Volume 1, No. 16. September 7, 2001
New Glory
Like
most showmen, Brad Schroeder speaks in code. When he tells his stage designers
and technicians that he wants a "Lion King opening number" for one scene
and "Les Miserables barricade scene lighting" for another set, his crew
knows exactly the feel, flow and effect he wants to attain. Attaining such Broadway-size
feats is usually a beyond-reach goal for Schroeder, now in his 12th year as
director of entertainment and events for Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri.
Yesterday, though, Schroeder got the chance to see his Lion King/Les Mis
ambition realized with the premiere of For the Glory, a Broadway-style
musical in Silver Dollar City's Opera House Theater. Though the show runs only
40 minutes and, as part of the park's fall Festival of American Craftsmanship,
will play only until October 27, it is the most elaborately staged show in the
park's 41-year history.
"I hope it's well received, or this may be my swan song," Schroeder joked. Telling
the story of families torn apart by the U.S. Civil War and based on that war's
second battle fought at nearby Wilson's Creek, Missouri, For the Glory
features a stage containing two 13-foot-diameter (4 meters) turntables on which
the action takes place, high-resolution PANI projection for realistic backdrops,
fiberoptic curtains, rain effects and cannons. "It's rather extraordinary for
anybody to mount this kind of production for a two-month run, and even more
extraordinary for the fact that it's in a theme park," Schroeder said.
His 9-year-old son spawned the idea. Two years ago the two were listening to
Civil War music when his son suggested Schroeder write a musical about the war.
"I thought Gettysburg has no bearing on this place, but then I started thinking
about Wilson's Creek." Though the National Battlefield Park is located just
35 miles from Branson, Schroeder had never visited the site. When he did, the
curators opened their research library to him. "The more I got into it, the
more I learned about the people who actually lived in the battlefield where
the Confederate encampment was," he said. "Here's a story that has a lot of
universal implications about what it is to be an American but grounded on what
happened that morning of August 10, 1861."
And the battlefield is so near the park, too, which is themed on 19th century
Americana. Ancillary to the theater playing For The Glory will be an
exhibit of Civil War artifacts and an information kiosk staffed by Wilson's
Creek officials.
The
show, though, is not so much about war as about community and romance. It starts
with the battle's opening salvo (it's the Lion King-style opening extravaganza
Schroeder is reaching for) as the armies advance out of the darkness from behind
the audience in surroundsound song. Then, after the cannon fire, the story recedes
48 hours to portray the participants preparing for the skirmish. Those portrayals
are based on actual diaries and letters from the Civil War. The musical ends
with the title number, a song of hope sung right before the battle, bringing
the action back to the opening sequence. "Either people will leave totally confused
or with a lump in their throat," Schroeder said.
At least they should leave impressed with the multi-sensory effort Schroeder
has put into the production. But with brisk ticket sales and the high investment
Silver Dollar City put into the show, For The Glory will likely get a
repeat run sometime next year, Schroeder said. He would not put a price tag
on the production, though. "It's a lot of money," he said. "Less than Les
Mis, and a lot less than Lion King." But no less ambitious.
Silver Dollar City aimed high with its Civil War musical. Photo courtesy of Silver Dollar City
Visionary
Kingdom
For six years youngsters from throughout Kentucky who were blind or had severe
seeing impairments attended a five-week summer camp at the state's School for
the Blind in Louisville. There they gained valuable job skills by working at
a local employer: Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom.
Both entities benefited from the state-funded program. For the school, Kentucky
Kingdom offered "a multitude of different types of jobs in one location," said
Darlene Middleton, the school's admissions coordinator and summer program coordinator.
"We can go in there and give them training on a variety of skill levels in a
variety of job settings," from food service to guest services, from groundskeeping
to warehouse operations. Meanwhile, the single location allowed the school to
use one bus and fewer job-coaching staff. For Kentucky Kingdom, the school was
providing five weeks' worth of eager employees at no cost.
However, state funds dried up this year, threatening the end of the program.
