Volume 3, No. 16. August 22,2003
Power
to the people
The weather, for
a change, was perfect: blue skies and warm temperatures. After a summer of cold
and rain, and with school vacation winding down, the crowds came, to amusement
parks, waterparks and zoos.
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,
Vaughan, Ontario
Kris Williams,
public relations manager, was accompanying a media crew doing interviews for
the theme park’s upcoming Portuguese Festival when suddenly “Everything
became very silent,” she said. She realized power was out around her, and
soon learned the whole park was without power. Full evacuations of all rides
were completed in 15 minutes she said. “You work through these things in
practice and study all the procedures in place,” Williams said. “When
you have an opportunity to work with those programs, you’re always pleased
when everything goes as planned.”
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,
Brooklyn, New York
What
Fran Hackett, associate manager of communications at the New York Aquarium learned
from this citywide blackout was how hot New York City gets without air conditioning.
And, “We learned that Con Edison is pretty darn good. We love them.”
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,
Rochester, New York
Rob Norris,
president of Seabreeze Park, wasn’t too surprised. His amusement park already
was considering buying auxiliary lighting, which he has since rented to finish
out the season. “We’ve always had beautiful power here, but lately
it was starting to get a little twitchy,” he said. “I guess that’s
a product of the days of deregulation.”
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,
Cleveland, Ohio
“The
computers started making a funny noise and everything shut down,” said
Susan Allen, the Metroparks Zoo manager of marketing and public relations. “I
thought it was a blip. We take power bumps every once and a while.” She
called a radio station to work out an advertising schedule and learned then
that power was out across northern Ohio. So, she started listening to her Sony
Walkman “and soon realized power was out in a lot more places than Northern
Ohio. The freakiest part was not knowing what’s going on, listening to
the news and not getting any answers.”
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.”
Allen said the event was a good learning experience for the zoo, but mostly
it was just “one big darn inconvenience and pain in the neck.” That
Thursday morning she had staged a media event to introduce the zoo’s new
baby giraffe. “I thought we’d have great photos and footage of the
giraffe the next day. Not!” She made up for it this week, staging a media
debut for the zoo’s 2-week-old black rhino.
Cedar Point,
Sandusky, Ohio
Finally,
Cedar Point was enjoying the perfect day. The weather was beautiful, the park
near capacity. Even Top Thrill Dragster had been running consistently
through the day. At 4:10 (16,10) everything stopped.
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
Cemetery workers
in Italy were being called back early from vacation to handle the increased
workload. France put its own death toll at more than 10,000. Forest fires raged
through Spain and Portugal. Nuclear power plants in Germany shut down because
the rivers are too warm to cool their fuel rods. In England, which has recorded
temperatures since the 1870s, the thermometer hit 38.1 Celsius in the town of
Gravesend. That is 100.58 Fahrenheit, the first time ever that Great Britain
has hit the 100-degree mark.
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
The shocking news emerging from Cincinnati last week that Paramount’s Kings
Island was closing Waterworks, its waterpark, at the end of this season was
quickly trumped by another piece of news: the waterpark is not necessarily closing.
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
Bittersweet
irony is the only way to describe the intersection of two institutions heading
in two different directions. That intersection came on Friday, July 25, when
the National Amusement Park Historical Association celebrated its 25th anniversary
at Hillcrest Park in Lemont, Illinois, the private picnic and amusement park
that has served the Chicago area 52 years but will be closing after this season.
“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.
Jetting to stardom
Staging a jet ski show in the wavepool is intended to boost attendance at a
waterpark. That it has done at Wild Water Adventure in Clovis near Fresno, California,
but the Showtime Entertainment Productions extreme jet ski demonstration has
also created a cult following for the performers among regular waterpark patrons.
“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
As scientific debates
go, it is not one of the most historically relevant or life-alteringly profound.
But it is one of the most discussed: where do you get wetter, in the front,
middle or back of a log flume ride, and what does passenger weight have to do
with it?
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.
AZA Preview
On
the Menu
Billy Bob threw down a mighty gauntlet at last year’s annual American Zoo
and Aquarium Association Conference in Fort Worth, Texas, and Patty Peters is
not afraid to take it up. The Associate Zoo Director/Marketing at Columbus (Ohio)
Zoo and Aquarium, the host of this year’s AZA Conference September 7-11,
promises—promises—she will stage a party that will outdo the do thrown
by the Fort Worth Zoo at Billy Bob’s Texas honky tonk last year.
