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In
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Ripley
Entertainment builds new museums and plans waterparks in the
face of tough times;
Blackpool Pleasure Beach engineers race the clock
to get a race car on Big One;
Disc-catching dogs give Quassy a warm, fuzzy feeling;
SpongeBob SquarePants soars in Q rating at parks
and zoos;
The Roller Coaster Museum and Archive trains well, thanks to Six
Flags Elitch Gardens;
We herald the rebirth of the Whip at Lakeside,
and we welcome, at last, a waterpark to Wild Adventures
and a camp campus to SeaWorld San Diego;
In the nursery we find a Ripley’s Believe It Or
Not in Key West, a Storm at Hyland Hills
Water World, a Moby Dick at Palace Playland,
Jaguar Cove at Woodland Park Zoo, and tall towers
at Six Flags World of Adventures;
THE LOOP soars high on a SkyCoaster, and we announce
our transition to a subscription newsletter and
site.
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You
gotta Believe
On Saturday, just a little more than one month after opening its
26th museum in Key West, Florida (see New Arrival),
Ripley Entertainment will cut the ribbon for its 27th Ripley’s
Believe It Or Not odditorium, this one in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Another museum in Kuwait City, Kuwait, is slated for a January 2004
opening.
In the face of slumping economies and a struggling travel industry,
Ripley Entertainment properties are holding their own, President
Bob Masterson said, and the company is looking to expand. Most notably
into waterparks.
Already Ripley is planning to build a waterpark in Florida, Masterson
said, declining to give the location until the company finalizes
the deal. The building of such a waterpark would bring a long-held
desire to fruition. “We like the waterpark business because
it’s something we can do well,” Masterson said. “We’ve
been trying to acquire waterpark companies for some time and haven’t
been successful.”
The building of such a waterpark also would be the launch of a long-term
strategy which would result in a chain of waterparks, he said. “We’d
go into markets we understand better. We’d give them a unique
theme. And we’re going to spend the money required to make
them special.”
One of Ripley Entertainment’s strengths has been building in
markets the company understands, whether it was their Believe It
Or Not Museums or their aquariums in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina,
and Gatlinburg, Tennessee, the latter the nation’s most successful
aquarium last year in terms of attendance. Ripley also knows how
to specifically appeal to the markets they are in. The Key West
Believe It Or Not is a typical Ripley museum, albeit with exhibits
unique to the location, as is true of all Believe It Or Nots.
The New Orleans version “is definitely different,” Masterson
said, in that it will feature much larger and more valuable pieces,
ranging from a 12-foot-long (3.5-meter) London Tower Bridge made
of matchsticks to a full-size crucifix featuring a skeleton that
has the life of Christ scrimshawed onto the bones, created by a
Sioux artist. “It’s a beautiful piece,” Masterson
said. The 11,500-square-foot (1,068-square-meter) gallery occupies
an old Planet Hollywood right on New Orleans’ Jackson Square,
continuing Ripley’s penchant for locating its museums at ground
zero of any tourism destination.
Right now, such destinations are seeing dismal times; yet Masterson
said he has reason to be bullish. “Ripley’s has done very
well despite the fact that markets all over the world are down,”
he said. “We are doing better than the markets we’re in.
People may say the market is down 40 percent, like at Niagara Falls;
the Ripley’s there is down, but nowhere near that. In the Orlando
market the Ripley’s is actually up. In other markets Ripley’s
is down a couple percentage points, is up in many markets, and overall
doing great.”
He attributes this ongoing attendance success to the Ripley’s
Believe It Or Not publications and television show, now in its fifth
season with first-season shows being rerun in syndication and the
old Jack Palance version showing up on some cable outlets. All told,
Ripley’s is seen in about 100 countries. Meanwhile, the museums
and aquariums carry the Ripley’s brand, which is trusted by
tourists with tighter spending capability.
As for the Kuwait City property—a Believe It Or Not which was
supposed to open this summer in the Al Sha’ab Leisure Park—construction
stalled when the whole area was closed down prior to the coalition
invasion of Iraq. However, the whole Middle East market remains
viable, and Kuwait in particular is a loaded with potential, Masterson
said; especially for Ripley. “It’s not intended for international
tourists, it’s a product for Kuwaitis, and it’s a good
diversion at a time diversions are really needed.”
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Formula
One driver Firman set a track record on the Big One by merely
finishing the coaster course in his car. Photos courtesy of
Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
Successful
formula
When
he was a student at England’s University of Manchester Institute
of Science and Technology, Alex Payne hoped to become an engineer
in the Formula One racing world. Instead, he stayed close to home
and became senior engineer for Blackpool Pleasure Beach—where,
10 years later, he became an engineer in the Formula One racing
world.
Sort of.
To celebrate the new fleet of Mercedes cars at the amusement park’s
1960-built Grand Prix ride—and those new cars’
sponsorship by Formula One racing team Jordan—Blackpool Pleasure
Beach Managing Director Geoffrey Thompson promoted this year’s
craziest publicity stunt in the industry: running a real Jordan
Formula One race car on the Pepsi Max Big One roller coaster.
