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

We report from the AZA Conference, where delegates paid tribute to 9/11 victims with their own reflections and music;

Oregon Zoo gives elephants a lesson in ballet (and PR specialists a lesson in image-building);

The U.S. Access Board issues new park and ride accessibility guidelines;

NASA bestows high honors on Bob Rogers;

Del Grosso's Amusement Park sets up drive through service for its chicken dinners;

The Tracks management joins a Branson tradition of assisting neighbors;

We welcome a conference center to Callaway,

And we reflect on our own brushes with history.

For back issues of THE LOOP,
click here

For a printable version of this column,
click here

For more information on the facilities and organizations featured in this newsletter, visit our Connections Page.
click here

Accessible guidelines
The dust is finally settling on one of the industry’s most contentious issues the past three years: accessibility standards for people with disabilities at amusement parks. The U.S. Access Board last week issued its final Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines (ADAAG) for recreation facilities, which include amusement parks, swimming pools, sports centers, miniature golf courses and play areas (regulations are currently being researched for waterpark rides and go-kart tracks).

For amusement rides, the regulations address the need for wheelchair space on rides or the capability for people who use wheelchairs to transfer to a ride seat. The Access Board has drawn up specific criteria for these wheelchair spaces and transfer devices, including diagrams. However, in an apparent bow to the industry’s own expertise, the Board acknowledges the singular nature of many new thrill rides and “supports the need for flexibility in making them accessible.” One section of the ADAAG permits ‘‘departures from particular technical and scoping requirements of this guideline by the use of other designs and technologies . . . where the alternative designs and technologies used will provide substantially equivalent or greater access to and usability of the facility.’’ This is in keeping with the ADA itself which says accessibility should not interfere with the fundamental experience of the public accommodation.

Addressing another hot topic, the Access Board has stated in issuing the new guidelines that they are applicable only to new construction and planned alterations. This may meet a strong challenge in court, however, as the ADA has no such limitation of its scope and even requires historic homes to provide at least some alternative form of accessibility.

Meanwhile, miniature golf courses did not gain much leeway in the currently issued regulations versus the draft sent out to public review two years ago. The new guidelines require at least half of the holes on a miniature golf course to be “served by an accessible route,” the specifications of which are spelled out in the regulations, “(taking) into account design conventions. . .such as carpeted play surfaces and curbs.”

The Access Board’s guidelines are, in the bureaucratic process of rulemaking, more or less recommendations to the Department of Justice, which enforces the public accommodations elements of the ADA and will issue the final set of regulations. Generally, the Justice Department adopts the Access Board’s guidelines with little change, but they do go through another public commentary period, yet a final chance for interested parties on both sides to provide further inputs.

Meantime, the guidelines become a de facto standard for accessibility, so operators and designers or all recreation facilities and equipment should study the guidelines. They are available from the U.S. Access Board (800-872-2253) and on line at www.access-board.gov.

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

NASA rewarded Bob Rogers meddling with this medal.Photo courtesy of BRC Imagination Arts.

Space mettle
For telling NASA engineers they should send a payload of sneakers with a very tall payload specialist into outer space; for telling NASA’s mission planners to bring back more from Mars than just rocks; and, most of all, for telling NASA’s story to the general public, NASA is now telling Bob Rogers thank you. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration yesterday bestowed one of its highest honors, the NASA Public Service Medal, on the chairman and founder of BRC Imagination Arts.

“I was sure tickled,” Rogers said. “When this letter showed up I thought they had sent it to the wrong Bob Rogers.” The letter came from Roy Estes, recently retired director of the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where the medal ceremony was to take place.

With a resume that includes work for Disney and Universal Studios, Rogers was hired to create Space Center Houston, the visitor center for the Johnson Space Center near Houston, Texas. Telling NASA’s story through visual and interactive mediums was not as big a challenge as getting his employers to understand the value of entertainment in getting that message across. “I’m telling them that the public doesn’t see what NASA does the way the NASA engineers and scientists see it,” Rogers said. “The public see it as an adventure and want to share in that experience. A lot of NASA guys say, ‘We’re good at what we do and enjoy it so put the money under the door and go away.’ A lot don’t want to explain it to anybody.”

