museum. “But it’s very different. It’s not about the relationship of a child with an exhibit; this is more about a caring relationship between the child and the natural world around them. Here visitors interact with real things." They growing real food in the greenhouse. They dig sod used in the armadillo enrichment program. They interact with real animals.”

The Play Zoo has 80 species in all, mostly birds, reptiles and amphibians, animals that kids can have relationships with outside the zoo. One corner is devoted to a ring-tailed lemur exhibit, where children can either dress up as keepers or as lemurs themselves alongside a glass wall through which the lemurs watch with equal interest.

The veterinary clinic offers a balance of real (X-rays of a frog, a rattlesnake, a penguin with an egg, an owl with a splint) and pretend (shelves of stuffed animals). “Some kids spend all their time in the hospital,” Becker said. “One kid, Zachary, brings his stuffed alligator from home for his weekly check up. And some kids won’t get out of the greenhouse.” No wonder: on “Spritzing Day,” face-painted kids are spraying the plants, while one girl trowels out a hole for a new plant.

When Keith Winsten arrived at Brookfield 4 1/2 years ago as curator of education, planning for the project had already begun. “Driving the mission was, what can we do for kids to help them grow up to be adults who care about animals,” he said. “Can we promote nature plus provide experiences for the kids and a model for parents, showing them the importance of nature in children’s lives?”

Fundamental to carrying out the play zoo’s message is that none of the play is organized, outside the storytelling sessions and crafts workshops. The Play Zoo’s workers—five full-time, three part-time, eight seasonal employees and about 60 volunteers—are on hand to play with children, not lecture. Along those lines, the two-acre outdoor area includes faux animal pens and a little stream cascading down a rocky bed that children can walk through. “There’s a whole generation of kids who don’t play outside,” Winsten said. “I’ve heard parents say ‘I’ve got to set up an animal hospital at home,’ and that’s letting the child practice care.”

Winsten and the Brookfield Zoo planners drew on the appropriate experts: child psychologists, landscape architects, play structure builders and, perhaps most important of all, the Kids Council, a dozen children between 5 and 10 years old. “They give you ideas, and they give you a gut check on ideas,” Winsten said. Like the idea to turn one of the Play Zoo’s rooms into a zoo director’s office, complete with desk, fake computer, phone and a table where children can design their own zoo. “We thought it would be a real failure,” Winsten said. The Kids Council backed it, though, and the Play Zoo has not lacked for candidates wishing to be zoo director.

Perhaps Brookfield has stumbled onto a great recruiting tool, too.

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Confectionery consternation
The residents of Hershey, Pennsylvania, could use a bit of amusement of late. That, at least, is one thing they are guaranteed of keeping, for the present.

The town built on the back of the Hershey chocolates empire was rocked a couple weeks ago by the news that the Milton Hershey School Trust was looking at putting the Hershey Foods Co. up for sale. The Trust, which owns 77 percent of Hershey Foods, said the sale was the “most prudent course of action consistent with its diversification objectives and its fiduciary obligation to the Milton Hershey School.” The school was founded in 1909 by Milton Hershey, the chocolate factory’s founder, to serve disadvantaged students. Analysts say that if a deal goes through, it would be huge: Hershey has $4.6 billion in annual sales and controls 31 percent of the U.S. candy market.

Hershey Entertainment and Resorts Co., which owns and operates Hersheypark and Dutch Wonderland, is not part of the proposed sale. “We have received word from Robert C. Vowler, the Trust CEO, that he has no intention of selling the company,” said Garrett Gallia, director of corporate relations for Hershey Entertainment and Resorts. The park, Gallia said, is part of the diversification the trustees are seeking. While Hershey Foods makes up 52 percent of the Trust’s portfolio, the Entertainment and Resorts company accounts for less than 3 percent.

Also safe are the park’s mascots, the oversized Hershey’s bar, Reese’s Cups and Kisses greeting guests at the park. Hersheypark established a trademark license agreement with the food company in 1985, and the park may use the characters royalty-free “for as long as we choose to use them,” Gallia said. “That licensing agreement would be binding for any potential purchaser.”

Hershey’s Chocolate World next to the park’s front gate is owned by the food company and would be part of the transaction. “We’ve always considered Chocolate World a retail outlet with an informational element,” Gallia said, an element which has included an edutainment dark ride and this year added a 3D movie.

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Rottner, left, would never have guessed her summer job in the mid-'80s would lead to lifelong friendships. Photo courtesy of Liz Pensler Rottner.

Weighty matters
Liz Pensler Rottner is a self-admitted loudmouth. It was the trait that made her an effective weight guesser on the Cedar Point midway in the mid-1980s, and she discovered old skills never die as she and 17 of her colleagues gathered for a reunion at the Sandusky, Ohio, park last weekend.

As a Michigan State University student from 1984 through 1987, Rottner spent her summers working at Cedar Point, and all four summers she guessed guest’s weights for prizes. “I didn’t want to give the same spiel over and over again; that’s why I didn’t want to be on a ride.” She was good, she said, regularly recording the “high hours” among an intensely competitive crew.

An intensely friendly group, too, as it turned out. Inspired by last summer’s Discovery Channel “behind-the-scenes” profile of Cedar Point, Rottner decided to take a vacation to her old haunts so her three daughters could see where she once worked. Upon logging on to the park’s web site she discovered Alumni Alley where she registered as a former employee and found two of her fellow weight guessers already registered. Upon contacting them, the idea formed of putting together a reunion, and a year later the erstwhile midway barkers descended on the park from as far away as New Jersey.

The park jumped aboard the program, offering free admission to the alum’s families and a discounted Friday night dinner at The BoatHouse Restaurant, courtesy of Assistant Director of Foods David Hensley, a former weight guesser himself who was games manager over Rottner and her friends. The next day, the alumni joined current guessers at the weigh stations for a day of guessing, with all proceeds going to the VFW National Home for Children in Eaton Rapids, Michigan.

Meanwhile, the park videotaped the alums guessing. “We were either a lesson on what not to do or what to do, I’m not certain,” Rottner said. Probably the latter as Rottner and her friends discovered. “It felt like no time had gone by. I felt as young as I ever had. It was fun, the style was there, the money was there. We still had it.” In fact, she turned in the day’s high hour. Afterward, the whole group went to Louie’s Bar at the end of the Cedar Point Causeway “just like old times.”

“The only letdown was reality bites; we had to go back to the real world on Sunday,” Rottner said. “It was nice to be 20 again."

Rottner said the alums did not come on as old-experts to their 2002 counterparts, but she feels they did impart a valuable lesson. “”Even though it’s August and it’s hard to come to work every day, it’s the best job you’ll ever have, and you won’t know it for 15 years.”

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top