The
LOOP
Volume
1, No.1 February 9, 2001
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Disney sets off on a new adventure, and the Holy Land experiences a new venture.
The big 3 take on a not-so-big 50, and Gardaland tries to take in all of Italy.
Legoland presents a son who takes after his dad, and Sunset Beach takes on a mom who takes after her son.
Cleveland
Zoo weathers promotions gone awry, And Caripo
learns the sale of the art.
Turning the Big 5–0
Price increases at the three big Orlando properties always draw the press’s attention, but this year’s admission hikes earned bigger headlines than usual as SeaWorld and then Walt Disney World and Universal Studios "broke the $50 mark," as The New York Times put it.
The parks insist it’s still a good bargain, but is it a big deal to crest 50? Some industry stalwarts, concerned that public perception of overpriced parks may have played a part in last year’s sluggish attendance, may say so. However, at least for the Orlando parks, the $50-frontier apparently matters more to the media than to the public.
For one thing, the parks didn’t really surpass $50 in ticket prices. SeaWorld raised its top adult admission ticket $2 to $47.95, and Disney and Universal both went from $46 to $48. Sales tax sends the cost over $50. Press reports pointed this out--more as an afterthought to the "price for fun surpasses $50 barrier" headlines--but few other products in the United States bear the perceptive burden of tax-added price tags.
True, people can now say it costs 50 bucks just to get in, but all three properties offer a number of discounts. "Does it price some people out of going to them? Most definitely," said Todd Hansen, director of sales and marketing at the Orlando Ripley’s Believe It or Not! "But it’s amazing how all those folks who claim they can’t afford it get in."
SeaWorld offers second-day admission free, and state residents purchase all-year admission with the Florida Fun Card for the price of a single-day ticket. These strategies gave the park room to lead the way in raising prices. "We have to pay for things in the park, like (the roller coaster) Kraken, so you have to raise admission rates," said SeaWorld Public Relations Director Nick Gollattscheck. "We always want to be able to give back to the guests, and we feel we do that with the Florida Fun Card."
And what does $50 get you these days in other entertainment venues? "Compared to skiing in Colorado or a two-hour Broadway show, this is an incredible value," said Disney World spokeswoman Michelle Baumann of the Disney parks.
So the barrier may be more in the eyes of the media than the ticket holder. "It’s definitely just media hype," Hansen said. "It’s the natural evolution of inflation. Every year prices increase, but (the parks) keep adding elements, and inevitably their parks are worth it."
Besides, the $50 barrier had already been far surpassed last year when SeaWorld’s Discovery Cove opened at $179 a pop. "The deal they rolled out with that was unbelievably fabulous," said Hansen. "They really were the pioneers in breaking that barrier, and they did it well and got great reviews doing it."
The bottom line, then, to twist
the gist of a popular line offered people approaching their 50th birthday,
is that the Orlando parks are not just getting pricier, they’re getting
better.
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The art of successful selling
Amid the deals for coasters and thrill rides concluded at the Caripro Amusement Technology booth during November’s IAAPA Trade Show in Atlanta, one sale was nothing less than a work of art.
To decorate the booth, Theo Nuy brought three paintings by his wife, Mien Huyskens, and sold one of her impressionist-style mixed acrylics for $2,000. In 22 years attending IAAPA shows, Nuy had never before brought any of his wife’s paintings, and didn’t expect to sell one this time, but it may become a new tradition. "I need something to retire on," he said of his wife’s talent.
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An inexact science
Talk about the weather fouling up your plans. The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo last year launched two can’t-miss promotions that missed due to weather.
First, to counteract Cleveland’s notoriously brutal winters, the zoo offered half-price admission on "Polar Bear Days," announced by the local Fox TV-News weatherman when the high temperature forecast was 32 degrees or less. "Wouldn’t you know it," said Marketing Director Esther Newman, "Cleveland experienced one of the mildest winters on record."
The zoo then tried a summer promotion with radio station WCPN 90.3. Visitors with a listener card received half-off admission for 90-degree days. "And, of course, it was the first summer in many years when Cleveland didn’t wilt in a single 90-degree day," Newman said.
Despite these weather-foiled promotions, the zoo’s 1.3 million total attendance was the second highest in history thanks in large part to the opening of its Australian Adventure exhibit last summer. In fact, the zoo was heading for a record-breaking year, but, naturally, the weather stopped it cold with one of the iciest Decembers ever as temperatures dipped below 20 degrees for 20 days. "Cold is one thing, but teens is something else," Newman said, noting that even the "Polar Bear Days" promotion wouldn’t have helped draw traffic in that kind of cold.
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Like son, like mother
This year will mark Cindy Buri’s first full season as Sunset Beach Park manager. Buri joined the small Charleroi, Penn. waterpark’s staff four years ago on a reference from a most unusual source: her son.