As testament, perhaps, to who benefited most from the relationship, Kentucky
Kingdom decided to finance the program themselves by paying the students regular
seasonal employee wages (the school's staff are full-time state employees).
Consequently, the program became even richer for both parties. The shift in
attitude is subtle but palpable as the park regarded the students as employees
rather than charity. "The students belonged to our team," said Rebecca Hanslick,
the park's human resources manager. "They were involved with all the activities
we do with our employees and incentive programs. I think our employees were
also more receptive of the program working side by side with a co-worker and
not just a student from a school."
The students felt the difference, too, Middleton said. "It said to the students,
'Hey, you have done a great job and we believe in you, we know you can do the
work, we want to hire you and are willing to pay you. For them to be accepted
as anyone else in the job market is a self-esteem booster that is as high as
you can go."
Zambonis fed Hyland Hills' coffers with sponsorships. Photos by Eric Minton
Frozen dinner
Imagine, if you can, 12 chefs skating onto an ice rink. The occasion: to officially
welcome a spaghetti and meatballs dinner riding on the hood of a Zamboni themed
to look like a table at a classic Italian restaurant.
When Hyland Hills Park and Recreation District, operators of Water World in
the northern suburbs of Denver, Colorado, opened its three-rink ice center two
years ago, the district sold sponsorships wherever possible to cover costs:
naming rights (the Sun Microsystems Ice Centre), the 50 dash boards surrounding
each rink, and the three Zamboni ice resurfacing machines.
The last is by far the most clever. The Safeway Supermarket Zamboni looks like
a shopping cart filled with packaged foods. Safeway recoups some of the $5,000-per-year
sponsorship fee by selling space to food makers to show their products, such
as Nabisco Oreos, M&M/Mars Snickers candy bars, Kellogg's Pop Tarts, Minute
Maid, Tony's Pizza and Pepsi. A local Caterpillar dealer painted its Zamboni
as an earthmover scooping up hockey players. Then there's the Johnny Carino's
Italian Restaurant Zamboni, the newest in the fleet with a green-checkered tablecloth
and, sitting atop, a scrumptious-looking pasta dinner complete with tableware,
a bottle of red wine and two wine glasses. Behind the driver's seat the ice
resurfacer's fuel tanks have been painted as bottles of Forest Glen Merlot and
White Merlot.
"I would say we have the three most creative Zambonis anybody has seen," said
Joann Saitta, Hyland Hills communications manager. "How many times have you
seen a full Italian meal on a Zamboni?" Not ever, said Paula Jensen, general
manager of Zamboni Merchandising. She has seen plenty of Zambonis dolled up
to look like cows, UPS delivery trucks and a trash haulers. Hyland Hills' Italian
dinner takes the cake, though; or, rather, the spaghetti. "That's absolutely
one of my favorites," Jensen said. "It's clever, it's unique, and with the props
on top of the machine, it shows a lot of thought went into it."
Selling sponsorships throughout the ice centre—as well as for Water World
and the district's golf course complex—fell to Saitta, and she decided
nothing was off limits to any potential advertiser willing to scrape up the
cash. And for something as funny-looking and suitably named as the Zamboni,
she decided to go beyond the standard format of a logo emblazoned on the sides
and top.
"I go out looking for companies that want to have fun with the Zamboni," she
said. "We told them, 'You can really be as creative as you want.'" So, when
Johnny Carino's suggested outfitting theirs with a meal, Saitta said, "Why not?"
The ingredient of the spaghetti, sauce, wine and tableware is styrofoam. The
only stipulation concerning their placement on the Zamboni's hood was that they
could not obstruct the drivers' view.
As far as Zamboni is concerned, owners may do whatever they like with their
resurfacers, but Jensen did have a note of caution for anyone driving Hyland
Hills' machine. "We don't suggest having any wine while driving the machine.
Or eating the spaghetti. You should wait until you finish resurfacing the ice."
To see other examples of decorated Zambonis, visit the company's web site at
www.zamboni.com and click
on the "history and trivia" button.
