Park News
parkworld-online.com
Don’t forget the
content! Teaching students about storytelling
Themed attraction designer/consultant Klaus Sommer-Paulsen reckons he’s spoken at between 30 and 40 conferences and education sessions in the past year in the USA, however on 2 September he kicked off a new educational course for students in his native Denmark. The Mulltiplatform Storytelling and Production course is being run in association with the Europe and Middle Eastern division of the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) at Filmby Aarhus, part of the VIA University College in Aarhus. “We spend an increasing amount of time on multiple platforms – multiple monitors, if you will – to experience all the content that is made available to us online,” notes Sommer-Paulsen. “Paradoxically many content creators really forget how important the quality of the content itself is. Technologies come and go, whereas the good stories will last. [This course] is much more than a talk about the latest technology and the latest trends.” Mulltiplatform Storytelling and Production will focus on the challenges and opportunities that the storyteller is presented with when dealing with interactive, social or mobile media for marketing, communication and entertainment purposes. Relations are promised with storytelling professionals from Denmark and abroad. Klaus Sommer-Paulsen is owner of Adventurelab, formerly the Creative Network Agency (CNA). The Mulltiplatform Storytelling and Production programme will run in Aarhus for the next three and a half years, with new students being admitted each summer.
adventurelab.dk
Kernels
Great Wolf Resorts has begun construction in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, on its newest resort, Great Wolf Lodge New England. Located about 50 miles (80km) west of Boston, it will provide families with more than 100,000 sq ft (9,300 sq m) of lodging and entertainment facilities including a 68,000 sq ft (6,300 sq m) of indoor waterpark , the largest in the state. Opening is scheduled for spring 2014.
greatwolf.com/newengland
Marriot International has been chosen as the proposed operator of the new Ocean Hotel at Ocean Park in Hong Kong. Capital Court Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lai Sun Development Company Limited has been selected as the preferred developer of the 495-room hotel that will sit in front of Ocean Park’s main entrance and is expected to open to the public by early 2017.
Games operator HB Leisure has been awarded a renewed five-year contract to run the game concession at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, England. HB has been in charge of the park’s 22 games since 2005, successfully delivering an increase in revenue and spend per head. The North Wales-based firm run by Tim Batstone firm now also manages the coin-operated amusements at the Pleasure Beach’s four on-site arcades.
The Looping Group, the French owner of Pleasurewood Hills in England, has sold the freehold to the park’s site near Lowestoft – but it’s business as usual according to general manager Alexis Camelin. "Pleasurewood Hills is not for sale,” he told the local Eastern Daily Press recently. “The investment opportunity presented by the sale of the free hold and the takeover of the head lease (lease hold) reside in the rent payable by Pleasurewood Hills to the landlord.” The deal is not the first of its kind in the UK. One of the first things Merlin Entertainments did in 2007 after buying the Tussauds Group was sell the sites of Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Warwick Castle and Madame Tussauds in London as part of a leaseback deal with the property group Prestbury. More than half the money raised from the £622m sale was then used to payback the debt it took on buying Tussauds.
After two years as operations director at Legoland Windsor, Merlin Entertainments has appointed Geoff Spooner as the new general manager of its Warwick Castle attraction in central England. He previously held management positions with the National Express bus/coach company and Merlin’s London Eye and Chessington World of Adventures.
Klaus Sommer-Paulsen (right) with the first intake of students in Aarhus
A custom-made Zamperla Twister Coaster with a 350m long track will be part of the brand new Mall of Istanbul, in Turkey.
22
OCTOBER 2013
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