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In
this issue:
(To go directly
to a story, click on a blue keyword below):
Custom Coasters bankruptcy rattles the nerves of Cliff's Amusement Park, who had already done likewise to journalists, courtesy of Bill Robinson;
Silver Dollar City designers get to play with 20th century toys for a change in the new Celebration City theme park, and the Miami Metrozoo plans out a zoo for the 21st century;
Raging Waters gets involved in shady deals, and Kennywood sees silver in three of its attractions.
We welcome CHINA to the Memphis Zoo, a waterslide to Chula Vista, and an aquatics center and Foam Factory to Wilderness Resort; and,
We give a fond farewell to good help, and embrace IAAPA's new UNICEF partnership.
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Cliff
hanger
Gary Hays was preparing to entertain the media and further inflame community
excitement over his park’s new wooden coaster, New Mexico’s
first. Yes, construction on The New Mexico Rattler at Cliff’s
Amusement Park in Albuquerque was behind schedule, a tardiness due, Hays
thought, to 9/11-related economic troubles interfering with delivery of
materials. But this July 12 grand opening celebration had been planned
when the coaster's opening was first postponed in early June, so the Hayses
and their opportunistic public relations consultant Bill Robinson turned
the event into a media day honoring Cliff’s 43rd season and the coaster’s
“pending arrival.”
All
Hays needed to know that Friday morning was when his coaster would be
done. Instead, he learned that the coaster’s manufacturer, Custom
Coasters International, was done.
Denise Dinn, the company’s president, told Hays and Robinson she
was planning to shutter the company for personal reasons related to her
pending divorce.
“Here
we were standing there doing a press conference knowing full well that
she had pulled the plug,” Hays said. “It was an interesting
feeling.”
On
July 17 Custom Coasters International Incorporated filed in Cincinnati
for Chapter 7 bankruptcy—liquidation. The same day, Denise Dinn filed
for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, consumer case. While assets were reported in
the business case, no assets were reported for the consumer case. The
first meeting of creditors in both cases is set for Sept. 4.
The
news of CCI’s closure sent a shockwave through the industry, surprising
some parks and manufacturers with its suddenness and flooring coaster
enthusiasts who consistently rated CCI woodies among the world’s
best. Even those who saw CCI’s demise coming were concerned that
yet another major ride manufacturer had fallen to financial woes and could
take other industry suppliers with it.
The
impact of CCI’s bankruptcy was most immediate at Cliff’s where
Hays thought he was nearing completion of The New Mexico Rattler.
“We found out a lot of the steel that was supposed to be here for
a July opening hadn’t even been ordered yet,” he said. With
CCI’s closing, the company's workers on the Cliff’s site were
laid off. “We had to make a payroll for her,” Hays said of Dinn.
Nevertheless,
Cliff’s continues with construction. “Being 95 percent complete,
we had to grab hold of it and go,” Hays said. He had already ordered
his trains directly from Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters, and he concluded
unfinished orders for supplies himself. He hired the 21 laid-off CCI employees
already on site, “and every one of them is busy. The guys out here
have just been great to work with. Their objective is to get the ride
completed.”
That, he now hopes, will be by the end of August. “We’re looking on the positive side,” Hays said. “It’s going to cost us more, but I think we’re going to have a class-one coaster when we’re through. It’s being built right in the middle of this park, and it’s amazing to see it being built with the park open.” And Albuquerque is still afire with anticipation. “The community is excited,” he said.
Rattling
the press
Cliff’s wood coaster may or may not be snakebitten, but several journalists
thought for a moment they were about to be.
When
sending out The New Mexico Rattler press packet and invitation
to the July 12 Media Day for Cliff’s Amusement Park in Albuquerque,
Bill Robinson included a packet of one dozen rattlesnake eggs. Alongside
the coaster's logo, the packet’s label stated “Caution: Keep
in cool place to prevent hatching. . . ”
“The eggs have been known to hatch while traveling through the mail,” park owner Gary Hays told me on the phone, leading to some consternation mingled with concern over just what this upright amusement park was sending through the U.S. Postal System. Sure enough, when I opened the packet, it unleashed the distinctive sound of a snake rattler, and I unleashed a yelp.
“Everybody
reacts the same way: scared,” Hays said. “We heard how unique
and how frightening it was for them. There would be a little antsiness
there when they see it, but when they open it, it scares them to death.”
It works in part because many media members are not up to stuff on their
zoology. Rattlesnakes give live birth, “but nobody’s ever caught
that yet,” Hays said.
The
device is actually a washer suspended from a wire pin with doubled-up
rubber bands. With the rubber bands twisted tight, the contraption is
placed inside the envelope and sealed; when opened the envelope’s
sides separate, allowing the rubber bands to untwine and the twirling
washer to rattle against the inside of the envelope.