Grand Prix Rookie driver Ralph Firman, a longtime veteran of British
kart racing and the Japanese circuit, was to “drive” the
car over the 235-foot-high (71-meter), 5,497-foot-long (1,675.5-meter)
Arrow hyper coaster track.
“My initial reaction was, ‘Right, OK, that could be fun,’”
said Payne, tasked with pulling off the stunt. “My initial
technical reaction was concern about drag.” Countering conventional
contention among Pleasure Beach staff that he was overreacting to
the potential problem of drag since this was, after all, an aerodynamic
race car, Payne knew from his own final year studies of race cars
in college that Formula One cars use drag as down force to stabilize
a car. “A racing car is aerodynamic when it has 900 horsepower
behind them shooting them along.”
Jordan’s car not only wouldn’t have that horsepower, it
didn’t even have an engine, which was removed so Payne’s
team could bolt the car to a Big One train chassis. That
was only after doing computer profiling and template measurements
to make certain the car, longer than the chassis and wider than
the coaster’s train, would fit through the whole course of
the Big One, which passes through two tunnels, three other
rides and itself twice. The tightest fit was in the station itself,
where the tires squealed as they rubbed along the loading platforms,
Payne said.
Meanwhile, the Jordan team stressed that Pleasure Beach’s engineers
maintain the integrity of the car. The wheels, stuck out to the
side, proved the biggest challenge because on a race track they
support the car. On the Big One, the car bolted to the chassis
supported the wheels. “All the loads were reversed,” Payne
said, requiring special heavy duty plates bracketing the wheels
to the chassis. Furthermore, because the engine had been removed
from the back of the car—an engine which is integral to the
integrity of the car's construction—Payne had to stiffen the
car body to make sure the back end didn’t fall off on the Big
One’s first drop.
“Now we’ve got the car on our chassis, we’re happy
that it physically will move around the whole circuit and won’t
disintegrate while doing so,” Payne said. Two days before the
July 24 event, Jordan’s car took its first plunge on the Big
One, a track that, when the wind is strong, will stall a sandbag-filled
coaster train weighing 7 1/2 metric tons (16,535 pounds). Jordan’s
car, weighing 400 kilograms (882 pounds), stopped just beyond the
first hill, which it surmounted going “inches per hour,”
Payne said. “It was very gloomy seeing how bad the drag would
be. That’s when everybody knew how right I’d be.”
Not that Payne took an “I-told-you so” attitude because
the drag was worse than even he expected.
Back at the shop, the Pleasure Beach engineers removed the car’s
brake cooling ducts and radiator, which “You need on a race
track, but you don’t need on a stunt like this,” Payne
said. He blocked off the air intake valves to the engines and polished
the car with a better surface finish. “It was a small advantage,
but every little bit helps.” He then added airflow panels and
increased weight on the chassis. Twenty-four hours later, test two
ended with the car stalling two-thirds through the track—right
behind the park’s new Big Blue Hotel (THE
LOOP, July 25, 2003).
“It was 8:30 in the morning, and people in the hotel woke up
to see a Formula One car stalled on the roller coaster track and
a bunch of guys working on it as if it were a perfectly normal thing,”
Payne said. “They were waving to us and asking us to pose for
photographs.” Test three an hour later ended with the car stalling
at the same location, allowing the hotel’s late risers their
own photo opportunity. After a consolation breakfast during which
Payne did some figuring on a napkin, he added another 150 kilograms
(330 1/2 pounds) to the chassis before the next try.
That next try, though, was the actual stunt itself with Firman sitting
in the cockpit. “I shook his hand, wished him a pleasant ride
and said, ‘See you when you get back’ with a serious face,”
Payne said. Exacerbating the situation was a strong wind. “I
wasn’t confident,” Payne said. “I was hopeful, but
I wasn’t confident.”
Firman rode the car all the way through. “He came back, stopped
in the brakes at the end of the station and stood up to wave to
the crowd,” Payne said. “I went away and sat on my own
for five minutes to recover.” Like Payne, the Jordan crew did
not tell Firman ahead of time the car had never made it through
the Big One during testing. “The moment he got back,
they went to him and said, 'We’ve got a confession to make,'”
Payne said. “We all conspired against him.”
Thompson claimed a new world record for a race car riding on a roller
coaster track, and while so much work went into the short-lasting
stunt, Payne felt it was all worth it, for the park—“It
was all over the media, and there was a big, big crowd at the ride”—and
for himself. “Blackpool Pleasure Beach is all about innovation,
Geoffrey Thompson is all about innovation. He’s really up for
the dramatic statements and things nobody’s done before. He
has a knack for seeing things where you initially hold your head
in your hands saying ‘What a crazy idea,’ and then it
turns out to be the proudest moment of your professional life. He’s
uncanny in that way.”
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Bob
Evans gave Luke and Quassy a lift with his performance in the Frisbeedog
tournament. Photo
courtesy of Quassy Amusement Park.
Hot
dog
Ron Gustafson went surfing this winter, got hooked on Frisbee and
consequently his park went to the dogs. And it was all good.
