Volume 3, No. 18. September 26,2003
Not
on their Wachee
In a lot of ways, Weeki Wachee and Cypress Gardens are alike. Both are historic
Florida attractions founded in the formative days of the state’s tourism
industry. Both relied on a combination of natural beauty and singular entertainment
to pull in tourists. Both saw that tourism traffic dwindle in the face of higher
tech, flashier competition in Orlando and a changing demographic.
In
one important way, both were different. The 56-year-old Weeki Wachee fell into
disrepair from a lack of investment, whereas 67-year-old Cypress Gardens maintained
its facilities until the day it closed last spring. And therein lies an even
more significant difference between the two parks: “Cypress Gardens closed
themselves. We want to keep Weeki Wachee open. We want to save the tradition
of the mermaids,” said John Athanason, the park’s director of marketing.
The
park’s landlord, the Southwest Florida Water Management District, agreed.
On Tuesday the state agency’s governing board approved the management team’s
business plan and decided not to forfeit the lease. It was a close call.
Due
to years of neglect the property was unkempt and some of the buildings termite
ridden. Only the park’s famous mermaids—swimmers in fish tails performing
synchronized water ballet in a clear-spring water theater—distinguished
Weeki Wachee. That, though, was a key distinguishment, much as the water skiers
were for Cypress Gardens in Winter Haven. “The mermaids are what made Weeki
Wachee,” Athanason said. “People come still from all over the world
to see the world-famous Weeki Wachee mermaids. It’s like Shamu is to SeaWorld,
Mickey Mouse is to Disney, the mermaids are to Weeki Wachee.”
Athanason
also points out that the mermaids’ theater, with audiences sitting 16 feet
below the surface watching the mermaids not in an aquarium tank but in an actual
spring, also has significant historic value. “No one could ever duplicate
that kind of theater again. I’m a native Floridian and it would just kill
me to see this park go away. I remember coming here as a boy, and I had a crush
on the mermaids. And the little girls, you see the wonder in their eyes. Mermaids
have that mystical thing behind them, and this is the closest thing you’ll
see to real mermaids, with turtles swimming by and manatees and occasional alligators.”
The
park’s previous owners/leaseholders had not kept up the park, Athanason
said, and ignored the Southwest Florida Water Management District’s demands
and deadlines. Then, rather than fix up the park, the absentee owners on August
1 donated it to the city of Weeki Wachee—population nine people. Robyn
Anderson, a former mermaid, not only is the park’s general manager, she’s
the town’s mayor. Athanason, too, is a town resident. Rather than cave
in, they decided to try to save the park.
“We
basically had two weeks to put together a business plan,” Athanason said.
The residents/staff went to work cleaning up the property, demolishing some
of the old buildings and fixing up what facilities they could. “We have
made more progress in four weeks than what the previous owners did in four years,”
Athanason said. The park mounted a “Save Our Tails” fundraising campaign,
and Home Depot donated lumber. “Cypress Gardens (closing) had a lot to
do with it," Athanason said. "There was a public outcry to save Florida’s
historic attractions, and now comes news this one is about to close.” Meanwhile,
Buccaneer Bay, a spring-fed waterpark with modern facilities, earns the park
some income.
Noting
the efforts, the Water Management District postponed a final decision on the
property until this month. The business plan Weeki Wachee’s staff put together
calls for further facility rehabilitation, improving the kiddie pool at Buccaneer
Bay and doing more educational shows at Weeki Wachee. The staff also comes with
impressive credentials; Anderson is a 19-year veteran of the park, much of the
rest of the management has been in place more than a dozen years, and others
like Athanason came in with theme park experience from other Florida attractions.
Handcuffed by lack of money and support from absentee owners, the staff had
maintained frustrated vigil over their prized park and now relish the opportunity
to bring it new life, though that requires working seven-day weeks.
Still, heading into Tuesday’s meeting, Athanason said, the Water Management District’s governing board “wanted to tell us we had a default of the lease. But with all the public support and the nostalgia this park has, they decided to work with us and were very cooperative. There’s a couple of minor things they want to change in the lease. The main thing is they want to keep this park alive.”
Storming
through
An aquarium flooded. A theme park’s trees toppled. A zoo’s power lost.
A canvas roof ripped, a park buyout postponed, and an island of fun amid a community
in the dark. Hurricane Isabel swept ashore last Thursday afternoon at the North
Carolina Outer Banks and sped through a mid-Atlantic region of the United States
not frequented by such storms. Key components of this particular hurricane,
which had downgraded to a tropical depression by the time it moved through Philadelphia,
were the storm surge coming at high tide in the Chesapeake Bay and heavy rainfall
on a region already waterlogged from a summer of excessive rain.
Along the way Isabel
left a swath of unforgettable experiences among parks, zoos and aquariums.
Virginia Zoological
Park, Norfolk, Virginia
Despite losing 25 trees, the zoo suffered no damage to its exhibits or fence
lines, and a rapid cleanup effort on Friday had the park ready to open to the
public Saturday morning. Except, the park still had no power. Not until Tuesday
did power return, and Wednesday the zoo finally opened to the public. Generators
powered all animal holding gates and animal food storage, but not the restaurant
freezers. City ordinance required the zoo to throw all that food out and thoroughly
clean up the storage lockers and be re-permitted before putting food back in.
Thus, the restaurant remained closed, but the zoo’s Executive Director
Lewis Greene expected it to resume operations today or Saturday. “I’m
pleasantly surprised at how fast (city inspectors) have been getting to restaurants
all around the city to get them re-permitted,” Green said.
The park’s
annual ZooToDo fundraiser was scheduled for last Saturday and has been re scheduled
for tomorrow. Afterward, the zoo plans to help a neighbor in need, the Norfolk
Botanical Garden, which lost more than 400 trees and took significant damage
to four of its gardens. “As soon as we’re done with ZooToDo we’ll
send our staff over to help them out,” Greene said. Given that Isabel did
little damage to his own property, Greene was thankful for the experience. “Now
we’re going to sit down and figure out what we did well and what we need
to work on so we can be prepared for the next storm. Before the storm hit, I
instructed the staff to write things down. I told them 'When you find something,
think about something, don’t depend on remembering it later: write it down.'”
Busch Gardens,
Williamsburg, Virginia
With plenty of warning of Isabel’s coming, the Busch Gardens staff spent
a week preparing for the storm. “We took in anything that could be a projectile,”
said Diane Centeno, public relations manager at the park. “We took in all
our Howl-O-Scream decorations and stored them, took in picnic tables and hanging
baskets and boarded up windows.” The landscape-award-winning park couldn’t
take in its trees, though. The number downed was “substantial,” Centeno
said, though she didn’t have an exact number. One tree fell on the Skyride
cables, so that ride will remain closed for the rest of the season. Otherwise,
Busch Gardens escaped structural damage.