With the success of Space Center Houston, BRC also produced the Apollo/Saturn V Center at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and is currently working on conceptual designs for similar visitor interactive exhibits at Stennis and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

However, Rogers’ newest mission isn’t so much bringing space to the general public, but taking the general public into space. In 1998 he was appointed to the Mars Architecture Committee, a gathering of NASA engineers and scientists—and one themed entertainment expert—to work on the master plan for exploration of Mars. “Theoretically, I know something about public engagement and how to fire the public imagination.” He also was appointed to NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group. “That is all about payloads and science. Don’t ask me why I’m a member. They sit around discussing the process by which they will decide the process for what they will do.”

Rogers, on the other hand, speaks a creative vocabulary foreign to the other committee members. “They’re going, ‘He’s used the word cool three times in the last sentence. Am I OK with this?’ At the same time, these are the brightest people on the planet. They could study something and get everything in a few minutes; smart, smart, smart people. They never fail to understand what I’m telling them. They don’t always know what to do with it.”

Like the time eight years ago he suggested a payload to NASA for which a private company would cover all the costs, and with the proper payload specialist, the public would watch the minutest detail of the mission. The payload: Nike shoes. The specialist: Michael Jordan. “They said, ‘He’s too tall for the space suit.’ But I said, ‘Great. Have him come in and try on the suit with the press there observing how it doesn’t fit, then come back in four weeks with a suit that does fit and the press will shoot him being fitted. Two press events in four weeks.’ Then they said, ‘But he’s too tall for the seats.’ I said, ‘Great. . .”

“I’m slowly nagging away at them. They all get it, but then they go back to what they know.” Rogers also now has a prestigious medal showing that NASA appreciates his nagging. “I’ve been to the Oscars twice and had the wrong name in the envelope,” he said of comparing his NASA medal with the host of other honors he’s earned in his career. “I’m really touched by the medal. I never expected this. Some of my work I was paid for, some I did for free because I was just interested. I’m touched. There are a lot of other people who deserved this more than I do, but I’m happy to go get it. I’m going to grab it quick before they change their minds.”

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Del Grosso's turned a tidy profit with its "Chicken to Go" program on summer holidays. Photo courtesy of Del Grosso's.

Pickin’ chicken
The park boasts in its advertising “America’s Best Amusement Park Food.” As evidence: how many amusement parks provide drive-through service to people just wanting its food?

Del Grosso’s in Tipton, Pennsylvania, began its “Chicken-to-Go” program about 10 years ago, providing barbecue chicken and rib dinners to the general public on the three summer holidays: Memorial Day in May, Independence Day on the Fourth of July, and Labor Day in September. “A lot of local people really enjoy our barbecue chicken, and you can only get that when you are at a catered deal at the park or during some charity events,” said Peter Gardella, the park’s vice president and general manager. “People were clamoring for it on holidays.”

So much so that when the park first started offering Chicken to Go, the park became too congested. So, Del Grosso’s created a cul de sac in a driveway between the park’s miniature golf course and the Del Grosso’s food factory across the highway from the main entrance to the park. There, staff set up a tent and hand out servings of chicken, ribs, fresh-made potato salad, fresh made baked beans, and cole slaw, usually from 10 until noon on the mornings of the holidays. That is the normal time the catering staff is finalizing picnics in the park, Gardella said. “Usually on those days we lack corporate picnics and outings, so it fits in real nicely.”

The most popular day for Chicken to Go is Memorial Day, he said. “I think it’s the first of the summer and people want to taste the chicken again after missing it so long.” A typical Memorial Day will see a thousand halves of chicken pass into cars, 500 racks of ribs, 1,200 pounds of potato salad, 300 pounds of baked beans and 250 pounds of cole slaw. Labor Day numbers run about two-thirds of that.

