In this issue:
(To go directly to a story, click on a blue keyword below):

The Mexican Waterpark Association gains the notice of political leaders, and the World Waterpark Association gets the ear of a government first responder initiative;

Baseball's World Series takes parks and zoos along for a wild ride, and Toledo Zoo gets the world's attention with a couple of hungry koalas;

Quassy Amusement Park uses young teens to create a physics program, the Oregon Zoo uses older teens and preteens to create a field trip preparation video, and Holiday Park uses a coaster marathon to create a medical lab for Germany's aerospace agency;

For Halloween, Cedar Point teaches journalists scare tactics, Knott's Scary Farm shares a secret language, and Disneyland gives Jack to its pin collectors;

We welcome a Power Surge to Australia's Adventure World, jellies to the New York Aquarium, and a fountain show to Sentosa;

And we reflect on a world of fun here at THE LOOP.

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Political considerations
The waterpark industry not only is booming in the country of Mexico, it has attained a level of public awareness—i.e. political clout—it has never known before. With that the industry is poised to achieve even more growth in numbers and stature over the next year.

At the heart of this newfound standing is AMPABA, the Asociación Mexicana de Parques Acuáticos y Balnearios. At its latest annual conference September 24-27 in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, AMPABA attracted 400 attendees and saw its membership jump from 90 to 120. “That’s a fourth more,” noted Elena Hannan, an international public relations consultant who works with AMPABA. “That’s a lot for us.”

In Mexico, however, it's not how many you know but who you know. After a previous association sputtered in the early 1990s, Margarita G. Saravia, owner of Las Estacas natural water spring in Morelos, founded AMPABA five years ago. She served as the association’s first president for three years before being named the secretary of tourism for the state of Morelos.

She was succeeded at AMPABA by German Ireta who owns Reino de Atzimba waterpark in Michoacan. He came to the association post after serving as secretary of tourism for Michoacan, and prior to that he was the mayor of Michoacan’s state capital, Morelia. “He had the political background in addition to being a waterpark owner,” Hannan said. “He could give the right push needed by the association to open more doors for government assistance and recognition.”

That has manifested in dignitaries attending the association’s annual meetings. Last year, the governor of Hidalgo attended the convention’s inaugural event, representing formal recognition from a state government. This year, with the closing banquet coinciding with International Tourism Day September 27, the association attracted Mexico’s minister of tourism, Leticia Navarro. “This is cabinet level,” Hannan said, “and with her was the whole hierarchy of important government members at all levels: federal, state and municipal. You should have seen the range of politicians there.”

For once, AMPABA was getting the kind of political recognition larger tourism industries, like the hotel and motel association, get. With that recognition came press coverage. And with that came new interest from other waterparks around the state. Next year’s meeting, headed for the state of Puebla (the dates have not been set), will for the first time include parks in Mexico’s southeastern states, Hannan said. Other changes are afoot, like a change of name to incorporate all water recreation facilities.

Hannan said the industry in Mexico grew over the past year, even in the aftermath of 9/11 which hurt Mexico’s resort businesses. Mexico still saw plenty of driving tourism from north of the border, and many of those tourists visited water attractions. Meanwhile, Mexicans stayed close to home and hit waterparks in increased numbers. “It’s the best business they could be in (now) and they are getting an influx of visitors,” Hannan said of waterparks. “And they are investing in better equipment and improving their facilities, making things more modern with clean, fancy dressing rooms and spas.” These improved amenities appeal to the upper socio-economic population in class-conscience Mexico, and that in turn has pumped new life into waterpark visitation.

It’s a cycle, one AMPABA looks to ride to even greater influence in the coming year.

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Responders responding
While Mexico's waterpark association strives to get noticed, in the United States the World Waterpark Association has taken the initiative to make sure waterparks voices will be heard. Literally.

At its annual convention and trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada, October 7-11, the WWA encouraged its members to participate in the Public Safety Wireless Network Program, a joint venture between the U.S. Justice and Treasury departments to improve real-time communication among law enforcement, fire and emergency agencies during incidents. Often, agencies use different equipment and frequencies, let alone different protocols, that hinder them speaking to each other.

After first focusing on governmental first-responders to major emergency events, the PSWN Program is now researching other first-responder situations: the type of incidents where a waterpark or amusement park might serve as a first-responder. “When we became aware of the initiative, we wanted to make sure our members had an opportunity to participate,” said Rick Root, WWA’s president.

