Amusementtrader.com

A proposal for county support for a local tourist attraction drew a packed audience at Tuesday’s county commission meeting.

The commissioners unanimously approved land purchases and promotional support of around $4 million for Tweetsie Railroad, a Wild West theme park between Blowing Rock and Boone that recently opened for its 51st year but faced an uncertain future.

Planning director Joe Furman, who is acting economic developer for the county, presented the economic incentive plan to open the public hearing. Furman outlined two conditions that would secure the park’s future in the face of rising land prices and pressure to develop leased property for residential use. Furman said Tweetsie Railroad must be purchased by general manager Chris Robbins, who is seeking financing to become majority shareholder of Tweetsie. Two tracts must be purchased by 2010, when current leases expire, with other park property under lease through 2065.

Furman said the loss of Tweetsie and its $27 million annual economic impact would be a big blow to the county, since it’s the sixth-largest employer in the county, with 26 full-time jobs and more than 300 seasonal jobs. He said other counties had offered proposals to try to lure the theme park out of Watauga County and because of planned expansions, Tweetsie was unable to buy the affected property before the 2010 leases expired.

Robbins thanked supporters and said the theme park has resolved many of the land leases but needed to buy out two parcels whose owners didn’t want to lease the property. He said there were other challenges facing the theme park, such as family succession in ownership, improvements and rising lease costs. He said park improvements were necessary, with the theme park spending $1 million last year.

He described the incentive package as a “partnership” and said the theme park was also making commitments to match the county’s. He said that last year, the park had 235,000 visitors, and the county could see economic benefits for “many, many years to come.”

“We brought the land resolution to 80 percent,” Robbins said. “We need that final 20 percent.”

The 300-acre park sits on several tracts, with about a third of the property owned by Tweetsie. Various landowner groups own the other tracts.

Under the proposal, the county would purchase a 46-percent interest share in a 46-acre tract and a 35-percent interest in a 96-acre tract, with a total outlay of $3.15 million. The county’s Tourism Development Authority, using revenues collected through an occupancy tax, would provide $200,000. The county would then lease the property to Tweetsie at $1 a year for six years, at which time Tweetsie could purchase it at market rate, plus any expenses and interest.

The TDA would provide an annual grant of $150,000 for those six years for marketing and promotion. Tweetsie, in turn, would commit to remaining at the present location, making $13 million in park improvements and creating an easement and constructing a portion of the Middle Fork Greenway on its property.

Tweetsie had undergone lease struggles in the last few years, reaching the point where it had begun exploring other locations outside the county. The theme park has an option on a property in Wilkes County and has also considered Caldwell County.

The county’s resolution reads, “The assistance to be provided by the County is essential to preserving probable hourly wages to be paid to employees of the Company which are at or above the median wage in the County; retaining a substantial number of jobs in the County; preserving substantial and positive economic impact for the county; retaining the Amusement Park in the County; and meeting the competitive offers made by one or more other counties.”

The town of Blowing Rock, the Boone Area Chamber of Commerce and the Boone Convention & Visitors Bureau delivered letters to the commissioners supporting the package.

AppalCART director Chris Turner, representing the Blue Ridge Sierra Club, supported the development of the Middle Fork Greenway as part of the incentive package. He said park expansion could also offer opportunities to use other “green techniques” in building and operations.

Fowler Cooper, member of the Economic Development Commission, said the commission was supportive and felt it was necessary to retain the park and its economic benefits.

Dan Meyer, president of the Boone Area Chamber of Commerce, said, “Their leaving would be a major loss to the county,” likening it to the loss of an industrial factory in its impact.

He said the park provides salaries that circulate in the area and support local non-profit groups and businesses.

Harris Prevost of Grandfather Mountain said in the travel industry, all attractions were partners, and overnight guests were more likely to want several attractions in order to justify a long trip and stay. “We’re all in this together,” he said.

