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In
this issue:
(To
go directly to a story, click on a blue keyword below):
The new Parrot
Jungle Island gets an unusual sponsor;
Paramount falls
in love with Bonfante Gardens;
Roaming retirees
fill the ranks at Wild Waves & Enchanted Village;
It smells like
Father's Day spirit at Caribbean Gardens;
We welcome Washington's
newest woodie to Wild Waves & Enchanted Village, and an
interactive water play structure that gets flighty at Oceans
of Fun;
In the nursery
we find a slide tower for Camelbeach, a Revolution
at Knott's Berry Farm, an interactive lagoon at
Dutch Wonderland, a simulator at Fort
Worth Zoo, a Dragon's Den at Raging Waters,
a Raging River at White Water, and a Fly
Away at Bobbejaanland; and,
We find
family and friends in far-off places.
For
a printable version of this newsletter,
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For
more information on the facilities and organizations featured in
this newsletter, visit our Connections Page.
click here
For
back issues of THE LOOP,
click here
Healthy
partnership
The first two sponsors were almost a given. As Parrot Jungle in
the south suburbs of Miami, Florida, transitioned to its new location,
new stature and new name—Parrot Jungle Island, scheduled to
open June 28 on the MacArthur Causeway between downtown Miami and
South Beach—the theme park announced partnerships with Pepsi
and Kodak. For Emily Marquez, director of sales and management,
that news elevated Parrot Jungle Island’s credibility.
“I was so amazed. When we announced locally to the press that
we had a partnership with Kodak and Pepsi, everybody picked it up
because it said to people, 'Parrot Jungle Island is top notch,'”
she said.
The next two sponsorships, however, did not come from your typical
pool of marketing partners: Cedars Medical Center and the South
Florida Water Management District. The latter is helping the new
Parrot Jungle Island build its Everglades Habitat with funding and
technical assistance. In turn, that exhibit will serve as an educational
outlet for the District and drive awareness of the Everglades, which
comes under the agency’s jurisdiction.
The Cedars Medical Center sponsorship spawned from Marquez’s
former employment, and her parents’ current employment, at
the hospital 2 1/2 miles (four kilometers) from the theme park.
Many people in South and Central America visit Miami to get U.S.
caliber medical care, and Marquez approached Cedars’ Director
of Marketing Kristen Koch with the pitch that Parrot Jungle Island
could provide an international marketing outlet for the hospital.
With the backing of Cedar’s new creative CEO, Michael Joseph,
Koch jumped at the opportunity.
“Within a 10-mile radius of Miami you’ve got five hospitals,
and it's very competitive” Koch said. With Parrot Jungle Island
anticipating 40 percent of its one million annual visitors coming
from overseas—the bulk of those Latin Americans—and the
theme park’s close ties with the cruise ships that dock across
the channel from the theme park, “When you think through all
that, it kind of makes sense,” she said. “We have all
these international people coming (to the park), and we are a health
care provider for many international patients, especially Central
and South America, the Bahamas and the Caribbean. It seems a natural.”
With the sponsorship, Cedars Medical Center becomes “Parrot
Jungle Island’s preferred health care provider.” That
association is mentioned on all park media and brochures and becomes
part of Cedar’s logo, too. The hospital’s name will be
tagged to the park’s customer service center and a portion
of the park’s walking trail. The partners also will share in
putting on special health-related events, and Cedars will send its
nurses to participate in various Parrot Jungle Island events throughout
the year, and Cedars brochures will be distributed at the first
aide station. Parrot Jungle also will take Cedars along for travel
trade shows and powwows. “It’s a way to get Cedars out
to an audience that maybe we wouldn’t reach otherwise,”
Koch said.
Cedars will be able to use Parrot Jungle Island for company events
at discounted rates, its staff members can use the park to meet
their company’s requirements of participating in community
service activities, and Koch already has received several invitations
to events at the park’s Treetop Ballroom. In return, Parrot
Jungle Island could use Cedars wellness program at discount rates,
and its staff will have access to Cedars Medical Center’s child
care center. “We have the things that each other needs,”
Koch said.
Koch would not say how much the hospital is paying for the sponsorship.
“We just think it’s a mutual benefit to pay a price to
be on their brochures, their pamphlets and at their trade shows,”
she said. “We wanted to be linked to the new Parrot Jungle;
it’s a first-class operation.” This is the hospital’s
first-ever sponsorship, too. “A lot of this I never would have
thought of,” Koch said. “It was Emily who came to me.
