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A Florida original with fresh plans

Cypress Gardens' new owner is ready to improve on his first-year success.

By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published November 14, 2005

[Times photo: John Pendygraft]

From the Sunshine Sky Adventure observation tower, visitors can see Cypress Gardens' carnival rides and roller coasters nestled in a pastoral setting.

WINTER HAVEN - After a 42-year run on Panama City Beach, the Starliner roller coaster sits stacked in numbered pieces on a back lot here.

Cypress Gardens Adventure Park owner Kent Buescher forked over $100,000 for the wooden coaster, spent $200,000 more to have it taken apart and is prepared to fork out $1.5-million more to have it rebuilt as his park's new lure in 2007.

"We're Florida's oldest theme park, so having Florida's oldest wooden coaster is a natural," said the folksy Georgia entrepreneur who has become the toast of Polk County for bringing historic Cypress Gardens back from the dead. "This park was static for years. We can't afford to let that happen."

Buescher surprised the skeptics when Cypress Gardens reported its attendance will hit 1.4-million when its reinauguration year ends next month. That's almost twice his original plan for 750,000 and enough to produce a "seven-figure" operating profit, if you don't count any return on the $50-million Buescher and investors put up to get this far.

But there's no looking back for Buescher, 50, whose award plaques as Chamber of Commerce and Polk County tourist industry executive of the year sit unhung on the floor of his Spartan office.

"We weren't supposed to crack 1.5-million until the fifth year and without the hurricanes this fall we would have gotten there in the first year," he said. "It's a blessing. But this has been a lot more difficult than I ever thought it would be. We still face some enormous challenges."

Indeed, now comes the hard part. Most of Cypress Gardens' attendance came from 300,000 season pass holders who needed only to show up three times for one of the park's 50 weekly concert events to account for more than half the park's annual visitors. About 80 percent of the first year crowd was residents who live within an hour's drive. That means the park attracted only half as many bigger-spending tourists as Buescher hopes to draw.

Giving people a reason to come back over and over is the lifeblood of any successful theme park, but it's even more critical for a park that relies on locals for more than half of its business.

"He's obviously a good businessman, but the telling period will be the second and third year," said Bill Coan, an Orlando theme park consultant. "That will tell if he has a business."

Indeed, Buescher, who also owns the Wild Adventures regional amusement park in Valdosta, Ga., is following four ownership groups - including Anheuser-Busch Cos. - that eventually gave up trying to keep Cypress Gardens going. It has been a struggle ever since founder Dick Pope passed the torch to his vintage 1936 creation of Southern belles in hoop skirts, water ski shows and Esther Williams films, before Walt Disney World and Interstate 4 dramatically changed the dynamics of the Central Florida tourist corridor in 1971.

Those changes left Cypress Gardens a dated and off-the-beaten-path attraction, lost in the shadows of multibillion-dollar theme parks backed by huge media conglomerates 25 miles away in Orlando.

State and local governments mounted a $14.5-million rescue effort to buy the 30-acre botanical garden and lease it to Buescher, who bought the rest of the 150-acre layout for $7-million. By the time Buescher reopened and remodeled the place in late 2004, the park had been closed for 19 months.

Buescher's solution to bring in a younger crowd and more families was to add 39 carnival rides and a couple of small coasters to what had been a lush pastoral setting most popular among seniors.

He value-priced Cypress Gardens as a family alternative that charges a third less than the big Orlando parks. Then he threw in at no extra charge a water park and a series of 50 concerts by second- and third-tier entertainers in an amphitheater that holds 10,000. He priced an annual pass at $64.95, less than the cost of two days' admission. It's the only Florida theme park that boasts an all-you-can-eat buffet.

"They really did a nice job, and it's very reasonably priced," said visitor Dorothy Millsaps, a Tennessee retiree who winters in nearby Dundee, on her fifth visit of the year. "I can't wait to see Wayne Newton come here, but I missed B.J. Thomas."

The few vacationers who ventured over from Orlando still are unsure what to make of it.

"It's very nice and well presented," said Ron Muffett, a British pub owner who discovered Cypress Gardens in a hotel rack brochure on his family's third Florida vacation.

"But frankly, we thought it was going to be on a grander scale," piped in his wife, Sharon. "We loved there were no lines, but the kids didn't see the wow factor."