Busch Gardens used
its own landscaping staff and called in other experts to clean up the debris
and inspect remaining trees to ensure their safety, a job which meant keeping
the park closed throughout the weekend, although full power did not return to
the park until Monday, anyway. The park was to reopen today with a soft opening
of Howl-O-Scream, which was supposed to have had its grand opening today, but
all of the decorations and attractions will not be restored until next week,
Centeno said. Meanwhile, Busch Gardens had staff issues to consider. “We
had a lot of employees who had personal issues to take care of,” Centeno
said, like tree damage on their own properties and continuing power outages.
Busch Entertainment consequently authorized early paycheck distribution to its
employees. “People need money. They’ve been without power so they're
having to pay for more food and batteries,” said Centeno, who did not get
power back to her own home until Tuesday.
Paramount’s
Kings Dominion, Doswell, Virginia
In Virginia alone, more than 1.8 million customers were without power. More
than 9,000 utility poles fell thanks to the combination of wind, rain and an
already soggy earth. In the middle of this darkness stood Paramount’s Kings
Dominion, literally a beacon of light. The park didn’t even lose power
in the height of the storm. “Our remote location (in the rural space between
Richmond and Washington), which sometimes causes people to say we’re out
in the middle of nowhere, was a benefit this time,” said Michael Sanfilippo,
the park’s advertising and public relations manager. “We get our power
direct from a substation, and our wires are under ground.”
Except for a few
toppled trees—none in any of the landscaped areas—Kings Dominion suffered
no damage and could have opened Saturday. However, after a thoroughly cleaning
and inspection, the park opened Sunday to what Sanfilippo described as a “typical
crowd on a fall Sunday. People didn’t have power, electricity, telephone;
they needed something to do.” Because Busch Gardens was still closed, Kings
Dominion also honored that day’s Busch Gardens tickets as well as season
pass holders. Then, in the middle of the afternoon, park officials decided to
open again on Monday because the schools would be closed. “We felt we could
staff the park adequately,” Sanfilippo said. “We were doing what we
felt to be a public service to our community.” He said park management
was “very satisfied” with the attendance, “considering we made
the decision mid-afternoon Sunday. We did some scrambling to get the word out.”
Six Flags America,
Largo, Maryland
Like the region’s other theme parks and zoos, Six Flags America staff spent
the days before Isabel’s arrival battening down the park. “As soon
as we heard (of the storm’s path), the 411 went out via e-mails and meetings,”
said Public Relations Manager Karin Korpowski. “We took down any signs
that were not fixed directly to a building, took in all the trash bins, tied
down all the (waterpark) rafts and lawn chairs, cleared all the drains.”
At stake for the
weekend were two private buyouts of the park. With no power Saturday morning,
that day’s event was postponed a week. When electricity returned to the
park just before noon, operations and maintenance crews spent the rest of the
day inspecting and testing all the rides, and Sunday’s private event “went
off without a hitch,” Korpowski said. Meanwhile, the Annapolis resident
remained Thursday without power at her own home. “I think I’m the
last one (on the staff) who doesn’t have power,” she said.
National Aquarium,
Baltimore, Maryland
Preparation, dating all the way back to the aquarium’s construction, saved
the Inner Harbor institute from certain catastrophe as Isabel’s surge flooded
downtown Baltimore. For the purpose of architectural drama as well as the potential
of 100-year flood levels, the aquarium design locates all the animal exhibits
above the ground floor. Thursday’s surge was a 100-year flood. The aquarium
has permanently installed backup generators which can provide 36 hours of coverage,
and a supply of oxygen is kept on hand should the generators fail. Upon Isabel’s
approach, the aquarium pre-leased a tractor-trailer sized generator to arrive
immediately after the storm “in case power was interrupted and restoration
delayed,” said Jenny Fiegel, media relations assistant manager. Thirteen
staff rode out the storm in the main aquarium building and another four stayed
on at an off-site animal care center.
All of that preparation
proved essential. As flood waters began seeping into the building the staff
cut off the electrical supply themselves as a preventive measure and turned
operations over to the generators. But the generators sputtered off when water
got into their main fuel tanks. The staff then supplied animals with oxygen
for several hours until new fuel could be ferried in for the generators. The
normal power supply was restored Friday afternoon. Though the exhibits and animals
were above the flood waters, the ground floor conservation/education and volunteer
offices endured significant damage. Both staffs now occupy a single classroom,
“A lot of people in a small space,” Fiegel said. “But everybody
has pulled together to make sure we get through this.” The aquarium reopened
Sunday and hosted 3,000 visitors, which was “close to what we were expecting”
without the storm, Fiegel said.
New Jersey State
Aquarium, Camden, New Jersey
The irony here was that while the aquarium officials knew Isabel would probably
strike—and it was not much more than a tropical depression when it did
strike—they knew they’d lose their giant tent top which covers the
aquarium’s 760,000-gallon (2,877-kiloliter) Open Ocean Tank housing, among
its 4,000 animals, 13 sharks. The canvas roof had already ripped during one
of the Philadelphia area’s heavy snowfalls this past winter, and the aquarium
was still finalizing bids for a new temporary cover before it could build a
hard structure later this year.
The aquarium secured the canvas as well as possible and had engineers posted to watch the tent. Sure enough, when Isabel rolled in about 7 p.m. (19,00) the canvas started ripping. The engineers sent out an SOS, and various staff came in to drag the tarp away from the shark tank. “It sounded like a movie to me,” Public Relations Manager Jesse Cute said. “All these people working through the storm, in the darkness, rain pelting them” heroically saving sea life. Then the aquarium’s publicity team jumped on the incident for its promotional value because the Open Ocean Tank now had no roof, allowing aerial views and a look at the tank in open sunshine. “Never before have the animals been so vivid,” said an aquarium press release.
Postwar promise
The word is one of the most important in the Turkish language: “inshallah.”
The literal translation is “Allah willing,” and it is integral to
any forecast, analysis, prophecy or plan.
Thus,
after the first part of her waterpark’s year was almost totally wiped out
by the impact of the Iraqi War, Nihan Ozbakir, sales and marketing manager for
AquaLand in Antalya, Turkey, noted that traffic began to pick up slightly through
the summer. “September, we’ll see proper numbers, at least,”
she said, and she anticipates rising attendance through November as tourists
who stayed away in the spring return in the fall for their annual fill of this
Mediterranean coast resort city. “Inshallah,” Ozbakir hastened to
add.
War
in the Middle East may have had a rippling effect through the amusement industry
around the world, but for parks in the Middle East the effect was more tsunami-like.
AquaLand, a 40,000-square-meter (10-acre) waterpark founded by Alke Tourism
in 1996 and now part of a 3.5-kilometer (2-mile) entertainment district called
Beachpark Antalya, regularly bested 200,000 visitors per year. About 85 percent
of its guests were tourists, primarily from Russia, who spent week-long holidays
in Antalya. That flow cut to a trickle thanks to Middle East woes.
Ozbakir
has been attempting to diversify AquaLand’s demographic makeup in view
of how events beyond her park’s control could so drastically cut into attendance.
“We are trying to push the schools and youth conferences (camps),”
she said. “We’re also trying to push local business. But everybody’s
trying to push the local market.”
