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In
this issue: The great North American blackout pulls the plug on parks and zoos, while the killer heat wave cools business in Europe; Paramount's Kings Island may or may not pull the plug on WaterWorks, while NAPHA helps bring the curtain down on Hillcrest Park; Jet skis stir crowds at Wild Water Adventure, and Log Jammer stirs scientific debate at Kennywood. In our preview of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association Conference, we give you an insider's view of the program hosted by the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, offer our perspective on perspective at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, gape at the JAWS art show at the South Carolina Aquarium and share in the shower of Fort Worth Zoo's pregnant elephant. We also throw in our own landmark art show. We welcome monkeys without barriers at Roger WIlliams Park Zoo, NASCAR SpeedPark to NASCAR country and jivin' reptiles and amphibians to Roger Williams Park Zoo, The nursery has a Sidewinder at Golfland/Sunsplash; a waterpark in Can Tho, Vietnam; a Waterfront at SeaWorld Orlando; a carousel at Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens; a boat ride at Gardaland; and a miniature golf course at Boji Bay Waterpark. And our webmistress leads our own fight against worms and viruses. For
a printable version of this newsletter, For
more information on the facilities and organizations featured in
this newsletter, visit our Connections Page. For
back issues of THE LOOP, Power
to the people Then,
lights out. The
power failures that swamped the upper Midwest and Eastern Seaboard
last Thursday cut short the day at amusement parks and zoos throughout
the region (see story in Extra!
Extra!). Not all. Ohio’s Six Flags Worlds of Adventure
lies in Aurora, one of the few Cleveland metroplex’s communities
that didn’t lose power. Toledo, Ohio, went dark, but the Toledo
Zoo lost power only for a few minutes. Meanwhile,
as power dissipated from much of northern Ohio, southern Ontario,
upstate New York and New York City a few minutes after 4 p.m. (16,00),
parks and zoos were forced to close down and evacuate guests. Operations
at those properties, however, continued. Paramount
Canada’s Wonderland, Most
of the rides were either in station or, with the coasters, heading
for the stations. “Explaining that to the media was interesting,”
Williams said. “They were shooting pictures of where coasters
might have been.” As
park officials learned the breadth of the outage they decided still
to keep the park open as long as possible. With Toronto’s mass
transit stalled and no streetlights operating on the roads, “We
didn’t want people to leave all at once,” Williams said.
“We wanted people to be prepared when they left to take precautions,
and we wanted to allow authorities to set up traffic control.”
With temperatures hovering around 28 Celsius (82 Fahrenheit), Wonderland
kept the waterpark open so guests could cool off in the wave pool
(sans waves) and river (sans current). At
7 p.m. (19,00) park officials decided to close to the public and
handed out complimentary passes and refunds. “The out-of-town
guests took the refunds,” Williams said. “We handed out
more complimentary passes. I thought it was an appropriate gesture
because guests didn’t get a full day.” The park offered
bottled water and food to guests at guest services and at the front
gate, plus to the York Region Police officers assisting with traffic
outside the park. Staff, meanwhile, were treated to a freezer-emptying
barbecue. “At that point we did not know how long we would
be without power.” Overnight,
as it turned out. But with the province under a state of emergency
and a directive to conserve energy, Wonderland remained closed through
Saturday, opening Sunday with the blessings of the power company.
