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In this issue:
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Our special AZA Annual Conference Report finds host Jack Hanna healing long-festering wounds with his zoo brethren, dance-happy delegates feeding on the antics of The Menus, the National Zoo going boldly where it had gone too long before, and the Shedd Aquarium giving a lesson in buzz-building tactics;

We preview the upcoming Fun Expo and alert you to visa requirements before traveling to the IAAPA Trade Show;

Singapore’s Sentosa invites live animals to join diners in new restaurant/zoo concept, and Sentosa Island Resort becomes a college campus for hospitality;

Sunken treasure enriches Raging Waters on Labor Day, while Gröna Lund builds one coaster and gets four new rides in the bargain;

Mars makes things happen at Coney Island’s Astroland and Atlanta’s Stone Mountain, and we really don't need to wonder what is making babies happen at SeaWorld Orlando;

Among our own New Arrivals, we have a pair of eagles to Knoebels, a flight simulator at Nashville’s Adventure Science Center, a Chinese hotel at Phantasialand, and a Saturation Station at Myrtle Waves;

We see a frightfully good fit in the IAAPA-IAHA alliance, and we sound our two-issue warning.

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Feeding time at the zoo
The idea that Bernard Harrison, longtime zoologist, presented to Sentosa CEO Darrell Metzger was intriguing. “We really liked the idea,” Metzger said of RIMBA Sentosa, a combination restaurant and boutique zoo on the Singapore resort island. “I said, ‘Let’s take a look and see how this works. Where is it being done?’ He said, ‘There is nowhere you can go. I wouldn’t bring this to you if I had done it somewhere else.’”

In a way, Harrison, CEO of RIMBA International, has done it before. While serving as CEO of Singapore Zoological Gardens, Harrison had come up with a Breakfast at the Zoo in 1981, setting up tables in front of the lion exhibit. “That was a roaring success,” he said, pun probably intended. “We were getting up to 500 or 600 people for breakfast.” prompted by that success he started doing other dining with animal experiences, including turning one of the trams of his popular Night Safari into an Orient Express-type train with dining cars for 36 guests and a chef on board.

“We found that animals and eating is a very popular and very stimulating experience,” Harrison said. Having left the zoo to run his own consulting firm, Bernard Harrison & Friends, Harrison was looking to attempt a more permanent application of the concept. His former food and beverage director at the zoo, Frank Yeun, was now working as Sentosa’s food and beverage director. “Frank was there, he was comfortable, Darrell was comfortable with Frank.” Through such mutual trust, the concept of a restaurant seating 1,000 people, serving three meals and housing 500 wild animals evolved. “When you start talking about it like that, it puts it in a league all its own,” Harrison said. “The closest anybody has done is in aquariums.”

He’s calling it a boutique zoo. The 10-acre (4-hectare) facility will feature 20 to 25 species, a mixture of diurnal and nocturnal animals to provide round-the-clock wildlife activity. This also allows him to double up use of enclosures. In another space-saving ploy, he is choosing highly sociable animals to populate his enclosures. Two main exhibits will be a savannah containing lions and cheetahs, and a rain forest with jaguars. Other than the cats and various monkeys, most of the animals will be free-ranging birds.

The restaurant will be divided into five different serving areas, including private banquet space and outdoor cocktail seating. The animals will be located behind 40 meters (131 feet) of glass. In the main dining room, the tables continue through the glass into the animal enclosure, so that a big cat could jump up and join diners for dinner. “When the lion jumps on the table outside, your cutlery rattles, and you know you’ve got a dinner guest,” Harrison said. In a sense, the diners will serve as the animals’ enrichment programs.

“We are very concerned about being taken frivolously,” Harrison said. “One of the main buy-ins I got is that everybody must be totally cross-trained in everything. So, waiters will be able to give guests in-depth discussion about animals they see around them, as well as plants. You can talk to a keeper who can recommend the best of steaks or the portabello mushrooms.” The menu Harrison describes as “World Barbecue” featuring a variety of barbecue meats and vegetables from different cuisines.