Buescher also brought back the fabled water ski show and its trademark four-high pyramid that vanished when the park's previous owners abandoned the place in 2003, putting the 40 skiers and 600 other Cypress Gardens employees out of work.

"We thought that was it. Cypress Gardens would never reopen," said Don Buffa, producer of the new show and a 19-year veteran of the team. "It's been a miracle how the park's come back."

Fortunately, water skiing is a second income for most of the ski team, including Buffa, a St. Petersburg cabinetmaker, and his wife, Linda, whose day job is operating room nurse at Bayfront Medical Center. Other skiers fell back on their day jobs working in a mortuary, flying commercial jets or waiting on tables at Outback Steakhouse. Many are second-generation Cypress Gardens skiers working their way through school at a job that starts at $12 an hour.

For the second year - and Cypress Gardens' 70th - Buescher is not easing off the gas.

He is pouring millions into improvements that include a new water ski show, a dinner cruise boat and a return of the fabled botanical garden boat tour in February. He doubled the entertainment budget to $7-million and is promoting a longer list of events including flower shows, Halloween haunted houses, and a daily parade and nightly fireworks in the summer.

Because he outfitted all of Cypress Gardens for less than what the biggest parks pay for a signature ride, Buescher is working the economics of running a smaller regional amusement park. That has left him trying to increase per-visitor spending inside the park because he is so reliant on season pass holders.

While the annual pass and the $7 parking charge remain unchanged in 2006, the daily admission was bumped up by $1 to $39.95. This year Cypress Gardens will begin serving beer and wine in selected settings. Food offerings will move closer to where guests cannot ignore them. Food vendors will appear in midway kiosks, and waiters will cruise the aisles at concerts.

"One drawback with locals is they eat at home, so we'll try selling food and drinks at concerts like you see at a baseball game," Buescher said.

The concert series also is being shaped by a year's experience with Florida audiences. Country acts - both modern and classic - remain the backbone of the schedule. But many groups from the 50s and 60s, including Percy Sledge, Frankie Avalon and the Temptations have been booked after the Drifters, Coasters and Platters drew more than 12,000. Artists such as Hootie and the Blowfish and Pat Benatar, however, drew poorly. So Cypress Gardens will try a Radio Disney show with B5 and Everlife.

Buescher didn't start marketing the place to group travel or tour operators until May. That's because the management was caught up in a rush to get everything opened - a job that still is not complete.

"We'll see the first trickles of tour groups this winter, but it will take a year or two for it to mature," Buescher said.

There will be no more new rides in 2006. So much of the park's full collection was delayed by cost overruns and hurricane damage in 2004 that it did not get a full year's exposure.

The eye of Hurricane Charley ripped through the park just a few months before the scheduled opening, laying waste preparations for what was supposed to be a September opening. More than 300 trees were felled. High winds left the botanical gardens a leafless, denuded tangle of brush, limbs and ripped-up sidewalks. Tornado-speed winds peeled the roof off the ice show theater, and other structural failures left building interiors a soggy mess, some of which is still being dried out. No sooner was repair work started than hurricanes Frances and Jeanne swept through.

"We had a lot of the park ready to open, then had to start all over, twice," said Buescher, whose partners needed to borrow an additional $30-million to recover. Some attractions did open, but months after scheduled. The water park, for instance, was supposed to open Memorial Day but missed the entire summer vacation season and didn't open until the school year resumed. Hurricanes caused the water level in Lake Eloise to rise so high that the electric boats on the botanical cruise could not get under the garden's pedestrian bridges.

Worse, Buescher is now in a fight with Landmark American Insurance Co. over what exactly was covered for hurricane damage and in what amounts. Buescher says he is owed $23-million and has filed suit in federal court over the dispute.

If he wins nothing in the fight, Buescher concedes he may lose controlling interest in the park.

"It's a mess," he said.

But he still marvels at how many longtime Winter Haven residents stop him in the park to regale him with memories of how the park is interwoven in their lives.

"I've had more thank-you hugs than I ever imagined, like the widow who talked about how she came here as a child, right after she got married and how her late husband would have really loved to have seen the place now," he said. "It's been very humbling. Those rewards aren't measured in dollars."

Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or 727 893-8252.

[Last modified November 11, 2005, 20:53:02]