The program’s popularity prompted Del Grosso’s one year to offer the service for Penn State University home football games and the Super Bowl. “It was too much for us, really,” Gardella said. And, perhaps, too much of a good thing for the general public. Scarcity ups the value of any commodity, and come summer, picnickers throughout the Altoona area are eager to get some of that chicken and go.

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Painting the town
The gap between the haves and have nots narrows every year in Branson, Missouri, thanks to Community Caring Day, an annual event when businesses go to work helping non profit organizations in the tourist city and its surrounding communities. Recreational Management, Inc., owners and operators of The Tracks, five family entertainment centers in Branson, this year sent five of its staff to be among the 350 volunteers engaged in 70 different projects for 28 nonprofit organizations.

“It’s a neat thing for the community, and a neat thing for nonprofit organizations that don’t have a lot of dollars,” said Larry Schmitt, president of Recreational Management. “One of the things we talk about in Branson is serving others, and this is an opportunity to serve others.”

Community Caring Day always occurs in late August when the city enters its slow tourism period and many business operators can break away. This year, Schmitt and company Vice President Mike Russell, Maintenance Manager Randy Kuhns, maintenance worker Mike Schackleford and kart operator Shawn Calhoun joined 10 other volunteers in repainting the Kimberling City Chamber of Commerce. “It was a pretty-good-size building and took us most of the day to get it done,” Schmitt said.

Past tasks included painting the Boston Community Center and repairing its roof—“I remember it was a very hot, tin metal roof,” Schmitt said—painting the Salvation Army building, and cleaning the metal siding walls of the Halfway House. “We rented a pressure washer and cleaned the outside of the home and all the deck areas,” Schmitt said. Noting the trend that he and his Tracks crew usually are assigned to paint and clean, he said, “When you’ve got unskilled labor like us, you can’t mess that up too bad.”

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

New Arrivals

The Southern Pine at Callaway blends and bends right in with its natural surroundings. Photo courtesy of Callaway.

It's a conference center!

Callaway in Pine Mountain, Georgia, announces the arrival of the Southern Pine at Callaway conference center, August 23, 2002. Measurements: 54,000 square feet total, 22,000 square feet of executive meeting space, two ballrooms of 7,000 and 4,000 square feet (the former capable of being divided into five rooms), eight breakout rooms, one pre-set board room, one conference room, one gift shop, one lounge, one restaurant and one reception area for cottage rentals.

Callaway didn't book its first meeting until September 4—the Coca Cola Company—but many more are on the way, ranging from the Social Security Administration to the Professional Golf Association Tour Commissioners.

What Callaway offers at its new $12,5 million conference center is the essence of Callaway itself—the vastness of nature. Every meeting room except the small ballroom has one wall consisting of a floor-to-ceiling window looking out over the woodlands. The large ballroom's forest-view wall is curved, with outside terraces available for pre-event socializing.

The center is so attuned to its natural surroundings that it will likely become the first-ever "Green Conference Center" certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, which has been monitoring the development since the blueprint stage.

Despite its one-with-nature essence, the Southern Pine Conference Center doesn't skimp on cushy comforts and technological amenities, including wireless Internet access throughout the entire building.

For the center's gala grand opening and ribbon cutting (actually, a pine bough cutting), Callaway supplemented the usual invitation list of dignitaries and media members with meeting planners, about 200 guests in all. "People were oohing and aahing," said Rachel Crumbly, Callaway's corporate relations manager. "It's a very beautiful place."

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

AZA Report

For a list of exhibitors, click here

Click here

Cuddled and hugged
To say the American Zoo and Aquarium Association members partied hard Tuesday night at Billy Bob's Texas—"the world's largest honky tonk"—is like saying Beethoven tinkered a little on the piano. From the redemption game center to the dance floor, pulsating with shoulder-to-shoulder people, this crowd was loud, it was laughing, it was drinking, it was partying "like it's 1999."

Or, like it was 9/10.