What Metzger describes as a “Rainforest Cafe come to real life” certainly is a revolutionary concept, but he has faith in Harrison. “He’s been doing this for 30 years,” Metzger said of Harrison’s experience in zoos. “I figure he’s made most of his mistakes already.”
Metzger is most excited about RIMBA Sentosa’s curbside appeal. The restaurant/zoo will be located at the island’s entrance. “When you drive by on the monorail or bus or car, you’re going to drive right by the RIMBA restaurant,” he said. “And you’re going to get glimpses of something over there through the bushes, and you’re not going to be sure what it is if you hadn’t heard about it.”

Scheduled to open next spring, RIMBA Sentosa is costing the resort SGD$15 million (US$8.6 million). Metzger calls it a “relatively small investment with high marketability. It’s going to promote international tourism immediately,” he said. “If it was just a mini-zoo, we wouldn’t do it. It’s not a petting zoo with tigers and cheetahs and lions. It’s a restaurant in a live environment. It’s the themed restaurant evolving into the next generation. If it works, we’re going elsewhere, we’ll export this concept. It will be a difficult concept for somebody to copy. There might be cheap versions. but this is not cheap. It takes a lot of land and takes a lot of expertise.”

That is what, respectively, Sentosa and Harrison bring to the table.

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Cum laude Sentosa
If Sentosa is to reap the maximum benefits of its SGD$3 billion (US$1.6 billion) expansion over the next 10 years, it is going to need help. Good help. So, Sentosa CEO Darrell Metzger stepped forward to help create good help, not just for Sentosa but all of the Pacific Rim and eventually the world.

The Tourism Academy at Sentosa should begin offering classes in 2005. The Academy is actually a satellite campus of Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore, which already offers a hospitality tourism program accepting 500 new students a year. The university needed more space to handle more students, and Sentosa had four old army barracks in the center of the island that, because they are listed as heritage buildings, cannot be torn down. Sentosa Leisure Group had planned to renovate the buildings as hotels, but decided a 50,000-square-foot (4,645-square-meter) campus was a better use, both for Temasek Polytechnic and for Sentosa.

“Part of our overall strategy is to create a world-class destination,” Metzger said. “The quality of service in the attractions business in Asia has not been one of our strongest assets, and that’s putting it mildly. We’re attempting to put the spotlight on service at Sentosa.”

The academy fits into that concept on several levels. One, it will serve as a workplace laboratory for Temasek students; some of the faculty will be Sentosa managers, and many of the students will work in the resort's hotels, golf courses, marinas, restaurants and attractions. “We’re introducing them to the full range of the resort and amusement industry,” Metzger said. Two, the academy’s location at the literal center of Sentosa Island will put pressure on the island’s operations to perform up to the standards taught at the academy. “Hopefully, this helps set us up as a showcase for what a tourism destination should be like,” Metzger said. “With the academy here, we better give good service or we’re not a good example.”

Ultimately, Metzger hopes the academy grows in stature so that it begins attracting students from throughout the Pacific Rim which, in turn, raises hospitality industry standards in general throughout the Asian cultures. “The attractions industry is not perceived as a career in Asia, it doesn’t have the credibility it has in Europe and the United States,” Metzger said. “If you said you worked for Disney in the U.S., that’s a good thing. If you said you worked for Sentosa Island here, that may not necessarily be a good thing because it’s not considered a real business.”

Metzger, who once ran the Disney University, Not only envisions the Tourism Academy at Sentosa becoming a respected institution of hospitality education in Southeast Asia, he sees it becoming a benchmark for the industry globally. Sentosa won’t earn income off the academy, per se, because Singapore’s education system is subsidized by the government and the campus belongs to the Polytechnic. “Financially we could have done better with a hotel,” Metzger said. “But for the longer term strategy, (the academy) was a better use (for the old barracks) than just putting in another 200 hotel rooms.”

