Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

For amusement makers, fun is job one

The latest in flipped-out, sense-shattering contraptions are on display at a trade show in Orlando.

By MARK ALBRIGHT, Times Staff Writer
Published November 16, 2007

Abbie Harris, 9, laughs as she lands on a giant Krush Kushionz landing cushion at the IAAPA annual trade show at the Orlando Convention Center. Harris was visiting the convention on vacation from Denton, Texas.
	[Edmund D. Fountain | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT Slideshow IAAPA Orlando [Edmund D. Fountain | Times] Dean Pflaume, 30, of Orlando climbs on a sheet metal wall using magnets strapped to his arms and legs Thursday at the IAAPA trade show in Orlando. [Edmund D. Fountain | Times] Mark Hilke, 28, of Wisconsin Dells, Wis., takes in the view from 118 feet above ground on the Dinner-in-the-Sky ride at the IAAPA annual trade show.

ORLANDO - It's just another $100 gourmet meal. Except the diners are strapped in with six-point seat belts and all 22 are being served by two chefs and three waiters around a table hanging 150 feet in the air from a crane boom.

Imagine dining aloft like this overlooking Niagara Falls. Or the Grand Canyon. Or imagine paying $150,000 for this flashy rig created by people who designed stunts for the TV show Fear Factor.

"The first question we usually get is 'what if somebody has to go to the bathroom?'" says Stephan Kerkhofs president of Dining in the Sky Inc., which has six of them serving "high-end meals for high-level meetings" in Europe and South Africa. "Go before you get on."

Dining in the Sky was one of the more off-the-wall stars at one of the world's more unusual trade shows this week in Orlando. The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, or IAAPA, drew 25,000 leisure industry executives from around the world to kick the tires on the latest creations of their 1,200 suppliers. This is where midway games get their plush doll prizes mostly for less than $2 apiece, the latest rides debut and everyone from carnival owners to Walt Disney World gets a peek under the circus tent at what's coming in the next few years.

Consider Krush Kushionz, honored as new product of the year. It's a new type of stunt-man cushion that uses a network of light, inflated plastic fingers of air to disperse the energy from a falling body. Created by a onetime circus trapeze star, Fred Oslar, who broke 11 bones in his career, people can land on it any way they want safely from as high as 25 feet. Oslar, who says it makes falling fun, uses it to give rank amateurs a fling on the trapeze without a safety harness.

"I thought it would be most popular among 12- to 20-year-olds, but kids as young as 6 love it and so do many of their parents," Oslar said.

Indeed, the industry is hungry for new ideas amid signs that U.S. growth has peaked.

That's why Busch Entertainment Corp.'s Discovery Cove and Aquatica are the only new theme parks to open in Florida since 1998. And for the first time since the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, Walt Disney World has no new park on the horizon. Meanwhile, hedge funds have been buying up troubled publicly traded regional amusement park operators. Blackstone Group, which owns half of Universal Studios Florida, is now the world's second-biggest theme park operator, behind Disney. The trend is raising fears that short-term investors will cut staff, training and the huge doses of cash needed to keep adding new rides.

"Intelligent reinvestment in new attractions is the lifeblood of this business," said Buzz Price, the consultant who did the feasibility studies for Walt Disney World and Sea World. "You have to keep it alive and refreshed or people will not come back."

Meanwhile, theme park attendance growth is overseas in Europe and Asia where growing middle-class families are flourishing. Even Busch, which owns Busch Gardens Africa in Tampa, is looking internationally for a new park now.

In Florida, the big destination parks are all reporting strong business in 2007. And they think the weak dollar will make them an even better deal for visitors from Canada, Europe and South America this winter.

Despite the economy, vendors say parks are spending.

Marty Sklar, creative director of Walt Disney Imagineering during a 50-year career, says the industry's challenge is technology.

"Kids today never put down their cell phones," he said. "We must figure out how to deal with these gadgets in our parks and create an opportunity."

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

Other things coming

Coasters: More speed and twisty inversions as big-ticket ride designers use hydraulic launch accelerators and linear-induction motors to control speed in a split second. Vertical drops are going beyond vertical to curving inward. Spinning coaster cars are spreading. Robotic arms, some even used like elbows, lift multiple-seat chassis on moving coaster trains and spin them. One new thrill ride looks like a giant fly swatter swinging from a beam with 30 seats built in the swatter.

Food: Deep-fried Oreo cookies is not the end. Now it's batter-fried fruits: bananas, strawberries and pineapples.

Vending machines: A coin-operated cotton candy spinner.

Arcades: Remember Whac-A-Mole? Now it's BuzzOff, with fly swatters.

Novelty: Lobster tanks fitted with an arcade game crane enables diners to wrestle their own meal out for boiling.

LED lighting: LEDs are the next big thing in rides and midways. Italian ride builder Zamperla decked out its new $600,000 amusement park version of Disko Coasterin them. Disney World covered the Cinderella Castle with ice blue ones for the holidays. Giant Ferris wheels are being programmed with 10,000 LEDs that can be choreographed in moving, multicolor patterns. Five to 10 times as bright as bulbs, LEDs need a fraction of the electricity, last longer and are too low amp to electrocute. "They are going to revolutionize the business," said Todd Kunz, president of Brandon-based Galaxy Amusement Systems.

[Last modified November 15, 2007, 22:58:37]