Specifically, the WWA publicized a survey PSWN was conducting to assess radio communications between private first responders and government first responders. This assessment would then lead to recommendations on improving public safety communications between responders. WWA distributed copies of the surveys at the convention, encouraging members to fill it out by the October 18 deadline.

“We just wanted, as an association, to ensure that our members’ voice was heard in this process so the reports and recommendations were balanced and worked for our industry,” Root said. For more information on the PSWN Program, visit its web site, www.pswn.gov, or call 800-565-PSWN.

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Disney rallied to the all-California World Series while keeping an understandable affinity with its own Angels. Photo courtesy of The Disneyland Resort.

Monkey business
Amusement attractions always jump on bandwagons, especially the successes of their local professional sports teams. However, few sporting events have created as many tie-ins with the amusement industry—and with so much variety, involving everything from capuchins to sea lions, plush dolls to wax— as the Major League Baseball World Series between the Anaheim, California, Angels and the San Francisco, California, Giants.

The amusement industry presence make sense for this particular series considering that the Angels are owned by the Walt Disney Company. Disneyland Resort appropriately staged a pep rally on the eve of the Series last Friday, with 11,000 people showing up at Downtown Disney, including Jackie Autry who brought the honorary Angels jersey of her late husband and team founder Gene Autry.

Knott’s Berry Farm in neighboring Buena Park also got into the hometown spirit by offering half-price discounts on admission for anybody wearing anything with an Angels team logo. The discount did not apply to the evening Halloween Haunt at the park, which public relations director Susan Tierney said had not been impacted in attendance by the postseason presence of the Angels.

Disney also capitalized on the fact that this Series is being contested between two California teams, another natural fit for the company’s Disney’s California Adventure. Both teams’ banners are hanging from the faux Golden Gate Bridge at the theme park’s entrance. Also hanging from one of the bridge’s towers is a 25-foot-tall (8 meters) monkey.

Ah, the monkey, a most surreal aspect of this World Series. The Angels started a tradition two years ago of the Rally Monkey, a series of videos on the Edison Field scoreboard starring the capuchin from the television series Friends. The Rally Monkey appears late in games in which the Angels are trailing and whips the crowd into a cheering frenzy. It has been credited with the team’s penchant for come-from-behind victories, and during the post-season playoffs Angels fans have been dressing as gorillas and orangutans, wearing various species of primates on their hats, and, most notably, carrying plush doll monkeys.

Many of the plush dolls are Aurora Wildbeasts sold at the Edison Field gift shops and at more than 15,000 retail locations across the country, including a number of zoos. A portion of the proceeds of their sale goes toward the Zoological Society of San Diego, which runs both the World-Famous San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Wild Animal Park, plus the Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species.

Even the Los Angeles Zoo has seen a run on the plush toys at its retail shops, which are reporting a 30 percent increase in sales, said Lora LaMarca, the zoo’s marketing and public relations director. “We’ve sold out of everything that is black and white,” she said, referring to the capuchin’s colors. “Even if it is a colobus, people think it’s the Rally Monkey.” Though her zoo does not have capuchins, LaMarca has fielded several media calls regarding the monkey, and Fox Sports Network did an interview with the zoo’s monkey curator.

Upstate, Six Flags Marine World in Vallejo, does have a couple of capuchins, which the park took to San Francisco Bay Area television stations for some good-natured turncoating. On one show, the capuchin was given a Giants terry cloth wristband which the little monkey naturally cuddled up with while on the air. Marine World also has sea lions, and that afforded an opportunity for the park to capitalize on the Giants’ mascot Lou Seal—which, despite its name, is a sea lion. “It was a good chance to distinguish between a sea lion and seal,” said Public Relations Manager Jeff Jouett, always putting an education spin on his park’s zoological endeavors.

Yeah, right. One television crew filmed Marine World’s Louie “really abusing a rally monkey,” Jouett said—the plush kind. Louie dragged the doll around, slapped it with its flipper, drowned it in the water, then barked “loud and long in the rally monkey’s face,” Jouett said. Whatever education message he was hoping to get across in the display didn’t work with his own boss, park General Manager Joe Meck, a former Disney and Knott’s employee. “He’s an unrepentant Angels fan. He’s only been here a year, not long enough to fully appreciate the Giants and (Oakland) A’s, and he has called me on the carpet for using the Rally Monkey in such a public fashion,” Jouett joked.

