Park Profile
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ABOVE: The new entrance area and RIGHT: the less impressive entry it replaces
it a nice big new station for this season. It’s a very reliable ride.
My favourite part of
Maja Land is Maja’s Blütensplash; I think it is everybody’s favourite part. It is the optical highlight of the new area and when it goes round and round with its special song, it is great fun. After hearing it three times everyone knows that song, even the teenagers walk away singing it! Maja the Bee, along with Wickie the Viking, was part of the catalogue of EM Entertainment in Munich, which Studio 100 bought in 2009 and rebranded as Studio 100 Media. Next year they will launch a computer-generated version of Maja on German TV, but still with all the same characters that everyone knows and loves. That’s the great thing about Maja the Bee, the parents know it, the grandparents know it, and the children know it.
The park forms part of the “360º” degree approach used for many years by Studio 100 in Belgium, where they put the characters on TV, do the
merchandising and then use the parks to promote them, which supports the parks in return. Once they bought EM Entertainment, it was only logical they would want to some parks in Germany. We have since introduced other Studio 100 characters and intellectual property into Holiday Park such as Tabaluga and the House Anubis, which is aimed at older children and teenagers. Last summer, after we had relaunched the Freefall Tower with Anubis, we held a small concert in the park with a meet and greet, and we had large queues of people wanting to get autographs of the actors. Now around 90% of our park merchandise features various characters, and people are spending more money on it.
Name game
While we have tried to bring the park’s logo into the Plopsa style with the same font and image as the other parks, we have left the name as Holiday Park, with Plopsa as just a little addendum. Holiday Park is still very known in this area because of its long history; we have even left the sound of the radio commercials the same. We still have the Holly parrot mascot for the moment, but now he has all these new friends such as Maja, Wickie and Tabuluga. We have noticed more guests coming to the park from the Benelux countries, but not because of the characters, as they use a different mix of characters at the parks in Belgium and the Netherlands. People are coming because the Plopsa season ticket is very good value and it is interesting now for them to have an extra park in Germany to visit.
I do not have the exact breakdown, but you can certainly see a lot more strollers around the park at weekends, we are getting a lot more children. However, over the years Holiday Park has built up a large following from teenagers, and we are not about to forget them.
Plopsa
Parks Plopsa is the theme park division of Studio 100, a Belgian-based producer of children’s
television and entertainment whose
productions – including Kabouter Plop, Maja the Bee, Wickie the Viking,
Mega Mindy and Anubis – can be seen on channels across the Benelux, Germany and beyond. These licensed properties are brought to life inside the Belgian parks Plopsaland De Panne, Plopsa Coo and Plopsa Indoor Hasselt (pictured), the Dutch outlet Plopsa Indoor Coevorden and now Holiday Park in Germany. A season pass to all five Plopsa parks sells for just €79 (€69 online), and also allows half price entry to additional 50 parks and attractions within the three countries.
plopsa.be
LEFT: A cluster of three Zamperla rides feature in this general view of Maja Land ABOVE: Merchandise sales are up as a result of Maja the Bee and other Studio 100 characters
AUGUST 2012 29
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