Competition
is fierce in Antalya. Rival Aquapark opened nearby a few years ago, and hotels
are adding waterpark elements to their pools. “Hotels, about 95 or 98 percent
of them, are operating as all-inclusive (properties),” Ozbakir said. “That
gives us a hard time to operate.”
Like
the heroes of ancient Middle East mythology, dolphins came to AquaLand’s
rescue this year. In February 2002 Alke Tourism opened DolphinLand adjoining
AquaLand. The 5,500-square-meter (59,201-square-foot), 718-seat marine mammal
stadium, the third largest in Europe and up until recently the only one in Turkey,
this year presents a show featuring dolphins, sea lions and Black Sea white
whales.
The
dolphin show carried the business through the war, Ozbakir said, in part because
it helped attract in-country visitors. While the Mediterranean-caressed Antalya
has a long tourism season from March through November, DolphinLand gives AquaLand
a year-round product, which is vital when your primary market, Russian tourists,
traditionally don’t travel in winter months. The marine mammal show also
gives AquaLand an edge with tour operators, primary bookers of most of the week-long
and 10-day holidays to Antalya. “It’s a new park, it’s for all
ages, it’s easier to sell,” Ozbakir said. “Most hotels have small
waterparks, so it’s not easy to sell the waterpark as a daily excursion.
Dolphins are something else.” Packaging AquaLand with DolphinLand provides
a price-point advantage for tour operators, too.
DolphinLand is working on another element that could further enhance AquaLand’s appeal: a swim-with-the-dolphins program. The park still must obtain certification to offer the program to the public, but it already is conducting dolphin swims as therapy for children from a private German hospital, Ozbakir said. Such a product would position AquaLand among tourists and locals alike to better withstand wars, weather and other woes. Inshallah.
Reversal of fortune
Whether your economy is wracked by war, SARS, heat, rain or a currency crisis,
outside the-box thinking is one of the surest means to survival. Or, in the
case of Parque DA Monica in Brazil, backward thinking.
In a country still
struggling to regain economic vitality, the two indoor family amusement parks—one
in Sao Paulo, the other in Rio De Janeiro—themed after the popular Brazilian
television character Monica were seeing a 40 percent increase in sales the first
half of this year compared with last year. Considering the ailing Brazilian
economy last year that is only now beginning to recover, one might think that
40 percent increase figure a bit skewered by perspective.
Not so, said Francisco
Lopes, Parque DA Monica’s CEO. “Last year was tremendous,” he
said of his properties which attracted some 1 million guests. This year simply
has been even better.
The secret has
been a shift in marketing strategy. Instead of going after families with more
money, the 10,000-square-meter (107,639-square-foot) indoor parks for children
2 to 10 years old targeted families with little money, especially during off-peak
periods. “They pay less, but it’s off season,” Lopes said. “And
when they are inside the park, they will buy and eat and drink. They usually
spend more per cap than the usual customer. It’s understandable; this is
the occasion they can come to the park. They don’t know when they will
come back.”
Lopes has used
birthday parties, strong targeted advertising and school groups to promote the
Parque DA Monica to lower income families. For school groups he altered his
live shows to take on educational themes, such as recycling. The parks have
also launched driving schools—“We teach them what’s important
in terms of driving and how children must behave while their parents are driving,”
Lopes said—concluding with the opportunity to drive tyke-size cars in a
mini city. This summer Parque DA Monica introduced “Engineers of the Park”
where children work together building structures with plastic blocks and fabric.
The Sao Paulo Monica
is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, which has also contributed to
the company’s growth. All year the park has offered parades featuring the
Monica characters, it is putting on a Halloween party next month and a “big
event at Christmas,” Lopes said.
Next year should
be even better, if the continent’s economies rebound. Overall, the amusement
industry in Latin America has been saddled with the countries’ high unemployment
and devalued currency, which makes capital improvements too costly vis-à-vis
the admission prices parks can charge guests. The upside is that attendance
continues to grow at amusement venues because “South Americans like to
go outside and celebrate and have fun,” Lopes said. As Brazil’s government
continues to slash interest rates, Lopes sees investors coming back to the market.
“I believe the Brazilian market has tremendous potential for the future.”
Even if it does not, Parque DA Monica should fare well because of the management philosophy and marketing acumen of its operators. “A good marketing strategy along with hard work, recognition of good employees and training; those are all things we know,” Lopes said. “But we also have focus. We know what our customers want and we try to reach these targets. I don’t believe in magical formulas.”
Soured enthusiasm
This is the park that built an effective marketing campaign by catering to coaster
enthusiasts. This is the park that forged a family-type relationship with those
enthusiasts. This is the park where an enthusiast pushed the thrill envelope
too far and fell to her death from the back seat of a roller coaster train.
However,
it was enthusiasts’ behavior in the aftermath of that tragedy that caused
Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari to decide that, for next year at least,
it would not host enthusiast events (see story in Extra!
Extra!). In a letter to 20 enthusiast club presidents and Internet forum
administrators, Holiday World also announced a new zero tolerance policy, permanently
banning from the park people who have engaged in unsafe behavior on rides or
even announced an intention to do so on the Internet.
“It’s
not the happiest day in my life,” Holiday World President Will Koch said
the day he made public the letter. “We’ve enjoyed a wonderful relationship
with the coaster enthusiasts over the years. The vast majority I would call
friends, we trust and get along with them just great. It’s this dang fringe
element out there, and we feel it’s time we put our foot down and say ‘enough
is enough.’”
Gone
is the annual Stark Raven Mad, which would have celebrated its 10th year next
season. The event had become one of the most popular coaster enthusiast gatherings
every year; but it was at May’s Stark Raven Mad that a woman, whom investigators
determined was standing in the back seat of The Raven roller coaster,
fell to her death.
Contributing
to Holiday World’s decision was the fact that next year’s Stark Raven
Mad would ostensibly have been an anniversary of the tragedy. “It would
be darn difficult to be here and be happy and have fun,” Koch said. “It’s
hard to imagine that. It would be difficult and painful for our ride operators.
Several of them are still struggling with what we went through in May. And,
the idea of being here worrying about what people are doing played into it.”
Exacerbating
that last point were Internet postings Holiday World officials saw throughout
the summer which festered the hurt of May’s accident: enthusiasts bragging
about their daredevil antics on coasters, enthusiasts offering detailed instruction
on how to subvert park safety procedures, and enthusiasts making what Koch said
are “libelous” claims about Holiday World activities.
“The
Internet is the great frontier, the wild west,” Koch said. “It’s
wide open, and you can post without having your name attached. I don’t
want to make it sound like we’re opposed to anybody saying anything negative
about the park, but the issue is talking about and planning ways to override
safety procedures and mechanisms, or saying things authoritatively that are
just not true. Those things really bother us. It’s not our desire to reign
in free discussion about what people like and don’t like about parks and
roller coasters, but we all need to be on the same page as far as safety is
concerned. We don’t need people out there planning ways to subvert our
systems.”