The directive to cut power use by 50 percent still stands, however,
and by cutting off water fountains, water pumps on some waterslides
and unnecessary lights at food and games locations and rides, the
park is using only 4.5 megawatts of power, well below its 10 megawatt
capability, Williams said. “We’re fortunate in that the
weather has been fairly cooperative.” For a change. New
York Aquarium, Strange
to hear somebody waxing romantic about the power company that shouldered
some of the blame, but Con Edison crews took special care of the
aquarium. When the lights went out at 4:11 (16,11), the aquarium
evacuated “in a very orderly fashion” while battery-fueled
lights were still on. The aquarium had generators for some exhibits,
but not for the whole park; of particular concern were the fish
in the penguin tanks and the sharks in their own tanks which were
not being aerated. “And sharks are very fragile,” Hackett
said. With
a call from the aquarium, Con Edison showed up immediately with
two compressor trucks to aerate the penguin and shark tanks, a mobile
generator to power the Alien Stingers exhibit, and a major generator
truck providing 3,000 amps of electric fuel for the rest of the
facility. Meantime, the power company took the aquarium off the
New York City power grid. “They waited until they got everybody
else up, and then they switched us back over to the city grid,”
Hackett said. “Everybody’s lights probably dimmed when
they did.” The aquarium reopened as normal on Saturday. Hackett
viewed the whole episode as a minor hassle, especially since the
Coney Island area, where the aquarium is located, turned into a
big block party. “I lost all my ice cream in the freezer at
home,” she said. “That’s what I was most upset about.” Seabreeze
Park, This
power outage was more of a concern for what was happening outside
the park than inside. “As much as a hardship or disappointment
it was, the whole process went well,” Norris said. “The
coasters were on track or in station, so none were on the lift chain.
The log flume was the only thing to unload. Everything else was
home.” The food stands served guests who could pay with cash
(“We’ve got to try to find a better way to make change,”
Norris said, a lesson learned), and the waterpark pools remained
open. “We just kept monitoring the chlorine level. When it
dropped below the state standards, we closed it down." The
staff also “scrambled to get generators going for the freezers,”
Norris said. “We didn’t want to lose our Dippin’
Dots.” Like
Paramount Canada’s Wonderland, Seabreeze did not immediately
close the park, allowing traffic jams to clear. By 5:30 (17,30)
the park was “pretty much” closed, Norris said. “It
was natural attrition out the gates. We kind of eased people out
of the park, didn’t push them. It was amazing how nice and
orderly and calm it was.” Park officials provided traffic reports
with suggestions for auxiliary routes as guests departed. Guests
also received rainchecks. “It was very well received that we
did that,” Norris said. The
power returned at 1:30 a.m. and Seabreeze reopened as normal the
next day. “People in this area weren’t inconvenienced
that much,” Norris said. “We had a major ice storm in
the spring and lost power for three or four days. What’s six
hours?” Cleveland
Metroparks Zoo, Because
the zoo closes at 5 pm (17,00) anyway, the keepers were already
preparing to take the animals in for the night, and guests were
already filtering out the gate. All essential power was fueled by
generators. “The facilities people kicked into high gear to
make sure everything in the animal buildings that needed to be working
were working.” The rhinos stayed out for the night, and the
door between the indoor orangutan exhibit and their holding area
wouldn’t work, so the apes stayed in their exhibit for the
night. Power
returned to the zoo between 6:30 and 7 the following morning. “By
8:20 we were back in business,” Allen said. But the mayor had
asked people to stay out of downtown until at least noon, and being
located near downtown zoo officials decided to postpone the normal
10 a.m. opening two hours. With the city on a boil water alert the
zoo shut down its drinking fountains and sold only bottled drinks.
“Bottled water was flying off the shelf,” Allen said.
In the hot weather, about 1,700 people visited Metroparks Zoo on
Friday, a figure Allen calls “OK, not bad.” Cedar
Point officials had no idea why the power went out throughout the
park, but the staff bolted into action. “I was proud to be
a Cedar Point employee,” said Public Relations Manager Janice
Witherow. “The employees, both full-time and seasonal, really
stepped up to the plate.” All but two of the park’s 68
rides were evacuated within 30 minutes, she said. The Iron Dragon
suspended roller coaster, with a mid-track lift hill, took 45 minutes
to get all the riders off with a boom lift. The Space Spiral
was lowered and cleared in about an hour. Millennium Force
had stopped near the top of its 310-foot lift hill, but that ride
has backup generators which sent the coaster’s train over the
top and back to the station. Staff moved up and down the midway
with tubs of ice and bottled water to hand out to guests and employees
alike. The
park’s primary concern were the guests staying at Cedar Point’s
hotels, cabins and cottages. The park ordered such food as donuts
and bagels—“Anything that didn’t require electricity,”
Witherow said—called in backup generators and sent staff out
to round up “hundreds of flashlights,” she said. “It
was a very impressive scenario, given the scope of the situation,”
she said. “Our guests were so compassionate and real understanding
and real troopers about the whole situation.” With
no power to the entire Cedar Point Peninsula, park officials were
having trouble understanding the full scale of the power failure.
