Volume 3, No. 16. August 22,2003
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.
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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