In this issue:
(To go directly to a story, click on a blue keyword below):

Southern California CityPass unites Disney, Knott's, Seaworld and the San Diego Zoo, while Marvel characters give Wonderland Sydney a singular identity;

Cedar Point lets the cat out the bag at last, while Crealy Park's owner bags a lasting honor from a queen;

A new association aims to help inflatables stay afloat, while Noah's Ark gave Noah's Ark a Noah's Ark;

Give Kids The World wowed the Rose Parade, while Make-A-Wish made a gaffe;

We welcome an expanded waterpark to Kalahari Resort, a boat ride to a Rainforest Cafe and a ballroom to Parrot Jungle Island;

We also welcome an old teammate back on board, we read your letters, and we let the Prague Zoo tell its own nightmarish tale.

For back issues of THE LOOP,
click here

For a printable version of this column,
click here

For more information on the facilities and organizations featured in this newsletter, visit our Connections Page.
click here

A forward pass
Mike Gallagher has a simple approach to his product: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but the whole should cost less than the sum of its prices. Thus, the president of CityPass, Inc. has packaged and sold cooperative tourist destinations in San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Hollywood, combining five or six of the top cultural attractions in those cities into one ticket.

Oh, one other business precept: he institutes CityPass programs only if he can sign up the most popular attractions.“We need the top things people do, and you just look at the (visitation) numbers. You don’t do it any other way,” he said. “Unless I had that, I wouldn’t proceed.”

Under that scenario, on Wednesday he launched his most significant program to date: the Southern California CityPass which comprises admission to Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure in Anaheim, Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, the San Diego Zoo and SeaWorld Adventure Park in San Diego. This marks the first regional CityPass program.

It also is the first time ever Disney has joined a cooperative marketing and admissions program with its competitors. And because CityPass can be sold at the member attractions’ gates, this is the first time Disney has put a third-party price on its marquee. Furthermore, Disney’s contribution to the program is the resort’s most popular ticket, a three-day hopper allowing unlimited access between its two parks over three consecutive days.

Disney, in fact, was a primary force behind the Southern California CityPass, which costs $166 for adults (a $237.95 value) and $127 for children (a $181.70 value). Gallagher credits Claire Bilby, Disneyland Resorts’ vice president of sales and distribution marketing, for herding the idea to fruition in her company. Both serve on the California Tourism Commission, and when Gallagher first approached Bilby with the idea two years ago, she immediately jumped on it, Gallagher said.

“It’s clear that since September 11 international business has all but gone away,” Bilby said. “We started the conversations before September 11, but after that we knew we had to work very hard as an industry to get international tourism back to the U.S.A. You have to do it collectively because you can’t afford to do it on your own.”

In other cities, the CityPass usually extends five days and costs around $50. The Southern California CityPass will be valid 14 days from its first use, aiming to capture the overseas travelers who generally spend one to two weeks in the area. Disney will be the exclusive wholesaler for the CityPass—the company already has an international wholesale network established (the same reason Universal Studios has a similar exclusivity as a member of the Hollywood CityPass)—and the ticket will also be available in local hotels as well as at all five parks’ front gates. The local distribution points aim to capture the fly-and-drive clientele who didn’t book a tour package; it also will appeal to long-stay domestic travel.

Such a cooperative effort among the highly competitive parks in the Southern California market might seem long overdue, but all involved said a third party was needed to put the program together. “I’m not a competitor,” Gallagher said. “I come in with an idea, and everybody is treated equally with this. I say, ‘This is what I’m doing, do you want to participate?’ If I had done that while I’m at SeaWorld, everybody would be suspicious about it.” He also already has the program’s infrastructure established—printing and distributing tickets and marketing literature—so that no one park carries those burdens.

“I’m very excited,” said Bilby at Disney. “We hope it benefits not only us but also all of Southern California.”

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Lockett scored a big W by bringing Spider-Man, Green Goblin and other Marvel characters to Sydney. Photo courtesy of Wonderland Sydney.

Marvelous development
Wonderland Sydney in Australia was just looking for a little identity. In the end, it got a lot of identity.

Spider-man, Hulk, Daredevil, Wolverine, Storm and Captain America, among others, are taking up residence at the amusement park thanks to a licensing deal Wonderland Sydney forged with Marvel Enterprises, Inc. in November. The deal culminates an effort by the park to move away from its association with Hanna-Barbera and align with a “major global brand,” said Dustin Lockett, the park’s director of sales and marketing.