The director of public relations for Quassy Amusement Park was looking
for special events he could stage at the small Middlebury, Connecticut,
family park and surfed the Internet for ideas. He came across a
dog Frisbee demonstration team based in New York City. Of course,
the demonstration team would charge the park to make an appearance,
but through further surfing Gustafson discovered the Unified Frisbeedog
Operations, a national competition sponsored by Royal Canine Dog
Food.
After Gustafson engaged in a few E-mail conversations with this
group, Ed Jakuboswki, a member located in Salem, Connecticut, visited
Quassy and determined the 3-acre (1.2-hectare) grass field the park
uses for large picnics, laser shows and gospel festivals would be
perfect for a UFO-sanctioned tournament. Suddenly, Quassy was the
site July 26 for one of UFO’s six national tournaments in which
competitors earn points toward the national championship held annually
at the Rose Bowl in California.
About 50 frisbeedog competitors from as far away as Dallas, Texas,
descended on Quassy for the Irv Lander Memorial Canine Frisbee Championship,
a continuous day-long competition. “I’d never seen anything
like it in the 20 years I’ve been involved in fairs, festivals
and amusement parks,” Gustafson said. And he doesn’t just
mean the athletic dogs doing choreographed routines with their disk-throwing
owners, like reigning two-time national champion Bob Evans. The
UFO organized the whole event for Gustafson, from marking and roping
off the field to handling registration, from bringing in its own
sound system to providing a portable pool for the dogs to splash
around in after their routines on the hot, muggy day. The competitors
also cleaned up after their dogs.
“Being a first-year event, you never know what to expect,”
Gustafson said. “This was a first-class operation. It’s
one of those groups you’re just glad to have an association
with when they come in and do it all and do it right.”
The only cost to Quassy, financially and in terms of personpower,
was marketing, and for that Gustafson merely inserted photos of
disc-catching dogs in his advertisements and sent out press releases
with photos. The park got strong coverage before and after the event,
he said. The tournament also generated traffic to Quassy in the
form of local novices—kids with their dogs allowed to use the
tournament field before the pros came on, all part of the UFO program—and
fans of the sport who traveled to Quassy for the event. Guests already
in the park frequently crowded under the shade trees around the
competition field to watch the action.
Both parties were happy with the day's outcome, giving Gustafson
hope that this will become an annual event. “We didn’t
have to invest thousands and thousands of dollars in a first-time
event to see what the potential may be,” he said. “I think
this is one of those things that will be a huge event in a short
while. And UFO is thinking this could be a site they could settle
into for an annual event.”
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Patrick
Starfish made easy friends at Funtown/Splashtown (above), while
his best friend, SpongeBob SquarePants, remains a big hit at Paramount's
Great America. Top
photo courtesy of Funtown/Splashtown; bottom photo by Eric Minton/THE
LOOP.
Soaking
up stardom
He’s
bigger than Elvis ever was.
“That may be going too far,” said Ken Cormier, president
and CEO of Funtown/Splashtown in Saco, Maine. However, his advertising
agent, David Despres of CBC Creative Broadcast Concepts, thinks
the Elvis comparison is apt. “He’s just an enormous draw,
bigger than life.” Scott Anderson, public relations assistant
manager at Paramount’s Carowinds in Charlotte, North Carolina,
said he “is just hot. He’s gone further than the Rugrats.”
Anderson may be too young to understand the Elvis comparison.
More to the point, Anderson is not too old to understand the SpongeBob
SquarePants phenomenon. This Nickelodeon cartoon character has become,
as Despres said, bigger than life. His appeal reaches a demographic
that Elvis Presley never marshaled, even after his initial fans
grew old with him. When SpongeBob SquarePants appears on the scene,
little children stand in awe, pre-adolescents scamper up to greet
him like a best friend, hoodlum-looking teens shout “we love
you SpongeBob” and mean it, college-age adults rush to join
the meet-and-greet lines since, in campus dormitories the urbane
sponge has a cult following, and parents shove all the above out
of the way to get their own pictures with Mr. SquarePants.
“Tim Fisher said he loves to watch the (TV) show with his daughter,”
Nicole Koebrich, public relations operations manager for Paramount’s
Great America in Santa Clara, California, said of her park’s
vice president and general manager. “He said it’s the
only show you can find that a 40-year-old man and 8-year-old girl
both like.”
Paramount’s Great America, like the other Paramount Parks in
North America, debuted a SpongeBob SquarePants 3-D move in its motion
theater. Great America also added a SpongeBob-themed ride to its
new Nick Central children’s area, and all the Paramount Parks
include the character in its meet-and-greet stations. “When
he comes out, the line doubles,” Carowinds’ Anderson said.
“Everybody is waiting to see SpongeBob, and the times he appears
are posted so they come back to see him no matter where they are
in the park,” Koebrich said.
Despres coordinated a SpongeBob SquarePants character appearance
at one of his client parks, Santa’s Village in Jefferson, New
Hampshire, on July 26. “He was mobbed, it’s unbelievable,”
he said. “The traffic was unbelievable on Route 2, the main
highway from Maine to New Hampshire. Three parking lots (at Santa’s
Village) were full by 9 o’clock in the morning. Some people
I’m aware of drove three hours just to get their picture taken
with SpongeBob.” Despres said basic advertising placed 10 days
in advance of SpongeBob’s appearance was “adequate to
draw several thousand people paying full price.” The character
is scheduled to make a return appearance at the park August 17.