Most of the amusement parks in the Bay Area are closed for the season, but they still have found ways to reap publicity from the Giants’ success. Giants star Barry Bonds “openly tells everyone that Paramount’s Great America is his favorite amusement park,” said the Santa Clara park’s public relations operations manager, Nicole Koebrich. When Bonds hit his 600th career home run this year, the team called Great America to participate in a celebration that would give Bonds 600 of his favorite things. The park sent a 5-foot (2-meter) plush Scooby-Doo bearing 600 tickets for Bonds to give his favorite charity.

Meanwhile, the Series has thrown a monkey wrench, as it were, into the plans of the Wax Museum at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. “We’re doing a Barry Bonds, and he agreed to come in for a measuring session after the season,” said Rodney Fong, vice president of the museum. “It keeps getting postponed because the Giants keep winning in the playoffs.”

So do zoos and amusement parks.

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Feirer, Doble, Madenjian, Narducci and Giammatteo gave Quassy a lesson in physics. Photo courtesy of Quassy Amusement Park.

Post-grad education
It’s an old adage: if you want to get through to someone, speak to them in their own language. Even if the lesson is one of physics.

Ron Gustafson, newly installed as director of educational programs at Quassy Amusement Park in Middlebury, Connecticut, turned to a group of local experts to help put together his park’s physics day program for next spring: five students at Rochambeau Middle School.

“Our philosophy was to have the physics program designed by students for students, so it wouldn’t be written way over the heads of your typical third grader,” said Gustafson. “If you go to a physicist, they’ll come out with something not even a rocket scientist would understand, let alone third grade students on a school field trip.”

This in no way is meant to diminish the skills or knowledge of the students who helped Gustafson put together his program. He enlisted the help of Judy York, a Project Explore teacher, to recruit students from her academic enrichment program. The five boys—Dom Narducci, John Giammatteo, Roddy Doble, Zack Feirer and Paul Madenjian— went to work armed with basic information about Quassy’s flat rides and roller coasters.

“I was blown away when I went into that particular classroom,” Gustafson said. “They had computers all set up and were able to go on line to get definitions and research the rides.” The boys first tracked down definitions of centrifugal and centripetal force, potential and kinetic energy and Newton’s Three Laws of Motion. They studied hydraulic and other propulsion systems. Then they applied these principles to Quassy’s rides. By the end of the morning they had formed the basis for the park’s educational physics tour.

“I’ve got about 10 pages of stuff they did for us,” Gustafson said. He’s already carried out one of their suggested experiments, placing a nearly full bucket of water on a Paratrooper seat. Despite the seat tilting out at an angle during the ride, none of the water spills. “They proved their centrifugal force theory,” Gustafson said. “It’s going to be one of our (physics day) experiments next year. Why does it do that? Well, these kids gave us the answer for that.” Gustafson is currently designing signs to place around the park based on the teams’ conclusions and in their vernacular. He also will use their material in a handbook for the student field trips.

Gustafson, who also serves as the park’s public relations director, held a similar job with Midway Park in Maple Springs, New York, and sees the education program as community outreach. “At the same time it helps us in dealing with schools who have issues about field trips to amusement parks for non-educational purposes,” he said. “We can turn the tide on that thinking. They can call us an amusement park, but they can’t call us non-educational.”

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Class acts
Across the continent from Quassy and in another environment,s the Oregon Zoo in Portland hired high schoolers to produce a “Let’s Go To The Zoo” video preparing grade school classrooms for their field trips.

For zoos school groups tromping through the grounds is a double-edged sword, and Oregon Zoo has long sent written material to teachers intended to express the zoo’s mission and provide information about the logistics of their visits.

“They always seem to not read the important stuff,” said Roger Yerke, manager of education programs at the Oregon Zoo. “And we want the kids to be prepared when they arrive, too. We thought if we could use a video, the teachers would show it to the students, and at the same time the teacher would get the information.” It also puts the orientation film in the classroom rather than at the start of a classroom’s visit to the zoo so students can be thinking about the zoo’s mission in advance of the trip.

To produce that video, Yerke and Rex Ettlin, the zoo’s education program coordinator, decided on an unorthodox route. They approached Franklin High School, where students were working on a project through the Northwest Film Center. “We looked at examples of work the film studies program had done, and we knew we’d get a quality product,” Yerke said. He got it at a much lower cost than a professional video company would charge, too.