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Contestants made a splash as they dashed for coins in Raging Waters’ wave pool. Photo courtesy of Raging Waters

Sunken treasures
On Labor Day in the United States, it’s hard sometimes to get people to play at your amusement or water park. For Raging Waters in San Jose, California, the competition comes not only from free concerts, family picnics, wine festivals, and the beach, it comes from a huge, free annual arts festival downtown. “You’re competing not just with people who are similar to you, you’re competing with the entire area,” said Jaime Friday, Raging Waters’ promotions manager.

So, Raging Waters counters with cash. “We wanted to offer something real exciting for Labor Day,” Friday said. “What’s more exciting than winning money?” The park gave out various door prizes, such as gift certificates to local restaurants and retailers, autographed professional football memorabilia and, this year, Southwest Airlines tickets. Every person under 18 years old received a free ticket to a Stanford University football game. Twelve of the raffle tickets distributed at the front gate were “instant winners” that selected the contestants for the day’s centerpiece event, the Splash for Cash.

The waterpark closes its wave pool for a half hour and staff distributes 3,000 dollar coins in the shallow end. This year the dollar coins were supplemented with specially marked coins: 10 worth $20 apiece, six worth $50 and five worth $100. In the three years Raging Waters has been staging the event, this was the first time it used the higher-value coins.

It made for a more interesting competition among the 12 contestants. The splashing sprints into the water are still standard, but instead of flailing away to scoop up as many coins as possible in the allotted three minutes of time, one woman specifically looked for the $100 coins. She found four en route to a total take of $670. The man who took home the most money, $713, just grabbed as many coins as he could and happened to grab the other $100. The lowest tally was $121.

This year's Splash for Cash was the biggest-drawing so far, Friday said. Given the competition for attention outside the park that day, Friday considers the competition for cash inside the waterpark the only thing that could bring in near-capacity numbers on Labor Day Monday. “You give away money, people come.”

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Four times ROI
Gröna Lund installed one ride for the 2003 season and got four new rides out of it.

The park, landlocked in downtown Stockholm, Sweden, was looking to build a Wild Mouse, something to fill the gap in coaster riding for kids between the ages of the park's Zierer family coaster Ladybug and the steel Schwarzkopf Bergbanan Jetline. The ride most in need of retirement was the Dreamboat, said Peter Osbeck, Gröna Lund’s ride manager. However, he didn’t think Dreamboat's location provided enough space for the Gerstlauer Vilda Musen that the park wanted to install.

Osbeck, however, struck on an idea. “The Jetline coaster is designed to be able to carry the weight and wind strength of a covering,” he said. “When we ordered it we thought maybe we’d cover it with a mountain. We decided not to do that because of the expenses, and probably that would look ugly. There are not many artificial mountains that look good.”

His idea was to utilize Jetline’s structural strength by building the Vilda Musen into it. With help from engineers Werner Stengel and Wendelin Stückl, Gerstlauer accomplished the feat. It made for a singular layout of the Gerstlauer mouse that not only engages in several fly-bys with the Jetline trains but has turns so sharp the manufacturer had to cut away some of the hood of the Vilde Musen’s cars.

The larger coaster is not the only ride with which Vilda Musen interacts, either. Coming off the lift hill mouse riders take a 180-degree curve that seems to pass right in the path of the 55-meter (180-feet) S&S Power Combo drop tower. Gröna Lund and Gerstlauer engineers went to the very edge of the TUV envelope when spacing the two rides. “There’s not much between them,” Osbeck said. “When you’re both moving pretty fast, it seems very narrow.” Additionally, Vilda Musen cars fly by the six rotating arms of the Mondial Top Scan ride.

By changing the experience for riders on the other three rides, Vilda Musen’s installation effectively created four new rides for Gröna Lund. And, by putting the Mouse’s station one story up, the park used the ground floor area for an arcade, souvenir shop and kiddie bumper cars. In a season marked by 32-degree Celsius (90-degree Fahrenheit) temperatures in July that kept local residents indoors or in water somewhere, Gröna Lund was fortunate to have the additional hardware, real and virtually real, this year. Vilda Musen has notched 550,000 riders, the other three attractions have seen increased ridership, Osbeck said, and the park pulled in 1.25 million visitors, about even as last year.