Owner Ferdie Rach hired then 14-year-old Jason Buri in 1994 and put him on the parking lot team. "I began to discover that when someone didn’t show up, I never missed them," Rach said. "Jason would do both jobs."
Finding himself short-handed staffing corporate picnics, Rach asked Jason to help out on the grills. The boy’s steller customer service attitude soon had groups asking specifically for him when re-booking. So, Rach moved Jason to the food service staff full-time, and the boy again wowed his supervisors with his work ethic and initiative.
Three years later, a middle-age woman approached Rach answering a newspaper ad for employment. "She wasn’t fitting in my imagination of any place I could put her," Rach recalled. So he engaged in small talk while "trying to find a way to tactifully say ‘No,’" and it was in the course of this conversation he foundout that her son worked at Sunset Beach.
"I said, ‘Who’s your son?’" Rach recalled. "She said ‘Jason Buri.’ I said, ‘You’re hired, you start tomorrow.’" He figured the mother of his best employee had to be a good bet, and he was right. "She’s just like Jason," he said of her work ethic. Midway through last year Rach promoted Cindy to park manager. Another son, Travis, enters next season as head lifeguard.
Jason, meanwhile, has gone on to the University of West Virginia, where a $60,000-a-year job awaits him upon graduation. Rach bemoans his loss, but he at least has another Buri he can trust to hire more Jasons, and she often turns to an effective recruiting tool. "If you know the applicants’ parents you know whether to hire them or not," she said.
Or, if you know their kids.
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Southern comfort
Embarking on a major expansion plan, Gardaland theme park near Verona, Italy, isn’t trying to elevate itself to major European attraction status: it’s simply trying to gain a stronger foothold among its own countryfolk, especially in southern Italy.
The park is scheduled to open the season next month with a new 10,000-square-meter family area. The centerpiece for the 22,600,000,000 lira (U.S. $10 million) area will be a large tree housing Gardaland’s mascot, Prezzemolo the dragon. The area will have four rides: a Vekoma 72-seat Mad House beneath the tree, a flume ride themed so that guests will feel like insects riding a leaf, a tractor-trailer ride through an animatronic farm, and a monorail with airplanes. Also on tap are a puppet theater, two eateries, and two retail shops.
"It’s dedicated to kids and families," said Park Director Aldo Vigevani. "We don’t want to be a ghetto for kids, where the children are stuck in one area riding while the parents sit idly waiting."
In addition, Gardaland is planning to build a 250-room resort, with a hoped-for 2003 opening, and perhaps a second gated park after that. These projects, the park hopes, will build on its current 3 million annual attendance. "To grow on 3 million a year is difficult," Vigevani said. "We want to become a destination."
Currently, 13 percent of the park’s visitors are tourists from outside the country, mostly from Germany. They visit the nearby Garda Lake and take in a day at Gardaland as part of their stay. Of the Italian visitors, 25 percent live within 80 kilometers of the park, and 50 percent are day-trippers. Only 25 percent come from the south, and that’s the audience Vigevani is aiming at.
"In the south we are just a dream. The children say, ‘I would like to go to Gardaland. I’m asking my mommy and daddy to take me to Gardaland.’ But it is a huge decision to come here."
That is why even with an eye on the future, the park focused on its past in 2000 by celebrating its 25th anniversary. While a series of events and daily specials appealed to patrons, the birthday bash’s real purpose was marketing. "We had 20 years without competition," Vigevani said. "Now we have competition (Mirabalandia near Ravenna). It’s hard to say you are a leader in rides, theming, attractions, but you can say, ‘I’m a leader because I have 25 years of history, of success, of expansion.’ It’s an indirect way to tell people we are long established."
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LEGOLAND gathered notable figures for its portrayal of history.
Photo by LEGOLAND
Inaugurating a scene
First they built miniature LEGO models of George W. Bush and Al Gore playing tug-of-war with an American flag. Then, to celebrate Bush’s inauguration, LEGOLAND California model builders staged their own version of the swearing in ceremony on the steps of its Miniland U.S. Capitol.
"Miniland has a lot of timely elements the model builders have fun with," Kina Paegert, the park’s senior communications specialist, said of the LEGO rendition of American scenes, including New York City, New Orleans, California, and Washington, D.C.
The humor in master model builder Bill Vollbrecht’s inauguration scene is in its accurate portrayals. With dark-glasses-wearing Secret Service agents keeping a watchful eye over the proceedings, gray-haired President Bush takes the oath of office from Supreme Court Chief Justice William Renquist as the Clintons, Cheneys, and mom and dad look on.
"They do a great job of making these guys look realistic," Paegert said. "Barbara Bush; look at her. Perfect." This mini, white-haired, former first lady wears a matronly blue dress and a string of pearls. Former President George Bush looks like he might be nodding off. And is that Gore on the opposite end of the stage, arms crossed and looking away?