I just thought they had a vision, they were well organized, they
had a plan. She explained her marketing budget and plan, and I liked
her vision and her objective.”
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Granter
loves the circus tree life at Bonfante Gardens. Photo
by Eric Minton/THE LOOP.
For
the love of Mike
People
who visit Bonfante Gardens have a tendency to fall in love. Including—indeed,
especially—the Gilroy, Calif., park’s own managers. The
object of their affection: the park itself.
“It just makes me smile,” said Barbara-Lea Granter, who
has taken the operational reins of Bonfante Gardens for Paramount
Parks. “Look at the detail!” she says pointing to the
architectured landscape. “Not only is it themed that way but
they put a lot of thought into getting plants to do what they do.
Just a tremendous amount of thought.”
Granter is the latest in a line of veteran amusement industry professionals
who have swooned over the natural beauty—literally bent to
do creative men’s will—like a hopeful romantic seeing
a hot Italian in Venice. Granter, assigned by Paramount Parks to
run the park, is no different. Less than a month after Paramount
Parks signed the management contract with Bonfante’s board
of directors March 1, Granter was giving a tour of the gardens,
all the while dropping such isolated expletives as “cute,”
“too wild,” “love this park” and “very
cute.” She giggled a lot, too.
Granter, a native Canadian, has spent much of her career with Paramount
Canada’s Wonderland in Vaughan, Ontario, eventually becoming
director of entertainment. The past two years she has been the manager
of Paramount’s Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas, Nevada.
From there she answered the call to take on Bonfante Gardens, the
$100 million horticulture themed park founded by Michael Bonfante
which had been unable to finish out either of its first two seasons
because of budget shortfalls.
Culture shock? “Vegas is the culture shock,” Granter said,
“but this is not a culture shock from Canada.” Operationally
she has gone from the hard park and stage shows of Wonderland to
the virtual reality of Star Trek and now to kiddie rides amid circus
trees and queues made of living bamboo. Still, that transition has
not been difficult for her, either. “You have to look after
your theming in any theme park,” she said. “Instead of
using painters and sculptors, we use landscape artists. It really
isn’t as much difference as I would have thought.”
In fact, it’s easier on the budget. “It’s actually
a very economic theming,” she said. “It requires expertise
to maintain, and it may have been expensive to put in, but from
a maintenance perspective, I don’t have to paint it. It just
grows.”
Paramount Parks still has a daunting task ahead of it turning Bonfante
Gardens into a viable financial operation. As a non-profit entity—its
proceeds destined for beautification projects in surrounding communities—it
does not need to make money, but it does need to cover its operating
costs and get out of debt. Paramount Parks runs the risk of being
another suitor who loved it but is forced to leave it.
Paramount Parks is counting on economy of scale. Though Granter
is on site, the rest of the management team is that of Paramount’s
Great America up the road in Santa Clara, California. Aside from
sharing expertise and talents with Great America, Bonfante can now
share that park’s audiences: Great America’s VIP pass
includes admission to Bonfante Gardens. Within days of that announcement,
Great America’s season pass sales spiked, and early in the
season Bonfante was seeing record numbers through its gate.
However, Bonfante Parks will not become a Paramount Park, per se.
Any capital improvements would have to be approved by the board
of directors, even if Paramount Parks wanted to make changes. But
why change perfection? “One of our goals, because it is a very,
very unique property, is to make sure it remains unique,” Granter
said. “It is an addition to the Paramount Park family because
of its uniqueness.”
The smile never fades from her face as she glances around her new
park and remarks in appreciation of its designers, “They did
some special things here.”
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Wild
Waves GM Freund (left) got good help from Fehlmann and his nomadic
colleagues. Photo
by Eric Minton/THE LOOP.
Motor
pool
It’s
hard to keep good workers around, but Wild Waves and Enchanted Village
has discovered that, for a good employee source, what goes around
comes around.
Lenny Freund, the Federal Way, Washington, park’s vice president
and general manager, calls them Work Campers: retirees who travel
the country in motor homes and stop at locations long enough to
do seasonal work before moving on. “We had one couple work
for us the last couple of years and I networked through them,”
Freund said.
This season he has hired 14 such motor home migrant workers, filling
slots in security, admissions, customer service and shuttling employees
and guests from satellite parking lots. “Most of them have
commercial drivers licenses,” Freund said. “They drive
motor homes all around the country, so I’m sure they can handle
a shuttle bus.”
