Park People
parkworld-online.com
AMILY ENTERTAINMENT
an attraction company. We are an entertainment company with several strong brands that we use to tell compelling and entertaining stories to our guests. We use theme parks, waterparks, dinner theatres, aquariums, an arena business and hotels to tell those stories. I would note that Disney only makes 25% of its profit from businesses that HFE is in today. They are not an attractions company. There is no reason we could not leverage our brands in other ways to make money and satisfy our guests over the long term – maybe not in my career time frame, but long term.
How important is to keep the “Family” in Herschend Family Entertainment as the business expands?
It is critical to who we are in two regards. First, we are family owned and intend to stay that way. However, it is even more important that our hosts and the guests feel like this is a family-owned company. We want them to feel like part of the family. That is part of the reason I wrote Love Works. It is one of the many ways we reinforce a family-oriented culture at HFE. We want our employees to know of our culture and if they all know, they will hold me and other leaders accountable to our family oriented philosophy.
Second, our product will always be family-focused and will always be wholesome.
The partnership with Dolly Parton at Dollywood is still going strong. Would ever you bring anyone else’s intellectual property (IP) into your parks? Our relationship with Dolly Parton is very strong. We have been her operating partner for 28 years and have enjoyed a lot of success together. She is one of
Joel Manby with HFE co-owner Peter Herschend
the most authentic, kind, generous and smart people I have ever worked with. I can say with 100% certainty that we would never bring in an IP at Dollywood that she does not support, yet we have a great relationship with her and she is very open to new ideas. As for our other properties, we look at other IP all the time. As you know, they are difficult to make work given the licensing fees etc.
What did you learn from the closure of Celebration City?
Manby goes incognito at Silver Dollar City for TV’s Undercover Boss
JANUARY 2014
I learned to trust my instincts. At the time, I was HFE chairman and there was a different CEO and a different senior leader for Branson, Missouri, where Celebration City was to be developed. The board’s instinct was the amount of capital being proposed was not enough to make the park strong enough to compete in the market. We were also worried about competing with our own Silver Dollar City in Branson. Leadership tried to solve that by positioning Celebration City as a night product but it didn’t have enough scope to make a return on the capital we had in it. My (and other board members) instinct was not to support the idea, but I wanted to support the CEO. I should have trusted my instincts and I have never forgotten that lesson. Now, don’t misunderstand me, my instincts are not always correct, but I have rarely gone against them since. Once I became CEO, we decided to close Celebration City in order to focus all of our capital and marketing efforts on Silver Dollar City (from a theme park perspective). That decision has paid off very nicely. In addition, I learned that we needed to take care of our people. We held onto all of our key full time employees who were at Celebration City and over time found great homes for them at other properties and sometimes in other cities. My favourite example is Miss Lillian, who is a famous character at Dollywood with a strong customer following: she was
A rollercoaster ride from the cave to the
basketball court It all began in 1950 when Hugo and Mary Herschend acquired a lease on Marvel Cave near Branson, Missouri. A decade later, as the popularity of the cave grew, so did the lines. In order to entertain cave guests during their wait, the widowed Mary, along with a staff of 17, opened a small 1880s-themed village on the cave's grounds. Silver Dollar City became a huge success – forming the foundation for Herschend Family Entertainment. Today the company operates and manages 26 themed family- oriented theme parks and attractions across America including Silver Dollar City, Dollywood, Wild Adventures, Stone Mountain Park, Talking Rocks Cavern, plus two aquariums, one waterpark, San Francisco’s Classic Cable Car Sightseeing, Ride The Ducks sightseeing tours in five cities, various hotel, lodging and camping facilities, plus dinner theatre shows such as Showboat Branson Belle and Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede. Via its subsidiary FE Management it also has a management contract for Darien Lake Theme Park Resort in New York. Most recently, HFE welcomed the legendary Harlem Globetrotters basketball team to its portfolio.
Currently headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the privately- owned company is considered the largest family-owned themed attractions corporation, its mission to “Create Memories Worth Repeating”.
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