“Marvel stood out head and shoulders above the rest,” Lockett said. But it took 12 months of negotiation and several trips to the United States before “we finally struck a deal both parties were happy with.”

The deal starts with the characters themselves walking around the park. Wonderland officials hand-picked eight characters, with Spider-man foil Green Goblin and Daredevil counterpart Elektra rounding out the group. The deal also allows the park to integrate the characters into its own merchandising line, except for The Incredible Hulk. While he is not available for mutual branding, the park still may sell Hulk merchandise.

Eventually, the characters will become the basis for attractions, starting with a Spider man show opening next year and ultimately evolving into a themed area in the park, a la Marvel Superhero Island at Universal’s Islands of Adventure in Orlando, Florida. “That’s the template,” Lockett said. The current license allows the live show, but the park is still in discussion with Marvel about themed attractions.

One of the things that appealed to Wonderland was the ongoing vitality of the Marvel characters, especially as they are featured so prominently in recent and upcoming cinema releases. The movies’ premieres offer piggy-back marketing opportunities for the park, which is still rolling out the characters one by one. Daredevil and Elektra will show up in Wonderland before next month’s Australia release of Daredevil starring Ben Affleck. Wolverine and Storm will be introduced at the park sometime this quarter, Lockett said, in plenty of time for the debut of the X-men sequel in the summer.

The Incredible Hulk is already prowling the property, though his movie isn’t due until June, as is Spider-man and Green Goblin, both riding the lingering popularity of last summer’s blockbuster. Though Captain America is “not really topical at this point in time,” Lockett said, “he’s still a bit of an icon here as well. He has quite a big profile.”

Lockett said the park has the opportunity to add to its stable of Marvel characters, especially any that may get movies of their own. This was a more affordable strategy than obtaining a generic Marvel license. “It’s not cost-effective to license all 4,700 characters in their library,” Lockett said. “I don’t think my accountant would have let me do that.”

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Do tell
Cedar Point will be notching a couple of important statistical firsts with Top Thrill Dragster, the new 420-foot-high (128-meter-high), 120 mph (193 km/h) hydraulic launch roller coaster announced Thursday by the Sandusky, Ohio, park (for details, see Extra! Extra!). The ride also will be the park’s first themed ride, with trains fabricated to look like dragsters.

Another important first was the way the park went about building buzz for the new ride through a shroud of secrecy.

“It’s a very different approach than we’ve taken before for any ride,” said the park’s Public Relations Manager Janice Witherow. Traditionally, Cedar Point makes a detailed end-of season announcement for the next season’s new ride. This time, park officials coyly kept mum even as the ride itself towered ever higher over the Cedar Point skyline. As the coaster's track grew, so did the speculation, growing beyond buzz status to fever pitch.

“We didn’t plan this approach, but in the fall when it was under construction and the park was open on weekends, the rumors started and the speculation began so we said, “Hey, let’s ride this out,’” Witherow said. “We’ve had a lot of fun with it.”

It was a strategy that could have backfired, as other parks have learned when they maintained an air of mystery over new rides only to unveil an attraction that didn’t meet up to the speculation. However, Top Thrill Dragster’s actual specs outpaced much of the speculation, as this will be the world’s tallest and fastest roller coaster by a quantum leap when it opens in May. “This approach with hype and buzz and speculation and build-up would only work with a roller coaster or ride of this caliber,” Witherow said. “And, certainly, it delivered even much more than we anticipated.”

Come announcement day Thursday she experienced first-hand how well the strategy paid off. Her day started at 3 a.m. (03,00) and was still going after supper time in the evening. “I have never seen the media go so bananas over an announcement in my 12 years at Cedar Point,” she said. “I thought (the media attention on) Millennium Force would never be surpassed in my tenure at the park, but this did.”

Cedar Point officials maintained Pentagon-level secrecy for a ride they had been planning for three years, but the pressure on the staff was intense. “The longer it went, the more difficult it was to keep this a secret, and we at Cedar Point were all bursting at the seams to talk about this,” Witherow said. “The holiday break was very difficult with family visiting, and you couldn’t tell them.”