Bill Fehlmann, 61, and his wife Beth just started their new lifestyle
when he retired from operating his contract construction company
1 1/2 years ago. “We want to see the country,” he said.
“Our health is good, and now is the time to do it.” The
work, he said, subsidizes his pension, at least until Social Security
kicks in. “Places like Six Flags (the company owns Wild Waves
and Enchanted Village) like to hire us because we’re old and
reliable.” Freund nodded at that statement, presumably agreeing
at least to the reliable descriptor.
Fehlmann said some two million retirees are wandering the country
in their RVs, and employers can tap into this resource via the internet
or, as Freund did, by networking. “It’s fun, and you meet
nice people,” Fehlmann said of the lifestyle and work. After
the Wild Waves season ends in the fall, he and Beth will “head
south” to San Diego or the Florida Keys. Or both.
Come spring, “We’re coming back,” Fehlmann said.
“I want to do a little fishing and a lot of golfing.”
And he plans to return to work at Wild Waves and Enchanted Village.
“They’ve done a helluva job hiring the people they have,”
he said, meaning the management and younger seasonal employees.
“And we get a kick out of the kids.”
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Father
nose best
Father’s Day is upon us, the day for such heartfelt
gifts as bad ties and gosh-awful aftershave, outings to the zoo
with the kids and olfactory enrichment opportunities for the animals.
The former play into the latter for this year’s Father’s
Day promotion at the Caribbean Gardens: The Zoo in Naples in Naples,
Florida. Fathers get free admission to the zoo this Friday through
Monday with one paid child’s admission and a bottle of aftershave
or cologne.
“We were doing a Father’s Day promotion of dads getting
in free and were looking for the media angle,” said Tim Tetzlaff,
the zoo’s director of education. “What could we have for
a photo op more unusual than, ‘Look, we have dads in the zoo’?”
Tetzlaff’s creative cohorts then saw the opportunity to educate
the public on the zoo’s behavioral enrichment programs, a leading
one being olfactory stimulus.
“This holiday is just associated with bad aftershave,”
Tetzlaff said. “This gives dad a chance to clear out that medicine
chest of stuff he never wears anyway.” Then, the animals get
new landscapes for their noses. As
for that other bane of Father’s Day, ties, “there’s
nothing appropriate we could do with that for the animals,”
Tetzlaff said.
Unfortunately,
keepers have found that one of the animals’ favorite scents
is a Mary Kay perfume called Angel Fire, and it is unlikely any
dads will show up with a bottle of that.
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Eric's
Turn
Photo
by Lenny Freund.
It’s
a small world
On a visit to Miami, Florida, to get a preview of the new Parrot
Jungle Island, Kristen Koch, the director of marketing at nearby
Cedars Medical Center, came in for me to interview her about her
hospital’s sponsoring the theme park (see story
in this issue). After our introduction, I extended the pleasantries
before the formal interview by offhandedly asking if she were related
to the Kochs of Indiana. A throw-away question proved to be a revelation:
turns out she is the great niece of Mrs. Pat Koch, making her second
cousins with Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari President
Will—or first cousins twice removed (I get confused about genealogy
lineage).
No wonder she took the unusual step of agreeing to have her hospital
become a sponsor for a theme park. Not only did it make good business
sense and provide a tremendous marketing opportunity for the hospital,
being involved with theme parks apparently runs in her blood. So
does a pleasant personality.
It’s
a small world II
On a visit to Wavre, Belgium, to cover the opening of Challenge
of Tutankhamon at Six Flags Belgium (THE
LOOP May 23, 2003), I rode in the back seat of one of the attraction’s
Treasure Recovery Vehicles behind two park guests from the local
community. Because of their keen attention to details of the ride,
I asked to interview them afterward. I introduced myself, gave them
my business card and Geert Smets of Tessenderlo immediately brightened.
“Oh, I’ve seen your web site,” he said.
Turns out he is a member of the Belgium Roller Coaster Club, which
was in the park en masse to experience the new Sally Corporation
dark ride. Later in the day, when I had finished my official duties
at the ride, I hooked up with the whole group to ride the park’s
fine coasters. Though they jostled to walk next to me and sit next
to me on the rides and at lunch, it wasn’t so much that I was
Elvis but that I was just an American Coaster Enthusiast with whom
they could compare experiences here and abroad. It drove home again
for me how global the amusement industry truly is, and that coasters
is an international language.
A special thank you to Geert and the Belgium Roller Coaster Club
for a good time and great friendship.