ACE
President Carole Sanderson feels enthusiast clubs are being unfairly blamed
for past incidents and tasked with sole responsibility for policing even those
people who are not club members. “What’s annoying to me as an individual,
not as president of ACE, is what do they do with the public? ACE is not a professional
organization,” she said: it’s a hobbyist organization. “Out of
8,500, we have our 5 or 10 percent that are problems. I don’t have a problem
getting rid of whackos.” However, citing a lack of rider responsibility
laws in many states and other enforcement standards, she said, “There’s
a lot more issues out there we need to address than a few bad ACE members.”
She
admitted that ACE had been reluctant to kick out violators of the organization’s
code of conduct because of lawsuit threats. When ACE removed a board member
several years ago, the resulting lawsuit cost the organization about $18,000
in legal fees though the organization won the suit. Nevertheless, even before
May’s tragedy at Holiday World, ACE had inaugurated new standards concerning
on-ride photography and member responsibility at ACE events, and since the accident
the organization has stiffened its resolve to take disciplinary action against
any member who violates the club’s code of conduct (THE
LOOP, June 27, 2003). Four such cases already have been advanced, turned
in by parks and other members; in two of them, the charged members quit the
club. Now ACE has no jurisdiction over their behavior, but they are still out
there visiting parks.
It
is specifically those “fringe enthusiasts” Koch is targeting. Still,
he wants the clubs and web administrators to take a stronger stand and more
formative action against such safety hazarders, and he wants to start meaningful
dialogue on this issue among other parks.
His
is a gutsy move. Cedar Fair in late August sent to enthusiast clubs a letter
signed by Ronald K. Fussner, corporate director of loss prevention, reiterating
Cedar Fair safety standards and asking the clubs to clamp down on violators
at Exclusive Ride Time events. Still, Cedar Point is scheduled to host next
year’s annual ACE Coaster Con.
Holiday
World’s move to cancel next year’s events (the park has made no decision
on 2005 or beyond) risks an enthusiasts’ backlash, one which would be broadcast
on the very same Internet forums that built the park’s national stature
in the first place. “I hope things go back to the way they used to be,”
Koch said. “Heck, we love that relationship.” Which is the other side
of the coin in Koch’s action: among amusement parks, Holiday World arguably
carries the most clout among enthusiasts, and the park’s decision is, at
the least, a profound wake-up call.
“There’s
a significant risk that the enthusiasts are not going to find the doors as open
as they used to be,” Koch said. “To do things they like to do, changes
are going to have to happen. At least at Holiday World that is true.”
Ticket
mastering
Evaluation was needless. When Universal Studios Hollywood tested its new print-at
home tickets in mid-June, “Immediately there was consumer demand,”
said Joshua Cole, the park’s director of interactive marketing. “We
were surprised. On day one people were coming to the gate with their (home-printed)
tickets. We went from the test right into continuous usage.”
The opportunity
to offer home-printed tickets grew out of the park’s on-line selling capability
through its web site. In conjunction with Sygnus Entertainment, Universal Studios
Hollywood decided to extend the capability to order tickets on line by allowing
the public to print out their own tickets. The attractiveness to customers was
the chance to bypass the ticket kiosks and the will-call windows and go straight
to the turnstiles where their bar-coded printouts could be scanned like any
other ticket.
Universal Studios took into account any foibles that come with home printouts:
low ink, bad toner, paper jams and coffee spills, some of which can happen to
traditionally shipped tickets, as well. The tickets therefore come with two
identical bar codes, one in the upper right corner, one in the lower left. “If
there’s a spill or ink splotch affecting one, the other will come out well,”
Cole said. If the guest arrives with a ticket that has been folded, spindled
or mutilated or is otherwise unreadable by the scanner, the guest could use
a confirmation number to have a new ticket printed at guest relations.
The computer also
knows if a ticket or its bar code is being used more than once. “With any
kind of ticketing program some people would find fraudulent ways to get into
the park, but so far so good,” Cole said. “We’ve only had a positive
experience.”
One element did
need tweaking. One of the benefits of printing your own ticket is to avoid shipping
charges. Some guests would order the at-home tickets but, because they didn’t
have their own printer, use the confirmation number to get a printout at the
park and so avoid the shipping charges. “We had to add ‘Access to
a printer required’ on the program,” Cole said.
Guests also can enhance their home-printed tickets with season passes and front-of-the line passes. In terms of staff training, it is just another ticket for front gate and guest service employees. In terms of public use, the ratio of print-at-home tickets mirrors that of the park’s general demographic, used by both locals and tourists.
But in one significant
aspect, it’s a whole new ticket. “I’ve
worked shifts at the front gate,” Cole said. “One of the benefits
that makes me excited—and I saw this from the get-go—was how happy
(guests) were with the ticket, especially when they see long lines. There was
a pride, as if they were saying, ‘I was smart enough to do this, I’m
so tech savvy.’”
So is Universal Studios Hollywood.
Nightfall rises
again
Night was about to fall on Nightfall, but the fictional town got a new lease
in life thanks to a new lease for its real counterpart, Old Tucson Studios in
Old Tucson, Arizona. Last week, Pima County agreed after a couple of contentious
years of negotiations to grant the venerable studio and amusement park a revised
lease, reducing the annual rent from $300,000 to $50,000 and giving the park
10 years to repay back rent with interest (see story in Extra!
Extra!).
The
park owners and the landlord county had been moving toward an agreement for
several weeks, but at the end of August Old Tucson officials announced that
their annual Halloween event, Nightfall, would be canceled. The decision may
not have directly influenced the Pima County Board of Supervisors, but the fact
that an 11-year tradition and the region’s most popular October outing—not
to mention Old Tucson’s primary moneymaking event—would be going by
the wayside shook up the community and illustrated just how dire Old Tucson’s
economic state had become.
The
real reason Nightfall was canceled, however, was uncertainty over the park’s
future, said David Girton, Old Tucson’s vice president of operations and
general manager. Staff continued planning for the event even after its demise
was announced, but no money was actually spent on the material, equipment or
talent needed for turning Old Tucson into the town of Nightfall with its own
special mazes, rides and shows. “Nightfall is our big money maker of the
year, it has always been,” Girton said of the event that drew more than
50,000 to the park last year. “Ownership was not going to not do it if
they could. But, you also aren’t going to pour the money into opening the
doors without the knowledge that you are going to be here.”
By
the time the new lease was agreed to, Nightfall didn’t have enough time
to come to full fruition. “We’re not going to have the time to implement
the programs that our customers have come to expect in an event called Nightfall,”
Girton said. However, the park had already booked groups for a smaller scale
event, so the park decided to name it Nightfall Presents Frightfest and open
it to the general public for almost half the price ($9.59 instead of $16.95)
and for just 13 days instead of the entire month. “We got everything together
we could get together with a short stream of money,” Girton said. “It
will be a nice strong event.”
Frightfest
will feature a stage show, Old Tucson’s strong suit, called "Frightmares:
Dead Again"; the "Scary Slinger Show," a takeoff on TV talk show
host Jerry Springer; two walk-through mazes, one of those the park’s mine;
talking gargoyles doing a comedy routine and something called Manimal, a “split-second
horrifying event” in the Old Tucson town square. For the first time in
years, too, the park will add haunt features to its train ride.