Courting
food
This year's Fun Expo/AMOA International
Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada, October 4-6 will have a noticeable new centerpiece:
food. For the first time, the show's organizers have invited food and food equipment
vendors to place their booths in "Restaurant Village" right in the middle of
the show floor. The concentration of food suppliers will surround a mini-theater
featuring 20-minute demonstrations on food preparation.
"We've always had food people in the show," said Carole Sjolander, executive
director of the International Association for the Leisure and Entertainment
Industry (IALEI). "What prompted us to do (the Restaurant Village format) was
the belief that a lot of fun centers are not doing food as well as they could
for customer satisfaction and their own bottom line." The schedule of seminars
will be posted at the theater, which will have about two dozen seats. "People
can get off their feet for awhile and learn something and be entertained at
the same time and rejuvinated," Sjolander said. "It also gives exhibitors an
extra opportunity to connect with the people who are attending." The village,
too, will get "good smells going on there," she said.
Food service gets further focus in the IALEI's seminar program in the two days
preceding Fun Expo. A full-day's worth of four workshops will be devoted to
the topic on October 3, while on the preceding day food will be integral to
an all-day seminar titled the "Birthday University's One-day Associate Degree
Program."
Welcome to the show
With this issue of THE LOOP we take the internet to
a whole new aesthetic level and our industry to a whole new dimension. Today,
we open the doors (actually, the windows) to the first-ever Cyber Animal Art
Show celebrating the works of painting pachyderms, porpoises,
penguins, pigs and a rhinoceros. You may enter the gallery, comprising five
rooms, each showing paintings adhering to certain themes, by clicking here.
Admission is free.
The art show's opening is timed to coincide with the American Zoo and Aquarium
Association's (AZA) 2001 Annual Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, which begins
today and runs through September 11. At these annual meetings, officials representing
virtually every aspect of zoo and aquarium operations get together to share
ideas in husbandry, fund raising, marketing and physical plant, discuss issues
facing animals both in the wild and in collections, and celebrate successes,
all in an atmosphere of warm collegial fellowship.
In the same spirit we present our art show, a representation of successful enrichment
and fund-raising programs at zoos throughout North America (see the three stories
that follow). We further encourage these efforts by linking the contributing
zoo's own web sites to each of their artists' works: when you click your cursor
on a painting, we will take you to that zoo.
This project, however, is much more than a publicity forum for zoos. When you
stroll through our galleries, you likely will develop a sincere admiration for
some of the talent we've put on display. We chose a wide range of styles and
species for this collection, and through that diversity you will discover that
while some animals were obviously playing with a paint-covered brush, others
seemed to use a discerning eye to portray their environments and moods.
I would like to thank all the zoos that participated in this ground-breaking
project—maybe that should be bandwidth-breaking project—and the artists
themselves for opening our eyes to a greater truth, which is the prime objective
of all art.
Click here to visit the Art Show.
That rich feeling
Animals have been painting in some form since at least the early part of the
20th century. More often than not these were publicity stunts, little more than
circus-type acts exploiting the animals. In the early 1960s, a keeper at the
San Diego Zoo in California, noting an elephant's natural behavior of drawing
in the sand with its trunk, included painting among one of her charges' behavioral
enrichment program. This amounted to the elephant pushing a large housepainting
brush across a canvas much like a big sweep broom.
At the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona, a precocious elephant named Ruby was beginning
to grow into an unruly adult, and keepers began seeking some way to keep her
mind engaged. Hearing of the San Diego painting pachyderm, Ruby's keepers decided
to introduce her to the hobby. They had not seen the manner in which the San
Diego elephant worked, so the Phoenix keepers went to an art store to buy supplies
for a more aesthetic take on the craft of painting. But Ruby caught on and soon
became a celebrated artist in her own right.
Though not the first, Ruby is certainly a trail-blazer: you could say that our
gallery—which has a room devoted to Ruby, who died in childbirth three
years ago—celebrates an art movement known as Rubism. Word of both her
effectiveness with an artist's brush and painting's effect on her behavior spread
throughout the zoo community, and soon other zoos were teaching their elephants
and other animals to paint.