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
new point of view
Sometimes a zoo opens a new exhibit that revolutionizes exhibitry throughout
the industry. Lately, the entire industry has seen a rapid succession of such
envelope-pushing, mind bending, outside-the-box-thinking exhibits.
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. “She was the first in the yard, she was the first up the hill.”
At
the entrance plaza to African Rift stand five giraffe statues created by local
artist Karyl and fabricated out of plastic by The Glass Hand in Cincinnati.
The statues bear the names of giraffes in the exhibit, and the spots on the
fabricated giraffes bear the names of donors. Spots range in price from $100
to $750, depending on their size and location: the larger and higher the spot,
the more it costs. All the $100 spots have sold out, Anglum said, including
those at the very, um, bottom. “When they purchase a spot, people will
say I want a leg on Jane or I want a rump. But all the rumps are taken.”
Another sculpture in the exhibit is that of a half-eaten zebra amid bushes inside the giraffe yard. It serves as an enrichment tool for the exhibit’s griffon vulture, which gets its food from the sculpture. However, other birds in the yard have discovered the vulture’s stash. “We’re making carrion eaters out of the cattle egrets,” Anglum said.
Wherefore
Art thou?
In Charleston, South Carolina, if you are getting into the business of displaying
art, you better make a significant showing of it. After all, this is the city
that, in the spring, annually hosts the Spoleto Festival USA (26 years) and
the “Duck People” of the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition (21 years).
Now
add JAWS: “Just Art With Sharks.” This new juried art show at the
South Carolina Aquarium attracted more than 40 artists from around the country
to submit pieces in a variety of mediums, of which 32 were selected to be displayed
as part of the aquarium’s current, four month-long SharkFest.
The
aquarium had often been approached about using its space as an art gallery,
but aquarium staff resisted, said Angel Postell, the aquarium’s public
relations manager. “Our main focus is animals and conservation, so we didn’t
jump aboard,” she said. “We’re not a gallery, we’re an aquarium.”
Last year, however, the College of Charleston took part in SharkFest with an
art show featuring students’ works. The show proved to the aquarium that
its space would, indeed, make a great gallery, and that it could be done in
concert with the overall mission. The work, however, “was not as professional
as we had hoped,” Postell said. “We wanted to bring it up a notch.”
She
therefore put together a juried show open to anybody, the only requirement that
the finished work relate to sharks. Publicity went out through local and statewide
media, but she also put notices in national art magazines. Participants came
from throughout the Carolinas and Georgia as well as Virginia, Florida and California.
Three staff members also submitted works, including the “Snapper Crapper,”
a toilet that accepts money done by Nigel Bowers in the husbandry and facilities
department. Other media included print, sculpture, ceramic, fabric, furniture
and paintings ranging from illustrations and traditional paints to cubist style.
Judging the show were Ellen Dressler Moryl, director of Cultural Affairs for
the City of Charleston, local artists Rhett Thurman and Margaret Petterson,
and aquarium Director Christopher Andrews and Curator Steve Vogel.
The
jury not only culled the number of pieces to display, it awarded a best of show
and three place prizes, plus, because of the “overwhelming quality and
variety of the art,” said Postell, three honorable mentions, each earning
cash prizes from $25 to $150. Winning best of show, and $150, was Boyd Boggs
of Charleston whose “Dinner Guest” is a cafe table carved of walnut
and maple resembling a dorsal fin with a top “raised and carved, expressing
movement and announcing the arrival of the guest.” Fourteen-year-old painter
Honey McCrary of Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, won first place and $100 for
“Shark Attack” featuring a mosaic of colored broken glass glued on
an old window portraying two sharks with mouths open.
Last week the show opened with a sold-out gala of live music and chef-prepared
food attended by Charleston society and some of the artists, including third-place
winner Randall Scott of Palm City, Florida, who has been conducting underwater
research and painting his observations for more than 25 years. His “Lost
Treasures” depicting a Caribbean reef shark gliding through a school of
horse-eyed jacks is one of the show’s most expensive pieces, priced at
$9,500 (“Dinner Guest” is available for $2,500 and McCrary’s
mosaic is $500, but “Snapper Crapper” is not for sale, Bowers describing
it as “priceless”). Also attending the gala were several local artists
expressing their regrets that they had not entered the competition.