It’s
a small world III
In the picture above, Stan Checketts, President and CEO of S&S
Power, and I are about to set off on our first front-row trip on
Timberhawk, S&S’ first wooden coaster, at Wild Waves
and Enchanted Village in Federal Way, Washington (see New
Arrival in this issue). When I flew to Seattle for the ride’s
media preview, I knew Checketts would be there, so this wasn’t
a happenstance meeting.
Still, it was a particularly special meeting because we were on
hand to witness a significant birth for Checketts, his company’s
first effort at a traditional roller coaster; not one that goes
100 mph (160 km/h), straight up and down, not a ride so scary that
tough-dude teen agers refuse to even look at the ride, but a nice
little woodie with great drops, turns, scrunches and some decent
air. And Checketts was understandably proud of his new baby.
Our industry is a labor of love, but "labor" carries both
its meanings when it comes to building and opening new attractions.
That is why we format our “New Arrivals” as birth announcements.
For more than a year we have offered the “Enhanced New Arrival”
option of a linked logo with the story and a jump page with more
pictures and information from on-site coverage (as exemplified by
the Timberhawk New Arrival in this issue and the Tutankhamon
New Arrival in the last).
Now we are introducing an extension of that advertising program
for either manufacturers or parks, a New Arrival announcement accompanying
our story on the new attraction for just $250, which gives you all
the typical benefits of advertising in THE LOOP plus ideal placement
and an in-story link to your web site. With issue of THE LOOP now
being read by more than 7,000 people, it’s a great way to broadcast
your happy news to your world.
For details, click here,
or contact THE LOOP’s advertising manager, Lynne Mosman, at
lynne@gettheloop.com,
toll-free 866-902-LOOP, or 937-294-3406.
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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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Volume
3, No. 11. JUNE 13, 2003
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New
Arrivals
Bare-backed
riders praised the attributes of Washington's first woodie in 68
years. Photo
by Eric Minton/THE LOOP
It’s
a wood coaster!
Wild Waves and Enchanted Village in Federal Way,
Washington, announces the arrival of Timberhawk, June 5,
2003. Measurements: 75 feet high (23 meters), 84-foot drop (25 meters),
2,635 feet long (798 meters), 50 mph (80km/h), two 24-passenger
trains. Delivered by Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters, Rocky Mountain
Construction and S&S Power.
One person was destined to be the most difficult for Timberhawk
to win over.
Not
any of the guests who climbed aboard Washington state’s first
wood roller coaster in 68 years and largest ever; they were happy
to be put on the coaster map.
Not
coaster enthusiasts who attended a photo-shoot preview; they’re
uncertain expectations were far surpassed by the ride’s interweaving
personality and fast drop-and-rise action.
Not
officials of Wild Waves and Enchanted Village which Six Flags, Inc.
purchased two years ago; they were happy to finally answer the 2-year-old
nagging question “when are you going to put in a big ride?”
“I think every park needs to have one great wooden coaster,”
said the park’s Vice President and General Manager Lenny Freund.
“We’ve got ours.”
No, Timberhawk’s most ardent pessimist was the man who
built it, Stan Checketts of S&S Power. Prone to motion sickness,
he likes his thrills in quick doses, and he is particularly perturbed
by woodies he deems too rough. However, his company had taken on
the creative assets of bankrupt Custom Coasters International last
year to start its own wood roller coaster division. So,
here he was, on media day for his company’s first-ever woodie,
sitting in the front seat of Timberhawk.
Checketts chattered non-stop through the whole ride, sometimes commenting
on his general coaster consternation, sometimes casting approving
judgments on the track his engineers designed, more often reeling
off incomprehensible phrases in that Gatlin gun cadence he employs
in conversation, and a few times jettisoning an exclamation regarding
an oncoming drop or head-chopper moment. At the end of the ride,
after counting the number of brakes employed in the final block,
Checketts proclaimed his new ride “a good feeling. It’s
thrilling. It’s fun.” And he’s ready to build more.
Having passed muster with the master builder, Timberhawk
proceeded to enthrall the local press and public. The day was supposed
to be reserved for early morning radio promotions and media members,
but Wild Waves and Enchanted Village wisely let park guests crash
the party. At first park officials suggested the public return “around
2 pm,” but by the time television broadcasters and newspaper
photographers and reporters were descending on Timberhawk
in the late morning, any guest who walked up could walk on. Soon
the word spread through the rest of the park, providing ideal photo-ops
of trains filled with whooping, beaming, Lord-praising riders swooping
through a course that, thanks to a tight footprint, counts 20 crossovers.