“You always get a good effect (on attendance) when you put in a new ride, and for us this was a pretty big ride,” Osbeck said. All four of them.

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Heaven helped them
The word “lunatic” derives from “lunar,” the moon, which is said to inspire madness in people. Martiatic is a whole other madness, and one experienced by guests at both Stone Mountain in Atlanta, Georgia, and Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York.

The occasion was Mars’ closest approach to earth in almost 60,000 years, a once-in-an epoch chance to throw a promotional event. Stone Mountain Park scheduled its “Mars Mania on the Mountain!” for August 29, two days after the red planet reached the epoch of its neighborliness. Stone Mountain figured a Friday night, especially one kicking off the three-day Labor Day weekend, would draw more guests than 5 a.m. (05,00) Wednesday morning when Mars made its closest pass.

The event had more historical meaning in Atlanta than that of some planet doing a near-miss, for this was the rare occasion when Stone Mountain itself was open after dark. After the park’s nightly laser show concluded about 8:30, guests were allowed to ride the skylift or walk the 1.3-mile (kilometer) trail to the top of the mountain. Up to a thousand people used the skylift and another couple hundred walked for a chance to view through one of 11 telescopes, two from astronomers at the nearby Fernbank Science Center and nine from eight members of the Atlanta Astronomy Club.

“The visibility from here was not that great,” said Christine Parker, Stone Mountain Park’s public relations director. “It was hit and miss with the clouds. Overall people just seemed excited to look through the telescopes, even to see a glimpse of (Mars), and talk to astronomers.” Most of all, people seemed excited to be standing on top of Stone Mountain at night. “A lot of people brought blankets, and after going through the line, they sat on the mountain and star gazed or looked at the Atlanta skyline.” An event that was supposed to end at midnight saw Parker escorting the astronomers back down the mountain at 1:45 in the morning (01,45).

Astroland Park on Coney Island, in partnership with the neighboring New York Aquarium, staged its “Mars Madness” last Saturday, more than a week after Mars’ visit. For one thing, the promotion didn’t go to waste on a Labor Day weekend night when traffic would be heavy anyway. For another Mars was not the only show in town—or, rather, in heaven. As astronomer Joe Patterson of Columbia University noted, the moon was particularly close September 6, too. “The moon was definitely more impressive than Mars, frankly,” said Jen Gapay, Astroland’s special events director who played Astro Girl for the occasion along with a co-worker who is particularly good with hula hoops, hence her stage name of Saturn Girl.

The event was themed to aliens. Astroland offered alien face painting, a live rock band dressed in alien ware and costume contests for children and adults with top prizes of $100 and passes to both the park and the aquarium. The Aquarium allowed special admission to its Alien Stingers exhibit featuring sea jellies, anemones and corals. The alien theme certainly drew a crowd—more adults entered the costume contest than kids, and many adults dressed as aliens didn’t even enter the competition—but seeing heavenly bodies on the beach was the true attraction.

These were authentic heavenly bodies, of course. The Columbia University astronomers set up four high-power telescopes about 30 feet out on the sand away from the boardwalk to minimize interference from park lights (they were joined by a hobbyist who brought his own telescope and offered it for public use, too). A consistent queue down the boardwalk of about 200 people, Gapay said, waited the chance to see Mars and the moon on a “beautifully clear night” throughout the 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. (20,30 to 23,30) event. It was a better-than-expected turnout, but, then, “we didn’t know what to expect,” Gapay said. “We never did a Mars event before.”

Nor are they likely to do so again; Mars won't be back for a few more epochs or so. Stone Mountain, however, had such a draw for making the mountain available at night the park is discussing with Fernbank a regular series of astronomy events on the granite top. At Astroland, Gapay said she may stage an event if Venus visits. “A meteor shower would be good, too.”

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Love of labor
SeaWorld Orlando in Florida has had a most prolific summer in terms of breeding.