Meanwhile, the Time-Warner cable company wanted to send SpongeBob
SquarePants to Funtown two weekends ago, but because of that park’s
proximity to Santa’s Village, Despres got the cable provider
to send SpongeBob’s best friend, Patrick Starfish. The devotion
was no less. The park started getting calls a week ahead of the
Saturday appearance, and the day Patrick arrived, his fans poured
in from as far as 150 miles away. “We had a line 100 to 200
people deep,” Despres said. “I’m glad we had two
or three handlers because we couldn’t keep the crowd off him.
I personally took three wireless telephone photos of teen-agers,
17-years old, and they were talking to this guy like he was one
of their peers.”
Two weeks ago, the Los Angeles Zoo in California brought out not
the character of SpongeBob, but his voice, Tom Kenny. One of the
zoo’s docents is a friend of the voice talent and knew he loved
reading to children, so the zoo invited him to take part in one
of its regular storyreading sessions. Not advertised in advance,
Kenny’s appearance was announced only to patrons in the zoo
at the time, and “We had one of our larger turnouts,”
said the zoo’s Promotions Coordinator Gina Dartt. Kenny introduced
himself with his SpongeBob voice, then read several books using
a variety of voices. Then he stuck around to sign autographs, leading
to something of a mob scene. “I had to pull him away because
one group of children tried to mob him,” Dartt said. “Some
people that worked here wanted autographs, too.”
What accounts for SpongeBob SquarePants phenomenal popularity? Koebrich
said the cartoon itself is not at all offensive so its safe for
young children to watch but with a clever sense of humor parents
can appreciate. “Nickelodeon did the right thing putting these
characters on the road,” Despres said. “They represent
wholesome entertainment, but not on a big purple dinosaur level.
It was on an intellectual level.” One of his new clients, the
Maine Lobster Council, was trying to get Despres to work out a commercial
featuring SpongeBob SquarePants, but Despres pointed out that SpongeBob
works at the Crusty Crab diner selling crab burgers, not lobster
fingers.
Cormier thinks its good marketing, likening the phenomenon to the
Cabbage Patch Dolls craze of the mid 1980s. “That’s power.
That shows you what good marketing can do,” he said. Cormier
said he had no familiarity with Patrick Starfish when his Funtown
appearance was first announced, but “once I looked into it
I began to understand (SpongeBob) was popular with kids.” Does
he thoroughly understand the SpongeBob SquarePants appeal? “Not
really. But who am I to question success?”
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Public
Relations Manager Eric Curry presided over Twister trains
coming and going and Six Flags Elitch Gardens.
Photo by Eric Minton/THE LOOP.
Well-trained
Gary
Baker, the events director of American Coaster Enthusiasts, while
organizing last weekend’s Preservation Conference at Lakeside
Amusement Park and Six Flags Elitch Gardens in Denver, Colorado,
heard rumors that Elitch Gardens might be getting new Philadelphia
Toboggan Coaster trains for its Twister Two. That would mean
the wood coaster’s original PTC trains that had run on the
legendary 1964-built Mr. Twister at the original Elitch Gardens
were being mothballed
Baker asked Jim Bouy, the vice president and general manager of
Six Flags Elitch Gardens, if the park would be willing to donate
one of the cars to ACE’s National Roller Coaster Museum and
Archive. “Let me check; I’ll get back to you,” Bouy
replied. A few days later the GM called Baker. “Would you like
the whole train?” Baker relayed this question to the museum
board and ACE’s archivist, who responded, “You have to
ask?”
Sunday, as part of Elitch Gardens’ hosting of the ACE Preservation
Conference, the park officially donated an original Mr. Twister
train to the National Roller Coaster Museum and Archive. The train,
with a new blue-painted finish and festooned with balloons, stood
at the entrance to Twister Two, looking as if had just rolled
off the assembly line—or the track. In fact, several park guests
thought the display was part of an announcement for a new ride.
The Mr. Twister train represents the Archive’s largest
acquisition. PTC, whose president Tom Rebbie is chairman of the
Museum Board, will transport the train to its warehouse for storage
until the museum is built.
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Volume
3, No. 15. AUGUST 8, 2003
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Rebirths
Rhoda
Krasner got truly Whipped at Lakeside for the first time in at least
six years. Photo
by Eric Minton/THE LOOP.
It’s
a whip!
Lakeside
Amusement Park in Denver, Colorado, announces the rebirth of the
Whip, August 1, 2003. Measurements: 12 cars. Delivered by
Mangles and Knoebels Grove Amusement Resort.
After
lying dormant for six years, the Whip whipped around its
bebop-architecture pavilion once again with Lakeside General Manager
Rhoda Krasner among the first riders. For the woman who inherited
Lakeside from her father, the moment recalled a childhood spent,
in large part, riding that very same Whip. However, the thrill
of riding the Whip this time did not compare with those times
riding it as a little girl, Krasner said. “It was always fun,
but this time the thrill was just having it going. Being on it was
great. I’m thinking, ‘It really is going. It’s OK!’”
