Volume 1, No. 17. September 21, 2001
Reverberations
"I'm a modern-day immigrant," said
Lynton Harris, a native Australian and chairman and CEO of The Sudden Impact
Entertainment Company. "I moved to America and moved to New York for all the
right reasons. The Statue of Liberty and New York are extremely symbolic and
important to me." Watching the events of September 11, 2001, unfold from his
mid-town New York office not only shook Harris to his moral core, it undermined
his very profession: building and marketing horror-theme attractions, including
one of his biggest projects ever, Fright House at the D.C. Armory in Washington,
D.C. Scheduled to open in two weeks, Harris and Armory CEO Bobby Goldwater canceled
the show for this year.
The fallout from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York
and the Pentagon in Washington rippled throughout the entire amusement industry
in many ways. Several theme parks in Florida and California closed for the day.
The American Zoo and Aquarium Association cut short its annual conference in
St. Louis, Missouri, (see story below), and IAAPA canceled
its summer meeting at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, which was to start the
next day (Fun Expo in Las Vegas and the WWA Convention and Trade Show in Orlando
next month, and the IAAPA Trade Show in Orlando in November will continue as
planned, organizers said).
Parks on weekend schedules responded with various acts of support. Holiday World
in Santa Claus, Indiana, gave away admission tickets to every person donating
blood at area Red Cross blood drives. Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier
replaced the green and purple lights on its 130-foot high (39 meters) Pacific
Wheel with red, white and blue bulbs in a show of patriotism, and 50 percent
of revenues from the wheel will be donated to relief efforts.
In an example of how far the terrorist attacks reached across the nation, SeaWorld
in San Diego, California, canceled its Skytower evacuation drill scheduled
for September 13. The technical rescue team from the San Diego Fire and Life
Services Department that was supposed to conduct the drill had been sent to
New York to fill in for rescuers lost in the collapse of the World Trade Center
towers.
Harris didn't think twice about canceling his pet D.C. project, for which he
had built scenery that included such Washington icons as the White House, the
U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument. "I made the decision from a personal
perspective on the Tuesday it happened. Anybody who lives in this city has been
impacted quite emotionally," he said, counting himself among those deeply distraught.
"To be in the right spirit to go to Washington that suffered a similar situation
on the same day would be inappropriate." What he called a "moral decision" he
later rationalized from the pragmatic viewpoint of a marketer. "I've sold half
a million tickets to scary shows in my career using adjectives like 'horror'
and 'scary' and 'experience the terror.' Those words took on a whole new meaning
last week."
He is, however, continuing to work with Paramount's Kings Dominion in Virginia
and Kings Island in Ohio on their Halloween festivals. "I think in the context
of a theme park, an existing leisure product, the public will feel comfortable
and familiar with those properties." He also thinks the public will be, by next
month, looking for entertainment opportunities again, including haunted attractions,
and he is working with the International Association of Haunted Attractions
in a fund-raising project.
Harris clearly laments the temporary loss of his new show, a project he had
been planning for a couple of years with "magnificent" sets that included all
43 U.S. presidents carved as jack o-lanterns. "From a creative point of view,
I'm definitely disappointed people won't see it this year. It's clearly a shame,
but a small, small price to pay in this context." The weary voice on the phone,
however, was not one of a crestfallen artist or disappointed marketer; it was
one of a numbed New Yorker and shocked immigrant. "People should be allowed
to grieve and move forward," he said. "And we'll look for new initiatives to
be part of that get-back-to-work process."