“For
people coming out, I don’t think it will be a disappointment,” Girton
said. “If they thought 17 dollars was worth it in the past, they will think
this is more than worth ($10).” As for the ideas and designs Girton’s
staff didn’t have time to implement this year, “the beauty of that
is it’s finished for next year.”
The beauty of that is that for Old Tucson, there will be a next year.
Not so funereal
Death is at the heart of Halloween, with facsimiles of the dead scaring the
living. Still, most haunters avoid staging an actual funeral.
Not
Kennywood. The West Miflin, Pennsylvania, amusement park opened its second annual
Phantom Fright Nights on September 12 with a mock funeral. “We were looking
for something different,” said John Rodgers, Kennywood’s director
of promotions. “Obviously, this is different.”
The
park teamed up with one of Pittsburgh’s top rock ’n’ roll radio
stations to promote a contest inviting people to apply for the chance to attend
their own funeral and hear their own eulogy with six friends serving as pall
bearers. The only stipulation set by the radio station was that the dearly not-so-departed
could not stand over 6-foot-5 or weigh more than 300 pounds. Good thing; the
winner from among 73 applicants weighed 250 pounds, “and that was a challenge,”
Rodgers said. “His friends were complaining as they picked him up and put
him into the hearse. Next time we’ll ask for somebody 5-foot-5.”
The
centerpiece to the whole promotion in Rodgers’ eyes was the hearse, an
authentic Civil War-era horse-drawn wagon purchased at a Buffalo, New York,
auction a couple of weeks before. “It was just too good to pass up,”
Rodgers said. The Kennywood carpenters and mechanics refurbished the hearse,
Marketing Director Keith Hood provided horses Nell and Bell from a farm in Ligonier,
Pennsylvania, and an appropriately dressed driver and footman completed the
effect.
The
deceased, made up to appear gaunt, was laid out in one of the steel coffins
Kennywood had made for Phantom Fright Nights. “We had to take the top off
because there was not much room in the hearse,” Rodgers said. Besides,
although the man was supposed to be dead, he still needed to breath. “We
didn’t want any bad situations.”
Accompanied
by a 10-piece band playing New Orleans funeral march music, the procession moved
to the park’s main stage where the memorial service was held. The passageway
from hearse to the stage was too narrow for the coffin, so the owner got out
to help his pall bearers pals tilt the box and place it on the stage. Lying
back down, he endured the roasts of a local comedian giving the eulogy and several
friends and family members called on to offer their own remembrances.
“After
the eulogy was done, he once again had to get out of the box to carry it outside,”
Rodger said. “Then he got back in and they put him back in the hearse.”
Transported now to a graveyard set up for Phantom Fright Nights, the pall bearers
placed the coffin in a mausoleum Kennywood carpenters had built, and the deceased
emerged, zombie-like, through a back door to the cheers of the crowd.
Rodgers said the funeral promotion seemed to add to what would have been a typical opening night crowd. The promotion will likely be repeated next year, he said, “now that we’ve purchased this beautiful horse-drawn hearse.”
FUN EXPO Report
Trading
places
Numbers don’t lie. They don’t always tell the truth, either.
With
that ambivalence, we gauge the start of trade show season.
First
came the American Zoo and Aquarium Association’s annual conference, which
drew standard numbers (about 1,600) but left many of the 121 exhibitors frustrated—and
some outright angry—with the lack of traffic in the exhibit hall. The show
almost unanimously described by vendors as slow was a reflection of a zoo industry
grappling with budget challenges, not only from this year’s attendance
drops at many zoos but also from restricted local government funding.
One week later, the co-located International Association for the Leisure and
Entertainment Industry’s Fun Expo and the Amusement & Music Operators
Association show occupied the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
The numbers on the AMOA side of the aisle were slightly up: 162 exhibitors compared
to 143 last year, 2,450 buyers compared to 2,351 in 2002. The numbers on the
Fun Expo side were slightly down: 151 exhibitors, down 26 from 2002, and 2,233
attendees compared to 2,332 last year.
The action on the floor, however, was hot if not hectic. “The feel and
excitement on the trade show floor is very obvious,” said Carole Sjolander,
IALEI executive director. Said AMOA President Chris Warren: “You’re
seeing smiles.”
Longtime exhibitors, like Ride Development Company and Peter F. Olesen and Associates,
saw this year’s Fun Expo as light in leads compared to past shows, but
they were nonetheless pleased with their overall outcome, given the state of
the economy. Newer exhibitors were little short of ecstatic.
Jim
Seay of Premier Rides, who was exhibiting at both AZA and Fun Expo for the first
time, raved after the first day of Fun Expo about the amount of interest and
number of sales his Cari-Co designed electric karts were generating. He and
his sales staff had their biggest shock when one FEC owner jumped in the Premier
booth’s kart and drove off down the aisle, the Premier staff in hot pursuit.
“Scared us to death,” Seay said. “We finally stopped him and
he said, ‘I’m a member of the (IALEI) board, I can do this,’
so we let him go.” After his test spin the operator parked back at the
booth and ordered a fleet.
Preston
& Barbieri Worldwide scored well with its line of Eureka rides, an interactive
family round ride. While Barbieri alone represented the Italian manufacturer
faction at Fun Expo, another surprise overseas vendor came all the way from
Russia, Pax Design Company, which also had some meaningful meetings during the
show. For these ride manufacturers, family entertainment centers are a market
worthy of diversifying their product lines.
The
annual Fun Expo Academy’s 41 seminars drew more than 1,600 attendees. The
two-day Rookies and Newcomers Workshop had 80 participants, a record high. Both
strong numbers are evidence that Fun Expo is establishing itself as an appealing
educational forum—after all, the academy does require a registration fee—and
that the FEC industry is in continuing good health.
Fun
Expo and AMOA revealed a couple more clues to trends worth watching as the industry
nears the IAAPA confab in November. One, the Fun Expo/AMOA trade show traffic
included a larger percentage of international buyers than previous shows, veterans
said, particularly from the Pacific Rim and Latin America. Two, family appeal
is a key watchword.
That
latter notion emerged notably around Fun Expo’s staging a Paintball Tournament.
The event drew eager contestants and curious crowds, and the camouflaged kids
added an exotic energy to the floor traffic. The tournament also drew a bit
of angst from some operators and suppliers, especially when people carrying
authentic-looking rapid-fire rifles set up in the aisles to shoot each other
(sans ammunition, but with realistic sound effects). Paintball arenas could
be a good investment for FECs, but a vocal contingent also believes the sport
is not conducive to the first word in the industry’s identifying acronym:
“Family.”
Clearly, Fun Expo has rebounded from its almost moribund status two to three years ago, and this year’s performance in particular reinforces the industry trend that, in today’s economy, size DOES matter: small IS good.