Painting is just one part of an overall enrichment program zoos and aquariums
use to build trust between keeper and animal, and to keep the animal from getting
too bored and stressed and consequently engaging in self-destructive behavior.
Mshindi, a black rhino at the Denver Zoo in Colorado, would need blood samples
taken to monitor his health; because rhinos generally react violently to being
stabbed with needles, he would need to be anesthesized which, for a rhinoceros,
is an even greater health risk. So, keepers work with Mshindi on different commands
and responses that ultimately lead to the rhino presenting his ear on command
for bloodwork or presenting his foot for a nail filing.
"His painting evolved from this role of the keeper as Mshindi's primary care
physician," said Suzanne Balog, the zoo's public relations manager. "Mshindi's
really smart. He'd learn new behaviors quickly, and the keeper always has to
keep up with him." So he doesn't get bored with painting, they let Mshindi paint
only a couple of times a month.
In the case of Ruby, the mission was so focused on her enrichment that Dick
George, then the Phoenix Zoo's public relations manager, kept the story of her
painting from the press for three years. "I remember arguing that we couldn't
send the story out because I thought it would appear exploitive of the animal,"
George said. Then a National Geographic photographer visited Ruby as part of
a global trek photographing elephants. "He came to me and said, 'Don't you know
those animals are going extinct? Screw your ethics. Sell the paintings and get
her story out so all elephants can benefit.'"
Click here to visit the Art Show.
Fame and fortune
Chicago has its cows, Cincinnati its pigs, Toronto its moose, parades of painted
fiberglass sculptures. Tampa, Florida, has the Tour of Turtles, with local companies
and agencies customizing turtles manufactured by The Resource Factory. One entry
in the tour comes from the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, whose turtle was painted
by Sunset Sam, a 22-year-old Atlantic bottlenose dolphin.
"Sunset likes to be challenged and likes to learn new things," said Coni Romano,
senior marine mammal trainer at the aquarium located in the Tampa suburbs. "We
had heard of other animals that painted, and we thought, 'Why not try it? Maybe
he would like it. And he did." Using an illustrator's paint brush with a rubber
tip to fit in his mouth, Sunset Sam raises out of the water to paint on canvas,
T-shirts, hats or fiberglass turtles on the pool's deck. The aquarium sells
some of his wares in its gift shops while other pieces are auctioned. Guests
may also pay to paint with Sunset. All proceeds go back to the aquarium to carry
out its mission of marine rescue and rehabilitation, some of that paying for
Sunset's own care.
Many other zoos have used their resident artists in clever fund-raising efforts.
Mshindi's works are auctioned off to help support a rhino conservation project
in Kenya. The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in Ohio is selling its elephant paintings
to defray the costs of the 21st annual Elephant Management Association Conference
scheduled at the zoo next September. The fingerpaintings of Charles, a silverback
western lowland gorilla in Toronto, Canada, raised $40,000 Canadian (US$25,000)
in 1995 toward his own new habitat, the world's largest indoor gorilla enclosure,
which opened at the Toronto Zoo this April. The FortWorth Zoo in Texas is taking
part in that city's 23rd annual Gallery Night tomorrow by putting up a display
of paintings by featuring a collection of Wilhelm Kuhnert paintings, a German
wildlife artist at the turn of last century, and a collection of paintings by
Rasha, a 28-year-old Asian elephant.
"The animal is deriving pleasure from (painting)," Romano said of Sunset Sam,
one of whose paintings was presented to former First Lady Barbara Bush during
a visit in 1999. "It's enriching for them and improves their environment."
In more ways than one.
Click here to visit the Art Show.
Sedgwick County Zoo patrons got custom-designed shirts from Cinda Elephant and totes from Lucille Pig. Photos courtesy of Sedgwick County Zoo.