A total of 45 births were recorded at the park in the past few months: 15 sea lions, 15 sting rays, three cow nose rays, six harbor seals, four dolphins and two flamingos. “It’s not completely out of the ordinary,” said publicist Jackie Wilson of the population boom, but it is a lot.

What may be out of the ordinary is that the animals on display are not the only ones experiencing a baby boom. Many of the park’s people on display are having babies, as well. Six of the 75 employees in SeaWorld’s Animal Training department have welcomed family additions this year.

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New Arrivals

Hattie showed the Knoebel crowds the form that makes her a great bird, and the missing feathers that keep her from flying. Photo courtesy of Knoebels Amusement Grove

It’s an eagle exhibit!
Knoebels Amusement Resort in Elysburg, Pennsylvania, announces the arrival of two American bald eagles, August 22, 2003. Measurements: two eagles, two rooms, one of them off-exhibit.

Long, long time ago, Knoebels had a petting zoo. The arrival of two bald eagles named Henry and Hattie after the park’s founders is the first time Knoebels has had live animals on display in at least 25 years.

Knoebels got back into the animal exhibiting business by mere happenstance. A veterinarian in Florida knows Page Knoebels, cousin of park President Dick Knoebels. Both the vet and cousin have an interest in animal rescue. The vet had the two eagles which, due to injuries, could not return to the wild. He happened to see a feature about Knoebels on the Discovery Channel, and when he ascertained the connection between his friend and the park, he decided Knoebels needed eagles.

“I think that had we thought about it as getting into the animal business, we would have had trepidations,” said Joe Muscato, Knoebels’ marketing director. “But it was more like, ‘Oooh, eagles!’ This ia a patriotic family with the Iwo Jima monument replica in the park, and these were birds that needed a home. This just seemed the right thing to do.”

Nevertheless, it was a complicated thing to do because of strict permit procedures the park had to go through with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The eagles must be displayed to provide an educational opportunity to the public—“We’ll build this into our school outings,” Muscato said—and the public must have unimpeded access to view the raptors. This requirement caused a hiccup in the process because Knoebels is an amusement park; Muscato said the park had a hard time convincing federal agents that every bit of the pay-as-you-ride park is unimpeded.

Meanwhile, with direction from a Pennsylvania raptor club, Dick Knoebels himself went to work on the exhibit itself. When it was done, club members looked at the rock and tree strewn exhibit in astonishment. “They said, ‘You needed to build a habitat; you didn’t have to build the best one in the world, but that’s OK,’” Muscato recalled. Even at the official welcoming ceremony August 22, featuring local officials and state representatives, Knoebel could not help pointing out his special brand of craftsmanship: “The cables you see supporting the structure are from the 16-car Elie Ferris wheel we’re not using anymore,” he told the crowd “in typical Dick fashion,” Muscato said.

The exhibit’s draw, of course, are Henry and Hattie. “From that moment (of the opening ceremony), a steady stream of people will wander up and look,” Muscato said. “People really get excited about it. People really just like seeing these two eagles up close and personal.”

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In the nursery
Other recent New Arrivals.

Adventure Science Center guests flipped over the museum’s BlueMax. Photo courtesy of MaxFlight.

It’s a simulator!
At last, the perfect break room. The Adventure Science Center in Nashville, Tennessee, opened its first-ever simulator July 11, 2003, a MaxFLight FS2000 two-seat flight simulator for pilot and weapons officer that the museum calls BlueMax. “This has been so wonderful for us,” said Amy Vineyard, the science center’s director of marketing. “When we lose our CEO, that’s where we find him.” Of course, he has to stand in line. All summer BlueMax, the first flight simulator in the Nashville area, drew long queues as guests of all ages paid $4 per member, $5 per non member for the chance to fly. “The Science Center is all about hands-on learning,” Vineyard said. “One of our focuses is air and space, so it’s a perfect fit for us.” In fact, the center is about to embark on a Centennial of Flight celebration, and the BlueMax will be a major promotional piece. Helping with funding of and exhibits around the BlueMax was the Aerospace Department of Middle Tennessee State University. The university officials’ assistance wasn’t all altruistic, apparently. “They came up and flew it, too,” Vineyard said.