“We had employees listening to their car radios,” Witherow
said. “Once we learned the severity of the problem and that
it was not specific to Cedar Point, we made the decision to evacuate
and close the park.” Most guests had already started leaving
an hour into the blackout. The park officially closed at 7:30 (19,30). Power was restored to Cedar Point 30 minutes later. Hot
times Europe
was in the grip of a record-breaking, tragic-proportioned heat wave
through last weekend, and the amusement industry, already contending
with a sluggish economy, suffered along with the rest of the continent.
“It was simply too hot to spend time at, or even drive to,
parks,” said Alex Gourevitch, Vice President, Corporate Communications
of Grévin & Cie, the French company that owns Parc Asterix
and 10 other theme parks, waterparks and aquariums in France, Germany,
Switzerland and The Netherlands. “Indoor facilities fared even
worse. Excess heat is not good for business.” Holiday
Park in Hassloch, Germany, is set in the middle of a forest, which
has helped keep that property cooler than most. “Thousands
of trees offer a natural sun roof for our visitors,” said Rudi
Mallasch, the park’s director of marketing. “In addition,
hundreds of benches invite guests to take it slow, and you can find
a lot of people taking a siesta in these Mediterranean temperatures.”
While he doesn’t think the heat has affected attendance at
Holiday Park, “consumer behavior is affected; everything is
a bit slower.” In
northern Italy, Gardaland saw a strong May—with an attendance
spike of more than 12 percent over May 2002—turn into a decrease
in June, which should have been a stronger month. “The heat
has reached unexpected values,” said Roberta Brentarolli, Gardaland’s
sales manager. Especially notable was a decrease in the number of
school groups and families with small children, she said. Though
attendance dipped, “we recorded an exceptional increase in
food and beverage per capita spending,” Brentarolli said. Gourevitch,
too, said Grévin & Cie properties saw guests purchase
more soft drinks and ice cream than usual, “but only at the
expense of other in-park purchases. So no major gains on ice cream,
either.” Gourevitch
is equally pessimistic about the rest of the year. “It is now
too late to make up for lost ground: school is gradually starting
again, all over Europe.” Nevertheless, the company is still
expected to meet its forecast of posting a slight growth for 2003,
he said. “Two things saved us, we think. First, the start of
the season was very good and put us ahead of schedule. This was
true specifically of our regional amusement parks. Second, Grévin
& Cie is now in three separate—related, but distinct—lines
of business, and if tourist attractions didn’t fare all too
well, amusement parks compensated for that. To us, that validates
once more our strategy of seeking diversification and locally strong,
rather than destination, facilities.” Mallasch expects Holiday Park to come out of the hot summer with decent numbers, in part because the theme park has begun offering “Summernights:” On Fridays and Saturdays the park stays open until midnight, “A novum in Germany,” he said. Gardaland, meanwhile, got a boost in attendance in July because of its evening hours and the late-June opening of a new ride (see New Arrival), which not only happened to generate the marketing boost and buzz typical of a new ride but also happened to be a water ride, Escape from Atlantis. “With two big descents and a breathtaking scenography, it conveys a sense of freshness and adrenaline absolutely apt to the warm months we are going through,” Brentarolli said. Cold
shower According
to the park’s press release, “Waterworks, the largest
water park in the area with more than 20 rides and slides will open
for its last day of operation on Labor Day, September 1, 2003. The
15 acres of land currently occupied by Waterworks water park will
be utilized for future park expansion in 2004.” The release
then quoted Craig M. Ross, Paramount’s Kings Island’s
executive vice president and general manager, saying, “Our
guests are in for a real surprise next season. It is going to be
amazing.” Upon
the news breaking, local media descended on the park across the
interstate highway from Kings Island, The Beach waterpark, where
Vice President and General Manager Pamela Strickfaden at first thought
reporters were repeating a wild rumor. “I was very surprised,
yes,” she said. After all, she had heard that Kings Island
would be targeting Waterworks for capital improvement after the
2003 season; she thought that meant upgrading, not removing. Naturally,
the news was good news for her and the 18-year-old Beach, but only
partly because Waterworks, which opened in 1989, has been a “competitive
issue for us.” She looked forward to the potentials of furthering
a marketing partnership that had been growing the past couple years
between the two entities sharing the same Interstate 71 interchange.