J.B. Lawrence, mayor of Blowing Rock, said the park offered fond memories for those who grew up in the area and the Blowing Rock Town Council supported the plan. “We could spend twice as much money and get only half the impact,” he said, adding Blowing Rock was dependent on tourism.

Blowing Rocking Chamber of Commerce director Charles Hardin said the theme park offered jobs to different sectors and said, “Third-generation Tweetsie-goers now accompany their parents and grandparents.”

He said positive experiences brought people back for return visits. “Boone and Blowing Rock would never be the same if we couldn’t hear the whistle of ‘The Little Engine That Could,’ while we were outside in the summer,” Hardin said.

Not everyone supported the plan. Roy Gryder called it the most “outrageous idea” to ever come from the county government, saying it would add to the local tax burden, and cited the county’s commitment to building a new high school. He said the privately owned company had failed to prepare for the future and “was now trying to coerce the taxpayers by threatening to leave.” He said the theme park should “live and die on its own merits.”

Tim Gregg also opposed tax dollars being used for a private company and said the money could better be used for roads, police protection and other needs.

Tracy Brown of the Blowing Rock TDA read a resolution supporting the theme park’s contributions to the region, dating back to the opening of the Wild West theme park in 1957.

Kent Tarbutton of Chetola Resort discussed Tweetsie and said it was a fair deal and the county not only gets its money back but gets other benefits in return, such as the park’s regional advertising.

John Callahan read a letter he’d written two years before, when he learned the theme park might be relocating. He said it was a historic site and suggested then that the county purchase the land and lease it back to Tweetsie. “This is a win-win situation that costs the taxpayer nothing and brings a lot to the county in the future,” Callahan said.

Watauga County TDA chairman Rob Holton said Tweetsie was an important part of the county’s culture. “Our tourism is based on wholesome family entertainment and outdoor recreation,” he said.

Dale Carroll, president of AdvantageWest, said keeping the theme park was important to the region and said, “This is a common thread that goes through many families, not just in North Carolina but throughout the Southeast and other parts of the country.”

He said diversity was important to the economy of the mountains.

Dick Hearn, president of the Middle Fork Greenway Association, said he applauded the county’s and Robbins’s efforts to develop the greenway and “keep the whistle blowing in these mountains.”

The commissioners unanimously adopted the proposal, and commissioner John Cooper said the package had been discussed for 18 months and was the right thing for the county. Commissioner Bill Winkler said the historic element was one of the most important draws of the theme park.

Commission chairman Jim Deal said the commissioners have received a lot of public feedback and had studied the issue closely and that he appreciated people expressing their opinions. He said taxpayers should hold commissioners accountable for their decisions.

“What we’re doing is not a giveaway,” he said, noting the county would own the land and taxpayers would not lose money. He said Tweetsie brought money to the county, and the package was an investment in a partnership that brought money to both parties and helped keep property tax rates low.

Machinery demolishes the Jet Stream rollercoaster at Rhyl’s funfair to make way for a new complex of shops

The world’s biggest collection of cartoon character and thrill ride theme parks is to be built in the desert in Dubai.

Legoland yesterday became the latest to sign up for Dubailand, a vast playground of theme parks and attractions on a tract of desert which, when completed, will be bigger than Singapore.

A total of 26 projects will make up the $60bn project, with separate theme parks also planned for Marvel Super Heroes (Spiderman, Incredible Hulk), Dreamworks (Shrek) and Universal Studios.

Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder will also have their own parks, with US-based thrill ride park Six Flags also opening outside America for the first time. The colossal project will be twice the size of Disney World in Florida, currently the world’s biggest theme park.
Work has already started on Dubailand, with an Ernie Els-designed golf course and three polo fields completed. A new cricket stadium opens in August, then works starts in earnest on the world’s first uber theme park.

“From December 2010, we will be opening a theme park every six months,” said marketing director Ahmed Tag Eldeen at a conference in Dubai yesterday.