Sure realism
So the animal has fun, the zoo's achieve funding and education goals, and the
public lays down big bucks for these novelty paintings. Does it qualify as true
art? A Tamworth pig can rub its paint-covered snout over a canvas and create
a picture that looks strikingly like smudges of paint across a canvas. But give
that painting a name, as Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, Kansas, did for one
of Lucille's pieces in our show, and the painting becomes an expressionistic
masterpiece. This, however, is judging art with no more astuteness than the
famous repartee between Hamlet and Polonius over the shape of a cloud that Hamlet
finally declaims is shaped like a whale. "Very like a whale," sycophant Polonius
replies.
But pause and ponder awhile the works in our Reflections gallery. Mshindi's
self-portrait is obvious, but only if he utilized a mirror. Balog saw one of
Mshindi's paintings that "I swear is a warthog," she said; but the zoo's warthogs
are not visible from the rhino's habitat. Still, Mshindi is particular about
his paints. Some days he consistently drops the yellow-dipped paint brush from
his mouth without using it, some days it's the red he consistently declines.
"Some days he just won't use certain colors," Balog said. "If that's temperamental
artist, I don't know."
More intriguing in the Reflections room is Sunset Sam's work "My Cousins." The
trainers could make out the shapes of a horse's head, a polar bear and a snake
or a stingray, all creatures Sunset Sam likely has never seen, even in his pre-rescue
wild days. But in the middle is the unmistakable image of a whale breaching
the water.
Couldn't be, Romano said. Even before Sunset was rescued on a sandbar 17 years
ago, Romano said, he wouldn't have delved into the deep domains of the big whales.
"He's never seen a deep-water whale that would jump out of water." But, truly,
it is very like a whale.
Which brings us back to Ruby. George, who has a master of fine arts in photography
and teaches at Arizona State University when he's not working at the Phoenix
Zoo, is certain Ruby knew what she was doing on the canvas. "She ultimately
began to choose which color she wanted from a pallet of seven different colors
and an array of four or five different brushes. I saw one canvas that was Wagnerian,
purple, brown, blue, black; it looked like a thunderstorm. The very next one
was delicate pink and blue and turquoise in vertical stripes like cattails.
I have seen her be interrupted and go back and finish the gesture she'd been
working on. I've seen keepers turn the canvas 90 degrees, and Ruby went back
to the same point she had been working on. She had a definite sense of what
she was doing and where she was going to go with it."
Ruby in fact prompted several studies concerning elephants' eyesight and whether
they can discern colors, studies which are not yet conclusive. Certain colors
that passed through her environment were often the colors Ruby chose for her
subsequent paintings. In a room of our gallery devoted to her work, we've included
a photo of a little girl holding the painting Ruby did while the girl was visiting
the elephant.
And when you question "Is it art," part of your answer should be "Whose art?"
George tells the story of a certain nationally famous televison news reporter
checking out the Ruby story on a visit to the zoo. After reviewing the paintings,
the star reporter sniffed, "When she takes up realism, then you let me know."
To which George replied, "Who says this isn't realism to her?"
New Arrivals
New arrivals
It's
a theme park!
The Walt Disney Company and the Oriental Land Company
announce the arrival of Tokyo DisneySea, in Maihama, Urayasu-shi, Chiba, Japan,
September 4, 2001. Measurements: 71.4 hectares, seven "Ports of Call" themed
areas, 23 rides and attractions, 33 restaurants, 32 retail outlets, 8,500 cast
members.
When it comes to theme parks, nobody can rain on Disney's parades: not even
Mother Nature herself. On a cloudy morning with occasional sprinkling rain,
some 10,000 people had gathered by 7:30 a.m. at the entrance to Tokyo Disneyland's
second gated park to witness the official opening at 8. The park allowed the
guests in so that they would become part of the opening ceremony, which took
place on the central lagoon around which the thematic Ports of Call cluster.
At 7:45 the ceremony started with Michael Eisner, Roy E. Disney and Oriental
Land Company President Toshio Kagami, and just then "the rain stopped, the clouds
parted and the sun came down," said Greg Albrecht, director of marketing and
sponsor affairs for Walt Disney Attractions, Japan. "Roy Disney said it was
Walt looking down on the new park."