While The Beach loses some day customers from outlying visitors
to Kings Island, the two parks share the majority of their local
season pass holders, and The Beach’s attendance has been steadily
growing the past few years. Running
a business that benefits from having a neighbor with strong regional
draw, Strickfaden also thought that removing Waterworks could only
strengthen Kings Island. After all, it has been five years since
Waterworks was upgraded. “I can see the benefit and merit of
having a waterpark in a theme park, the ability to market ‘Stay
cool, get wet,’” she said. But, “The waterpark business
is an animal of its own. I’ve been in both environments (Strickfaden
formerly worked in Kings Island’s management). It’s the
same as far as the concept of entertaining people, but it’s
a completely different animal. Our primary business is water; that’s
what we focus on. Kings Island, their prime business is themed entertainment.
To me, it makes sense for them to focus on rides and themed entertainment.” Which,
it seems, they likely will do—it just may include water, all
the same. Jeffrey Siebert, manager of marketing communications at
Paramount’s Kings Island, said after publishing the release
“The key message we’re saying is the folks that loved
Waterworks are going to be blown away by what we do in 2004. We’re
just saying Waterworks as we know it is going away.” In
fact, clues indicate the waterpark will likely stay pretty much
intact, hints starting with the word Strickfaden herself had heard
from highly placed officials that Waterworks was getting an upgrade
for 2004. Thursday Paramount's Great America unveiled plans for
a new Australian-themed waterpark (see Extra!
Extra!), meaning the theme park chain has no intention of leaving
the waterpark industry. The always-coy Siebert, fielding an onslaught
of rumors from enthusiasts and local media alike, will say that
anything “is a possibility,” including a revised waterpark.
“But also a possibility is we’ll mow it all down and put
in a big statue of Eric Minton,” he said. That
won’t happen, even though Siebert did say “What we are
creating is unlike anything this region has seen before.” But
a statue of a journalist doesn’t require “full-blown computer
generated animations” to explain it, as Kings Island’s
publicity and marketing team will be using to introduce next year’s
expansion, a campaign Siebert said will begin shortly after Labor
Day. “We’re trying to explain the magnitude of what we’re
building,” he said. We can only take so much shock. Hillcrest
crossroads “Hillcrest
is a really unique place in the amusement industry,” said NAPHA
Historian Jim Futrell. “It’s not open to the general public.
It has a wooden roller coaster, and a lot of enthusiasts say, ‘How
do we get there?’” NAPHA, based in Chicago, has had a
“casual relationship” with Hillcrest Corporation President
Rick Barrie over the years but the park was always booked on weekends
and has no lights for evening operations. “When we found out
they were closing we said, ‘We’ve got to work it out.’
For so many members this would be the only chance to experience
the wood coaster at Hillcrest Park.” That
coaster is a 1952 Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters Little Dipper
built for a Chicago shopping center and moved to Hillcrest in the
mid 1960s. PTC sold the coaster as a kit that parks could order
and put together on their own. Only two remain, Futrell said, the
other also in Chicago at Kiddie Land in Melrose Park. Like
the other kiddie rides and equipment at Hillcrest, the Little
Dipper is currently up for sale. “We’ve had lots of
talkers, but no real takers yet,” said the 53-year-old Barrie,
who began working for his father at Hillcrest when he was 11 years
old. He did have his train sold to a museum in Bristol, Florida,
but the local government pulled the grant because of a budget crisis. The
economy that hounded Hillcrest into closing continues to dog it
still, it seems. Three years ago Hillcrest hosted 48 events; this
year it has only 26. Six years ago a dozen picnics had more than
3,000 people, and another dozen more than 2,000; now only a couple
pull more than 3,000, and no more than four get more than 2,000.