Originally
built in 1931, the ride shut down in the mid-90s, but Krasner never
considered removing it. “It was exceedingly important that
we rehabilitate this ride,” she said. “We appreciate what
we have. It’s not only a bit of history but a viably fun ride.”
That
rehabilitation was accomplished all in-house by the park’s
Director of Maintenance Tom Verdue. He, too, grew up visiting Lakeside,
but when he arrived as an employee four years ago, the Whip
was silent. He and his crew gutted and rebuilt much of the cars,
the floor and the pavilion, too. He estimated 75 percent of the
cars’ structures and 80 percent of the ride are new. He received
a lot of technical support from Carl Dill at AIMS seminars, and
Dick Knoebel provided advice and parts. “People think it’s
a simple ride. No, it’s not,” Verdue said. “We had
to use special tools on this thing. The springs are something else.”
With
almost four years of work renovating the Whip, Verdue felt
it should be treated like a new ride and re-opened appropriately.
Krasner chose for that occasion the evening Lakeside was hosting
the American Coaster Enthusiasts’ Preservation Conference,
and members of ACE joined her for that first ride. For Verdue, that
meant one more challenge: a full day painting the cars and then
10 hours of welding overnight the day before the re-opening ceremony.
Krasner
took two rides on her new old Whip that first evening, soaking
in the thrill of having a longtime favorite operating again. “You
can not go back,” she said, “but you should never grow
up.”
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New
Arrivals
Ambassadors
in green joined Valdosta and Wild Adventures officials in a colorful
luau. Photo
courtesy of Wild Adventures Super Park.
It’s
a waterpark!
Wild
Adventures Super Park in Valdosta, Georgia, announces the arrival
of Splash Island, July 31, 2003. Measurements: one 20,000-gallon
(76,000-liter) wave pool, a 1,000 foot-long (305-meter) river, 40-foot-tall
(12-meter) slide tower with two tube slides, one 42-foot-tall (13-meter)
interactive play area with seven slides and 8-foot-tall (2.5-meter)
tipping bucket. Delivered by Murphys Waves, North Beach Engineering
and Whitewater West Industries.
So
Wild Adventures was late opening its new waterpark (scheduled to
debut Memorial Day weekend at the end of May, but 11 inches of rain
in February and March delayed construction). This year, it didn’t
really matter.
“It
would have been better for us if it had opened earlier,” said
the park’s Public Relations Director Sara Sumner, “but
with the weather playing such a factor as it has with our season
this summer, that’s hard to say. If you’re going to have
a late opening on a waterpark, it might as well be at a time when
people don’t want to get in the water anyway.”
Wild
Adventures did get its Paradise River and Rain Fortress
interactive play structure open June 14, and followed with the Double
Dip Zip slide tower. The last bit of the Splash Island first
phase, the Catchawave Bay and beach area, finally opened
to the public July 31, meriting the big grand opening celebration.
For
the occasion, the park invited local dignitaries, media and the
waterpark’s construction crews out for a Luau Celebration.
Of course, it stormed, but once the rain let up after an hour, the
122 special guests showed up for the evening gala. The local chamber
of commerce, as Valdosta custom dictates, sent its ambassadors to
help with the ribbon cutting. They wore their traditional green
jackets, but supplemented with bathing suits, Hawaiian shirts, innertubes
and waterwings. Valdosta Mayor Jimmy Rainwater, wearing an inflatable
elephant around his waist, held the ribbon for giant-scissors bearing
park owner Kent Buescher and Kent’s wife Dawn.
Though
the waterpark's opening was late, its gala debut provided a publicity
boost at the summer season’s midpoint. “We had an awesome
weekend that Saturday and Sunday,” Sumner said. “For a
weekend not having a concert at the park, we managed to create traffic
flow problems. We like to do that.”
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Campers
were allowed the full run of their new SeaWorld facility. Photo
courtesy of SeaWorld San Diego.
It’s
a camp campus!
SeaWorld
San Diego in California announces the arrival of SeaWorld Adventure
Camps, July 20, 2003. Measurements: two acres, a 3,795-square-foot
(352.5-square-meter) single-story building containing three classrooms
and a multi-use auditorium, a 16,630 square-foot (1,545-square-meter),
two story dormitory with eight rooms containing beds for 128 campers
and 12 counselors, a 690-square-foot (64-square-meter) food service
area, a 250-square-foot (23-square-meter) wet suit storage room
2,000-square-foot (186-square meter) grassy recreation area, 400-square-foot
(37-square-meter) picnic area, and 700 cubic yards (535 cubic meters)
of concrete. Delivered by Jeff Katz Architecture.
For
Joy Wolf, a 25-year veteran of SeaWorld San Diego and now the park’s
director of education, the opening of the new Adventure Camps facility
near Shamu Stadium is the realization of a dream dating back more
than 10 years. Yet, it’s not the dormitory, the dedicated classroom
space or even the multi-use auditorium that thrills her most. It’s
the grass.
