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MARK ALBRIGHTThe Tampa theme park is revamping its presentations as part of changes to help stimulate return visits.
TAMPA - Busch Gardens Tampa Bay is updating its live entertainment for what's shaping up as a year of change at the theme park.
Busch on Wednesday announced a one-month engagement for a holiday kid's show featuring seven of the popular Sesame Street characters. The park also will close its World Rhythms on Ice show in January to make way for the spring debut of a $5-million-plus show designed by some of the producers, engineers and craftspeople who created the Lion King show on Broadway for Walt Disney Co. There's even talk of adding a ride and replacing the park's decades-old Moroccan theme entrance as part of the new project to rebuild the park's highway access.
"We've got a lot coming off the drawing board," said Dan Brown, executive vice president and general manager of Busch Gardens. "It shows we are fully committed to keeping this a world-class theme park in the years to come."
That commitment hasn't been completely clear in recent years. Busch has been heavily outspent by the theme park giants in Orlando. Walt Disney Co. opened Disney's Animal Kingdom in 1998. It now draws twice as many visitors and borrows heavily on Busch's formula of zoo animals, shows and rides. Busch officials quietly folded their plans for a four-star, 800-room hotel overlooking their animal-rich African Veldt even as Disney opened its own version.
Last year chairman August Busch III, who owns a winter home in Lakeland, told Anheuser-Busch Co. shareholders he was taking a more active role in beefing up the profitability of his company's theme parks.
As Universal Orlando and Disney return to their big-spending ways of the past, Busch is stepping up to remain competitive and recover financially from a tough two years since the terrorist attacks of 2001. Park officials say attendance has perked up, but they won't know until December if they can report an annual increase in visitors.
With Florida tourism on the mend, Busch needs some new draws to stimulate return visits. The park also must enhance the value of its offering as it tries to wean locals off discounts that became rampant during tough economic times. Park officials, for example, are now studying changes to their popular Florida Fun Pass that at its height offered unlimited visits to the park all year for the price of a single day's admission.
The Sesame Street show, Big Bird's Beach Party, which runs Nov.28 through Jan.3 in the Stanleyville Theater, is one example of the park's new revenue strategy. Busch will let parents take photos of their kids with Big Bird and Cookie Monster. But it will be selling photos taken by its own roving cameras as well. For the first time, the park also will stage character breakfasts, lunches and dinners a la Walt Disney World, at prices ranging from $12.95 to $19.95 a person.
The Sesame Street show is part of another new Busch strategy of maximizing popular attractions from the other Busch Entertainment Corp. parks. The costumed characters, licensed by Sesame Workshop, the New York producers of the PBS-TV kid's show, came from Sesame Place theme park near Philadelphia, another Busch property, which is closed this time of year.
The stage show arriving next spring replaces a four-year-old ice show. Called Katonga, the new $5-million-plus stage production will feature an 18-member cast of acrobats, dancers and singers acting out a 35-minute play with original music about animal fables. The five principals will earn $15 an hour, the rest of the cast $11.25 an hour, according to the casting call. The star performers will be giant animal puppets, an idea similar to the Lion King show.
It all sounds familiar: Character breakfasts. Short 30-minute versions of highly stylized Broadway shows for theme park audiences. Hiring producers who helped stage the Lion King for a short musical based on animal stories. Is Busch getting a bit too "Disney?"
"Not at all," replied Gerard Hoeppner, spokesman for Busch Gardens. "We were an African-themed park based on animals, rides and shows long before Disney came out with the Lion King or Disney's Animal Kingdom."
Busch last week broke ground on a new parking lot. It's part of a major overhaul of its highway access that includes the widening of 40th Street/McKinley Drive and construction of two new tunnels that will keep motorists and park trams from interrupting traffic flow on what will eventually be a four-line highway linking the University of South Florida and Interstate 4. Work on the parking lots is not expected to be completed until early 2005.
- Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or 727 893-8252.