Volume 3, No. 12. June 27, 2003
Coaster Con Report
A
hand of 5 aces
At the convention-ending banquet Friday night, when Paramount’s Kings Dominion
General Manager Richard Zimmerman was introduced along with Paramount public
relations officials David Mandt, Jeffrey Seibert and Mark Riddell, the ACE members
gave them a standing ovation. Despite a week of rainy weather, the entire banquet
passed without one mention of rain outs; instead, the commentary focused on
gracious hosts.
Before giving out his annual Spirit of ACE Award (this year's winner was ACE
Census Director Lisa Scheinin), Philadelphia Toboggan Coaster President Tom
Rebbie, noting the comments he had heard from various ACE members, told the
Paramount Parks’ group, “You’ve achieved the monumental task
of pleasing everybody in this group.”
The 2004 Coaster Con had been regarded with high anticipation among the membership
because Cedar Point would be co-hosting with Six Flags Worlds of Adventure—and
everybody knows the kind of bash Cedar Point is capable of throwing. Yet, after
last week’s banquet, after the week of typical ERT and atypical moments
like the Midway Olympics and Seibert’s humorous video account of the games;
like eating gourmet-style “finger food” while a dance band performed;
like the 12 specially made “Welcome ACE” flags placed at each of the
park’s 12 coasters, and the scavenger hunt through which ACE members could
win those banners; like the hilarious MTV-like “pop-up” version of
the Hollywood film Roller Coaster; like the three-course hot breakfast;
after all that, Larry Scott, assistant regional rep for northwest Ohio, commenting
on next year’s Con could only promise to “match” this year's.
“The bar has been raised awfully high,” he said. “I think the
best anybody can do is match it.”
Loched
in time
ACE officially was founded at the Fort Magruder Inn near Busch Gardens Williamsburg
during the first-ever coaster convention at the theme park. That convention’s
chief drawing card was a new double looping steel coaster, the loops intertwined
at the center of the cat’s-cradle ride. That ride, Loch Ness Monster,
like ACE, turned 25 this year. ACE commemorated the event with a landmark plaque
and ceremony. Busch Gardens commemorated the event with tie-dye and Afro wigs.
Trying to achieve the ultimate retro-look, Busch’s PR team had ACE members
don psychedelic swirling-colored T-shirts, black Afro wigs, headband scarfs
and sunglasses. With the ride being broadcast via satellite feeds, the enthusiasts
held up two-fingered peace signs throughout the coaster’s course.
As those of us who lived through both eras know, that was the look of 1968,
not ’78 when leisure suits, gold-chain necklaces and big hair were the
fave. However, as Ryan Vulcan, Busch’s public relations representative,
pointed out, the look for the coaster celebration needed to be colorful and
eye-catching for the cameras. And to tell true, founding member Richard Munch
very much resembled his younger self in the pictures taken during the events
of 1977 and 1978. He’s a preservationist in more than just coasters.
Midway
to excellence
Sixteen teams signed up, one forming during the opening ceremony. The big winner
was Paramount’s Kings Dominion. After its first session of ERT, the host
park staged the first-ever Paramount’s Kings Dominion’s Midway Olympics
comprising ACE teams competing in 10 events: Whack-A-Mole, Spilt Milk, Ring
Toss, Skee Ball, Quarterback Challenge, Basketball Free Throw, Ladder Climb,
Water Gun Battle, Power Tower and Speed Pitch. The selection of games were not
announced until the opening ceremony. “We didn’t want teams to practice
and get an unfair advantage by knowing ahead of time what games we were playing,”
said Mark Riddell, public relations manager for Paramount’s Kings Dominion.
After Scooby-Doo presided over an opening ceremony featuring a parade of referee
stripe-shirted judges (members of the park’s marketing department), the
six-member teams moved off to the Grove’s Midway led by the judges and
followed by local press. Rachel Sanders, the park's marketing supervisor, had
an apropos background for her job as judge of the ring toss; one of her regular
duties is to organize the park’s public competitions for bands, cheerleaders
and the like. “I always hire professional judges and pay them well,”
she said of her official events. For refereeing ring toss, however, “Somehow
I feel very qualified for this.” After each team failed to land a ring
on a bottle neck, she told them all the same thing: “You’re tied for
first place, which is zero.”
While nobody earned a single point on Ring Toss, everybody earned the maximum
150 points on Wack-A-Mole. According to the rules, two players from each team
pounded on the moles and the highest score between the two would be awarded
to that team. When Riddell wrote up the rules, he was not aware that in Dominion’s
version of Wack-A-Mole, the first person to 150 ends the game. Meanwhile, only
one person scored 300 points on Skee Ball: Steven Corbly of Carnage, Pennsylvania,
who has a skee-ball alley in his garage. His Skee-ball performance lifted his
team, The Volunteers, to 716 total points and the title of “Worldwide Kings
of the Midway,” besting, The Dominionites at 701 points and Hungry Texans
at 688. For their efforts, each member of the winning teams received handsome
medals engraved with the ACE 25th Anniversary logo and “Midway Games Champion”
on one side and the Paramount’s Kings Dominion logo on the back.
