Industry Insider
www.parkworld-online.com
Darren Torr – President, RMC
Park World’s Matt Broughton joined Rocky Mountain Construction’s Darren Torr at IAAPA, enjoying their intriguing, eye-catching, converted container booth.
Darren Torr
Matt Broughton: First things first, I want to talk to you about your container stand! Tell me about the concept and what the story behind it is. Darren Torr: Well, we've always tried to be very value conscious; we never spent a ton on our booths and that kind of thing. We really only just started going to international shows; three years ago, we went to Europe for the first time (to IAAPA) and then we went to Asia for the first time last year.
We've been building world class rides - 11 out of the top 25 coasters in the world - and we've expanded our portfolio by purchasing flat rides with Larson we come to these shows we've put a lot into it, so we wanted to have a space that was really on-brand for us. So, we bought these used CONEX [containers] and decided to repurpose them. We designed and built them all in-house - we have the capabilities to do it - so we're really proud of it. It's our first time having them. We will make a couple of tweaks next time, but we think it's kind of a cool on-brand functional space that's been well received. I think we won the best booth or best image award!
MB: Having seen it, it seems like a real no-brainer. Do you expect to become a future market leading booth designer? Are we going to see more boxes on the show floor next year? DT: I'm contemplating doing a little side hustle with booths, but we'll see what happens. We prefer to build roller coasters, but who knows!
22
"We're building these giant engineering works of art, and I've never worked anywhere with more teamwork and better people"
MB: You mentioned the Larson deal there; can you tell us a bit about that and what you think it's going to do as far as changing the shape of RMC over the next few years? DT: You know, big coasters are a little bit lumpy in terms of the payments, because they're big construction projects. Typically, we do mostly custom builds. Once in a while we'll do a standard Raptor, which is a clone, but for the most part everything is really custom designed and engineered and built. So we'd run out of capacity sometimes, and there's only so many giant coasters that a park can purchase. We were good friends with the former owner of Larson International, Jeff Novotney (his son, Hunter, now works for us actually) so we looked at the capabilities they had down there - very similar to ours in terms of a nice machine shop, a nice weld shop, a great paint shop, etc. so it really allows us to expand our capabilities. And from a market standpoint, it gives us a bigger portfolio of rides to take to market. We'd invested heavily in engineering and design in Hayden, Idaho, for a centre of excellence, and we're really looking at the rides that we added to our portfolio down in Texas as to how we could modernise and innovate and make it all those rides better. I think it gives us a more comprehensive conversation to have with customers.
FEBRUARY 2025
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