The elder Disney likely would be proud, as the intricately themed park opened
to much anticipation and enthusiastic acclaim. "This is the kind of park I don't
think we'll see again in our lifetime because of the incredible detail," Albrecht
said.The 338 billion yen park (US$2.8 billion) offers fanciful living portrayals
of a Mediterranean Harbor, an American Waterfront, an Arabian Coast and the
Central American jungles of Lost River Delta, as well as the more fantasy-inclined
Mermaid Lagoon, Mysterious Island (Captain Nemo's haunts) and Port Discovery,
a "marina of the future."
However pretty the park may be, rides seemed to carry the day on opening day.
All 23 rides are unique to TokyoSea except Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple
of the Crystal Skull, which uses the same ride system as the California
version but has different theming and surprises. Upon the park being officially
proclaimed operating, the bulk of first-day guests headed immediately to this
Disney territory's icon, Mount Prometheus, where the park's two most popular
rides, a whole new version of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Journey
to the Center of the Earth, are located. "Because of advance announcements
and media coverage and internet reports, they all went directly for that area,"
Albrecht said.
To print this article, click here
Eric’s
Turn
Meeting time
I am posting this LOOP and writing this column from St. Louis on the eve,
literally, of trade show season for our industry. Tomorrow the American Zoo
and Aquarium Association's annual conference and exhibit kicks off. I get back
home next Wednesday in just enough time to travel, with Sarah, to Cedar Point
in Sandusky, Ohio, for the annual IAAPA Summer Meeting. This is a busy time
of year for all of us in the industry, but it's also my favorite time of year.
The trade shows and meetings give me a chance to get together with my colleagues
and competitors—dear friends all—catch up, learn and laugh. This next
week is particularly appealing to me because of the locations of the AZA and
IAAPA meetings.
I'm a graduate of the University of Missouri (the number one School of Journalism
in the country, I must boast) and feel a strong affinity for this state and
this city. The AZA's host this year is the St. Louis Zoo, which I've visited
often and always enjoyed. Geographic fealty aside, I consider it one of the
best zoos in the world, and I'm eagerly looking forward to our "Zoo Day" on
Monday when I'll get to see progress on the zoo's innovative River's Edge multi-use
habitat. As for Cedar Point, professionally I consider it the benchmark park
of our industry, but personally I just love soaking in its atmosphere, the mingling
of happy sounds, smells and sights, and the pervasive friendliness that always
seems to settle over the crowds there. Add all that to the good camaraderie
that is the hallmark of the IAAPA Summer Meetings and I look to stockpile cheeriness
that should last more than a year.
Another reason I'm so eager to get into trade show season is it affords me the
chance to personally thank all the people who have supported and endorsed THE
LOOP in its fledgling first year. I've been writing professionally more than
27 years, I've published more than 600 articles in 100 different publications
ranging from niche trade magazines to Good Housekeeping. Nothing has generated
the response that THE LOOP has. I average more positive feedback per issue of
this newsletter than I received in long stints with various magazines, and the
comments I've gotten over the course of just 16 issues is far greater than I
heard over the previous 27 years combined as a publishing writer. I know I'm
bringing news, reflection and smiles to many people in an industry I'm particularly
enamored of. May we all continue to do well.
Corrections
In the last issue of THE LOOP (August 24,
2001) we printed the wrong closing date for Mitchell Barutha's photography
show on Kennywood. "Bits and Pieces of Kennywood: Hand Colored Photographs by
Mitchell Barutha" runs through September 27 at John Stobart's Three Rivers Gallery
in Pittsburgh.
Also in that issue, in our report on how Magic Waters Waterpark in Rockford,
Illinois, repaired an accidental release of hypochlorous acid at its wave pool,
while the story correctly named Magic Waters, a headline in the index misidentified
the waterpark. We regret the error.
Both have been corrected on that issue of THE LOOP and the indexes