He would also get a product produced by a demographic that grade school kids idolize. “In terms of getting something that was really in the right tone and the right style and the right idiom to communicate to kids, kids would have to do it,” Yerke said. The high schoolers met with Yerke’s staff, learned the purpose and direction of the video, then came up with the concept themselves and wrote the script.

The high schoolers then got fifth graders from neighboring Atkins Elementary to act in the video, which featured superheroes Coat Woman, who told students how to dress properly, Animal Amazing and Habitat Hero, who instructed students on how to behave while viewing animals, and Garbage Can Man, who talked trash. The video also put forth the zoo’s conservation and habitat message by encouraging “low-waste lunches.”

“It was fun, it wasn’t dry, which it would have been if we’d written it,” Yerke said. “I don’t know if anybody on our staff would have come up with it. I never would have come up with Garbage Can Man or Coat Woman.”

The 10-minute video had a preview screening for 200 Oregon teachers earlier this month and “got a very positive response,” Yerke said. But however popular the video may prove to be, he doesn’t expect it to spawn any new zoo mascots. “I don’t foresee us having Garbage Can Man running around. I don’t think we could hire anybody who could do it as well as the kids did.”

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Headline news
At a time when a half dozen major, developing stories around the world are vying for space on the front pages of newspapers and at the top of newscasts, the biggest news it seems seeped out of Toledo, Ohio, earlier this week. The Toledo Zoo is sending its two koalas back to the San Diego Zoo, which had “permanently loaned” the marsupials to the Ohio institution.

Toledo Zoo simply can no longer afford to feed the koalas, who arrived in 1991 amid much hullabaloo and accompanying sponsorships. But in more recent tougher economic times, the corporate assistance for the koalas’ upkeep has tapered off. Meanwhile, the zoo is annually paying $44,000 for the eucalyptus browse alone, and another $22,000 to have it shipped fresh from Florida and Arizona twice a week. “That worked out to 18 percent of our overall food budget,” said Andi Norman, the zoo’s public relations manager. By comparison, two elephants, two rhinos and four hippos get by on just $23,000. Given the economics, and after two years of consideration Toledo Zoo finally decided to send the koalas back to San Diego and are waiting for quarantine arrangements to be finalized.

All of this may not seem to be such big news among zoos, and Norman herself counted only on handling local fallout once the news broke (“Some people are upset that we’re taking out the koalas, and some are upset that we were spending so much,” she said). Then the calls started coming in. A half dozen of them came from radio stations and newspapers in Australia, where one deejay suggested that Toledo could keep its koalas if everybody in his country sent one envelope each containing a eucalyptus leaf.

Then Norman received a phone call from London: that would be the news director for a Toledo radio station, London Mitchell, she thought. “They said, ‘No, it’s London, England.” The BBC, specifically, who wanted to do an interview with Norman. “Don’t you have more important news to cover?” a shocked Norman asked.

Why the international interest in the story? Norman theorizes the cause may be due to the headline on the local newspaper’s story that first broke the news: “Zoo fed up, sends koalas packing.”

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Rodriguez stood tall among coaster riders and pilots when he passed his longest test. Photo courtesy of Holiday Park.

An air force of one
At the Medical Division of the German Centre for Aviation and Aerospace in Cologne-Porz, future pilots and astronauts undergo rigorous physicals and tests to determine their fitness for flying German Air Force fighter jets and space travel. American Richard Rodriguez was there in May, undergoing eyesight and hearing tests, X-rays and “all types of stress tests,” he said. “They checked every bone in my body.” Doctors and some of the fresh-faced pilots going through their physicals asked Rodriguez what he would be flying: an F-16 fighter, perhaps, or maybe a Tornado F2? “I’ll be on the GeForce,” he replied. They didn’t know what he was talking about.

They do now. A couple of days after those physical tests Rodriguez boarded the Expedition GeForce, the Intamin mega-coaster at Holiday Park in Hassloch, which he would ride a world-record 104 consecutive days. The marathon, concluded on September 3, was Rodriguez’s 15th world record for coaster marathoning and his second at Holiday Park. In 1982 he rode a then world record 384 consecutive hours on the park’s steel corkscrew coaster, the Superwirbel.