“This was kind of a new thing for us,” Barrie said. “In
the past we were recession proof. We would lose two or three or
four picnics, but nothing like this last season.” He
doesn’t wholly blame the corporation bosses. Years ago, employees
stayed with companies longer and those companies showed more loyalty,
so in economic hard times the picnic was “One of the last things
that went,” Barrie said. “Now people change jobs three
or four times in a career, employees are not that loyal, so companies
don’t need to be loyal, so picnics are the first thing to go.
We don’t see anything getting better.” So, when a developer
offered a tidy sum for the property to develop it, like the surrounding
neighborhood, into a warehouse center, Barrie accepted. “It’s
going to be real hard when that last picnic is over,” he said.
He at least enjoyed having the 150 NAPHA enthusiasts out. “I
thought it was kind of neat that they wanted to come, and I wanted
them to come,” he said. “It was kind of neat talking to
them all about the coaster.” NAPHA, meantime, used the occasion
to advance its mission of preserving the amusement park heritage
by conducting a mailing to inform other parks around the country
of Hillcrest’s closing and the rides that are available. “Hopefully
the Little Dipper will run again somewhere,” Futrell
said. For NAPHA members the moment was probably particularly special since the organization got its start in a gathering of operators and fans of Chicago’s Riverview Park, which closed in 1967. Chicago is losing another treasure, and the industry is losing another member that represented a now-dwindling sector. Showtime's jet skiers showed time and time again they could please a wave pool crowd. Photo courtesy of Medhy Menad/Showtime Entertainment Productions. Jetting
to stardom “The
season pass holders were becoming so attached to the jet skiers
we decided to keep it going on weekends,” said Jessica Taylor,
Wild Water Adventure’s marketing assistant. Two thirds of the
three-man team that started running three daily shows at Wild Water
Adventure July 12 extended the run—intended to end August 10—through
Labor Day. Thierry Tournache decided to head home to France, but
Showtime President Medhy Menad and Fresno-native Allen Westersund
continue to entertain audiences with their synchronized jet ski
ballet, barrel rolls, submarines, suicide jumps and wave jumping
in the 800,000-gallon, 30,000-square-foot Blue Wave wavepool. “Many
shows we do we can be far from the audience,” Menad said. “This
show is very good for a waterpark because we are close to the audience
all the time, we’re close to the wall. It’s a great interactive,
makes very good relations between guest and performer. At the same
time they are wearing swimsuits, so they really like to get splashed.”
Menad ends the last show of the day with a human torch trick, setting
himself afire and circling the pool’s edge. He douses his blazing
self with a submarine stunt. “During
that the audience has to scoot back because you can feel the heat,”
said Daniel Irick, the park’s production assistant who is serving
as the show’s narrator. “There’s always a lot of
noise until he does that, and then everybody is quiet, in awe.”
Menad performs the human torch only for the last show to entice
people to stick around for the day—“It’s nice that
people see different shows throughout the day,” he said—and
so that no one enters the pool after he does so covered with fuel. Menad
has been staging such waterpark wavepool shows since debuting it
at Aqualand in his native France in 1990. All told he has produced
shows at 10 waterparks, including The Beach in Mason, Ohio, last
year. The jet skis have been proven perfectly safe for the water
chemistry (they are fueled and start on a stage outside the water),
and with jet ski maneuverability no pool is too small, Menad said.
