Park News
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BigQuestion What seasonal events work at your park? What didn’t?
Raul Rehnborg, California's Great America: We’ve experienced incredible success with our Halloween Haunt event. Now entering its sixth season, it has become the Bay Area’s leading Halloween attraction with eight frightening mazes, three scare zones and five shows. We also provide Halloween themed dining, while Snoopy’s Trick-Or-Treat Festival allows our younger guests to celebrate in costume with Snoopy and the Peanuts gang. Earlier in 2013 we debuted an Easter Day Celebration to rave reviews. Activities included cupcake decorating, colouring stations, egg dyeing, a hunt for the Golden Snoopy idols and photos with the Snoopy The Easter Beagle. Then, on Memorial Day and July 4th, our military were duly honoured with free admission and reduced price passes for their guests.
Karin Koppelmans, Efteling, The Netherlands: We basically have two seasonal events: our Seven League Summer and Winter Efteling, both of which are big hits. Each has totally different theming and atmosphere. Extra decorations and the adding of temporary attractions, such as an ice rink in the winter and live-entertainment in summer, really make the theme complete. What did not work? Efteling chooses themes that suit our park. We are not inclined to bring in a big Halloween event for instance. We would want to tailor a themed event, to make it special and different from the offers of other parks. Fairytales and themes around ancient sagas or magical stories would suit Efteling better – we have of course been the “custodian of the cultural heritage of fairytales” for over 60 years.
Michael Fehnel, Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom, USA: Our Halloween business is growing at a rapid rate and extends our season into the fall. We offer Haunt, a unique product with 10 haunted attractions and three themed shows. Alongside our fright-filled nights we also offer Boo!Blast, a family friendly daytime event that includes popular fall activities such as a hay bale maze, pumpkin painting and a petting zoo. When potential guests weigh up local entertainment options, the combination of world-class rides and the Halloween specific activities make our product very compelling.
Ray Phillips, Gulliver’s Theme Parks, England: Christmas is a particularly popular event now at our Warrington site, I think we were one of the first parks to do it 20 years ago. Halloween never really used to do much for us, but it’s really come on in recent years and we now host Trick or Treat Weeks at all three of our parks.
*More Halloween events on pages 32-39
Figures of Fun
9.11
US dollars – special price offered last month by Tumbledown Trails in Verona, Wisconsin, for nine holes of adventure golf to “commemorate” 9/11 terrorist attacks (really)
12
number of haunted mazes and attractions at Knott’s Scary Farm, still going strong at Knott’s Berry Farm in California after 41 years
15
number of years Halloween Horror Fest has been running at Movie Park in Germany
100
number of nationalities represented among “cast members” (staff) at Disneyland Paris
250
number of giant spiders at Djurs Sommerland’s Magisk Halloween celebrations in Denmark
OCTOBER 2013
5
24 26 28 50
32 20 3841
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