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Volume 2, No. 9. May 24, 2002

Goooooooaaaaaaaalllll!
The storied football club Real Madrid took home the European Champions League title last week, and consequently boosted ridership on the bumper cars at Parque de Atracciones Madrid in Spain.

What the two have in common is the centenary celebration of the Spanish capital city’s top football club (that’s soccer for you Americans). To honor the occasion, the downtown amusement park is staging "Real Madrid: La Layenda Viva," a season-long promotion that includes special exhibits and shows and temporary re-theming of some of the attractions.

The centerpiece of the park’s celebration is a 1,000-square-meter (3,300-square-foot) exhibition set in a building that simulates the Santiago Barnabeu stadium, Real Madrid’s home grounds, and includes a replication of the players’ locker room, displays depicting the history of the club and many of its trophies. The park also has built a tile mosaic of the club’s insignia and is staging a multimedia light, laser and waterscreen show on the park’s central fountain every night. In one of the more ambitious touches, Parque de Atracciones built a scaled-down replica of the Cibeles fountain, a landmark monument in downtown Madrid where Real supporters flock to celebrate a big win by the team.

For the park’s simulator, Lunatus of Madrid has supplied a film in which the audience watches—and feels—a football match from the perspective of the ball. Then there are the Zamperla-manufactured bumper cars, which park repainted as athletic shoes sporting the colors of Real Madrid and the city’s two other teams, Atletico Madrid and Rayo Vallecano Madrid. Drivers use their Dodgems and hands to maneuver a giant ball around the bumper car arena trying to score for their team.

“It’s very funny,” said Parque de Atracciones’ Lamberto Fresnillo. “It’s another way of getting the park involved in the football world, and it’s something new. It also respects every supporter in the city. We did not want to discriminate against the other supporters.”

The other two teams, however, have not been around for 100 years, nor have they tallied the number of titles Real Madrid has (Atletico’s centennial anniversary is next year, and the amusement park is in discussions with the team to do a similar cross-promotion). Participating in the centennial celebration would have been a strong promotion in its own right, but the park also was counting on Real Madrid bringing home a trophy or three to boost the free publicity quotient. But the club failed to win the Spanish League’s season championship, and lost in the Spanish Cup final. The third title opportunity, however, they won.

“I think it’s the most important competition, so everyone is happy they won the big one,” Fresnillo said. For the occasion, Parque de Atracciones showed the title match against Bayer Leverkusen of Germany on a specially installed giant screen in the park’s theater. At the conclusion of the game, which Real Madrid won 2-1, the 2,000 fans in attendance erupted in a celebration that moved out to the park’s own replica Cibeles fountain.

“There were a lot of media here,” Fresnillo said. “We could watch the team and the real Cibeles celebration—it was a massive event in Madrid—on the screen.” And for Parque de Atracciones: “It was something new and something funny at the same time. It got the attention of the media.”