Park People
parkworld-online.com
Angry Birds around the world
The latest Angry Birds Activity Park by Lappset opened on 25 May at Lightwater Valley amusement park in North Yorkshire, England (see elsewhere on this page). The smaller English park Sundown Adventureland launched its own Angry Birds Activity Park last summer, and will soon expand it with the addition of various themed rides.
The original and largest Angry Birds attraction to date is Angry Birds Land at Särkänniemi in Tampere (Finland’s second city), featuring both a large Lappset play area and various Zamperla rides. Rovio has also partnered with the Finnish Holiday Club chain to realise Angry Birds Activity Parks at four of its properties across the country. In the USA, Angry Birds fans can engage with the brand at Angry Birds Space Encounter at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Space Center Houston in Texas. Featuring a mix of play equipment, midway-style games, mazes and educational challenges, each of these attractions is dedicated to the Angry Birds Space franchise. For the Harbin
International Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival in northeast China earlier this year, Rovio produced an entire section dedicated to Angry Birds. Elsewhere in the country it has installed a number of free-to-use Angry Birds playgrounds, and has plans for many Angry Birds Activity Parks. The ambitious Finnish company is also considering additional attraction concepts around the world using some of its other intellectual property.
it’s important for us as a company, but of course for park operators it is a great revenue stream. We have got some really great iconic characters.
Angry Birds Activity Park at Sundown Adventureland, UK
What support can park operators expect when they sign up for an Angry Birds attraction?
One of the main things is our huge fan base, we now have over 1.7 billion Angry Birds downloads. We are continually updating our property all the time, and our partners will benefit from those updates and refreshes. We launched an animated Angry Birds television series earlier this year, and now we are working a full-length feature film. The great thing with Angry Birds is that it truly a globally-recognised brand. There are some great IPs [intellectual properties] out there, but when you start narrowing it down some of them actually have quite limited reach. Our brands are very attractive to operators looking to reach a global audience.
How important is the merchandising? Merchandise was the way in which our fans first became active with Angry Birds in a physical sense, so
What other attractions are currently in development? It doesn’t just have to be playgrounds; there a lot of great things coming onto the market that are interactive, including older technologies with digital overlays, digital climbing walls, interactive booths with gesture-based gaming etc. We will do more traditional theme park rides and attractions, but only when we can add a layer of interactivity. I think in the right location, with the right attractions, we could also have a completely Angry Birds branded park.
rovio.com
Angry Birds Land at at Särkänniemi, Finland Angry Birds at Lightwater Valley
The latest Angry Birds Activity Park opened to the public at England’s Lightwater Valley on 25 May, launched with help from Rovio’s Dan Mitchell and “Mighty Eagle” Peter Vesterbacka. Created by Lappset, the £1 million ($1.5m/€1.17m) addition to the amusement park covers an area of 30,000 square feet (2,800 sq m).
The main playground in built around a series of 25m- high nesting towers and includes climbing walls, pig
tunnels, slides, rope bridges, ladders and fireman’s poles. Three-dimension figures and features from the Angry Birds games such as Red Bird, King Pig, Minion Pig and Yellow Bird are complemented by themed benches and bins. Kids can also play an interactive game and trigger various movement-generated sounds effects.
A separate indoor area focused on Angry Birds Space features play equipment aimed at younger kids, plus light and sound projections, interactive games and five 55" touchscreen computers where they can play a customised level 8 version of the Angry Birds game. Angry Birds was the most popular paid-for app in Apple’s App Store in 2012. Nestled between the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors national parks, Lightwater Valley is part of the Heritage Great Britain group and features over 40 rides and attractions.
lightwatervalley.co.uk 28 JUNE 2013
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