Whereas most Rodriguez marathons are merely publicity events and cultural references, at Holiday Park they also take on the specter of scientific research.  “Wolfgang (Schneider, the park’s director) is always interested in doing something for science,” Rodriguez said. For the Superwirbel ride, Schneider had his guest wear a heart monitor. For the Expedition GeForce stint, Schneider, with Rodriquez’s blessing, contacted the country’s aerospace leaders, who jumped at the chance to study one man’s daily encounters with 4.5 Gs, weightlessness and the “hostile environment” of continuous coaster riding. “They figured out that altogether he was five days in weightlessness,” said Rudi Mallasch, Holiday Park’s marketing director. “That was like a space shuttle mission.”

Using the initial physical as a baseline, the aerospace doctors occasionally visited Rodriguez during his summer-long run to do further tests. Then he went through another physical at the end of the marathon, and the results will be studied and compiled in a formal report. Rodriguez also accepted an invitation to speak at the aerospace conference afterward to describe his experience. “I talked about the training effect of adapting to the hostile effects of a roller coaster,” he said. “The toughest part of a marathon is the first three or four days because the body is adapting. After that it actually gets easier. After a month it’s more settling to be on a coaster than to be off walking around.”

Actually, for Rodriguez the toughest part of the marathon was the tests. “The marathon is a difficult thing by itself; you don’t want to have anything that intrudes on it. Anytime you ride around with an EKG and you’ve got wires running up your arm and fingers, it feels funny. It’s a pain. It gets in the way in an already uncomfortable situation.”

Nevertheless, with the hospitality and camaraderie heaped upon him at Holiday Park, Rodriguez was happy to comply. The testing also further enhanced the publicity the marathon already was generating, said Mallasch. “On some days I had 80 newspapers in Germany writing stories on (the marathon),” he said. He got coverage from “all the radio stations in Germany,” from Univision in Miami, the NBC Today Show and enough television news reports to fill up more than an hour of video tape.

Among the people who stopped by to cheer on Rodriguez were military personnel, U.S. and German. And when Rodriguez returned to the aerospace center in Cologne for the conference last month, Mallasch took along a stack of Expedition GeForce posters. They all were quickly snapped up by those fresh-faced pilots.

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New Arrivals

The Power Surge gave patrons a new view of their Adventure World. Photo courtesy of Adventure World.

It’s a flat ride!
Adventure World in Perth, Australia, announces the arrival of The Power Surge, September 28, 2002. Measurements: 57 feet high (17 meters), 24 passengers in 12 gondolas. Delivered by Zamperla.

When you open a ride with 31 nude passengers, as Adventure World did last year in debuting The Rampage (THE LOOP, October 5, 2001), you’ve set a pretty, um, high standard for ride openings at your park. “It was difficult to beat that, so we didn’t even try this year,” said the park’s General Manager Andrew Sharry. Instead, his new $1.2 million Australian (US$664,000) Power Surge premiered with no fanfare when Adventure World opened for the season.

Still, the new ride gained notice. “The feedback has been absolutely fantastic,” Sharry said. “I didn’t expect it to be as strong as Rampage, but the feedback we’ve been getting is that it’s a better ride.”

Thus, the park has had two hit installations in consecutive years, an important outcome in the first two years of Sharry’s five-year strategic plan to grow the park’s attendance. For one thing, last year’s Rampage was the first new ride since 1997. “There’s been a drought of new rides since 1997, and that’s as good as a lifetime in this industry.” For another, he’s shifting the park’s focus from being merely a waterpark to a more full-scale amusement park. “Seventy percent of the people were coming because of the water attractions, which is fantastic when you’re having good weather, but when you’re having mild weather, it’s no good,” Sharry said.

He also had identified a “real hole” in the park’s demographic: young teens. The physical thrill rides of Rampage and Power Surge not only appeal to that demographic, but are good spectator rides for other guests.

With The Power Surge, Sharry is hoping to raise another bar established by Rampage: last year the park saw a 29 percent increase in attendance and 34.5 percent increase in revenue. That’s a naked truth from which you can’t avert your eyes.

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Another sea of aliens settled in New York where they could more artistically express themselves. Photo courtesy of the New York Aquarium.

It’s a jelly exhibit!
The New York Aquarium in New York City, New York, announces the arrival of Alien Stingers, September 26, 2002. Measurements: 4,200 square feet (390 square meters), 19 tanks, eight species of jellies.

Noting that, in the wild, most humans’ contact with jellies is either blobs on the sand or an alarming tingle on the ankles, the New York Aquarium set out to present these cnidarians as artistic expressions in nature. The jellies float in kreisel tanks, the largest a curved kreisel tank weighing 26,620 pounds (12,075 kilograms) and holding more than 2,400 gallons (9085 liters) featuring West Coast sea nettles. Another 1,500-gallon (5,678-liter) tank holds mastigias jellies from Palau.