The next morning, the AZA Annual Conference in Fort Worth, Texas, officially kicked off with a ceremony of remembrance of the events of last 9/11. The ceremony included local representatives of the U.S. military, police and fire departments. William tucker, chancellor emeritus of Texas Christian University, filled the ceremony with a sermon about the emotional and social importance of remembrance and reflection.

"Today we remember," he said, "knowing that remembering is hardly a wooden exercise on the edge of the essence of life." In fact, remembering is a way toward immortality for those remembered, he said.

This crowd not only was remembering the lives lost in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania one year ago, they also were recollecting their own feelings of being lost and helpless when the terrorist attacks left them stranded at the interrupted AZA meeting in St. Louis, Missouri.

"I know it's difficult to be away from home today," Fort Worth Mayor Kenneth Barr told the assemblage. "Many of you had to spend last September 11 alone, away from your family and friends."

The greater image in that ballroom Wednesday was the crowd itself—a large crowd. More than 1,700 people were expected for this year's show, 5,000 more than the most optimistic estimates even a month ago. True, some stayed home because their memories of their own 9/11 hardships are too fresh to revisit, but many more were here to share ideas, give and hear papers, shop the exhibit hall and party like only an AZA member can.

The 15-minute ceremony concluded, the opening session moved swiftly on to the welcoming remarks by host Fort Worth Zoo and city officials and to the keynote speech of Pete Emerson, senior economist with the Environmental Defense Fund, who exhorted the delegates to look at new approaches to accomplish conservation objectives by developing public/private partnerships and incentives.

When all was done and said, and the delegates filed out of the ballroom for the exhibit hall, for more meetings and for various social clusters, left lingering was the morning's most eloquent lines, spoken by AZA President John Lewis. He started his one-year term last September with an abbreviated, tear-filled address proclaiming the conference concluded. Referring to the St. Louis Zoo staff and volunteers, he said, "Last year we were cuddled and bid farewell. Here we've been hugged and told 'hello.'"

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Pierce and Surratt played a key role in the AZA Conference's Opening Ceremonies. Photo by Eric Minton.

In tune
The key piece, literally, of the 9/11 commemoration at AZA’s Opening Session Wednesday was Fort Worth Zoo Staff members Stacey Pierce and Ron Surratt.

Delegates entered the Fort Worth Convention Center’s ballroom to the piano playing of Pierce, the zoo’s development director who had been a public school choir director for seven years prior to joining the zoo. Her choice of songs projected an inspirational solemnity, but subtly: “Amazing Grace,” “America the Beautiful,” “Do You Hear the People Sing” from Les Miserables and "Dixie" done slowly.

"I was just trying to find things that were inspirational, but not flippant," Pierce said, avoiding Sousa tunes and "Grand Old Flag." I wanted things that were dignified but didn't interfere with people's reflecting and remembering."

Surratt, the zoo's mammal curator, joined Pierce on stage during the ceremony to sing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "God Bless America." Like Pierce, Surratt was asked by Zoo Director Michael Fouraker to perform at the session, but he was making his public singing debut. "I'm just a goat roper," he said. "I sing a lot in the car, but that's about it."

In an unusual but fitting decision, Surratt sang the seldom-heard introductory refrain of Irving Berlin's famous song:

  While the storm clouds gather
  Far across the sea
  Let us swear allegiance
  To a land that's free.
  Let's all be grateful
  For a land so fair
  As we raise our voice
  In a solemn prayer,
  God bless America . . .

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to to

A member of The Pacific Festival Ballet and members of the Oregon Zoo performed a pas des cinq for the media. Photo courtesy of the Oregon Zoo.

Step aside, hippos
Bill LaMarche thinks visually. The media relations officer for the Oregon Zoo in Portland also gets into the heads of his zoo’s animals, and the success of his publicity campaigns hinges on the confluence of those two traits, because LaMarche knows that what excites the animals makes for great photo ops.