Well, really, how much pressure could loving family members apply over the identity of a new roller coaster? For Witherow, the pressure included an offer of money from those loving family members. “I could not give in. I could not take the money and run.”

Print article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Empirical evidence
She is no Beatle, she’ll quickly admit. But in one respect, Angela Wright, owner of Crealy Adventure Park in Devon, England, is on a par with three members of the former Fab Four. In the annual New Year’s Day release of the Queen’s Honour List, Wright was tapped to receive an MBE, Member of the Order of the British Empire (the Beatles received MBEs in 1965; Paul McCartney has since been knighted).

“I was absolutely stunned,” Wright said of receiving the letter in November from Number 10 Downing Street notifying her that Prime Minister Tony Blair had included her in his recommendations to Queen Elizabeth II. The nomination was to remain secret until the Queen officially released the final list, but Wright received a head’s up leading up to the list's New Year publication. “The first confirmation I had was when journalists started ringing me up,” she said.

She is receiving the honor because of her services to tourism, not only as the founder of Crealy Adventure Park but also for the work she has done in Britain advancing the industry. “I’m taking it as a huge tribute for all those people I have worked with, and all the people who have advised me and helped me with the park, and also my colleagues in the industry and at (the British Association of Leisure Parks, Piers and Attractions),” she said. “I think it’s a plus that it recognizes tourism as a serious industry.”

Usually the Queen or a member of the royal family invests the honoree in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace, but Wright may receive her medal from the High Sheriff of Devon, who serves as the Queen’s official representative. “I’m hoping we’ll get to do it in London,” Wright said.

And why not? Wright is not an ostentatious personality, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime honor. She said she’s even noticed that since the announcement, some people have changed their behavior toward her. “It’s very funny; some people treat you very differently,” she said. But she also thinks she may have to start treating herself a little differently, now that she will be expected to put the MBE title after her name in all correspondence. “Otherwise, you’d get your head cut off,” she joked. “But I’ll be trying to live up to it. I’ll have to try harder, I guess.”

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Inflationary practices
Benjamin Moseley, editor and publisher of Inflatable News, the one-year-old bimonthly magazine for the inflatables industry, likens his sector of the amusement industry to the Wild West. Perhaps he even sees himself as something of a new marshal in town, but he’s not looking to bring law and order to the community; just order.

Moseley is forming a new organization, the International Inflatable Products and Games Association, IIPGA. He sees an already large and still rapidly growing sector in desperate need of inflatable-specific information resources. “Right now there is no communication,” he said. “I want everybody in our industry to go onto a computer and get ahold of anybody, ask any question, find any regulation. We don’t have that now.”

Lack of communication and its associated condition, a lack of training standards, are undermining the industry, he said. “Ninety-five percent of accidents happen on the operator end,” he said. “The manufactures have their act together. If we can get all these people working together, we can create a set of standards.” He also hopes to get enough strength in numbers—he estimated the combination of manufacturers and operators at 30,000 worldwide—to convince an insurance carrier to create a group policy for inflatable operators, with lower rates for everybody by virtue of the improved safety standards and training program for the members.

What Moseley does not want is “all the politics” common in many associations. “In today’s time of high overheads there is no reason to put together a staff of 50 people and drain the organization of the money that’s spent on the political level.”

He made his first hire for the fledgling association on Monday, Carol Crain, a 13-year veteran manager in the Walt Disney Company, who will be the national communications director. Among her first duties will be helping Moseley form a bottom-up organization. Every state will have an elected representative, and these 50 reps plus 50 other industry people will comprise an advisory council. This council guides the board of directors, which will probably have 15 members, Moseley said. “They only act on the votes of the people,” he said. The Board’s primary role will be to channel information coming up through the ranks and dispensing it throughout the whole organization via forums and on-line chat rooms. Similarly, each state rep will hold state-specific forums.

Moseley said he has about 50 applicants for the board and “hundreds” for state representatives. He has not yet started soliciting memberships, waiting until he gets the organization’s structure finalized. He also has not set a membership fee, though he wants to keep it below $300. “Our goal is not to charge a lot of money, it’s to get a lot of members,” he said. “An industry that has thousands and thousands of people is one the insurance companies look at more seriously and the states look at more seriously.”

Though he has not established IIPGA as a non-profit organization, he said he plans to in the future. “It’s not going to make a profit now, so taxation is irrelevant,” he said. More information on the association is available at www.iipga.com.