Accompanying the display of jellies are computer interactive graphic displays, a self-guided tour and six terminals allowing guests to play a marine science computer game produced for Alien Stingers. The aquarium’s operator, the Wildlife Conservation Society, also commissioned four artists to create representations of jellies specifically for blind people and people with visual impairments. Charles Fambro, a Brooklyn composer, composed a “sound sculpture” that captures the feel of sea jelly movement. Sculptors Priscilla Deichmann and Rebecca Fuller built tactile sculptures that replicate the form and texture of the jellies, and Athena Reich wrote poetry describing interaction with jellies, anemones and corals.

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Kiki was all wet as a character, giving him a unique appeal for Singapore audiences. Photo courtesy of Sentosa Development Corporation.

It’s a fountain show!
Sentosa in Singapore announces the arrival of “Magical Sentosa” September 19, 2002. Measurements: 25 minutes; eight water geysers 12 meters high (39 feet); 24 mist bars 150 meters high (492 feet); 20 water effects; three water screens, one 20 meters wide (66 feet) and two 15 meters wide (49 feet); one 20-meter (66-foot) flame; 16 shooting flames 10 meters high (33 feet); four sky beams of 4,000 watts each; and one actor; all added to the existing 29 fountains, two parabolic jets, 192 lights, 305 under water lights, 16 water jets shooting 25 meters high (88.5 feet), an eight-channel sound system and 16 lasers. Delivered by ECA2.

It is one of Singapore’s longest running shows, the nightly fountain extravaganza on Sentosa, a tradition going back more than a dozen years. The latest edition of the fountain show, “Spirits of Sentosa,” had run for two years, attracting local residents and 50 to 60 tour buses a night. Sentosa’s new CEO Darrell Metzger, looking to rejuvenate the island resort attraction (THE LOOP, February 22, 2002) saw the show, saw its popularity and saw an opportunity.

“It was something I could do very quickly, and it could make an impact on our two main markets, our resident market and the tourist market,” he said. “Plus we could do a high quality show that would set a benchmark for the level of expectations we are setting for (improvements on) the island.” With that last goal in mind, Metzger didn’t even put the new show out to bid; he simply convinced his government-run board to hire Yves Pepin’s ECA2 production company in Paris, Frances.

The new show cost $4 million Singapore (US$2.25 million), about half of that going toward new jets, water screens and pyrotechnics. The rest of the expense covered Pepin’s production, a musical with original compositions featuring a live actor interacting with a screen character called Kiki, a “cheeky monkey.” Metzger said he will closely monitor the show’s staying power with local residents—“We know we’ll attract the tour groups”—and make a change once its popularity fades. “We’re not going to hesitate to change out the show again because we have the hardware installed now.”

Any change may be long in coming, however. Pepin has succeeded in wowing Sentosa audiences. Opening night garnered lots of press coverage that resulted in sterling reviews, especially on local television stations. “It’s so visual,” Metzger said of the new show, “and there’s a tremendous curiosity factor in Singapore. When something new hits town, everybody comes out to see it." Since the show opened, Sentosa’s attendance has increased 26 percent.

Impact accomplished.

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Media scare
Name the most frightening fiend that haunts your nightmares. A journalist perhaps? If you are a park operator or publicist who fears that a member of the media may be lurking around the corner, do not visit Cedar Point for its HalloWeekends.

The Sandusky, Ohio, park has invited working reporters, writers, anchors and on-air hosts to become “screamsters,” the term used for the walking monsters and other scaremongers who roam the Fright Zone during Cedar Point’s annual Halloween celebration. Cedar Point’s publicity team got the idea from members of the media themselves who requested a chance to be made up as monsters. Noting the power of participatory journalism—and the usually positive stories that come out of it—Cedar Point sent out a news release with a general invitation to all working press. About 20 signed up for the opportunity.

The journalists are placed in the hands of John Taylor, manager of graphic services and the man who not only designs and builds HalloWeekends’ haunts but oversees the make-up team. After his group of makeup artists finish the 40 actors who work the fog-shrouded Frontiertown midway, he works on the journalists. The reporters are fitted with a prosthetic mask, usually already painted. They are then dressed in flannel and a vest in keeping with the Frontiertown theme and covered in “scare cloth” that resembles rotting matter. Handed a shaker can, the reporters head out to the midway to startle Cedar Point guests for the Friday and Saturday night, 8 pm to midnight (20,00 to 24,00) events.