Hays
gives Robinson, president and CEO of William H. Robinson, Inc., total
credit for the gag. “Once we decide on the name, that’s when
he goes to work,” Hays said. “I don’t know where he comes
up with this stuff.”
In fact, Robinson himself fell victim to the gag from a vendor when he was a buyer at Americana almost 20 years ago. “I came out of my chair,” he said. Remembering its effectiveness, he specifically shopped for rattlesnake eggs when he attended the merchandise show in Las Vegas this year, a fertile venue for the contents of his many Brass Ring-winning press packet offerings. “I looked at rubber snakes, I looked at plush snakes. I got these and each costs a quarter. All I was trying to do was find something that would get media people’s attention. A T-shirt looks nice, but it doesn’t jump out of the package.”
Bright colors, lights and rides distinguish Celebration City's designs. Rendering courtesy of Silver Dollar City Corporation.
Cause
for Celebration
That general huzzah you are hearing from southeast Missouri is coming
from the talented designers and engineers of Silver Dollar City Corporation.
The Branson, Missouri, company is building a new theme park, Celebration
City, in its hometown, and it will be set in the 20th century as opposed
to the 19th century village look of SDC’s other major properties—Dollywood
in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, Stone Mountain in Atlanta, Georgia, and Silver
Dollar City itself.
“The
guys are able to do more contemporary things and play with nighttime lighting,”
said Bob Montgomery, the company’s vice president of Branson Attractions
who has been tapped to run the $40 million park scheduled to open in the
spring of 2003. “This has been a real rush for them. They’re
looking at colors they wouldn’t use before.”
Not
that the new park, located on a 112-acre site near downtown Branson on
the property that formerly held Branson USA, will be a departure from
the Silver Dollar City core competency of nostalgic theming. Celebration
City will focus on Americana culture through the first half of the 20th
century, with themes pertaining to such technological advances as electricity
and the automobile.
Part
of that culture, too, pertains to the role of the amusement park. Celebration
City, therefore, will be more of a ride park than the company’s other
theme parks, with an 80-foot-tall (24-meter) wood coaster from Great Coasters
and a total of 24 different rides and attractions, many of those vintage
in feel if not in actual age. “We think this is part of the complimentary
but differentiated strategy we’re employing,” Montgomery said.
“We have a chance to do something here that’s more ride-oriented
than what we have done in the past, but still have the charm and heavy
theming and landscaping and interactivity Silver Dollar City is known
for.”
Being
located on the former Branson USA site helps. Celebration City not only
will inherit about half of Branson USA’s rides, but also a site developed
specifically to house an amusement park. “We do have the joy of having
a good infrastructure and sound buildings we’ve integrated into our
plan,” Montgomery said.
As
for the prospects of success in that market, Silver Dollar City’s
management is “bullish” on Branson, Montgomery said. The new
park will be geared to a family audience, a demographic the tourist city
has seen growing the past few years, surpassing the community’s earlier
reliance on the tour group and adult couple markets. “We’re
building on a lot of success we’ve seen in the past couple of years,”
Montgomery said.
The company also has withstood the amusement industry’s economic foundering of the past year, and, in fact, sees this as the perfect opportunity to expand. “There’s no question it’s a buyer’s market for us, and we’re taking advantage of that condition,” Montgomery said. “We believe this park is the key to seeing Silver Dollar City grow. By growing the market and growing our offer here (in Branson), it’s the best thing we can do for all of our attractions.”
The
new century’s zoo
Zoo Director
Eric Stephens is emphatic: contrary to local media depictions, Miami Metrozoo
in Florida is not planning to become a theme park. What it has laid out
in its new 20-year master plan approved last week by the Miami-Dade County
Commission is the strategy toward becoming what could surely be the prototype
zoo of the 21st century
“We contracted with the Portico Group out of Seattle to help devise
the plan,” Stephens said. “We drew on their experiences as well
as our experiences from visits to other institutions and nature facilities.
We set about trying to make an exciting and interesting and interactive
place for people to come and still be a family destination where you can
experience and fall in love with exotic wildlife.”
Drawing on the hottest trends of today, the Miami Metrozoo of tomorrow
will be a highly themed 300-plus-acre (121-hectare) zoo with interactive
experiences for both the public and the animals, various rides, plenty
of retail opportunities and restaurants thematically fitting the various
eco-exhibits. Far down the plan’s timeline is an Eco-Lodge, which
would be an overnight facility for guests or for use as an executive suite.
“Visitors can fall asleep to the sounds of South America and the
African Savanna,” the master plan’s executive summary states.
A notable aspect of the plan is the means by which guests will be able
to experience the animals. People would be able to take a faux safari
ride, similar to those at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, Busch Gardens
and Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Guests also will float along in native
dugouts to see small primates, birds and sloths in the proposed South
America section. In Asia, guests will get the chance to snorkel through
a lake filled with tropical fish separated by an acrylic wall from sharks.