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Covenants of the Arks
The call, said Rock Hall, “was very confusing.”

The principal of Technifex, Inc., was relating how his company happened to get the contract for producing the new show ride, Noah’s Incredible Adventure, for Noah’s Ark Waterpark in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. The three-part simulator-type ride will be the first such attraction at a stand-alone waterpark and the first entry into the waterpark market by Technifex and Heinrich Mack GmbH, which is supplying the Mystery Swing ride vehicle (for details of the planned ride, see the current issue of Amusement Today).

Last summer, Dan Gantz, Noah’s Ark’s vice president, was pondering a show experience type of ride for the waterpark. On the suggestion of his brother Tom, Dan visited Kennywood in West Miflin, Pennsylvania, which has a 1936-built walk-through Noah’s Ark on a motion platform. Guests enter the Ark via an Evelator, a simulated elevator ride built by Technifex.

Gantz was immediately taken with the Evelator. “I said, ‘This is cool, who did this?’ They said, ‘Technifex.’” Hall recalls that Gantz called him from inside the Evelator, and while Gantz does not remember that detail he admitted, “I could see me doing that and saying ‘I’m standing inside your ride here and this is kind of cool.’”

For Hall, it was not just the call “clear out of the blue” that “caught me off guard,” it was the process of identifying who was calling from where. “I got this call from the Noah’s Ark attraction from this guy from Noah’s Ark Waterpark,” Hall said. “It was like, ‘I’m at Noah’s Ark and I’m with Noah’s Ark and we want to do a Noah’s Ark for Noah’s Ark.’ I didn’t take this phone call very seriously at the beginning.”

Nevertheless, Hall supplied Gantz information on the Evelator and Technifex’s show production experience, “And I told him we could certainly help build him an Evelator and all that. Then a couple of months later I got a call from Dan and he says, ‘OK, we’re ready to go on this.’ I’m going, ‘Wow, this is the easiest job I’ve ever gotten.’”

Technifex’s role evolved from simply furnishing the Evelator into producing the whole ride show, which actually centers on the Mack Mystery Swing simulator reached via the Evelator. Along with that evolution, Hall’s initial skepticism borne out of that first call from Gantz of “America’s Largest Waterpark” (“I thought, ‘yeah, right,’ but it’s true!”) has since evolved, too, into genuine respect. “They are very sharp guys,” Hall said, “and they’re great guys, they really are nice guys.”

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Give Kids The World was floating on Roses to wide acclaim. Photo courtesy of www.gktw.com

Return visits
Give Kids the World got just what it wanted New Year’s Day. The Kissimmee, Florida, entity’s Tournament of Roses float (THE LOOP, December 13, 2002) not only won the parade’s Tournament Special Trophy—awarded for “exceptional merit in multiple classifications”—it was positioned just ahead of the car carrying the parade’s grand marshals, Bill Cosby, Art Linkletter and Fred Rogers. Both guaranteed maximum exposure on all three networks covering the Pasadena, California, parade. The pop group O’Town was riding on the float, but the networks focused wholly on the float’s depiction of the GKTW Village and its mission, even announcing the charity’s web site.

With the parade’s theme for 2003 being “Children’s Dreams, Wishes and Imagination,” Give Kids The World was not the only industry-related float in the tournament. The students of Cal-Poly University built a float titled “A Sundae Afternoon,” turning confections into an amusement park, with gingerbread men riding a candy cane ferris wheel and a real roller coaster coursing around the float. The entry won the Theme Trophy for “best presentation of the Roses Parade theme.”

Cal-Poly students contributed an amusement park to the parade. Photo courtesy of www.tournamentofroses.com

* * *

Ben Jones did not reach his goal of collecting 1,000 business cards for a terminally ill boy named Craig Sheppard (THE LOOP, November 26, 2002); but, then, apparently no such boy exists. Jones, who had recently conducted a fund-raiser for the Make-A Wish Foundation at his Congo River Golf and Games in Kenosha, Wisconsin, had read about the alleged card-parrying boy in Make-A-Wish literature. Jones referenced Sheppard on his donation check and told the Foundation he would collect business cards for the boy, but because the Foundation had no such person in its files, it did not cash his check, nor did it follow up with Jones. “No one from MAW ever called us to inform us that our adopted recipient didn’t exist,” Jones said. “It won’t be the last time that I act with my heart and then aim later.” Jones did gather 600 cards, quite an achievement in and of itself.