“We usually have them buddied up, give them a regular talent to help them along,” Taylor said. “It’s funny to see how tired they are when they come back. Once you start chasing people down the trail, you can’t stop. They do get pretty wild, and you have to tone some of them down.”

They leave the park with their mask as a souvenir—“It’s real personal because it’s got your sweat all over it,” Taylor said—and a photo to keep and one to be placed on Taylor’s “Wall of Shame” in the makeup room, where all his actors’ monster portraits are displayed. The reporters also leave with a fuller appreciation of the work that goes into staging HalloWeekends. “Especially the makeup stuff,” Taylor said, “and how physical it actually is to go out there and do this stuff. They come back dog tired.”

Cedar Point Public Relations Manager Janice Witherow said the general invitation has paid off for the park’s sixth annual HalloWeekends. “We’ve had more coverage this year than we’ve ever had, including our first season,” she said.

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Knott's monsters made up their own professional vocabulary. Photo courtesy of Knott's Berry Farm.

Horrible grammar
Dead meat. Flatliner. Pinball. Swamp juice. Gruesome.

These words carry meanings well known to most English-speaking people, but in the vocabulary of haunters they have definitions altogether different than that found in your typical Merriam Webster’s or even your dictionary of slang. That last word, for example, “gruesome,” is a noun, not an adjective.

All professions develop their own idioms and acronyms (as a journalist I often “start with the lede and work to 30”), and the people who spend their Octobers dressed up as ghouls and monsters and other scare-characters at haunted attractions and amusement parks are no different.

In promoting its 30th annual Knott’s Scary Farm, Susan Tierney, director of public relations at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, included a glossary of “MonsterSpeak” in her press packet, the “actual working vocabulary used by the 1,000 monsters at Knott’s Scary Farm.”

“I resurrected it from several years ago,” she said. “Over the years (the monsters) have developed this lingo all their own that describes different types of guests or different things they’ve developed over the years.” Like a “slider,” a monster who slides across the ground on his or her knees to scare a guest below eye level. Daring sliders will try to accomplish a “lifshin,” a dangerous slide, and try to avoid a “heath,” a botched slide.

Other terms are obvious. “Shaker” is a noise maker, “scare zone” is a themed area with a concentration of monsters. The area is usually filled with “swamp juice,” i.e. fog. Here you will find “mookies” (a first-year monster, or rookie) and various “gruesomes” (a monster with no specific name or identity).

Some of the vocabulary applies to guests. A “flatliner” is a guest who cannot be visibly scared. Those are a challenge; more annoying are the “dead meat,” the monster groupies who spend the entire night following a group of monsters. One of the thrills of being a monster is to accomplish a “free scare,” when you scare a guest unintentionally. A planned device is to team up with other characters in a “monster hug,” when a group of monsters merely surround a nervous guest, or in a “pinball.” That is exactly as it sounds, where the guest resembles a pinball bouncing from one scare to another as monsters continuously step into the guest’s path of escape.

Tierney’s glossary does not gloss over the hardships these monsters endure in the course of the monthlong Knott’s Scary Farm. “MED,” for example, is a “monster eating disorder” which usually happens to characters while wearing full facial latex prosthetics. Then there is the “Haunt widow,” a term that has a counterpart in most professional dialects: a monster’s spouse or significant other during October.

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Jack is giving collectors something to celebrate at the Haunted Mansion. Photo courtesy of The Disneyland Resort.

Pins and needings
What is arguably one of the most famous loading stations in all of the amusement industry has become the focal point for a cult-like faction of patrons during the Halloween-cum-Christmas season.

For the second straight year, Disneyland in Anaheim, California, has made over its vaunted Haunted Mansion into a Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas-themed presentation. This year’s version features an added treat—actually, 13 treats: a mural of 13 gift packages piled high on the wall across the tracks from the conveyor belt loading platform, where guests clamber into the oversized chairs for their ride through the mansion.

These gifts are no mere addition to the nightmarishly festive decor. Every Sunday, a package will open to reveal an item replicated in a special-edition Disney collector’s pin, a pin which at the same time goes on sale at the nearby Premiere Shop in Le Bat en Rouge.