The park got more than good publicity out of the event. The excitement buzzing
around the Midway increased general public traffic to the games, and for that
morning the take was better than usual. Furthermore, the park scored points
with ACE members for the inventiveness of the idea, the effort of the opening
ceremony and those Olympian-calibre medals. “It was a blast,” said
Scott Connor of Texarkana, Texas, and the winning Volunteers. “I told (Paramount
officials) that it was the neatest thing they’ve come up with. It was an
absolute blast.”
Said 12-year-old Kari Lipnicky, “Now I’ve got to defend the title
next year.”
Just
a song before he goes
Mark Riddell’s first gig for Paramount’s Kings Dominion came when
he was a teen-ager, playing with a Christian group on a stage in the Doswell,
Virginia, park’s picnic pavilion. So, there was much irony in the fact
that in the waning days of his tenure as Kings Dominion’s public relations
manager, Riddell brought his dance band, Sonny Daze, to the park to perform
at the ACE welcoming reception. Riddell plays keyboards for the combo that performed
oldies rock mixed with some modern Top 40 tunes in honor of the convention’s
25th anniversary theme.
Riddell began his music avocation as a 12-year-old playing the organ and switching
to piano in high school when he discovered “there’s not too much of
a call for organs in bands.” He took some formal lessons, but “I was
never much of a student; I didn’t like to practice.” Nevertheless,
he was good enough to join Sonny Daze, already an established unit, about five
years ago. The band performs a couple of times a month, mostly for corporate
clients, country clubs and weddings. For the summer the band will assume an
alter-ego as the Down Island Kings, a Jimmy Buffet cover band for marinas and
pool parties.
“We have so many songs in our repertoire we don’t try to memorize
any of it,” Riddell said, and the band practices only in advance of scheduled
shows. The repertoire has to be wide:
because of the type of venues Sonny Daze plays, the music must appeal to all
ages and all types of people, exactly like a theme park, Riddell noted.
Coordinating and hosting the ACE Coaster Con was Riddell’s last official
task for Paramount’s Kings Dominion. The man who came to the theme park
after working for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is going
back to Ringling Bros. to be national director of public relations. He certainly
went out on a high note.
Last
rides
The two empty trains parked half way up the lift hill of the Rebel Yell
racing coaster. In the midway below, ACErs gathered for a moment of solemnity
rare among Coaster Cons as the organization paid tribute to the members, park
personnel and coaster designers who have passed away over the past 25 years.
As part of the service founder Richard Munch and the Reverend Cliff Herring
Jr., pastor of the United Church of Christ in Northampton, Pennsylvania, read
off a list of 120 names. ACE member number 18, one of the originals, Herring
presided over the service. After the names were read, the two empty coaster
trains, representing, Herring said, “the void (the members) have left in
our club and fellowship,” started up the lift hill again and coursed through
the Rebel Yell while the enthusiasts stood by in silence.
“I wasn’t planning to come to the convention this year,” Herring
said. Time off from his church duties is becoming increasingly precious. However,
when Munch and the organization’s leadership began planning the memorial
service, Herring knew he had to be the one to officiate. “I didn’t
know all those names, but I knew several,” he said. In particular he thought
fondly of Marie Miller, the club’s oldest member and adopted grandmother
in the early years. At the request of her family in New Jersey, Herring had
conducted her funeral service.
For this 55-year-old man of the cloth, the link between coaster enthusiasm and
spirituality is an easy one. Based upon years of communing with his fellow enthusiasts,
he comments on the beatific nature of everybody’s “first time”
on a coaster. “Their language parallels that of a religious experience,”
he said. In the memorial service he described the deceased members as having
moved on to the eternal amusement park “where I am hoping Harry Traver,
John Allen, Herb Schmeck and others have built heavenly rides. They must have
coasters there—after all, they call it heaven. May they enjoy ERT: Eternal
Ride Time.”
Rise
and shining
OK, so Paramount’s Kings Dominion was planning a “hot breakfast”
for the final morning of the ACE convention. Waffles, of course, and pancakes.
That was more than enough to entice the 700-plus members to the picnic pavilion,
where, however, they also found biscuits and gravy, breakfast potatoes, fresh
hash, scrambled eggs, sausage patties and go-for-thirds bacon. That kind of
breakfast spread is unheard of for such a large group in a picnic pavilion.
“We do it for special occasions,” Lisa Gatewood, the park’s catering
operations manager, said matter-of-factly. Then she admitted that such “special
occasions” normally would entail 50 to 100 people. A little bit later,
she admitted that the largest crowd she had served such a breakfast to prior
to ACE numbered 50.
Most
items for hot breakfasts cannot be pre-cooked, and Gatewood also wanted sufficient
variety. Thus, she served three different main courses and three different meats,
the third being a hash that was drawing Volcano-calibre raves. The bacon
was cooked fresh in perforated pans so that the grease would drip through.
Given the difficulty of the feat, why did Paramount’s Kings Dominion attempt
a hot breakfast spread for such a group as ACE (which, some say, actually stands
for All you Can Eat)? “Our overall goal was to impress,” Gatewood
said. “I think it worked.”
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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