Phantasialand’s new hotel put the Asia in the German park’s name. Photo courtesy of Phantasialand

It’s a hotel!
Drawing on the “Asia” in Phantasialand, the Brühl, Germany, park decided to give its China Town section more than a genuine-looking thematic facade, but to make that facade a genuine hotel with genuine Chinese craftsmanship. The Hotel Phantasia opened July 4, 2003, with a press preview of the hotel’s spacious lobby and a sampling of its 165 rooms, like the family rooms featuring bunk beds shaped as Chinese junks. The 14,300-square-meter/153,924 square-feet hotel includes a restaurant, terrace, show kitchen, bar, five elevators and “lots of wood,” said Christoph Molitor of Phantasialand’s marketing department. “With the richness in detail and craftsmanship, it is a most spectacular building.”

A volcano cooled off guests at Myrtle Waves’ Saturation Station. Photo courtesy of Myrtle Waves

It’s a water play structure!
The second of KoalaPlay Group’s interactive water structures opened for play at Myrtle Waves Water Park in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on July 1, 2003. Like the first one at Quassy in Connecticut (THE LOOP July 11, 2003), this one is called Saturation Station and includes two four-level platforms connected by wood plank bridges, three slides and dozens of water shooters and fountains, with a capacity of 150 people, large and small. The tiki theming, including a net full of coconuts, is capped not by a tipping bucket but by a 700-gallon volcano that erupts onto the guests below every six to eight minutes.

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AZA Report

For a list of exhibitors, click here

African dancers and drummers got the AZA Opening Session off to a rousing start (above) and Hanna gave the delegates an arousing conclusion. Photos by Eric Minton/THE LOOP

Seizing an opening
Jack Hanna had a tough act to follow.

Andean musicians, Japanese drummers and African dancers woke the crowd up for Monday morning’s Opening Session and Ceremony of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association’s 2003 Annual Conference in Columbus, Ohio. Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman extolled his city (among the platitudes Columbus is ranked the eighth best city for pets) and exhorted the delegates to spend money while in his city. Then came Dewey Stokes, Franklin County commissioner.

“I’ve noted the theme of your conference, ‘Re:Connect with Wildlife,’ and that got me to thinking about tonight’s pub crawl” he said of that evening’s scheduled social event. “I’m a little worried for our local residents. I’ve met a few of you and I’m not sure what to expect.” The joke brought appreciative applause from a group known for following intensive work sessions with intensive socializing.

The morning’s key moment, unquestionably, was the keynote, given to the audience of about 1,100 by a reluctant Jack Hanna, director emeritus of the host Columbus Zoo and Aquarium and world-famous television star. In his latter guise he has become a lightning rod of controversy. On one side, PETA-type objectors demonize him because he represents zoos; on the other side, conservative animal collection officials cringe at his penchant for taking animals on late night talk shows and education outreach programs that include public handling of otherwise wild species. Despite years of being in the public eye, Hanna was obviously nervous at the AZA podium. “I probably worked harder on this speech than on my television shows,” he said in an interview afterward.

In that speech, interspersed with videos of Columbus Zoo's outreach program and clips from his own TV shows through the years, Hanna made no apologies for his opinion that children should be allowed to lay hands on and otherwise experience in their classrooms or hospital wards the wonders of wildlife. He also urged the AZA delegates to intertwine entertainment into their conservation and education missions because the first is the most effective way to get the general public interested in and supportive of the last two. He set up an analogy with NASA. “We don’t know 90 percent of what NASA does,” he told the audience. “We don’t know all that they’re doing in research and satellite development. What we do know is the space shuttle launches are cool to watch, that space walks are like science fiction.

“One hundred and twenty-one million visitors come to our zoos each year. Most understand the F word: fun.”