“Having
your own grass is great," she said. "When you’re
in camp, that’s a critical element to have free time where
you can run and play and have camp games. Grass areas, as we’ve
grown as a park, have gotten smaller. Now we have our own grass,
and park operations can’t run us off to host a picnic or something.”
Pavement
is another of the facility's most valuable assets. “We have our
own sidewalk where we can do our own chalk drawings of a whale and
not have it cleaned up.” Gone are the days when campers drew
life-size renderings of an orca, then rode to the top of the park’s
observation tower to view their creation from the sky only to find
that operations had already washed the chalk away.
Rest
rooms, too; campers have their own instead of using the park’s
public rest rooms. Plus, park guests now don’t have to put
up with camp songs. “We sing a lot, and the purpose is to keep
(campers) together,” Wolf said. “We always thought of
the park as our whole camp.”
Having
a facility dedicated to campers—complete with grass and sidewalk—makes
SeaWorld San Diego’s setup unique among zoos and aquariums.
Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida, and SeaWorld San Antonio in Texas
have modified buildings for campers, but San Diego’s is a veritable
campus. The park began offering day camps in 1980 and sleepovers
in the early 1990s. At that time, the park began visioning a weeklong
camp program. “We had to make it profitable, we had to build
the business,” Wolf said. That not only meant building camp
credibility (SeaWorld is a member of the American Camping Association),
but also designing a facility that would return handsomely on its
investment. The Adventure Camp, once camp season is over at the
end of the season, will then become available as corporate meeting
space, and the park is negotiating with Asian schools to use the
facilities for residency programs.
For
now, though, Wolf’s new complex is a “dedicated area where
education and camp come first—they have to ask US to move.”
The park hosts two adventure camps, Ocean Adventures for fourth
and fifth graders, and Ocean Animals for sixth through eighth grade.
The two-story dormitory allows the program to separate ages or genders,
as necessary.
The
first 102 campers arrived that first Sunday with wide eyes and jealous
parents. “The first thing parents said was, ‘Can I go,
too?’” The park did not stage any formal opening—the
official dedication is set for September 26 after the camp season
concludes—but the facility’s inauguration generated much
attention. “We prayed a lot,” Wolf said. “We had
all hands on deck, all the managers were out there to make sure
it went smoothly.” This on a week when the park was also hosting
300 day campers at the complex, as well. Aside from a few typical
hiccups, the first week of residency camp proved successful for
both the campers and the park. “I had goosebumps the whole
time,” Wolf said. “We’re exhausted to a certain extent,
but after two weeks of good operations, I’ve been sleeping
well this week.”
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In
the nursery
Other recent New Arrivals.
It’s
a museum!
It fits the market in more ways than one: a popular tourist attraction
in a popular tourism destination, an odditorium in a place known
for oddity. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not opened its latest
museum, its 26th worldwide, in Key West, Florida, July 6, 2003.
The 10,000-square foot/929-square-meter museum occupies an
old Planet Hollywood restaurant on the 100 block of Duval Street,
“Ground Zero,” said Bob Masterson, president of Ripley
Entertainment. This Ripley is a little more themed than most, he
said, in keeping with the singular Key West market. “Key West
is a great market, typical of the markets we go into,” he said.
Denver's
latest Storm surged to popularity among Water World guests. Photo
by Eric Minton/THE LOOP.
It’s
a water slide!
Hyland Hills’ Water World in Federal Heights, Colorado,
has the most economical theming for its new dark ride, Storm:
tin fixtures scavenged from a nearby abandoned farm, a weather vane
purchased new and bent out of shape, a bicycle—hanging from
the side of the building—that was thrown away by Hyland Hills
Executive Director Greg Mastriona’s daughter. The park did
get some professionally themed structures from SceneWorks
and National Rock & Sculpture. The interior of the 700-foot/212-meter-long,
10-foot/3-meter-diameter ProSlide Technology family tube ride
has a bit more high-tech effects by Brad Russo, like the
constant sound of howling wind through four speakers, roiling
mist from one fog machine, flashes of lightning courtesy
of six strobes and a scarily authentic accompanying boom
of thunder. Though Storm does not have the sculptured and
animatronic theming of the park’s other famous dark tube chutes,
it met the guests demands when it opened July 5, 2003. “We
have a history of theming and creativity that the community comes
to expect of us,” said Hyland Hills Communications Director
Joann Saitta. “And we like to deliver.” One of Storm’s
purposes was to relieve the queues at Voyage to the Center of
the Earth and Lost River of the Pharaohs. Those rides
still require 45- to 90-minute waits, even as Storm’s
line stretches to an hour. It seems that Water World is continuing
another tradition: increasing guest demand by meeting guest demand.
It’s
a flat ride!
Needing height and a little more thrill, Palace Playland
in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, followed its installation of
a Zamperla Power Surge with a Moby Dick
from Wisdom, July 3, 2003. The Moby Dick (1,008-square-foot/94-square-meter
footprint, 29 feet/9 meters tall) is the park’s third Wisdom
ride, adding to an Orient Express and a Tornado. “They
both gave me height that I wanted,” Joel Golder, Palace Playland
owner, said of the Moby Dick and Power Surge, “and
they gave me a great, general family appeal and thrill appeal.”