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

New Arrivals

Kalahari's Storm Tower made a big impression on guests at the resort's newly expanded waterpark. Photo courtesy of Kalahari Resort & Convention Center.

It’s a waterpark!
Kalahari Resort & Convention Center in Wisconsin Dells announces the arrival of an expansion of its indoor waterpark December 20, 2002. Measurements: 58,000 square feet (5,388 square meters), 570-foot (174-meter) Master Blaster, 84-foot (26-meter) family raft ride, 2,953-square-foot (274-square meter) activity pool, 1,418-square-foot (132-square-meter) lap pool, three jacuzzis, a children’s play area with 90 hands-on interactive devices and water cannons, a 450-foot (137-meter) extension of the lazy river, one bar and two concession areas. Delivered by NBGS and Wizard Works.

Todd Nelson, Kalahari’s owner and president, claimed that when he sets a completion date for a new project, his resort will bull’s eye that target. And he insisted the expansion to his waterpark, which almost doubled its size to 125,000 square feet (11,613 square meters), had to be open for the weekend before Christmas.

Such dedication to on-time construction resulted in Kalahari capturing two titles: the nation’s largest indoor waterpark and the first indoor facility to officially open a Master Blaster in North America.
.
Apropos for this Christmas present, Santa Claus was on hand for the gala re-opening of the African-themed waterpark. Dressed in an old-fashion red jumpsuit, the bearded St. Nick took the inaugural ride on the Master Blaster, the Botswana Blast, as Wisconsin’s Governor James Doyle and 120 local VIPs looked on. “It was the normal hoopla that you do for an opening,” said Josef Haas, the resort’s general manager. Resort guests and the general public were ready to play by the time the hoopla concluded, and that the afternoon the 2,000-capacity park was hosting about 700 people, Haas said.

Kalahari built the expansion while still maintaining operations at the existing park throughout the fall. Five days before the re-grand opening, the waterpark was closed so that crews could break through the wall, connect the tubes and lazy river and re-pour concrete. “What took us the longest was heating the water back up to 85 degrees (29 Celsius),” Haas said. “That took us a whole day. We even heated one of the pools to 100 degrees (38 Celsius) and overflowed it so the water would heat other pools.”

Ironically, it was the relative heat outside the waterpark that has diminished attendance in the facility’s first few weeks. “Let me tell you what hurts us: beautiful weather,” Haas said, referring to 52 degree Fahrenheit (11 Celsius) temperatures this week.

One of the park’s new signature attractions is the NBGS/Water Wizard smart play area, the first fruition of that partnership. The area includes the Storm Tower capable of blasting 750 gallons of water through its top in a variety of ever-changing formats. “The adults are just as much involved in that area as the kids are,” Haas said.

However, the park’s most popular attraction has been Botswana Blast. “By far, because we hyped it so much,” Haas said of the coaster-type water ride that features about 100 feet of enclosed channel curling outside the building proper. “You can feel the change in temperature in the tube when you sluice through it,” Haas said. “Everybody was talking about it. It’s been a great ride, or whatever you call it: it’s been a great blast.”

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

It’s a cafe and boat ride!
Landry’s Restaurants, Inc. announces the arrival of Rainforest Cafe, Retail Village and River Adventure Ride in Galveston, Texas, January 9, 2003. Measurements: 35,9500 square feet total (3,340 square meters), 5,171 square feet (480 square meters) for the 368 seat restaurant, 1,985 square feet (184 square meters) for the Retail Village and 17,300 square feet (1,607 square meters) for the ride, 5-minute ride with 12 six-seat rafts. Delivered by Aqua Sport, Aquatic Development Group, Cunningham Group, Frattalone and Associates, Interior Designs Unlimited, KX International, Shuller and Shook and ThemeScapes.

Boat rides pass through restaurants at Disney parks and navigate around a restaurant at SeaWorld Adventure Park in San Diego, California. However, the 29th edition of the Rainforest Cafe chain, set in the San Luis Resort on Galveston’s waterfront, may be the first stand-alone restaurant to incorporate a water ride.