But this show likely will continue, Postell said. She’s not ready to announce a rivalry with either the Duck People or Spoleto, though “this would be cool to do during Spoleto,” she said. “We might want to try it in the spring. It takes a long time, eight months to plan everything and get everything out.” The pay off is that, for the next four months, the South Carolina Aquarium is doubling as a first-class art gallery.
A
shower to remember
First, to answer one obvious question, yes Home Depot, the nationwide chain
of hardware warehouse stores, does offer bridal registries, at least in the
Southern states. But, no, they don’t normally do baby shower registries,
especially when the individual being showered is an elephant.
“This
was the first baby shower for the Fort Worth Zoo, and as far as we know the
first for an elephant anywhere,” said Lyndsay Nantz, communications director
for the zoo in Texas. The baby shower grew out of the zoo’s public relations
effort to educate the community about Asian elephant reproduction and generate
excitement about an upcoming birth. “We were a little hesitant because
of the anthropomorphic issue of doing a baby shower for an elephant,” Nantz
said, “but we still thought it was a creative idea and a new way of announcing
the pregnancy.”
On
top of that, it gave the zoo a new fundraising device: or, more to the point,
a new device-gathering drive. By registering Rasha at the Dallas-Fort Worth
metroplex’s 12 Home Depots, the zoo encouraged patrons to donate tools
for the elephant keepers. “That was able to offset the cost of buying supplies
throughout the year,” Nantz said: “probably enough stuff to last several
years.” In all, $5,000 worth of items rained on Rasha’s July 30 shower.
The
gift tally included brooms, buckets, pruners, a drill accessory set, extension
chords, fans, flashlights, a garden hose and nozzles, hammers, insect repellent,
batteries, work gloves, pliers, post hole diggers, rakes, shovels, a sledgehammer,
tarps, trash cans, wheelbarrows and wheelbarrow tires, a wrench set, paint brushes
(to encourage her hobby of painting), wire brushes and 17 rolls of duct tape.
Another gift Rasha received that was on her registry was a Mexican palm tree,
which the zoo wants to add to her exhibit.
The
tree was the priciest item, but the zoo included enough suggestions on the registry
to offer gift-givers a wide variety of prices. “We wanted to make sure
we could include the entire community,” Nantz said. “This way a child
with an allowance would be able to participate.”
Typical of showers, not all the gifts were registered. Rasha also received two apples, two plastic balls, three stuffed animals and a one-ton bag of peanuts. “Most of those came from kids,” Nantz said. Additionally, Rasha received many greeting cards and letters. “The best thing we got out of all of this was a better understanding of how important elephants are to (Fort Worth Zoo) members and the community,” Nantz said.
Number
by painters
In this special AZA Preview issue, we want to point out a special link between
two of our stories above. In “Wherefore Art thou,”
we cover an art show at the South Carolina Aquarium in which human artists use
sharks as their subject. In “A shower to remember,”
we profile a baby shower thrown for an elephant at the Fort Worth Zoo, Rasha,
who happens to be an artist herself. Among her many gifts were paint brushes
with which she could pursue her hobby.
When
THE LOOP posted the first-ever Cyber Animal Art Gallery as part of our AZA Preview
issue two years ago, Rasha was among the featured artists. In honor of the now-pregnant
Rasha and all the AZA-affiliated animal keepers who come up with creative enrichment
activities for their charges, and because we think our art show, “Paintings
by Pachyderms, Porpoises, Penguins, Pigs & a Rhinoceros,” is one of
the best features we’ve ever presented at www.gettheloop.com, we again
this year provide a link and invite you to visit the Gallery.
Begin your tour here.
Rebirths
It’s
a tamarin exhibit!
Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island, announces the rebirth
of the Tropical America Building with Spunky Monkeys, August 2, 2003. Measurements:
1,400-square-foot (130-square-meter) exhibit in 3,000-square-foot (279-square-meter)
building, five cotton top tamarins, no barriers.
What
was intended merely as general maintenance and repair of an aging exhibit turned
into something a bit more revolutionary for Roger Williams Park Zoo. The Tropical
America Building closed in January for what was supposed to be a short duration,
but during the course of the work the animal care department got together with
the facilities department with an eye toward doing something different.