The scale of the project is staggering, with only Las Vegas capable of building on such a scale. Jurassic and Formula 1 theme parks are also planned, as is a wheel bigger than the London Eye and a lifesize replica of the Eiffel Tower.

A huge sports stadium and Tiger Woods golf club are also planed – but you only get to play if you buy a villa (from $2m). All will be marketed as Dubailand, with a new rail link being built from Dubai’s centre.

Dubai even promises some culture, with the opening of the Islamic Culture and Science building.

The project is the culmination of increased efforts to double tourism to Dubai. Last year, more than 7.7m tourists visited, but Dubai expects 15m to visit by 2015. More than 20,000 hotel rooms will be built on site, along with thousands of shops and restaurants.

The Emirate also wants to boost the amount of time visitors spend in Dubai – currently only 2.8 days. Tourism now accounts for 19 per cent of Dubai’s revenue, a figure expected to increase to 35 per cent by 2020.

But one name conspicuously absent from the theme park roll call is Disney itself. “We are not excluding Disney – we are in talks with everyone,” insisted Ahmed Tag Eldeen. “They may join but it all depends on whether Disney wants to come to the party.”

Roll up, roll up for the battle of the theme parks, with two new rides in Orlando opening this week.

In the Disney corner, Toy Story Mania, after the Pixar movie that launched computer-generated feature films. In the Universal Studios corner the Simpsons’ Krustyland, after what is not simply the most popular cartoon series of all time, but the longest-running sitcom. There’s no love lost between the two companies.

This year Disney celebrates 80 years since Uncle Walt founded it. Did Universal Studios time its Simpsons launch to rain on Toy Story’s parade? Is it pure coincidence that both are themed like old-fashioned Midway carnival attractions? Officially, no comment. But, as Homer might say, does the Pope s*** in the woods? Is a bear Catholic?

Toy Story: You are one of Andy’s toys, shrunk to size in his giant bedroom. The toys stage a fair under his bed, which involves you riding in a spinning car wearing 3-D glasses, and shooting moving fairground targets with a giant pop-gun. Sometimes they hit back with a blast of real air or water - touch being the additional “dimension” that lets Disney call this a 4-D ride.

Simpsons: You enter Krustyland through the head of Krusty the Clown, his tongue laid out in a 35ft-long red carpet. The big ride is a motion simulator in which evil Sideshow Bob attempts to kill you on a giant screen.

FUN FACTOR

Toy Story: There is an atavistic pleasure in pumping away on an old-fashioned pop-gun rather than pressing an electronic button; though some suggestible young women were rendered hysterical on launch day by what this repetitive action suggested, particularly since one of the Midway attractions, a ring-toss game, is called “Buzz Lightyear’s Tossers”.

There is a real thrill and novelty in the way your shots are translated by one of 150 computers into balls, darts or other missiles on the screen.

Simpsons: The six minutes of action are so fast and furious that you’ll immediately want to go again, to catch the bits you missed. It begins with the destruction by Sideshow Bob of the roller coaster you seem to be on, unleashing a chaotic rampage through Krustyland.

Your car careers out of control into Captain Dinosaur’s Pirate Rip-Off (a none-too- subtle parody of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean), then makes a giant evil robot panda knock the head off an irritating singing elf (woo-hoo! Take that, Disney’s Small World ride), before getting towed around a water tank by a killer whale (Sea World).

Semi-finally, you re-create the Simpsons’ opening credits by bumping the family into their house and on to their sofa… before the mayhem starts up all over again.

IN-QUEUE ENTERTAINMENT

Toy Story: The antechamber is a giant bedroom, with outsized toys and board games, and features the world’s most sophisticated Animatronic: a talking, moving Mr Potatohead, which cost $1 million to build.

