Volume 1, No. 10. June 15, 2001
Global wetting
It's a universal bane of amusement
parks, water parks and zoos, and this past week it seemed to be everywhere.
Rain caused business havoc for parks in North America, Asia and Europe, while
the wet season settled in for South American facilities.
No park was hit harder than Six Flags Astroworld in Houston, Texas, which, like
the rest of the metropolitan area, suffered flooding from a tropical storm that
swept through town twice in one week. The theme park closed early last Friday
when the second deluge began and didn't reopen until yesterday. Its Showcase
Theatre, season pass processing center and a couple of gift shops took water
damage, and the warehouse "was hit pretty hard," said the park's public relations
manager Darryl Freeman. Several offices in the warehouse as well as food, merchandise
and "a lot of paper goods" were lost, though the park has not put a price tag
on the damage yet, she said.
As much as cleaning up, the park's staff has had to deal with property losses
among their fellows. "Some individuals have lost some things," Freeman said.
"A couple of people had flooding in their homes. Many people had damage to their
vehicles." Workers were gathering donations to help those affected by the floods.
While the park has always put up with almost daily squalls during typical seasons,
and flash flood warnings are almost nightly occurrances, this storm overwhelmed
the whole population. "None of us had any idea what was coming," Freeman said.
"We've seen bad floods in Houston, but we've never seen them so widespread in
several parts of the town." The freak flooding came about when Tropical Storm
Allison eased ashore early last week, swept back out to the Gulf of Mexico,
then returned with even more.
When the extent of the flood became obvious on Saturday—whole sections
of Interstate 10 resembled the Mississippi River—the park didn't even attempt
to open for the weekend, heeding the city's need to focus on rescue and recovery
and keeping those people who could stay home off the roads. "We didn't want
to risk people driving around Saturday and Sunday," Freeman said. Astroworld
staff realized Monday that its own cleanup needed time, too, and decided to
hold off re-opening until late in the week.
While the park's flood waters receded Saturday, other neighborhoods remained
under water into this week, with total damage estimates reaching $1 billion
for the city. Downtown Houston, just blocks north of the park, was among the
worst hit areas. Lily Tsang lives in that area and in a phone call described
the devestation to her sister, Lisa Tsang, entertainment manager at Ocean Park
in Hong Kong. Lily's own home suffered no damage, much to Lisa's relief.
But, then, Lisa was dealing with her own city's deluges, which caused landslides
throughout the province, including a "minor mudslide" in the backstage area
of the park. While the public area has been spared, "attendance is bad," she
said, and the rains have forced the park's new outdoor show indoors more often
than not (see New Arrival).
Her plight is one shared by parks across the United States, especially in the
Midwest and Northeast. Coming off one of the wettest, coldest summers in memory,
the parks had "nowhere but-up" hopes for 2001, and the spring held much promise
with record crowds. The three-day Memorial Day weekend, however, saw cold, wet
weather at almost every park in the country, and the rains stuck around until
the middle of this week in the Ohio Valley, keeping temperatures and attendance
down throughout the region. When that cold front moved out it was replaced by
a daily dose of violent thunderstorms.
European parks and zoos are also reporting weather-hampered attendance this
month, even though the season has been no wetter than past years. The problem,
said Jeff Bertus, secretary of Europark, is the weather forecasters. "The last
couple of weeks we saw the weather forecasting guys being too pessimistic,"
he said. "They miss quite often. But if you tell people, 'This weekend the weather
will be raining or too cold or whatever,' they don't plan to go to the zoo or
amusement park."
©2001, Minton Enterprises LLC
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