Pins have a long tradition at Disney parks, but Jeannine O’Malley, manager of regional market publicity for Disneyland Resort, said they have become particularly hot commodities in the past nine months. This is the first time a pin production and promotion has been tied to a specific ride, but it may not be the last. Three weeks into its run (the last gift will open December 29), the “13 Weeks of 13 Treats” promotion has proved a hit for pin collectors, who gather each week for that Sunday’s unveiling.

The promotion does not necessarily increase traffic to the park. “It’s mostly directed at annual passholders because they come every week anyway, and they tend to have the highest affinity for things Disney,” O’Malley said. But the promotion does increase buzz. “Pin-trading people think it’s cool,” she said. “People who love pins can’t get enough of them.”

That’s literally the case with the Haunted Mansion pins. With only 3,500 of each pin being produced, guests are allowed to purchase only two of each pin per day, but if they buy all 13 they get a 14th pin free.

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Eric's Turn

Divine intervention
I received an E-mail recently from a reader wondering where I got my quotes. The question puzzled me at first because quoting people in my articles is second-nature to me, a 29-year newspaper and magazine veteran. Plus, in THE LOOP and Extra! Extra! I give attributions to all my quotes, which I obtain mostly in interviews and occasionally from statements or other news sources.

Then I realized this reader was coming at me from his World Wide Web experiences. So much of what is posted on Web sites, even those purporting to be news, are taken from other Internet or print sources without attribution or are merely rumors and hearsay presented without proper context or verification. When I began posting THE LOOP in February, 2001, I came at it not as a Web weenie but as a tried-and-true journalist, with all original material gathered and written in the standards that are second-nature to me via training and experience. Others have done the same in other subject matters, but on the whole I guess it was a novelty for Web browsers. I believe our kind is growing on the Internet, however, including in this industry (more competition for THE LOOP, but overall good for the information-starved attractions industry).

Another question I field more often is, where do I get my stories? Again, it’s the common lot of the journalist covering a specific beat. Some come to me as press releases and announcements, some are calls or E-mails from sources, some I pick up on my travels, and some I get from reading a wide range of newspapers, newsmagazines, web sites and other news mediums that report on stories with amusement industry angles.

Then there are the stories that emerge from living life, the synergistic kind. These are the most fun because often they entail a topic I have a natural affinity for, and they seem to take on a life of their own.

This edition of THE LOOP has one such story, and it’s been, frankly, one of the most fun and most interesting I’ve ever done in my 29 years in the profession. One look at the picture above will clue you in to the particular story (or you can click here to go to that story).

Sarah and I are baseball fans. We travel the country (and someday, the world) visiting Major League and Minor League baseball parks. Along with our deep appreciation of the sport, going to baseball games in the many different communities around the continent is a great way to experience all the many facets of America. We’ve also gathered quite a collection of baseball gear, including 118 hats from every team we've visited.

Naturally, we have been watching the Major League playoffs. During the divisional playoffs when views of Anaheim’s Edison Field awash in monkeys first appeared on the television screen, I was flabbergasted. I had never heard of the Rally Monkey; all I knew was that here was a stadium packed with people carrying the kind of plush doll monkeys I get at the American Zoo and Aquarium Association annual conferences. Could I turn such a connection into an angle for a story in THE LOOP? I wondered.

Long shot though that notion was, I started calling my good sources at zoos around Southern California. At first I was met with “Huh?” Here seemed clear evidence that Eric Minton was a bit delusional, and those who didn’t follow baseball were questioning whether my birthplace really was Earth. Within a couple of days, though, these same sources started getting hounded by the mainstream press, and their own research into Rally Monkey fervor as it impacted their facilities increased their own astonishment. Meanwhile, for me the breadth of the story kept expanding. Every time I thought I would hit a dead end with a courtesy call to an attraction, another monkey tale emerged.

The story was even fun to write (most of us professional writers hate writing; we love “having written” but we’re not too keen on the tumultuous mental process we go through to get to that point) and it lent itself to a wonderful title. Then, in the solitude of my office, writing the article on my computer, the story attained yet another synergetic level. I happened to be listening to the Beatles BBC recordings, and just as I was finishing up the story I suddenly realized what song was playing: “Too Much Monkey Business.”

OK, perhaps the story is too long. I’m a lot like your park and zoo guests; I don’t want to see the fun end.

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LOOP Classifieds

FOR SALE—Classified ads in THE LOOP, just $20 per month (two issues) for up to 30 words, $1 per additional word. We accept cash, check, VISA and MasterCard. E-mail lynne@gettheloop.com.