Because jet skis skim the water—unless the rider is doing a
submarine stunt—they can ride over just a foot of water, he
said. “We stop at the beach at the end of the show and do a
meet and greet, take pictures with people,” he said. The
threesome make a great meet-and-greet team: two native Frenchman
and local boy Westersund. “It was not intentional to use him
for this show,” Menad said. “We’ve known him for
some time. He’s a good rider. We thought it was good for the
park to have an American rider and some foreign.” The 22-year-old
Westersund not only entices his school friends out to his performances,
he inspires more than the usual coverage among local media. Nevertheless, Menad, or, more precisely, his Showtime Entertainment Productions, scored the biggest media coup for the park this year because of the company’s ties to the new Tomb Raider movie. The producers of Tomb Raider 2: The Cradle of Life asked Showtime to supply jet skiers for a stunt sequence in the movie. In obliging, Menad established a relationship with the studio that allowed Wild Water Adventure to give away souvenirs of the movie this summer and take part in the movie’s Fresno premiere, attended by Menad. Signs
of life That
question is getting even greater play for guests lining up to ride
Log Jammer at Kennywood. The West Miflin, Pennsylvania, amusement
park is taking part in the Girls, Math and Science Partnership,
a program under the auspices of Family Communications Inc. (the
late Fred Rogers’ company) and two local universities. As part
of a campaign to get young girls interested in math and science,
the program, with grants from the Heinz Endowments, Alcoa Foundation
and the National Science Foundation, seeks to expose kids and their
families to the science all around them. “Science
is everywhere, and that’s the message we want people to take
away,” said Barbara Mistick, director of Girls, Math and Science
Partnership. “We know kids tend to drop out of science especially
in middle school because they think it’s hard or doesn’t
have much application. We want to develop some comfort level with
science.” The
program used Kennywood’s steel roller coaster Phantom’s
Revenge for the pilot project last year with a series of signs
in the queue explaining coaster physics. The National Science Foundation
then stepped in with a three-year grant to determine which type
of venue and medium would work best for these living science lessons.
The program has installed signs at an ice skating rink, interactive
signs at a city playground, and a video message played right before
the Major League Baseball games at PNC Park, plus signs at that
stadium ’s children’s play area. In
the initial study, the signs that seem to be the most effective
were those put in by Kennywood this year in the Log Jammer
queue. One reason is the captive audience. “If you’re
in long lines you might as well do something,” said Mary Lou
Rosemeyer, Kennywood’s publicity director. Another reason is
the signs’ look and location, both courtesy of students at
the Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design (though Kennywood
paid to build the signs). “Revenge’s signs are
a little more content-oriented: did you know and then they give
facts,” Rosemeyer said. “Log Jammer's are a lot
more creative. And they’re great because they are (located)
throughout the lines.” Yet another reason is the lesson’s
relevancy. “I don’t think anybody who has stood in line
for one of those rides hasn’t thought about where they should
sit to get the wettest or stay the driest.” Studying
the signs’ effectiveness are psychology researchers from the
University of Pittsburgh, using such methods as pre- and post-exposure
surveys and observations. In other words, “They’re eavesdropping
on what’s going on,” Mistick said, meaning they’ve
been standing in a lot of Log Jammer lines the past month.
“The day I went out with one of the Pittsburgh paper photographers
climbing through the line, everybody was talking about it,”
Rosemeyer said. “They were reading the signs. Kids and their
parents. It really works.” Girls,
Math, and Science Partnership is one of many concerted efforts around
the country to bring more gender balance to the study of math and
sciences. Girls drop out of science in middle schools at three times
the rate of their male peers, Mistick said, and the number of women
graduating from engineering programs is 5 percent. “That’s
not changed at all in 20 years,” she said. Studies also show
the fault lies in society, not aptitudes. For
the signage program, the signs are geared toward girls. “We
know from research that the stuff that appeals to girls will also
appeal to boys,” Mistick said. “More aggressive and action
focus will turn girls off.” At the park, choice of rides plays
a part. “They’re looking for rides on which there’s
a lot of girls riding, there’s interest in the topic, there’s
enough riders in the queue to have the opportunity to get out the
message.” That last bit is the responsibility of the Carnegie Mellon designers, but they got some advice from a couple of thousand Girl Scouts last week. To help Girls, Math, and Science Partnership extend its community network, Rosemeyer suggested Mistick’s office participate in the park’s hosting of the Girl Scouts of Western Pennsylvania last week. “I suggested the Girl Scouts because that’s a couple thousand girls here right at their target demo,” Rosemeyer said. One of the scouts’ task was to decide which other rides should also get the science signs. Girls who completed that project got a Scout badge. After the day, the two groups were talking more long-term partnerships. “We share a common interest in seeing that girls can be everything they want to be,” Mistick said.
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Worm's
meat 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 I wanted to send you a note and to thank you for your recent story on SpongeBob. I no longer feel guilty about being a 27 year old man who loves SpongeBob. Jeremy Sueksdorf
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LOOP Classifieds Amusement Leisure Worldwide Ltd. AutoCAD
Technician Fax
resume to Chris @ 403-245-6261.