Also in Asia guests would be able to climb ropes into the trees to view
animals at canopy level.
The plan sees the zoo enhancing its modes of transportation, which currently
comprises a tram and a monorail. The latter would access more stations
and become the transport of choice on Miami-hot days. With a network of
lagoons, guests would also be able to take boats to the different themed
villages. The tram, currently running through the 30-foot-wide (nine-meter)
walkways, would move to a service-road route as the pedestrian paths are
narrowed to 12 feet (four meters) for a more intimate feel with shade
canopies. “Feel is a big part of it,” Stephens said of the end
results. Each themed area would also have themed restaurants and carts
serving foods germane to that social-eco region. “That’s an
opportune area for zoos to grow in if they choose to,” Stephens said.
Total cost for the master plan’s implementation in 2002 dollars is
estimated at $350 million. The zoo already has $14 million in hand for
phase two, a zoo-wide renovation of visitor amenities to be completed
by 2005. Phase One is the Wings of Asia aviary, replacing the structure
destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, scheduled to open this winter.
One thing this next generation zoo would do that the current facility
has not is take better advantage of the zoo’s South Florida location,
where it can become more of a tourism draw. “We need to focus a lot
more on tourists,” Stephens said. “Most of our market now is
the tri-county area of South Florida. A lot of tourists come to South
Florida to get on the cruise ships and see the Everglades. We need to
position ourselves to capture more of that market.”
What may play an important role in doing that is a second element of the
master plan. For that, the zoo is researching use of surrounding property,
much of that federal land officials believe will become surplus. Among
the options for that land: keep it wild or use it to develop a waterpark,
family entertainment center or amusement park, “something that would
be compatible with the zoo,” Stephens said. That plan will be finalized
and ready to present to local officials in six to eight months, he said.
Print
this article
Raging Waters sells two shades of shade on its sand beach. Photo by Eric Minton.
Made
with the shade
No park operator today would believe 10 years ago that he or she would
be able to sell drinking water; nay that people would demand that parks
sell bottled water, even for $2.50 a swig when free water is readily available.
Given
that, Dave Simon may be something of a visionary. Until recently the director
of operations at Raging Waters in San Dimas, California, Simon began selling
shade at the park. And people are buying it.
Technically,
Raging Waters is renting cabanas, but the low-end version is an umbrella
with two beach chairs for $15. At the high end are 27 canvas awnings each
covering three lounges; these shade structures rent for $50. Most of the
cabanas and umbrellas populate the sandy beach around Raging Waters’
wave pool, and on the deck at the back end of the wave pool are six palapa
shade structures with four loungers each. Those rent for $45. “They
used to be the deluxe cabanas, but they went down in stature because of
the noise from the wave pool’s operations,” Simon said. Several
single-leg palapa structures also dot the beach providing smatterings
of shade for those who do not choose to pay.
Simon’s
background, including stints at Wild Rivers in Irvine, California, and
with the Walt Disney Company, is in revenue-generating operations. When
he arrived at the white sandy beach of Raging Waters in 1998, he saw an
earnings opportunity where others merely saw shade. “Casinos and
resorts sell shade structures, and it’s always so popular. It seemed
like a natural fit here with the sandy beach.”
He had to do some convincing of management, however. The question: would people pay for shade, especially those coming to a waterpark? Simon was allowed to make a trial run. “The only feedback we got was (the shade) selling out,” he said. “In peak season they sell out every day. People are paying for it, but the perception is that they are paying for quality.”
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Dragon dancers celebrated the opening of CHINA in Memphis. Photo courtesy of the Memphis Zoo. It’s
a China exhibit! The market demanded Chula Vista point its new waterpark toward the extreme. Photo by Eric Minton. It’s
a waterslide! Two
years ago Chula Vista President Mike Kaminski saw a new slide design
by Amusement Leisure called “Backlash” on which tube riders
would curl down a trough and into a ramp where they would reverse
direction and speed into another trough to the run-out. “I
said, ‘I’ve got to have one,’” Kaminski said.
At the time, though, his resort’s waterpark was of the indoor
variety; outdoors he had only a medium-high slide structure next
to the swimming pool. So,
Kaminski built a whole new tower with four slides: a 60-foot-high
(18-meter) speed slide, a 240-foot-long (73-meter) twin racer, both
by Amusement Leisure, and a Water Fun Products Sidewinder that Chula
Vista calls the Switchback Canyon. The resort got the bulk
of the new attractions open for Memorial Day, allowing Kaminski
to boast that he now has one of the largest outdoor resort waterparks
in the Midwest. The Gator Tail opened a month late, but still
it allows Kaminski to boast of having a one-of-a-kind. His
is just the third Backlash in the world, the second in the United
States after the prototype at Big Sky Waterpark in Columbia Falls,
Montana. “I needed to do something outrageous to set us apart
from the other resorts,” Kaminski said. “I wanted the
really new, upcoming, different kind of rides.” He also decided,
given his indoor attractions and the existing slide structure, that
he needed to widen the demographics of his waterpark offerings.