They
decided that “different” would be no barriers. That meant keeping
the exhibit closed longer than planned, but “the upside was that we were
able to reopen with a fabulous new experience,” said Lisa Bousquet, the
zoo’s deputy director. “It’s pretty unexpected for the visitor.
It’s really funny to watch their faces as they come in. They look up and
see (the tamarins) and realize there’s nothing between them and the monkeys;
no cage, no glass, no nets.”
Part
of the delay in opening was the month-long study to determine if the invasion
of space would actually work. “Would they approach people, would people
approach them?” Bousquet said. The zoo recruited groups of volunteers called
the Cotton Top Crew to stay in the building while the zoo’s seven tamarins
acclimated to their renovated surroundings. The volunteers monitored the monkeys
to make sure they were behaving suitably, which led to some interesting calls
over the radio, Bousquet said. Because all cotton top tamarins look alike to
the lay person, the keepers dyed the cotton tops in pink, purple and green to
help the volunteers keep track of individuals. The vegetable-based, non-toxic
dye was applied with the tamarins under anesthesia during their routine physicals.
Except for two males who took to fighting to sort out the dynamics of their new environment, the tamarins adapted well. The two trouble makers were removed, and the public allowed in. “We went into it thinking it was an experiment, and if it didn’t work out we could put them back in the enclosure,” Bousquet said.
New Arrivals
It’s
a kart park!
Burroughs & Chapin Co. announces the arrival of NASCAR SpeedPark at Concord
Mills in Concord, North Carolina, August 6, 2003. Measurements: 7 acres (3 hectares),
six go-kart tracks, a bumper boat pond, laser tag arena, 18-hole miniature golf
course, climbing wall, grill, arcade with 50 games, retail shop and three party
rooms. Delivered by Formula K.
For
its third NASCAR SpeedPark, Burroughs & Chapin went right to the heart of
NASCAR country, a half mile from the Charlotte Motor Speedway. It was a gamble
in more ways than one.
The
first two SpeedParks, in Burroughs & Chapin’s home town of Myrtle Beach,
South Carolina, and in Sieverville, Tennessee, near Pigeon Forge, relied on
those markets’ healthy tourism draws. Concord, North Carolina, except during
Race Week, is not known as a tourism destination. The first two SpeedParks were
stand-alone mini-theme parks. The new venture is part of a shopping center,
Concord Mills. The first two SpeedParks, while located south of the Mason-Dixon
line, are not sitting in racin’ hotbeds. Concord sits near the Pettys'
and Earnhardts' hometowns.
The
gamble, though, seems to be paying off.
Concord
may not be a tourism hotbed, but Concord Mills draws some 14 million shoppers
a year, and NASCAR SpeedPark is capitalizing on the nearby Charlotte population
center. “The excitement there is incredible,” said Nicole Aiello,
hospitality and tourism public relations coordinator for Burroughs & Chapin.
“Season pass sales are doing very well, and birthdays are sold out for
three or four months.”
Not
only did the shopping center location provide great synergy for attracting people
to the SpeedPark, the location allowed Burroughs & Chapin to fine-tune its
SpeedPark design. The first two stand-alone sites were more spread out. “We
found that people like to have them closed in so they can see the different
tracks,” Aiello said. “We worked out the kinks and bugs in the other
two, and this new one is going to be the prototype going forward.” The
company, in fact, is going forward with its fourth NASCAR SpeedPark at the St.
Louis Mills in St. Louis, Missouri, opening in November alongside an ESPN X-Games
Skatepark.
As
for hunkering down in the middle of stock car territory, several NASCAR representatives
attended the August 6 opening of the Concord Mills park. “It was hilarious,”
Aiello said. “They come in wearing nice dress slacks and button downs and
get in those cars and race the heck out of each other.” They had to contend
with a real Winston Cup driver, Elliot Sadler, driver of the Number 38 M&M
Ford on NASCAR’s top circuit, and driver of the Number 38 M&M Formula
K on the SpeedPark’s Mini Motor Speedway.
One of NASCAR SpeedPark’s spokesdrivers, Sadler, currently 18th on the Winston Cup Series points list, was on hand to inaugurate the park and visit with fans. The opening day celebration also included prizes, face-painting and balloon animals, a live band and appearances by NASCAR SpeedPark mascot Sparkie the Sparkplug.
It’s
a crawler exhibit!
Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island, announces the arrival
of Stayin’ Alive, August 2, 2003. Measurements: four buildings, 450 square
feet (42 square meters) each, five species of turtles, five species of lizards,
five species of snakes and 11 species of amphibians.
One
thing Roger Williams Park Zoo was lacking in its collection were the scaly and
slimy kind of crawlers. “The big visitor request has been in the creepy-crawly
side,” said Lisa Bousquet, deputy director of Roger Williams Park Zoo.
To fill that need the zoo took four small exhibit buildings located around the
zoo and turned them into themed galleries devoted to different suborders. Supplementing
the animal exhibits are touch stations, three 9-foot (3-meter) komodo dragon
sculptures and a giant fabricated tortoise shell into which children can climb.
For
the overall theme of the collection, the zoo settled on highlighting the species’
longevity in the annals of time and called it “Stayin’ Alive.”
“Some of these species have been around since the age of the dinosaurs,
and adaptation has kept them going,” Bousquet said.
That
theme, though, allowed Roger Williams Park Zoo to, well, boogie oogie woogie.
The zoo’s graphic designer, Lars Grand West—who created the illustrated
entrances to the four exhibit buildings—came up with a logo featuring a
tortoise in white leisure suit strutting on a dance floor, a la Saturday
Night Fever. The opening day celebration featured 1970s music. “They
were be-bopping all over the place,” Bousquet said of the day’s patronage.
Because the new exhibit features frogs, Bousquet staged a croaking contest. “Of course,” she said. Thanks to the publicity—“Our slogan was ‘We’re looking for a few loudmouths to join us,’ so the media had a good time with that and got us extra publicity,” Bousquet said—she ended up conducting four croaking contests that day. “The kids were lining up to croak,” she said, the kids competing with local celebrity croakers comprised of television and radio personalities. The event proved so popular, even, that Roger Williams Park Zoo has repeated the croaking contest every Thursday since.
In
the nursery
Other recent New Arrivals.
It’s
a water slide!
The Sidewinder slide from Water Fun Products/Amusement Leisure Worldwide
is appealing because it is such a unique thrill slide for waterparks. But that’s
precisely what dogged Golfland/SunSplash in Mesa, Arizona, as
the waterpark tried to get its Sidewinder approved by state and
county authorities. The Maricopa County Swimming Pool Advisory Board, which
conducts monthly meetings to approve new pool construction and any water attraction,
has de facto jurisdiction over new slides. “When they looked at it they
said, ‘Whoa! what is this?’” said General Manager Franceen Gonzales
of the 40 feet/12 meter high, 30 feet/9 meter wide, boomerang type tube
slide. The board deferred to state authorities who normally debate drinking
water matters. After an educational session garnered the state’s endorsement,
Golfland convinced the county board to hold a special session rather than wait
for the next scheduled monthly meeting. “We really had to push for the
special session because we had advertised we were opening in July,” Gonzales
said; without it, Sidewinder wouldn’t open until mid-August. County
approval in hand, SunSplash opened Sidewinder with a media event July
26, 2003. “I think a lot of people have been really excited,”
Gonzales said. “When we were doing the testing, you could see the excitement
on kids’ faces.”
It’s
a waterpark!
Vietnam is becoming something of a waterpark hotbed, with the latest installation
opening in Can Tho, Vietnam, July 8, 2003. Located on the Mae Kong Delta,
the waterpark will draw on the city’s two million population and another
million tourists annually from the rest of Vietnam. Designed and supplied by
Amusement Leisure Worldwide, Murphys Waves and Prominent Technology,
the park covers 10 acres/4 hectares with a wave pool, a river, a three-slide
kiddie structure, three themed kiddie slides, two speed slides, two body slides,
two tube slides, a four-lane racing slide, a Vortex AquaWhiz, a Backlash and
a Sidewinder, plus two food outlets and one retail store. General Construction
Company Number 1, the owner, developer and general contractor, completed
the project in just six months. “That’s the most special thing, for
something of this size and this quality to get built this fast,” said David
Orr, president of Amusement Leisure Worldwide.
It’s
a retail center!