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For
a list of exhibitors,
Rwandan widows became Columbus Zoo's special bags ladies for the AZA Conference. Photo courtesy of Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. On
the Menu Her
secret weapon is a Cincinnati-based band called The Menus, which
will perform during Zoo Day on Wednesday, Sept. 16. “They are
a little edgier than some,” Peters said. “It’s definitely
going to break the mold of standard conference music. From the minute
I saw this band, I said, ‘We have to use these people for Zoo
Day.’” That was four years ago, and she has since used
them for the zoo’s annual Zoofari fund-raising gala. The only
other hint she’s willing to divulge about southern Ohio’s
most popular show band is that she still has her job, even though
she’s booked The Menus for four straight Zoofaris. Unlike
other trade shows and conventions where the play is part of the
work, AZA Conference attendees are all business during the seminars,
paper presentations and committee meetings, and all play for the
parties. Despite budget restrictions instituted at many North American
Zoos, registration for the Columbus conference is currently running
ahead of the pace of last year’s well-attended conference in
Fort Worth, and Peters expects about 1,700 attendees. Typical
of AZA Conferences, Columbus Zoo is making sure both sides of the
coin are adequately exposed to a strong slate of sessions and plenty
of opportunities to enjoy all that Columbus—Ohio’s state
capital and home to Ohio State University, i.e. a “college
town”—has to offer. On
the socializing side, the Convention Center where the conference
is taking place is located right downtown, a recently rejuvenated
area featuring a number of restaurants and clubs for both noontime
and evening dining and imbibing. The Icebreaker on Sunday evening
will be at the Nationwide Arena a couple blocks from the Convention
Center. For those arriving before Saturday evening, check out a
local tradition, the Gallery Hop through the nearby Short North
Arts District where you can stroll several blocks of galleries,
music clubs and eateries. The proprietors there have been alerted
to look for AZA delegate badges which will be good for certain discounts.
Book lovers need to taxi to the restored 19th century German Village
to visit the Book Loft, a place to browse for books you might not
find anywhere else and also spot rock guitarist Eric Clapton; it’s
one of his favorite hangouts. On
the serious side, among the many husbandry, fundraising, operations
and marketing sessions planned, a highlight this year will be two
seminars put together by the AZA’s new Green Business Practices
Committee: “Conservation Through Institutional Choices—Tools
for Your Green Toolbox” on Monday afternoon and “Greening
the AZA—Developing Environmentally Friendly Programs at Zoos
and Aquariums Without Blowing Your Budget” on Tuesday morning.
The Akron (Ohio) Zoo is taking the lead on these two programs that
can help zoos transition to environmentally conscious operations
in the business offices as well as in the public space. Speaking
of the Akron Zoo, one unique aspect of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium
hosting the AZA Conference is that few zoos have such good neighbors:
the Akron Zoo, the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, the Cleveland
Metroparks Zoo, the Toledo Zoo and The Wilds in Cumberland. Among
the United States, Ohio has perhaps the richest collection of zoological
exhibits, and attendees can sign up for tours to all these other
properties before and after the conference. All are well worth the
side trips. Meanwhile, one of the zoo industry’s most visible
spokespeople, Jack Hanna, Columbus Zoo’s director emeritus,
will be giving the keynote address at Monday morning’s opening
session. For
Peters, the conference won’t be all work and play. Already
she has turned it into a conservation tool. As with most conferences,
attendees will receive tote bags containing conference materials
and Columbus goodies. To manufacture the handbags, Peters turned
to a group of eight women in Rwanda, widows of victims of the 1994
genocide, who the zoo had helped set up in a sewing business as
part of the Partners In Conservation’s Artisan Project. “The
idea is to take pressure of the animals by taking pressure off the
people,” Peters said. Peters paid the group what she would
have paid to purchase the tote bags in the United States, and the
women bought traditional African fabric and wove the bags themselves.