It wasn't so much what Hanna said as what he showed of himself throughout his presentation. AZA Director Syd Butler, in presenting Hanna with a plaque of appreciation, noted his passion for what he does and compassion for all he reaches. And while, as Hanna said in the interview afterward, his ongoing television and outreach programs are not intended to “reach the people in this room,” he at least wanted the people in the room to, if not like him, to understand him. “I expected people to walk out (during the speech),” he said.

No one did. Instead, upon ending his speech with a graceful benediction—“I respect all you’ve done for the animal world; I hope I’ve earned your respect as well”—the audience rose to a sustained standing ovation. Hanna sat down trying to stifle tears. “I had a few tears in my eyes, I admit it,” he said later. “To get a standing ovation from this group was one of the great highlights of my life.”

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Oklahoma City Zoo’s Tara Henson dared to match antics—if not outfits—with The Menus’ Goldrainer. Photo by Eric Minton/THE LOOP

On The Menus
This story is for all those who bugged out early—and it’s a souvenir for those who didn’t. It also allows me to relive my days as a music critic 20 years ago before, even,The Menus were getting started.

Capping Zoo Day Wednesday night at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Jack Hanna, with all the gusto of a classic rock deejay, introduced The Menus, Ohio’s most popular cover band. Lead Singer Tim Goldrainer emerged dressed as Hanna, complete with blond wig. The joke, cheered by the Columbus Zoo crew, was unappreciated by the rest of the audience simply because the rest of the audience didn’t know what was yet in store for them (the Columbus Zoo staff did know because The Menus play regularly at the zoo’s annual Zoofari fund-raising gala).

The Hanna costume was the first of seven Goldrainer wore through two sets. He came out in 1950s styles women’s bathing suits, a frilly halter top with chartreuse leopard-spotted micro skirt, stars-and-stripes shorts and cape, and backless shorts. Such was his costume-changing acumen it inspired no less a person than AZA's Immediate Past President John Lewis. At Thursday night's closing banquet, Lewis switched from suit to an AZA "I Am Aware" T-shirt to swear in the new board members. Changing back into his suit, Lewis told the audience, "The guy in the band last night taught me how to do this."

Costume changes was just a small part of the guy in the band's showmanship. When he wasn’t wearing a wild hat, wig, shark head cap or Elmo head, he flung around long locks of black hair that, Medusa-like, had lives of its own. He maintained almost constant repartee with the audience, singling out people who looked like Burl Ives and Kenny Rogers, giving away plush dolls and archaic LP albums. Goldrainer also was an able mimic, singing as Jim Morrison, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Bob Seger, the Commodores’ Clyde Orange and, briefly, Brittany Spears. Throughout the show he popped confetti balloons hanging 10 feet above the stage; popped them with his high-kicking feet.

Most of all, though, Goldrainer is a musician, and his antics in no way detracted from the band’s solid play: John Casster on bass, Steve Chiori on guitar, Jimmy Orwig on keyboards and falsetto vocal, Brandon Ryan on drums, and Goldrainer himself. His vocal range not only covered the gamut of superstar singers but the spectrum of musical genres from classic rock to country to R&B, and he could scale octave after octave at will.

“This is the best band we’ve ever had at a zoo conference,” said Liza Herschel of Proprietary Media, who has been attending national and regional conferences for seven years. Much of the audience seemed to agree. The large dance floor in front of the zoo amphitheater’s stage was as jammin’ packed with people at the end of the show—which included an encore—as it was at the beginning.

The Audubon Institute, next year’s annual conference host, will likely give us a slate of New Orleans jazz, which is both good and appropriate. But here’s hoping they put The Menus on their entertainment menu, too.

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Woes be gone
No question, it has been a troubled zoo. No doubt, too, it has a brighter future than its dismal recent past.

Even before the American Zoo and Aquarium Association tabled the accreditation renewal application last spring of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoological Park (National Zoo) in Washington, D.C., the zoo already was pursuing a new strategic plan. The AZA’s action, effectively putting the zoo on probation for one year, in fact fit in with the zoo’s efforts to accomplish that plan.