The 2,016-square foot/187-square-meter, 60-foot/18-meter-tall
Power Surge opened in early June. Golder removed a waterslide
on the midway to make room for the two new rides, but other than
typical advertising he did not hype the additions. Nevertheless,
the park has seen an attendance increase this year over last year,
including through rain-soaked June. “I don’t know the
reason,” Golder said, “but our numbers are up.”
Woodland's
jaguar fit right in its new environmentally rich exhibit. Photo
by Mike Teller/Woodland Park Zoo.
It’s
a jaguar exhibit!
Eleven years ago, Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Washington,
built its 2.5-acre/1 hectare award-winning Tropical Rain Forest
exhibit. One element, however, was not completed. “When we
designed it, we left space for a new exhibit for our jaguar, but
we didn’t have adequate funding to build the jaguar portion,”
said Gigi Allianic, the zoo’s media relations manager. Ten
years of soliciting private sources raised $4.3 million for Jaguar
Cove, which opened to the public June 28, 2003, one day
after a member’s preview. The 3,850-square-foot/357.5-square
meter exhibit designed by Portico Group quadruples the
size of the jaguar’s previous 1950s-era exhibit and features
more than 1,500 plants representing 104 species inside
and outside the enclosure, 10 pieces of natural deadfall
plus two artificial trees, an outdoor cave, a waterfall, stream
and 4 1/2-feet/1.3-meter-deep pool allowing underwater viewing
for the public. Woodland Park Zoo officials claim this is the largest
and most naturalistic jaguar exhibit among zoos, but it also has
a number of husbandry amenities, like two outdoor off-view dens
and three interior dens with a kitchen service area. This will
help the zoo bring a pair of jaguars from Bolivia to join its one
9-year-old male for breeding purposes. “That will be at least
a couple of years,” Allianic said. Well, the jaguar has waited
this long to get a new home; what’s a couple of years for a
mate?
Hurricane
Mountain gave Six Flags Worlds of Adventure a new skyline. Photo
courtesy of Six Flags Worlds of Adventure.
It’s
water slides!
Pre-dawn live broadcasts are common for parks opening new rides,
including Six Flags Worlds of Adventure in Aurora, Ohio.
This ride, however, was a water slide. At 5 a.m. (05,00), the Cleveland
NBC affiliate was on hand June 5, 2003, to film invited guests
enjoying the park’s two new slide towers, Hurricane Mountain
and Shark Attack, both by Whitewater West Industries.
“It was very chilly,” said Shannon Pak, the park’s
public relations manager. “But they rode anyway.” The
100-foot/30-meter-tall Hurricane Mountain supports
four tube slides and three body slides with lengths ranging
from 288 feet/87 meters to 510 feet/155 meters. The 46-foot/14-meter-tall
Shark Attack holds three body slides of 399 feet/121
meters, 355 feet/108 meters and 345 feet/105 meters. The park
claims Hurricane Mountain is the largest water slide complex in
a North American theme park, and it at least makes for an impressive
landscape in the heart of Six Flags Worlds of Adventure. “It
looks awesome inside the park, it’s so tall,” Pak said.
With its seven slides of yellow, blue, orange, green, pink, purple
and turquoise, it looks like a giant psychedelic octopus, or Medusa
in a punk mood.
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Eric's
Turn
A
new charter
We won’t pussyfoot around: THE LOOP is going to paid subscriptions.
The cost is only $22 per year, less than $1 per issue. Plus, subscribers
will get exclusive access to our Reading Room, which will feature
every month a new selection of guides and checklists for operating
and marketing amusement parks, zoos and waterparks.
From the beginning, we have intended THE LOOP to be a free service
for the amusement industry. Advertising was to pay its way. Despite
THE LOOP’s rising popularity—each issue now averages 8,000
visits (16,000 per month), the May 23 issue drew 12,000 visitors,
and the number of visits has more than doubled in the past year—we
have not been able to secure adequate advertising dollars.
The move to paid subscriptions also comes at the behest of some
of our readers. They want to see THE LOOP continue, and with 61
issues now under our belt, we think it has established a reputation,
authority and following to keep continuing.
By switching to a subscriber-only database we will also be able
to offer other benefits to our readers. Many people have asked if
they can receive THE LOOP in some form other than the Internet.
Now we can offer THE LOOP by mail or fax, with additional fees to
handle printing, postage and phone costs. We’ll also be better
able to notify our subscribers of special events and important news
bulletins.
Extra! Extra!, our page of news updates we post jointly with Amusement
Today, will continue to be a free service available through
our home page, and our Connections page will remain accessible to
the general public.
We will be transitioning THE LOOP to its subscription site over
the next two months. Already the Reading Room is password protected.
By September 30, THE LOOP itself will become a subscriber-only service.
Anybody who subscribes before that time will have their annual subscription
run through December 2004; that means you get five free issues of
THE LOOP.
Right now we’re looking for our charter subscribers. The first
500 subscribers to THE LOOP not only will get the additional five
free issues, their annual subscription rate of $22 will be locked
in for life.