It already had street musicians. The shopping was grand, the dining varied,
the luau a party. It already had performing cats. All that was left were the
acrobats, and with the opening of “Odyssea” on July 4, 2003,
the Waterfront at SeaWorld Orlando in Florida was complete. The 30-minute
“Odyssea” in the Nautilus Theater features tumbling penguin characters,
aerial performers, a contortionist and “tube worm” characters. The
rest of the 5 acre/2 hectare Waterfront opened Memorial Day weekend and
includes three boutique retail stores and two restaurants. While parents
indulge in upscale spending, kids can play in two interactive play areas,
a tidal pool and a 6-foot/2-meter tall fountain. SeaWorld has put a lot of effort
into the new district’s entertainment value with two theaters (a
musical review and the luau in the Seafire Inn Theater in addition to the Nautilus
Theater’s “Odyssea”). Additionally, guests will encounter four
street acts: the Harbormaster, the unofficial mayor of The Waterfront; the
Aquanuts, a trio of comic longshoremen; the Groove Chefs, a busboy threesome
using the tools of their trade—pots, pans, buckets, trash cans—for
a percussion concert; and cats. Kat ‘n’ Kaboodle is a show featuring
16 exotic breeds of cats performing various tricks, which, in addition
to climbing ropes and leaping through the set, includes one cat whose gig is
to sit on a guest’s lap throughout the show. Tough trick.
It’s
a carousel!
The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Cincinnati, Ohio, at one
time was known for owning one of the finest carousels in the country, a 70-foot/21-meter
Dentzel that was sold in 1974. Now, almost 30 years later, Cincinnati Zoo has
a carousel once again, this one a 36 foot/11-meter Chance Morgan endangered
species version with a real thatched roof. Among the 30 animals and two chariots
is a Sumatran rhinoceros made especially for the zoo in honor of the birth of
such a rhino at Cincinnati Zoo two years ago, the first birth of the species
in captivity since 1885. The Carousel for Conservation opened July
3, 2003, in conjunction with the zoo’s Wild American Summer festival
which included introduction of a new petting area in the children’s zoo,
renovations to the North American river otter exhibit and harbor seal exhibit,
a new bird show in the renovated Wings of Wonder Theater, and extended tram
service throughout the zoo.
It’s
a water ride!
Gardaland near Verona, Italy, has such exquisitely themed rides
that school teachers use the settings for studies of ancient Egypt or dinosaurs.
Now Italian students can take field trips into Greek mythology with Escape
from Atlantis, which opened June 27, 2003. The ride, covering 10,000
square meters/107,639 square feet contains more than 100 sculptures
including an 11-meter/36-foot Neptune, plus various ruined columns, arches,
portals and alters. This is not a romantic cruise, however; the 700-meter/2,297-foot
boat ride by Intamin passes through tunnels and drops over two waterfalls,
one 10 meters/33 feet, the other 15 meters/50 feet, which the park claims
is the highest in Europe. The 20-passenger boats travel at up to 56
kmh/35 mph, traversing the ride in 6 1/2 minutes.
It’s
a mini golf course!
The blend is a bit strange. Boji Bay Waterpark in Milford, Iowa,
decided to supplement its water slides with an 18-hole miniature golf
course. Castle Golf designed the course, giving it an Old West look out
of the company’s catalog. However, Boji Bay owner Jack Clark is a NASCAR
fan and wanted a stock car theme for his new course. Six scale models of race
cars sit out front, golfers play through stop signs and hear sirens when they
make a putt, and on the first hole they set their balls down to the announcement
of “Gentlemen, start your engines.” Though the theming is a mixed
message, one thing about the course is perfectly understandable: it’s a
challenge. “Myself and two assistants went out and played it three times
and decided it’s a par 43,” said Merle Markwardt, Boji Bay Waterpark
manager. “If you do better than that, you play pretty well.” The course
opened June 18, 2003, but hasn’t drawn much attention from the summer
home owners around Blue Water Lake and the families that make annual visits
to the water spot. “People come back year after year,” Markwardt said.
“They know the waterpark is here, and even though we advertise the heck
out of (the golf course), I’d say 80 percent of the people who walk in
say, ‘When did you put in the golf course?’ Those who played it love
it, so they’ll come back.” The park also plans to improve the parking
lot lights so that people driving by can see that the course is open in the
evening. One other thing the golf course needs is a name. “Maybe that will
help promote it,” Markwardt said. “We better get that name by next
year.”
Sarah's Turn
Worm's
meat
Hello readers, this is Sarah, THE LOOP’s webmistress, database manager
and e-mail notification sender (above with office cat, Mollie).