The River Adventure Ride is actually located next door to the restaurant, but the synergy between eatery and water ride all but removes the physical walls between the two. “We know the restaurant will do business and will feed the ride, but we think the ride will bring people into the building, and some of them may stay for dinner,” said Jeff Cantwell, senior vice president of development for Landry’s Restaurant. The boat ride, costing $4 per circuit, also offers relief to barely patient patrons waiting for a table on busy evenings.

The two venues also are thematically connected. The river ride’s story line has travelers searching for previous adventurers who vanished while seeking a lost treasure. The trip takes guests through the rain forests of South America, Africa and Indonesia with lush flora and animatronic jaguars, macaws, monkeys, giraffes, crocodiles, elephants, tigers, snakes, spiders, indigenous peoples and a river god. “We use animatronics, water features and specialty lighting in our restaurants, so the companies we have long-term relationships with we’ve been able to work with on this ride,” Cantwell said.

The restaurant also features a 65-foot (20-meter) volcano with an ever-present waterfall and a recurring eruption of flame and steam shooting up into the air and lava cascading down the sides.

Landry’s chose its Galveston complex for the experimental restaurant/ride hybrid because of the city’s heavy tourist draw, amounting to about 12 million visitors per year, including Houston residents driving down for a day at the beach and evenings of waterfront nightlife. The venture does not signal a new direction for the chain, however, Cantwell said. “We’re not going to do it at every location, but where there’s an opportunity we might. Obviously it would need to be a heavy tourist market.”

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

It’s a ballroom!
Parrot Jungle Island in Miami, Florida, announces the arrival of Treetop Ballroom, January 6, 2002. Measurements: 13,824-square-foot (1284.29 Square meters) main ballroom seating up to 1,028 and capable of breaking down into three rooms, a 140-person capacity room capable of breaking down into three rooms, a veranda divided into 12 sections of 432 square feet (40 square meters) each, a 3,000-square-foot (279-square-meter) kitchen. Delivered by DEI, International Design Partnership and Koroglu Associates—Architects.

The $47 million park itself won’t be ready for the public until July. But the view was already there, and the ballroom—on the third floor of the new Parrot Jungle Island’s guest services and administration complex—was already nearing completion, so why not let the public go ahead and use it?

“As the early part of construction and planning came to fruition, it was obvious the banquet hall would be completed first,” said Ron Sampiero, food and beverage consulting manager for the park. “It afforded us the opportunity to open up and create revenue.”

The Treetop Ballroom is not 100 percent completed—“We’re still hammering and fixing things up and we have some wall coverings to go up,” Sampiero said—but the park already is giving tours of the facility to potential groups, and those groups are booking. The first, a monthly outing of local philanthropic executives, is set for February 15.

Even if the facilities themselves didn’t wow potential bookers, the view would: the Miami skyline and its harbor, where on Friday evenings shimmering lighted cruise ships dance out toward the open sea. “It’s just an unbelievable sight from the ballroom veranda,” Sampiero said. And down below will be a jungle garden featuring exotic birds and animals.

“The clients we’ve been seeing are mostly those who are doing events at high-class hotels,” said Rodesrick A. Westmaas, the park’s director of catering. “They are surprised to see a facility of this size and the setting it’s in.”

Ironically, a facility such as a meeting and banqueting space was one thing the old Parrot Jungle lacked, but obviously needed. “There were a number of opportunities brought to the table in the old park,” Sampiero said, but because of its location in a residential neighborhood, neighbors objected to after-dark activities at Parrot Jungle. The park also had only a small cafeteria that could be set up to cater events.

At its new site, Parrot Jungle will have, in addition to Treetop Ballroom, a covered plaza outside the ballroom handling up to 800 people sitting or 1,500 standing, a picnic area with a capacity of 1,000 people, two pavilions seating 96 people each and four pavilions seating 32 people each, and a cafeteria with the serving line hidden behind a mural of art, allowing a nicer ambiance for group catering.

Rather than the linear plating of traditional banquet halls, Treetop’s kitchen has stations “more like a star,” with the chef in the middle plating the main course and other cooks around the chef plating the side dishes, Sampiero said. The plates may then be covered and stacked for direct service or placed in heating carts. With four carts and four service lines, Treetop will have up to eight stations dispensing hot meals simultaneously.

The star-plating technique works more efficiently than linear serving, Sampiero said, but only “when you build the equipment to do the system” he said. “It’s a hard sell to convince people to build equipment this way. I had to convince everybody else, and you have to build it so they can see it work before you make a believer out of them.”