The scene involves 3,949 LEGO bricks and took 25 hours to build. Unveiled January 19, the day before the real inauguration, it had an extended run into this month.
Disney unveiled a new gate and dream.
Photo by Eric Minton
It’s a theme park!
The Walt Disney Company announces the arrival of Disney’s California Adventure, February 8, 2001: $1.4 billion (US), 55 acres, three themed areas, 24 attractions, 22 eateries, 17 shops, and countless street acts.
Michael Eisner, chairman of The Walt Disney Company, measured the day’s success by the fact that even his own adult-age kids got up at 6 a.m. to attend the 7:30 opening ceremony. In a pageant of dancers dressed in gold-lamé-like-leotard and fabric-induced illusions, Eisner, Roy Disney, Mickey Mouse and several honorary guests opened the company’s latest venture and the keystone piece to an overall public/private strategy to make Anaheim a destination resort.
The chilly but brilliantly sunny day greeted about 1,000 public patrons who camped out overnight to see what Roy Disney called the "dawning of a dream." Art Linkletter, who not only broadcast Disneyland’s opening 55 years ago but also emceed the real Golden Gate Bridge’s opening in 1937, cited only one glitch. "The sun was behind the stage. If Walt were here he would say, ‘Get the sun back of us,’ and it would have happened."
The sunrise ceremony concluded three days of individual attraction openings and a red-carpet gala attended by celebrities ranging from Haley Joel Osment and Frankie Muniz to Mickey Rooney and Jack Nicholson. The Beach Boys played to their celebrity brethren as the California Screamin’ coaster raced overhead.
Though the coaster is a major draw in the park’s Paradise Pier re-creation of a seaside amusement park, the big draw on opening day was Soarin’ Over California, a new ride system that dangles patrons in paragliders while viewing an IMAX montage of California. Less than an hour after opening Soarin’ had a 60-minute wait. "It’s the most Disneyish of the rides," said Mouseketeer Bobby Burgess. Pre-opening buzz about Soarin’ directed most of the foot traffic from the front plaza directly to Condor Flats, the ride’s location.
Other sections of the park saw casual, light traffic. Waits reached no more than 20 minutes on all rides except Soarin’, and as the day wore on more and more rides on the notice board were listed as "see now!" One of the longest lines of the day, in fact, was that winding from the retail shop selling special first-day merchandise.
The first-day guests were, many of them, devoted Disney fans, like Van and Mari Aposhian of Mission Viejo, visiting on his 69th birthday. The Disneyland annual pass holders had first visited the original park two months after its opening and met Walt Disney himself. Mari’s take on the new park: "It’s awesome."
That was the general opinion of the Roberts family from Salt Lake City: Tony and Debbie with Levi (12), Austin (9), and Paige (8). The two oldest had ridden the Grizzly River Run rapid river ride eight times, while the father’s favorite was the California Screamin’ coaster, and the daughters’ top ride was the Maliboomer Space Shot. But all of them reserved special commendation for Soarin.’ "That was the most amazing," Debbie said.
Look for our Snapshots from the opening in the Reading Room, and get full coverage in next month’s Amusement Today.
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Two Mickeys got nosy at the opening-eve
gala.
Photo by Eric Minton
It’s a theme park!
Zion’s Hope in Orlando, Florida, announces the arrival of The Holy Land Experience, February 5, 2001: 14.6 acres, $16 million, five re-created Biblical settings, two theatrical presentations, a marketplace, café, one 1,056-square-feet scale model of ancient Jerusalem, and 100 employees in 145 period costumes. Delivered by ITEC Productions.
Threat of protests from the Jewish Defense League and three days of cold, rainy weather gave the developers of Orlando’s latest high-tech themed attraction plenty of consternation. But when developer Marvin Rosenthal presided over the dove-release public dedication Tuesday morning, the skies were clear blue and a total of four protestors had shown up: two to protest the park, two protesting the protestors. That threat of controversy, however, "caused a large media surge," said ITEC Marketing Manager Dena O’Malley. International media was on hand in huge numbers, and the public came out in even larger numbers. The 800-capacity park sold out by noon, the ticket lines stayed long, and "people were buying annual passes and hadn’t even stepped into the place," O’Malley said. All-in-all, a happy Experience.
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ANOTHER NEW ARRIVAL
It’s a Web site!
Eric Minton announces the arrival of THE LOOP, a biweekly newsletter and a Web page. Delivered by e-mail.
Welcome to the debut issue of THE LOOP, connecting the global community of amusement parks and attractions. In the coming weeks we will further develop our Web site, www.gettheloop.com, to include news, announcements, and articles serving you. This is your newsletter, so call us toll-free at 888-902-5667 (outside North America: 937-296-9796) with your news, "birth announcements" of new attractions, and suggestions.
©2001, Minton Enterprises LLC
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