You can subscribe on line and pay through an on-line payment program,
or you can subscribe by postal mail or fax using a credit card or
check. To subscribe, click here,
or call Lynne Mosman toll-free at 866-902-5667 (outside North America,
call 1-937-294-3406, or fax 520-514-2255).
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Photo
by Eric Minton/THE LOOP.
Our
fall and rise
This one was for Ian. I hadn’t done it for anybody else.
As several amusement park operators and public relations managers
and a few park and ride designers know, I have never taken the plunge
on a SkyCoaster. I contend well enough with my profound fear of
heights to enjoy roller coasters and tolerate towers and tackle
everything S&S Power has thrown at me. My approach to SkyCoasters,
though, was simple: no way.
OK, one way: I would do it for a good cause (some publicity stunt,
at the least) and with somebody who would pull the ripcord. Ian,
part-time LOOP production manager and full-time son, throughout
the summer has told me he wanted to ride a SkyCoaster. I told him
to find somebody else to do it with.
Then Thrilltime Entertainment International installed a SkyCoaster
at Royal Gorge Bridge and Park near Cañon City, Colorado
(THE LOOP, July
25, 2003). Ian and I already were scheduled to drive to Denver
from Tucson, Arizona, for the American Coaster Enthusiasts Preservation
Conference last weekend, and along the way we were taking in some
of America’s National Parks (I’ve got to expose Ian to
something other than amusement and water parks).
Royal
Gorge was on the way. I couldn’t come up with a valid-sounding
excuse to avoid it, and Ian’s wishful sentiment was sounding
more and more like whining. He’s 14 years old, remember. Besides,
why not make my first-ever SkyCoaster ride one that swings out 1,300-plus
feet (394 meters) over the Arkansas River (pictured above)?
So there we were. Mike Bandera, vice president and general manager
of Royal Gorge Bridge & Park, met us at the front gate and took
us on a brief tour of the park, including traversing the highest
suspension bridge in North America, measuring 1,053 feet (319 meters)
from span to gorge bottom. Built in 1929, the 1,260-foot-long bridge
(382 meters) struck more fear in me than the SkyCoaster looming
on the far cliff edge. Bandera, a Six Flags Over Texas 1961 original,
has a nice little operation at Royal Gorge, with 16 rides and attractions,
including the aerial tram suspended 1,178 feet (357 meters) above
the river, a 1,550-foot-long (470 meters) incline railroad sloped
at a 45-degree angle, mountain man demonstrations, a herd of elk
and white buffalo. The park’s chief attribute, he admits, is
the gorge itself. “It took us a long time to dig this out,”
he joked. “Couple million years, at least. I don’t know
how much it cost.”
Finally, it was time to step into our harnesses and waddle out to
the SkyCoaster platform. The initial discomfort of lying shaky-kneed
and prone in a harness being winched up 100 feet (30 meters) immediately
fell away as we fell away on our flight past the edge. Another bit
of heightened heart-thumping came at the apex of our swing (that
is where Bandera measures his claim that the SkyCoaster goes up
1,300 feet); after peaking—and peeking down—we got a brief
free-fall sensation as if we were no longer attached to the cable.
But back we flew over the platform, and I was expressing my delight
both vocally and with a thumb-up to Bandera (the other hand still
was clenched tight around Ian’s arm).
My thanks to Bandera and his courteous crew, Carol Anderson, Jenny
Lozano, Wil McClung, John O'Dell, Jason Reinholdt, and Trecia Willey.
The point of this story, as Ian this weekend heads from summer-home
Tucson back to Alaska to attend school, is to thank him for his
hard, dedicated and skillful work with us this summer. Thank you,
Ian, for taking THE LOOP to new heights.
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THE
LOOP is written and produced by Eric Minton, Minton Enterprises,
LLC. To see more examples of Eric Minton's work and Minton Enterprises
services, visit www.ericminton.com.
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Letters
Re:
“Tell it on the Mountain” (THE
LOOP, July 25, 2003), our story on Stone Mountain restructuring
its lease in the wake of an attendance shortfall in the troubled
Atlanta, Georgia, market.
Regarding
the article about Stone Mountain Park and Herschend Family Entertainment
Corporation, not all metro Atlanta attractions are experiencing
a down year. Kangaroo Conservation Center offers an exclusive experience
to a limited number of visitors (www.kangaroocenter.com). We measure
our monthly attendance in the hundreds rather than the thousands,
but despite raising our fees 20 percent this year, our attendance
has been up every month since we opened for the season in March
2003. For June 2003, our attendance was up 28 percent over June
2002, and income from tour fees and gift shop sales was up 40 percent
over June 2002. We also had the same rainy weather to contend with
as other Atlanta area attractions. Perhaps the key for attractions'
growth is to offer to the public a truly unique experience not available
elsewhere. In June 2001, our facility was named one of the "top
7 don't miss attractions in Metro Atlanta," by the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, and to be sure, our attendance has grown
each year.
Sincerely,
Debbie Nelson
Kangaroo Conservation Center www.kangaroocenter.com
Dawsonville, GA
Member AZA, IAAPA
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