“If we give enrichment treats or devices to the animals that are visible and can tie that in with our event, then we get press coverage,” LaMarche said. “(The media) comes up for the enrichment moment and get the video they can’t live without, and while they are showing the video they get the message out about the event and they get our conservation mission message out. It’s win win.”

He put this strategy to use in promoting the first ever ballet performance at the zoo. As part of the an outreach program, The Pacific Festival Ballet scheduled performances August 20 and 23 at the Oregon Zoo Amphitheater, a lawn-seating venue able to seat 3,500 people located next to the Asian elephant enclosure. “I thought it would be fun to play off these two separate ideas in an unexpected way, the art of ballet and the size of elephants,” LaMarche said of the show’s promotion.

LaMarche proposed an enrichment program to the elephant keepers: let them meet a couple of the ballerinas, and let the media watch the encounter. “The keepers loved the idea. The elephants had never experienced ballerinas before.” The costumed ballerinas entered the elephant yard and performed their pirouettes and demi pliés for the zoo’s four female elephants. The youngest elephant, Chendra, certainly appeared inspired, doing trunk pirouettes and lifting her leg to match the moves of the dancers.

Some 1,000 people attended the actual performances, many of them picnic-bearing families with young girls wearing tu-tus and mimicking on the lawn the ballerina’s steps on stage. Also attending the performance was Hugo, the bull elephant watching from his yard and like the little girls lifting his legs and walking backward and, in a move all of his own, swaying his trunk in time with the piano music.“He was really, really active during the whole performance,” LaMarche said.

Both The Pacific Festival Ballet and the zoo, which runs a concert series throughout the summer, were pleased with the shows and feedback. “It’s definitely worth doing again,” Lamarche said. The elephants, it seems, hope so.

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Eric's Turn

Photo courtesy of www.nasa.gov

A higher power
I’m always reflecting on the wrong things, it seems. This week I have been thinking long about one of the most historical events in mankind’s history, an event that, even with the passage of time, remains vivid in my memory. That memory was jogged this week by Bob Rogers on the eve of his own historical moment, receiving a public service medal from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I was 10 years old, the time frame was Christmas 1968, we were living near Fairbanks, Alaska, and as our family was driving home through the ice fog late one night we listened to the car radio broadcasting the Christmas service—the reading of Genesis’ first chapter in the Bible—by the Apollo 8 crew. Of all the Apollo space missions, that one still remains the most significant to me, even moreso than the moonlanding six months later, because the 8 crew were the first to orbit the moon, the first to go to the dark side of the moon, during which they could not communicate with earth. Three men in a tiny capsule isolated in space. And when they emerged from the dark side, they saw something no other humans had ever seen: the earth rising over the moon. They took a picture of that moment (above).

To Rogers, the element of the space program that made the most impact on society was not Velcro or Tang. It was four photographs: that one of the earth rising over the “used ashtray” landscape of the moon, the photograph of the entire earth set against the vast blackness of the universe, the man standing on the moon, and the footprint in the moon dust.

Of the earth pictures, Rogers said: “There was the earth and there were no lines on it. Saudi Arabia wasn’t pink and Egypt wasn’t green. It looked beautiful. And it looked fragile.” He noted that the photo of the astronaut on the moon not only represented man standing on another planet, but because that man was wearing a visor and space suit, his age, race and even gender were indistinguishable. It was a human being.

These images changed the way people on earth thought about their planet. “It’s no mistake that the environmental movement started right after that picture came down from Apollo 8,” Rogers said. It also gave rise to the concept of global thinking in the form of “global market” and “global community.”

If you’ve read this LOOP in its entirety, you might be surprised that I’m using this commentary space on the NASA medal story rather than the one at the top of this page. Don’t be. Two days ago as I sat in a hushed room full of zoo and aquarium professionals, I quietly thanked the Apollo 8 crew for all they’d done for this planet.

Print this article

Comment on this article

Back to top

Correction
In the August 23 issue of THE LOOP, I misplaced Wonderland Amusement Park, which is in Amarillo, Texas. The newsletter has been corrected on the web site, but we wanted to alert you to the change.