“They are simple cloth tote bags, but they are bright,”
Peters said. “They made enough money that these eight women
will be able to support their families for the next year, including
roof over their heads, food and education for their children. I
knew we were helping them; I had no idea it would make that much
of an impact on their lives.” For Peters, the tote bags are already the highlight of the upcoming conference. The Menus are just gravy. A workbook helps young visitors to Cheyenne Mountain Zoo explore the African Rift Valley, from the fabricated giraffes that helped pay for the exhibit to the real giraffes who benefit from the proximity of guests in the exhibit. Photos by Eric Minton/THE LOOP. A
new point of view This
year alone we have seen the AZA Conference host, the Columbus (Ohio)
Zoo and Aquarium, open Islands of Southeast Asia using a slow boat
ride as a method for viewing the exhibits (THE
LOOP, July 25, 2003), the Brevard Zoo in Melbourne, Florida,
unveiled Expedition Africa featuring kayak tours (THE
LOOP, July 11, 2003), and the Downtown Aquarium in Houston,
Texas, routed a train through a giant shark tank (THE
LOOP, February 28, 2003). The Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska,
built the largest nocturnal exhibit featuring five themed halls
with Kingdoms of the Night (THE
LOOP, April 25, 2003), the St. Louis (Missouri) Zoo fit both
the Arctic and Antarctic inside the Penguin and Puffin Coast (THE
LOOP, July 25, 2003), and the Memphis (Tennessee) Zoo put the
finishing touches on the architecturally rich CHINA exhibit it opened
a year ago (THE
LOOP, July 26, 2002) with a pair of pandas this spring. One
zoo, however, managed to pack several stunning innovations into
a single new exhibit, innovations that run the gamut from fundraising
devices to operational procedures to new ways of experiencing the
animals. The exhibit is the African Rift Valley at Cheyenne Mountain
Zoo in Colorado Springs, Colorado (THE
LOOP, June 27, 2003). “Our mantra is every kid, every time, goose bumps,” said Sean Anglum, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo’s director of public relations. Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and exhibit designer Jack Rouse Associates have put in many clever interactive elements (track how many crackers guests feed each giraffe each day) and educational displays (giraffe anatomy inside the giraffe house), and got a bonus with the exhibit’s location on the side of Cheyenne Mountain overlooking Colorado Springs. “The TV guys are always coming here to do weather shots,” Anglum said. The
designers themed the exhibit to compare the African Rift with Colorado.
Both regions feature expansive plains leading to high mountain ranges,
both with unique native fauna. This theme is explained in a workbook,
the “Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Journal” handed to all children
who enter the exhibit, that features “Anne” of Colorado
Springs and her friend “Joseph” visiting from Kenya. Their
footprints, along with that of a giraffe, can be seen in the pavement
throughout the exhibit. The
4 1/2 acre (18,211-square-meter) exhibit allows the zoo’s ample
(19) and proliferative (181 births in 40 years with two more on
the way) herd of reticulated giraffes to gambol in a bush and tree
bordered sloping yard. Also on display are various fowl, meerkat,
zebra mouse, lesser kudo, red river hog and red-flanked duiker.
What
sets African Rift Valley apart is the many ways guests can experience
the giraffes themselves. Guests can feed them from three locations
and can view them from several vantage points, including a three-story
tower, a ground-level “research station” and on a drawbridge
that opens every morning to allow the giraffes to pass from their
holding areas out into the yard. “People crowd in at 9:15 to
get a position here,” Anglum said. The
most unique vantage point is from inside the exhibit itself. The
zoo is offering “Safari Tours” that take up to 10 guests
on a path along the vegetation bordering the giraffe yard, allowing
patrons to walk alongside the giraffes without the risk of being
caught underfoot. Offered six times a day, the tours cost $5 per
person, even for members, and most of the tours have been sold out,
Anglum said. Also inside the yard itself is a blind where professional
photographers and artists can sit to shoot or sketch the giraffes
and fowl. As revolutionary as those perspectives may be, guests get an even more singular view of the zoo’s giraffes by way of one of the zoo’s giraffes, Twiga. She has been trained to wear a strap on her horns that will carry a small video camera. The image will be broadcast to a screen in the interpretive area of the exhibit. “Twiga is easy to work with, and she’s our brave giraffe,” Anglum said. | ||||
