Volume 3, No. 11. June 13, 2003
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.
New Arrivals
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.
For more photos
and information on Timberhawk,
Click Here
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.
In
the nursery
Other
recent New Arrivals.
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.
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.
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.
Eric's Turn
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.
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.
©2003, Minton Enterprises
LLC
All rights reserved