The official opening came on Saturday when Timberhawk exclusively
hosted local dignitaries and park marketing sponsors. By then, Wild
Waves and Enchanted Village had established itself as a coaster
park. “We had one shot at it, to put the best product we could
out here,” Freund said, “and Stan and S&S delivered
that.” Even Stan liked it.
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Congratulations
www.s-spower.com
for
a successful delivery!
For
more photos and information on Timberhawk,
Click Here
Oceans
of Fun offered its guests a new form of Paradise (above), but called
on its own birds (below) to belt out the bucket's tune. Photos
by Eric Minton/THE LOOP.
It’s
interactive water play!
Oceans of Fun in Kansas City, Missouri, announces
the arrival of Paradise Falls, May 24, 2003. Measurements:
40 feet high (12 meters), 125 interactive aquatic elements, seven
slides, 1,000-gallon (3,800-liter) tipping bucket. Delivered by
WhiteWater West Industries.
With a palette of bright primary colors, tropical faux fauna and
several fiberglas macaws and parrots perching on the structure,
the new interactive treehouse at Oceans of Fun—Worlds of Fun's
adjoining waterpark—lacked only one thing: a colorful soundtrack
to go with its colorful appearance.
That was the opinion of Dick Kinzel, CEO and president of Cedar
Fair, L.P., owner of Worlds of Fun/Oceans of Fun. Kinzel noted the
macaw perched alongside the tipping bucket atop Paradise Falls
and wondered aloud to park Vice President and General Manager Phil
Bender how neat it would be to have the macaw call every five minutes
that the bucket spilled its load. “(Bender) just ran with the
idea,” said Bridgette Collins, Oceans of Fun's operations manager.
At first park officials searched the Internet for macaw songs. “But
macaws give out loud squawks, and that didn’t sound too fun,”
Collins said. So, the park leaned on another ready source: Worlds
of Fun’s own Happy Hookbills Bird Show, featuring parrots,
cockatiels and macaws.
The tape features the show’s two macaws, Rox and Ernie. Though
the birds are trained to perform behaviors on command, the park’s
sound technicians merely set up the recording equipment “and
let run,” said Debbie Obarka, who hosts the show with her husband,
Mark. Most of the yelling is by Rox, she said. “Rox loves Ernie,
and when you take him away she starts screaming.”
The Obarkas have not visited the new Paradise Falls to hear
the recording of their stars’ finished work. “No, we hear
it here every day,” Mark said. But, truthfully, Rox’s
panicked squealing fits in much better with the tipping bucket action
than would, say, Joey the Amazon parrot singing “I'm Looking
Over a Four Leaf Clover” as he does on the Obarka’s web
site, www.parrotpros.com.
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In
the nursery
Other
recent New Arrivals.
Camelbeach
does triple duty with Triple Venom. Photo
courtesy of Camelbeach.
It’s
a waterslide tower!
It’s official opening day is listed as June
7, 2003, but while Triple Venom at Camelbeach
Water Park in Tannersville, Pennsylvania, was ready that day,
the weather wouldn’t play. The whole park, in fact, was closed
due to the rainy 50-degree (10 Celsius) conditions. On Sunday the
public finally slid down the three ProSlide Technologies
body slides: the 360-foot/109-meter Viper,
the 294-foot/89-meter Serpent, and the 370-foot/112-meter
Cobra. The tower is only 24 feet/7 meters high,
but thanks to the slides using the Camelback Mountain’s ski
slope terrain, the total drop is 60 feet/28 meters. Since
Triple Venom’s opening, Camelbeach has been generally
socked in by rain, fog and chill, but the new structure has drawn
the most crowds relative to the rest of the park, said Dave Johnson,
Camelbeach’s assistant director of sales and marketing. “Just
by nature of its location (prominently displayed on the incline
at the back of the park) and newness it’ll attract lines when
we get rolling with the weather,” he said.
A
Revolution erupted at Knott's Berry Farm.
Photo courtesy of americacoasters.com.
It’s
a flat ride!
Knott’s
Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, added a dash of color
and movement to its Fiesta Village with La Revolución,
a Revolution from Chance Morgan and KMG. Opened on May
24, 2003, the 120-second ride carries 32 passengers
in eight vehicles to a height of 64 feet/19 meters.
It’s
a water play structure!