As we put together this LOOP issue with its major stories on the power outage
and the upcoming American Zoo and Aquarium Association Conference my thoughts
naturally turned to worms—specifically computer worms. As a web-based business
we are always concerned with anything that could impact either ourselves or
our readers, and we take several steps to prevent that from happening:
=> We don’t maintain our own servers. We have an outstanding
web host in LexiConn who does that meticulous task for us with real people monitoring
the servers 24 hours, seven days a week.
=> We operate on Macintosh computers with Macintosh operating systems.
Apples are not guaranteed worm/virus-free computers (contrary to Mac users’
popular beliefs), but most outbreaks don’t harm them.
=> We use Earthlink and Netscape to send you THE LOOP’s e-mail
notifications. Again, neither one is guaranteed worm/virus-free, but they rarely
seem to be affected or infected by the attacks.
=> We have Norton AntiVirus software loaded on our computers. We request
and receive virus detection/removal updates once a week, every week—before
we send your LOOP notification. This anti-virus software also checks all of
our e-mails as we send them out and all incoming e-mails as they are downloaded
into our Inboxes.
Occasionally you will receive a message from someone @gettheloop.com that may
contain or appear to contain a virus or worm. Most worms spread by invading
an infected computer’s e-mail program and automatically sending itself
to addresses it finds there. What you are getting most likely came from other
computers, not ours. Because we send notifications to more than 7,500 e-mail
addresses, we have been inundated with worms this week from people who have
our e-mail address in their infected computers. Nevertheless, we have stomped
on all those we receive.
What can you do to prevent worms and viruses infecting your computer?
=> Install an anti-virus program on your computer and set it to regularly
and automatically update it’s virus detection/elimination/repair capabilities.
Also ensure that it checks your incoming and outgoing e-mails as well as any
files or programs you download.
=> Make sure your e-mail is set up so that you don’t automatically
see previews of the messages. As with many worms and viruses, the current Sobig.F
virus uses apparently innocent subject lines such as “Your details,”
“Thank you!,” “Re: Approved,” “Re: Your application,”
“Re: Wicked screensaver” or “Re: That movie.” Unless you
recently sent an e-mail to a trusted source with that subject line DELETE THE
MESSAGE without opening it. Then go into your Trash/Deleted Items folder and
DELETE THE MESSAGE AGAIN.
=> Set up your e-mail so that you can see when messages arrive with
attachments. Be suspicious of messages with an unusual subject line AND an attachment
with the following extensions: .pif, .scr, .zip, .exe. Always DOUBLE DELETE
those messages without ever opening them. If you should happen to open the message
DON’T OPEN ANY ATTACHMENTS Again, DOUBLE DELETE.
=> If a suspicious e-mail comes from gettheloop.com, DOUBLE DELETE
it and please let me know so I can investigate the cause and take action.
Having outlined our process to keep worms and viruses at bay, I also want to
let know that we are also committed to protecting your privacy and keeping spam
in the pantry where it belongs. Below are some of the ways we accomplish those
responsibilities.
We protect your privacy:
=> By sending out our e-mail notifications with the addresses in “Blind
Copy” so no one can see anyone else’s e-mail address.
=> By not selling, giving away, or otherwise publishing or publicizing
our database of e-mail addresses.
=> By crosscut shredding all papers that contain any personal information
(even if it is just your name) once we no longer require them.
=> By working only with companies that operate with strict security
policies and effective security measures.
We support and stay in compliance with anti-spam requirements:
=> Our e-mail notifications are sent from Eric Minton’s e-mail
account and have eric@gettheloop.com as the return address.
=> A human being (normally yours truly) manually sends out the 7,500+
e-mail notifications. They go out in batches of 15 blind-copy addresses per
e-mail notification and take us three to four hours to send.
=> If you ever want to Unsubscribe the instructions are at the bottom
of our e-mail notifications, and I personally take care of each request to unsubscribe.
=> If you have installed an anti-spam filter, please make sure you
have included @gettheloop.com in your list of approved e-mail addresses.
THE LOOP team has worked long and hard to earn your trust, and we intend to
continue to do everything we can to keep that trust. If you ever have any questions
or problems don’t hesitate to contact me at sarah@gettheloop.com.
Letters
Re:
“Soaking up Stardom” (THE
LOOP, August 8, 2003), our story about the popularity of SpongeBob SquarePants.
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
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.
©2003, Minton Enterprises
LLC
All rights reserved