Parrot Jungle officials put their faith in Sampiero; and Treetop Ballroom is poised to convert many meeting planners to the merits of banqueting at Parrot Jungle Island.

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

As the flood waters rose for the Prague Zoo, hope sank among the zoo's staff. Photo courtesy of the Prague Zoo.

A flood of emotions
We depart from our standard practice with this story. We have no choice.

Last August, some of the worst floods in eastern European history ravaged the Czech Republic, wreaking horrendous destruction on the Prague Zoo in particular. Aside from the loss of many buildings and exhibits, the zoo lost several animals in its collection.

The zoo’s staff also saved many animals, and stories of these heroic efforts began making the rounds of the zoo community in the weeks following the flood. We asked the zoo director, Petr Fejk, for some information and an interview so we could report on these efforts in THE LOOP. Months went by without a response.

Then, in November, Fejk sent us a first-person account of those three traumatic days in August. Realizing that in a typical LOOP article we would not be able to capture Fejk’s gripping mix of fear and courage, grief and gratefulness, bewilderment and professionalism, we decided instead to post his account in his words in full in The Reading Room. You can go directly to his story by clicking here.

Fejk’s story is a vivid lesson in managing a catastrophic event, an account worthy of every attraction operator’s attention. His harrowing tale of staff using boats to evacuate a scared troop of gorillas from a tower, his watching helplessly as water broached the elephants and hippos pavilion located well above the flood plain, and keepers and soldiers chasing seals down the river for two days is a riveting read for anyone.

It is, unfortunately, a timely story, too, as Prague is once again threatened with more flooding. It doesn’t matter that Fejk and his staff have valuable experience to handle such another flood; they don’t want to apply that experience ever again.

Print article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Eric's Turn

Photo by Jonathan Minton

Here comes the son
Greetings for 2003 and welcome to Volume 3 of THE LOOP, representing our third year of publication. We enter the New Year flush with the successes of 2002 and stoked about the continuing growth that this year promises.

So stoked, in fact, that we’ve added a new member to our LOOP team—kind of. Ian Minton, a salaried assistant last summer, returns to the fold as an apprentice bearing the title “production assistant.” That's him between Sarah and I earlier this week at Old Tucson Theme Park.

He’s only 13 years old and, because of his school and concert band obligations, we’ll only have use of him for a few hours per week. But in that time he will help us build, maintain and manage our web sites and do graphic design for web pages and advertisements. This will be as much a learning opportunity for him as it is a needed helping hand for us.

Yes, he’s my son, but this is no paternal indulgence—and those of you who have met Ian know I’m telling the truth. He brings computer acumen to the job and an eagerness to learn along with a maturer-than-his years work ethic. Last summer he built most of our ads and posted the semi-monthly LOOP newsletters, too. As an active member of the American Coasters Enthusiasts, Ian also brings more knowledge of and boosterism for the industry than you’d typically expect even in a young teen. When I decided to search for help producing THE LOOP this year and I set down all the qualities I wanted in a production assistant, the only person I knew who matched all those qualities was Ian.

We’re pleased to have him formally working for us again. We suspect he will learn a lot, and have fun doing it, too.

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Letters

On par
From Eryn McConnell, 23
Re: Marc’s DinoPutt (THE LOOP, December 13, 2002)

I am Marc's sister, and I was so excited to discover your article about Give Kids the World and the new minigolf course, Marc's DinoPutt. After getting a chance to play the course, I can say it is the most amazing mini golf “experience” (because that's the only way I can describe it) I've EVER seen!!

My family and I just want to thank everyone who has been a part of our wonderful adventure. Marc was truly the most wonderful person with an amazing spirit and always a positive attitude. Thanks to Give Kids the World, Universal Studios and especially Pam Landwirth, Marc's memory will live on forever and every family that comes to the Village will get a chance to "club" with the dinosaurs and "have a ball!" So thank you for printing this fabulous article and letting us all share in the magic—as Marc would say, "This is so so so so AWESOME!!"

Thanks again,
Eryn McConnell

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

LOOP Classifieds

FOR SALE—Classified ads in THE LOOP, just $20 per month (two issues) for up to 30 words, $1 per additional word. We accept cash, check, VISA and MasterCard. E-mail lynne@gettheloop.com.