Presidential
campaign
Ken Vondriska worked his way down the 100 aisle of the Fun Expo show at the
Las Vegas Convention Center in Nevada. At each booth, he stopped, shook hands
with the proprietor and handed over his IALEI President business card. After
brief conversations, he moved to the next vendor. All the way down the aisle
it was stop, handshake, card, “how’s it going?” and onward.
He
looked like a man running for president, not one already appointed to head the
International Association for the Leisure & Entertainment Industry this
year. He even stopped at a Convention Center food cart where he handed its attendant,
Denise, a business card. “I was trying to get a free hot dog,” Vondriska
said later in defense; except that Denise didn’t sell hot dogs at her cart.
While
Vondriska got a certain amount of gentle ribbing for his campaign-style demeanor,
his purpose was nothing short of profound: simple, logical even, but something
rare for an association president at an annual confab. Over the three-day trade
show Vondriska intended to visit all 153 booths, give vendors a name and face
to the organization and get feedback from those vendors on the show’s traffic
and their problems or concerns.
“I’ve
been in this business 30 years,” said Vondriska, COO of International Theme
Park Services, Inc., “and one thing I know is if you want to keep your
customers happy, you have to go out and shake their hand and talk to them and
ask how they’re doing.” Vondriska “instructed” all the IALEI
board members to do the same. By the time he reached some booths, the vendors
told Vondriska he was the fourth or fifth IALEI officer to stop by. “I
think it’s important to put a face to the association,” he said. Or
many faces, for that matter.
“IALEI
owns half of this show,” he said, referring to the trade show CO-located
with the Amusement and Music Operators Association International Expo. “It’s
important to keep the suppliers happy.” One of the surest roads to happiness
for trade show vendors is heavy traffic, and that comes from increasing membership,
Vondriska said. IALEI just launched a new strategic plan with 12 goals that
he summarized in three primary objectives:
—
To improve the association’s education efforts by recruiting an education
director, by developing manuals and videos, and by “taking the show on
the road” with regional seminars.
—
To increase membership, currently at about 800 members including 200 suppliers,
by at least 25 percent by 2006. Vondriska calls that benchmark “aggressive,”
but the association is aiming to meet that target by attracting more FECs through
its education and member services, by courting small parks with attendance between
100,000 and 400,000—an initiative begun last year that also seems to be
bearing fruit, based on the small parks attending Fun Expo—and by courting
zoos. “They do the same things FECs do: birthday parties, sleep-overs,
souvenirs, food and beverage,” Vondriska said.
—
To improve Fun Expo.
Vondriska took his first big step on that final goal down aisle 100 with business cards in hand. “Every vendor here has had a positive response to that,” he said; even those couple of vendors with gripes. “I hope they remember that when they re-up.”
Sample
sampling
Always searching for member benefits, the International Association for the
Leisure & Entertainment Industry came across a company called Target Market
Concepts, a marketing agency that helps brand packaging companies with product
promotions. “We go to brands and connect them with outlets,” said
company President Greg Sobocinski.
For
10 years, those outlets included skating rinks across the United States, thanks
to a program Target Market Concepts developed for the Roller Skating Association.
The nice thing for the skating rinks is that the products, promotional samples
that the rinks could hand out to customers, are free.
IALEI
wanted its members to get a taste of that action. “Your (guests) like it,
you like it, and it costs nothing,” said IALEI Executive Director Carole
Sjolander. “What more could you want?”
The
official name of the IALEI/Target Market Concept program is the Family Entertainment
Center Promotion Network. Any IALEI operator member could sign up for the chance
to receive free snacks, magazines, toys, games and, mostly, candy that they
could then pass out to their patrons. “We go to all the major packaging
brands,” said Brian Scott Sockin, managing partner of Target Market Concepts.
“We eat a lot of chocolate; it’s a very dangerous business.”
Indeed, at its Fun Expo booth Target Market Concept had samples of some of the
samples FECs could give their guests, like miniature candy bars, M&Ms and
other chocolate goodies.
Furthermore,
250 participating FECs will receive a free LED message board. The family entertainment
center could program any messages they want to put on the board while Target
Market Concept places national brand advertising on the side panels. Through
such advertising and the FEC Promotion Network, Target Market Concept gives
its clients entree into the coveted family market and also provides back-end
research.
The “win-win” phrase is well worn, but it perfectly describes this symbiotic relationship, with Target Market Concept as the bridge. To Sjolander, as an IALEI member privilege, the FEC Promotion Network is a no-brainer. “If you’ve got a program like this and not want to do it, you have to be brain dead,” she said.
AZA Report
Eye
opener
The striptease act was one thing; altering the swearing-in ceremony was the
more noteworthy point. Both came at the closing banquet of the American Zoo
and Aquarium Association’s Annual Conference in Columbus, Ohio.
Before
swearing in the AZA’s new board members, Immediate Past President John
Lewis at the podium removed his coat and tie and donned a T-shirt—bearing
Aza’s eyes and the legend “I Am Aware” —handed out by the
association’s National Awareness Campaign Committee earlier in the week.
Then, instead of merely replying to their charges with “I accept,”
Lewis had the new board members repeat “I accept and I am aware.”
“Awareness”
was the catchword of this year’s conference. AZA has, for the past couple
of years, mounted a campaign with the help of Proprietary Media, a New York
media and consulting firm, to improve public understanding of both the organization
and its mission. Part of that campaign was creating a cartoon mascot, a hybrid
creature called Aza, and working with former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley on a
survey of children and a resulting white paper (THE
LOOP, April 25, 2003).
This
year the campaign reached groundswell proportions, thanks to the efforts of
the AZA’s National Awareness Committee, a blue ribbon leadership committee
formed last year. “What we realized last year was that everybody was not
at the same stage of understanding,” said Lyn Frankel, senior director
of marketing at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland, and vice chair
of the committee. The campaign also honed its intent: with the primary message
being wildlife and habitat conservation, it is not so much promoting AZA itself
but the collective that is AZA. “We can be much more impactful if we operated
with one voice of 215 strong institutions and 33,000 experts,” Frankel
said.
Last
year the campaign forged a five-point plan: to secure buy-in from institutions
at the director level, to establish leadership, to generate understanding of
the concept, to draft goals and objectives and a subsequent marketing plan,
and to improve internal communications. The first is in progress: 160 institutions
have signed on. “We’re 80 percent there,” Frankel said. The leadership
has been established via the committee. The drafting of objectives and the marketing
plan is still under way, and internal communications was the key component of
this month’s conference, highlighted by a morning general session devoted
to the National Awareness Campaign and culminating with Lewis’ visual and
verbal statement at the banquet.
AZA
institutions traditionally partner in almost all aspects of their missions,
but that communication “is in silos, if you will,” Frankel said. “The
animal people cooperate with the animal people, the marketing people communicate
with the marketing people. This is breaking down the silos and getting everybody
talking with everybody else.”
Generating
understanding of the concept is, perhaps, one of the most difficult challenges
within and without the organization. The committee under took extensive surveys
of zoo patrons over the past year, compiling data that reinforced the information
Proprietary Media had previously gathered. According to the surveys, the American
people are concerned about wildlife, they love zoos and aquariums, but they
don’t know what those AZA-accredited institutions do outside their walls
in regards to worldwide conservation efforts and species survival programs.