Water always was on the horizon when Hershey Entertainment
and Resorts Company purchased Dutch Wonderland Family Amusement
Park in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “One of the initial parts
of the strategy when we purchased the park and looking at where
we’d want to go long term, this was something we thought would
fit very very nicely with the hard park,” said Dutch Wonderland’s
Assistant General Manager Chris Barrett. That something is Duke’s
Lagoon, an 8,000-square-foot/465-meter interactive
water play area from Air-Tech Systems, NBGS and Wizard Works.
The unit, with a 3,000-square-foot/278-square-meter wet deck
for the kiddies and 5,000 square-foot/465-square-meter dry
deck for the parents, contains the Duke the Dragon Rain Tree, the
Giant Flow Lab with science stations and water gadgets, the Spray-n-Splash
Fun Shack with dump buckets, pull-rope showers and teeter-totter
water troughs, and Under the Rainbow, the complex’s highlight,
an arched rainbow with 11 interactive spray mechanisms. That
rainbow was overly optimistic; rain washed out the grand opening
day of Duke’s Lagoon May 24, 2003, and the weather
since then has been a little to wet and chilly. “When the weather
is moderate and gets warm, (Duke’s Lagoon) is getting
very, very good reports,” Barrett said.
Dutch Wonderland also opened two rides May 10, 2003, transferred
from Hersheypark: the former Earth Mover miniature bulldozers
has been rethemed as Duke’s Dozers (eight vehicles),
and the original Kiddie Whip is now the Wonder Whip
(eight cars). Between the two birthing days the park celebrated
its 40-year birthday on May 18 by offering free admission to any
40-year-old. Barrett said the promotion, in partnership with a local
radio station, got a strong response, but that bad ol’ weather
dampened attendance.
It’s
a simulator!
The Fort Worth Zoo in Texas is supplementing its real-life
exhibits with a virtual reality experience. The 4-D African
Safari Adventure Simulator opened to the public on May
19, 2003, a 20-seat motion platform by Flight Avionics
with a film by PowderKeg. For the six-minute film,
guests don 3-D glasses to see such African animals as elephants,
rhinos, gazelles, cheetahs and bats, the latter flying within inches
of the riders’ face. Through ankle and neck ticklers, seat
buzzers and air blasts, guests also get to experience an invasion
of African honeybees and an elephant blowing its nose, er, trunk.
Raging
Waters guests were bowled over by its new dragon sculpture. Photo
courtesy of Merrill Marketing/Communications.
It’s
a waterslide!
Raging Waters in San Jose, California, has a tradition of
naming its slides after edgy animals: Serpentine Slide, Great
White Shark, Barracuda Blaster. However, Dragon’s
Den, which opened May 17, 2003, is the first featuring
the actual animal. After their two-person rafts drop down
the 130-foot/39-meter enclosed flume at a 45-degree slope,
guests will circle a 10-foot/3 meter fire-breathing dragon
in the middle of the 35-foot/11-meter diameter ProSlide Technologies
Cannonbowl. OK, it’s a mist-breathing, water-spraying dragon,
fabricated by Pacific Coast Foam. “It’s pretty
incredible, the fact they rigged up a water system to go through
the nose and tail,” said Jaime Friday, the park’s promotions
manager. The park did not stage an opening ceremony, but promotions
scheduled throughout the season revolve around the Dragon’s
Den, much as guests do the dragon.
It’s
twin waterslides!
White Water in Branson, Missouri, used a more obvious theming
device for its Raging River Rapids twin body slides
from ProSlide Technologies: a waterfall. The 200-foot/61-meter
tall structure has a five-story-high waterfall sending
8,000 gallons/30,400 gallons of water per minute through
the two 400-foot/121-meter-long slides, one enclosed and
the other partially enclosed. The slide opened May 17, 2003,
on Branson’s first sunny day in weeks, a weather pattern that
has generally held for the park since.
It’s a fast wheel!
Looking to improve its appeal among teens, Bobbejaanland Family
Park in Lichtaart, Belgium, opened the Fly Away
on May 17, 2003 (22 meters/72 feet high, 520-square meter/5,597-square-foot
footprint, 36 passengers, delivered by Huss Maschinenfabrik).
The 1.4 million EURO (US$1.7 million) anchors a new themed area
at the park featuring a futuristic facade and more thrilling rides.
The Fly Away, however, was not themed. The original Huss
design had such a “Jules Verne” look it fit right in with
the new area’s theming, said Bobbejaanland’s Operations
Manager Jack Schoepen.
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