“Hotels don’t typically get into extreme stuff,”
he said. Hotels don’t typically build their own waterparks, either. Chula Vista’s was constructed solely by Kaminski and his maintenance staff. “That’s fun for the maintenance guys, and they take more ownership in the park,” he said. Kids, and parents, too, went wild in the Wisconsin Dells first Foam Factory. Photo courtesy of Wilderness Hotel & Golf Resort. It’s
an aquatic center & Foam Factory! It
was a quiet opening. Well, quiet may not be the right word. No Foam
Factory or aquatic area is quiet when in use, and these two were
put into immediate use when they opened to the guests of the 443-room
(162 of those opening with this summer’s expansion), 28-villa
and 88-condo resort. But while they may have debuted to the immediate
swoosh-swoosh of tubes speeding down waterslides and the whoop-whoop
of foam balls shooting from wilderness themed blasters, the two
additions opened without much marketing hoopla. That
will come later this season, promises Joe Eck, Wilderness’
director of sales and marketing, when the resort celebrates “a
successful season” while formally announcing a new 65,000-square-foot
(6,039 square meters) indoor waterpark scheduled to open by Christmas.
The
additions of this summer help round out the resort’s entertainment
amenities to its guests, Eck said. “We listen to what the guests
want, and they wanted an activity that doesn’t involve getting
wet,” he said. Hence, the resort settled on installing the
Timberland Playhouse, a thoroughly themed SCS Foam Factory
with Delta Play elements (an outcome of those two firms being part
of the Koala family). “This is open for an hour after our waterparks
close, and the flow of people that go in there at that time is amazing.”
The unit covers all demographics, from its toddler crawl zones to
the ball blasters themed as logs, beavers and skunks and cannons
that look like tree stumps spurting foam balls. “I see more
parents than kids in here a lot of the time,” Eck said. Though guests wanted some dry time, the resort’s number one draw is still its waterparks. Lake Wilderness, which expands the resort’s total waterpark square footage to 232,000 (21,554 square meters), was a response to requests from adult guests who wanted more traditional, leisurely waterpark activities. “Wilderness is everything we didn’t have at the other pool,” Eck said, like the lap pool, the activity pools, and the centerpiece element, the “lazy lake,” as Eck calls it, with a current gently moving water around an island. The island itself is a big draw for guests who can lay back in lounge chairs settled on the island’s underwater ledge.
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Kennywood's Racer attracted Turtle-loving fans celebrating the two rides' 75th anniversaries. Photo courtesy of Kennywood. A
three-quarter effort But
many of her other ideas were embraced and a one-day celebration
for the The Racer roller coaster, the Turtle tumblebug
ride and Kiddieland turning 75 this year turned into a 75-fest at
the suburban Pittsburgh amusement park. Quarter-pound hot dogs sold
for 75 cents throughout the park. Some games cost 75 cents. A $110
print of Kiddieland in one of the park’s stores was reduced
to $75. The
park also rewarded anybody 75 with 75 cent general admission (a
$7.25 savings) or $7.50 ride-all-day ticket (a $20.45 savings).
Who could be 75? Any guest born in 1927, born in 1975, weighing
75 pounds or measuring 75 inches high. The park set up two scales
to measure people. “It was so funny because the girls weren’t
real strict,” Rosemeyer said. “If the guest was a little
over they’d say, ‘Take your shoes off.’ Or if the
weight was off, they’d tell them to try the other scale.”
Because of the special pricing, three of the front gate’s computerized
registers were re-keyed for the 75 crowd. Meanwhile,
three separate birthday parties were raging inside the park. Operators
handed out raffle tickets to everybody riding The Racer,
the Turtle or the Kiddieland rides, and a drawing at the
end of the day gave away “goofy prizes,” Rosemeyer said,
like Turtle balloons that had been part of the festoons at
the Turtle, and 75 cartoon video tapes to 75 different children
at Kiddieland. Employees also dove into the spirit of the day, wearing
special name tags and buttons, and the Kennywood Marching Band playing
“Happy Birthday” Dixieland style. “We played stump
the band at the parties,” Rosemeyer said, “and each time
somebody named a song, the band members would confer then play ‘When
the Saints Go Marching In.’” The
whole day was a morale booster for employees and a hoot for guests,
Rosemeyer said. “People stopped me on the midways throughout
the day and thanked me for doing it because they were having so
much fun,” she said. The celebration also generated lots of
press—perfectly timed for the late-season push—with every
TV newscast on hand. “I’d love to think of a way to do
it again,” Rosemeyer said. “There’s always an anniversary
you can find.”
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