Significantly, while several other organizations push conservation agendas,
the surveys indicated that many people “don’t know who to trust,”
Frankel said. “They want someone to tell them what to do. They trust us.
They want us to take that role.”
That role can be profound when it is voiced with 33,000 animal experts in 215 respected institutions, not to mention the fact those institutions represent the one tangible link between the civilized world and the wildlife world: the animals themselves. “We have the collective expertise, we have the physical contact with people,” Frankel said. “Our animals connect with people in an emotional way. In order to change minds and activate hands, you’ve got to open eyes. It’s a winning recipe for high-impact education.”
Teacher’s
teachers
To trace the mentor-mentoree relationship as far back as it goes, you’d
have to envision Charlie Hoessle as a high school student standing outside a
radio shop in the late 1940s looking through the window to watch the Zoo
Parade television show. “We didn’t have a television,” the
St. Louis (Missouri) Zoo director emeritus said. The host of Zoo Parade
was Marlin Perkins, who would later evolve his television show into Wild
Kingdom.
As
one of Perkins biggest fans, Hoessle was inspired to pursue his own zoological
career, eventually conducting outreach programs on reptiles and other small
animals for Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and other social groups in St. Louis. He
did one such program for the Women’s Auxiliary of the St. Louis Natural
History Museum; in the audience was Carol Perkins, who told her husband, Marlin,
he needed to hire the young Hoessle at the St. Louis Zoo. “He called me
up asking me to help as keeper in reptiles and to eventually start an education
program for the zoo,” Hoessle recalled. “That was the carrot to get
me to join him.” That meeting was his first face-to-face with his idol.
“I was in awe,” Hoessle said.
It
was an audience of friends and admirers at the American Zoo and Aquarium Association’s
Annual Conference who were in awe of Hoessle as he accepted the R. Marlin Perkins
Award for a lifetime of outstanding service to the AZA and wildlife conservation
and outreach. “I was absolutely shocked,” Hoessle said. He had been
tipped off a few weeks before the conference, he said, but, “I didn’t
think I deserved it. There are so many other people in AZA who have contributed
so much.”
The
Perkins award is so highly regarded it is presented only in years when a suitable
recipient is identified, sort of the zoo industry’s elite hall of fame.
That Hoessle should receive the AZA’s most vaunted award named for his
mentor made it all the more “super special,” Hoessle said. He recalled
how TV-star Perkins received so much fan mail and requests he would ask Hoessle
to help answer the correspondence. “That allowed me a chance to do all
that research.” After Hoessle succeeded Perkins to the position of executive
director at the St. Louis Zoo, assigning responsibilities and encouraging research,
outreach and education among his own charges became a trademark of his own tenure.
His own impact on the industry was made evident when Bill Boever, St. Louis
Zoo's current director and COO, in presenting the award to Hoessle asked those
in the audience who had gone on from the St. Louis Zoo to leadership positions
at other zoos to stand. More than a dozen did so.
“Oh,
I choked up a little bit when I started talking,” Hoessle said. “There
were so many old friends in the audience, a lot of former employees. I’ve
been going to AZA meetings for 40 years. It was like a family affair.”
The AZA Conference’s closing banquet and award ceremony took place on September
11, two years to the day that Tim O’Sullivan, former director of human
resources at the Bronx Zoo, was killed while visiting the World Trade Center
on business. In the AZA annals, O’Sullivan had been instrumental in launching
the association’s professional development program and teaching some of
the management courses. That program has since grown into one of the AZA’s
strengths.
The
association annually honors zoos and aquariums for their conservation programs,
their public education programs and their exhibits. Plus, overall service to
the AZA is recognized in various ways, from honorary memberships to the Marlin
Perkins Award. However, no special recognition existed for those association
volunteers who had advanced the association’s own internal education program.
“A
lot of people in our industry were putting in lots and lots of effort specifically
to the professional development program,” said Deb Fassnacht, executive
vice president of the John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Illinois, and past
chair of the AZA’s Board of Regents. The association also wanted to honor
its own victim of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “It was a perfect fit,”
Fassnacht said. “The timing was good to recognize these people, and because
of Tim’s role in the early years of the program there was a need to honor
him in some way.”
The
first Tim O’Sullivan Award for professional contribution to the AZA professional
development program was given to another of the association's education pioneers,
Dr. Bruce Carr, currently holding the Roy Disney Chair of Conservation Education
at AZA.
For a full list of honors and awards at the AZA Annual Conference, click here.
New Arrivals
It’s
a Holocaust exhibit!
The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education at Hebrew Union College Jewish
Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio, announces the arrival of Mapping
Our Tears, September 4, 2003. Measurements: 750 square feet (70 square meters),
40-seat classroom with three video screens showing six testimonials of seven
minutes apiece, three motif vignettes, more than 500 artifacts, more than 100
props. Delivered by Jack Rouse Associates, SOS Video and the Shoah Foundation.
Racelle
Weiman, after visiting the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.,
stood at the exit and surveyed visitors about what impacted them most. The overwhelming
answer was the survivor testimony broadcast in one of the museum’s rooms.
“I thought, why go into a side room to get the most important feature?
Why not make it front and center?” Weiman said.
That
notion drove the design for the new exhibit at her own Center for Holocaust
and Humanity Education in Cincinnati. Aside from making the testimonies the
centerpiece for Mapping Our Tears, she wanted to give visitors the impression
that survivors were talking directly to them in person. The gallery is designed
as an attic. The audience sits on steamer trunks. As survivors recount their
experiences on the plasma video screen, lighting and sound effects highlight
aspects of the stories in the room. When a survivor describes hiding in an armoire,
an armoire in the room is lit. When a survivor describes the Nazi crowds shouting
outside, guests hear the crowds. When a survivor describes a mother’s lullaby,
the lullaby plays, the only time music is used in the exhibit.
“We’re
not teaching history, we’re teaching human experience,” Weiman said.
“The experience is as if you’re sitting in this attic, almost a safe
hiding place. There’s nothing evil or vicious—it’s an attic.
And it talks about the time of innocence past.” The testimonies are all
drawn from people living in a 150-mile radius of Cincinnati and include not
only Holocaust survivors but also resisters, liberators and Nuremberg Trial
officials.
Graduate
students further set aside compelling stories that were combined in three different
vignettes representing three human emotions: courage, love and loss. “Afterward
you don’t feel you’ve been battered; you feel privileged,” Weiman
said. “You sit and listen to wisdom.” Throughout the whole exhibit
are artifacts donated by survivors and liberators, supplemented by some props
from the 1930s. Drawers contain documents, such as letters, that guests can
read.
