PROFILE
The Pirate’s Aquaplay area boasts eight slides and 100 different water guns plus a series of extreme slides
members at Calypso – who are the heart of the park – will stay with us for a long time.” In fact, retaining his best employees was
Drouin’s original reasoning for adding a waterpark to Valcartier to keep the attrac- tion open year-round. “It’s quite tough to keep your best employees with only winter activities. That’s why I really worked to open summer activities and to be able to keep many employees year-round. Right now we have 50 year-round employees [at Valcartier] who really know what they’re doing. At Calypso, we’re only running the waterpark, but in the future we’re looking to open for more than just three months of the year – to open in spring and late fall also.” This will mean new additions to the park that Drouin can’t yet reveal. Expanding Valcartier from its humble beginnings meant a steep learning curve for Drouin. He had no industry experience when he took over the park in 1971 from his father, Adrien, who had been running it since 1963. At the time, it was a small win- ter slide centre offering tobogganing. “The early 70s were supposed to become the entertainment years, where people would only work four days a week and have three days off to have fun. That’s why I was inter- ested in the industry – the trends were going that way,” Drouin says. “I’ve worked all my life to build something for people to enjoy when they’re on vacation.” Drouin, who has a degree in engineering,
studied the industry meticulously to make up for his lack of experience. “I read a lot and I was really interested in, and still am interested in, everything going on in the industry. I visited a lot of parks – my fi rst trip was to California to visit Disneyland.” He grew the park, fi rst expanding the winter activities with skating paths and
cross country ski trails. In 1978, he introduced inner tube slides on the park’s hills – a new concept at the time. Today, Valcartier is the world’s premier snow tubing destination, attracting visitors from around the world with 17 lifts and 42 different slides. After adding the fi rst waterslide in 1980,
he expanded the waterpark rapidly, add- ing new slides every year or two, with a wave pool debuting in 1989. Challenges included a fi re, which destroyed the park’s main lodge in 1983, and marketing the park to summer visitors who still associ- ated the Valcartier name with a winter wonderland rather than sun. “We had problems letting them know it was a sum- mer place, but today we have more people coming during the summer than in winter,” Drouin says – 350,000 summer visitors ver- sus 250,000 in the winter months.
FUTURE GROWTH Though Drouin’s focus is now Calypso, he’s open to building more parks in the future. He sees potential for more waterparks in Canada, particularly in the Toronto region and in the province of Alberta, where he thinks a location between Edmonton and Calgary could do
well. But waterpark investments are always a risk, particularly where the weather is concerned, he notes. “Competition is very tough, there are a lot of other activities everywhere. And the big issue is that the equipment is so expensive to buy and put
in place. It’s a big investment, $45m (£30m, 36.5m) for only three months of opera- tion. It’s quite a risk, especially when you’re facing the weather,” he says. “You need people to come to the park, really enjoy it, then recommend it to everyone.” This is the key to Valcartier’s suc- cess and what he hopes to achieve with Calypso, Drouin says. “We can create big advertisements, but if the experience isn’t very good in the park, we won’t last long. That’s our goal, to make it as enjoyable as possible for our customers.” He has no worries about the park’s abil-
ity to attract crowds, as long as the weather cooperates. “Californian waterparks get 30, 35-degree weather more often than we do here. But in Canada, when it gets to 25 degrees, people really enjoy it and want to swim.” He laughs:
“We live in the north, so we go crazy in the summer.” ●
Currently Calypso only covers 100 acres of the 425 acres available. Drouin plans to add new rides every two years
22 Read Attractions Management online
attractionsmanagement.com/digital AM 3 2010 ©cybertrek 2010
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86