Opening
such an exhibit required a ceremony that struck a balance between celebration
of the exhibit’s debut and respect for the victims of the Holocaust. The
event featured chamber music, responsive readings and addresses from a survivor,
a liberator, a Nuremberg prosecutor and a Catholic high school student, the
last speaking on behalf of the first students to view Mapping Our Tears. Rabbi
Alfred Gottschalk, the college’s chancellor emeritus and himself a Holocaust
survivor, gave the keynote address. The ceremony also included the placing of
a Mezuzah, a scroll of scripture Jews put on doorposts to bless a new house;
this one was carried to Cincinnati in a survivor’s purse after World War
II.
About 400 people attended the official opening, Weiman said, a surprising turnout for a mid-week event. “The college had never seen this many people at one event,” she said.
In
the nursery
Other recent New Arrivals.
It’s
a restaurant!
Completing the second step toward realizing its “Entertainment Realm”
directly behind the park’s front gate, Efteling in Kaatsheuvel,
The Netherlands, opened a 400-seat restaurant inside the park’s
1,200-seat Efteling Theater on September 1, 2003. The restaurant offers
casual dining with a “fusion cooking” menu different from anything
else in the park. Diners sit around a small stage where singers perform. The
kids’ menu comes with plates featuring park mascots Pardoes and Pardijn
that the children can take home with them. The restaurant will be a key component
when, for the first time, the park premieres on November 7 (two weeks after
the park closes for the 2003 season) the musical Doornroosje (Sleeping
Beauty). Produced by the Belgium Studio 100, the show has been traveling through
Belgium and The Netherlands but will reside at the Efteling Theater until January
18. “Visiting a musical in Efteling is totally different than visiting
another theater,” said Henk Groenen, Efteling’s head of communications.
“Before the show people can visit for free our Fairytale Forest and get
the sphere of fairy tales.” Until Winter Efteling opens in early December,
Doornroosje will be the park’s sole attraction, and the restaurant
enhances its attraction. For the 2004 season the theater again stages an in-house
production, but another touring musical will settle in for next winter.
Eric's Turn
Zero
tolerance no debate
One thing Will Koch, president of Holiday World and Splashin’ Safari in
Santa Claus, Indiana, said he hoped to accomplish with his open letter to enthusiast
organizations and forums was to generate discussion among parks about rider
behavior (see story above). Pray he succeeds in at least that.
It
is heartening to see such a topic—safety—being discussed so openly.
Here’s hoping that discussion maintains an intelligent, even tone and temperament,
for it could devolve into blanket judgments and defensive postures that would
ultimately undermine one of the industry’s most important relationships
without ever accomplishing the safety standards the parks are seeking among
its customers.
One
phrase in Koch’s letter should be the anchor to all future responses to
the issue of rider behavior: zero tolerance policy. That means anybody, no matter
who they are, enthusiast or not, who is caught engaging in unsafe behavior should
be disciplined. That disciplinary policy should be established in writing and
applied uniformly to all ages, genders, demographic classes, organization affiliations
(this goes for train and carousel enthusiasts, too, as well as journalists).
It should become part of the operator training standards. It should become part
of coaster organizations’ constitutions. There can be no exceptions and,
more importantly, no excuses for not carrying out such policies.
I
have two experiences to share along these lines, one from back before I started
covering the amusement industry full time, and one from my visit to a theme
park on Sunday.
One
of the topics I have covered as a magazine journalist was workplace violence,
from bullying and hazing among office workers to fatal acts of aggression. Inevitably,
the former would lead to the latter. Subsequently, the only means of prevention
for the latter was a zero tolerance policy of the former. First violation would
mean a warning, second violation was termination. Could a termination lead to
an act of violence? Possibly. Would kid-gloving the violation lead to violence?
Certainly. The key to carrying out the policy was no exceptions, no excuses.
If a worker even joked about “going postal,” that worker would receive
a warning and be referred to an employee intervention program.
There
are parallels here with what we are dealing with in the amusement industry right
now. We are not talking about violence, but we are talking about consequences,
and both lead to fatalities.
Sunday,
I saw the no-tolerance attitude put to practice, and I was, in fact, a party
to it. It was at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, and I was
visiting with two friends from Germany. Heading up the lift hill of the Jaguar
coaster, I heard the “voice of god” coming over the public address
system saying, “put away the video camera, please.” From the consternation
in the seats behind me I knew she was directing her comments to one of my friends,
and he admitted as such. I could not tell, truthfully, whether he knew he was
violating park policy, but when we exited the ride I told him that next time
he would be escorted out. He understood then and complied thereafter.
Such
upfront diligence by the parks and self-policing by enthusiasts will, I guarantee
you, rid us of almost 100 percent of the problem behavior that is cramping our
coaster enjoyment. Letting any behavior slide will rid us of none of it.
Perspective
is equally important, however. Back to the workplace violence analogy; imagine
in your mind the profile of a typical perpetrator. Now, wipe that image away,
because it’s wrong. There is no “typical:” violent behavior was
engaged in by young and old, men and women, blue and white collar, all races,
all ethnicities.
Similarly,
the
current situation is not merely an enthusiasts’ problem. It is more universal
than that. Both Holiday World’s and Cedar Fair’s letters were addressed
to enthusiast clubs and singled out behavior among enthusiasts at enthusiast
events. The parks are calling on the organizations’ help moreso than pointing
accusatory fingers, but there’s a dangerous tendency by both park operators
and enthusiasts to regard these as targeted admonitions. Both sides stood together
during the hemotoma debate. They need to be allied on this issue. They need
to fully cooperate. As such both need the others’ help. ACE President Carole
Sanderson makes a valid point that parks risk being blindsided by the bigger
picture if they focus only on enthusiast behavior. The industry as a whole should
continue pursuing rider responsibility laws in every state and educating the
general public in proper behavior.
Zero tolerance, no exceptions, no excuses. Ground all discussion and action on this simple premise, and everybody wins.
Foresome
for some
I once wrote profiles of Professional Golf Association players. I have written
many guides to golf courses. I have never golfed.
And
I don’t plan to start any time soon, even in so worthy a cause as the Give
Kids The World golf tournament during the IAAPA Convention and Trade Show this
year in Orlando. But I’ll be participating nevertheless, caddying for Michael
Getlan and his foursome of clowns. That’s clowns in the literal sense,
for the group that annually performs for kids at Give Kids The World (that's
Getlan above at a GKTW gig) plan to be in full regalia on the golf course. Whether
their caddy will follow suit—literally, in this case—we’re not
revealing.
The
tournament, scheduled for November 17 at the Celebration Golf Course in Celebration,
Florida, and sponsored by IAAPA and Harris Miniature Golf Courses, Inc., is
still looking for players. You can register on line at iaapaorlando.com.
Speaking of Give Kids the World and the IAAPA Trade Show, THE LOOP is offering a special package for advertisers in our IAAPA preview and report issues, with $50 of the $300 cost of advertising in three issues being donated in the advertiser’s name to Give Kids The World. For more information, contact THE LOOP’s ad manager Lynne Mosman at 866-902-5667 (outside North America call 937-294-3406) or e-mail lynne@gettheloop.com.
THE LOOP is written and produced by Eric Minton, Minton Enterprises, LLC. To see more examples of Eric Minton's work and Minton Enterprises services, visit www.ericminton.com.
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