Simpsons: TV screens show clips from past episodes linked with newly commissioned material, such as safety tips from hopeless police chief Wiggum: “If you must throw up, do it in your hat. And beware Sideshow Bob: if you see him, call 119… no, 191… er…”

FAITHFULNESS TO THE ORIGINAL

Toy Story: The ride has been in development since 2005, though it was only after Disney formally acquired Pixar in 2006 that Toy Story creator John Lasseter properly came on board. He insisted on the original animators being involved, as well as on the inclusion of Buzz Lightyear, whom Disney had left out as he already has his own ride called Astro-Blasters.

Simpsons: Creator Matt Groening, producer James Brooks and the writing team were heavily involved throughout the two-year development of the ride. The original voice artists are featured, most notably Kelsey “Frasier” Grammer as Sideshow Bob.

MERCHANDISING

Toy Story: The gift shop has yet to open, but is expected to include merchandise from a range of Pixar films, not just Toy Story.

Simpsons: The gift shop is housed in - yes! - a Kwik-E-Mart, and has an awesome selection for all ages.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Toy Story: Four floats carry 40 insanely enthusiastic dancers, many dressed in stifling Pixar character suits, grinning away despite the heat. And they do this three times a day.

Simpsons: Whaddya want? as Krusty might say. You’ve had your yuks, now get outta here already ya big schlemiel.

And the winner is…

… you. Toy Story may come out just ahead on points, but both rides are terrific fun. And both companies stand to benefit. As Buzz Lightyear would surely put it, “To liquidity and beyond!” Or, as Homer would more succinctly riposte: “Do’h!”

THE SHOWDOWN: HEAVYWEIGHTS OR LIGHTWEIGHTS?

Toy Story

Big idea 4/5

Fun factor 4/5

In-queue surprises 5/5

True to the original 5/5

Add-ons 4/5

Special events 4/5

The Simpsons

Big idea 4/5

Fun factor 5/5

In-queue surprises 4/5

Faithfulness to the original 5/5

Add-ons 4/5

Special events 0/5

Eleven months after a cable on a ride at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom severed her feet, Kaitlyn Lasitter walks gingerly on her reattached right foot and on the prosthesis on her left leg, holding hands with her parents, crutches close at hand.
“I want to be a 14-year-old girl,” she said yesterday at a Capitol Hill news conference. ” … I want to go to the mall with my friends, but … when I do, I have to have crutches, I have to have my dad there to hold my hand, and I have to have a wheelchair just in case I get tired.”

The Louisville teenager spoke publicly for the first time about her accident and her injuries yesterday to help draw attention to a bill that she and others say would plug a gaping loophole in federal law:

Rides at theme parks such as Six Flags, Disney World and Busch Gardens are subject to no federal regulation, even though rides at traveling carnivals or church socials are.
“As millions of families prepare to head to amusement parks, there is a dangerous double standard that defies common sense,” said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who has been trying to change the law for nine years.

His bill, which is in a House committee, would allow the Consumer Product Safety Commission to investigate accidents, share information about malfunctioning rides among the states and require manufacturers to fix design flaws.

The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions opposes the legislation, saying that theme parks have an excellent safety record and that Markey’s proposal would create “an additional layer of unnecessary regulation.”

“We safely entertain 300 million people a year in the U.S. alone,” said association spokesman David Mandt.

“Those same visitors take 1.8 billion safe rides,” he said, and injuries are “extremely rare.”

Since there has been no federal regulatory oversight of theme park rides since 1981, no national database tracks deaths and injuries.

But the Consumer Product Safety Commission makes estimates of such incidents, involving all amusement rides, based on samplings of hospital visits.

The commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System estimates that there were 18,776 injuries on amusement attractions in 2007. A decade ago, the system estimated that 13,478 people nationwide suffered injuries on amusement attractions and required a hospital visit.

Kathy Fackler, president of Saferparks, a nonprofit group backing Markey’s bill, said roughly half the customers at the nation’s top 20 theme parks, 67 million people, will get their thrills on unregulated rides this year.

And that, she said, is “an abomination.”

Referring to Kaitlyn, Fackler told reporters: “If this girl’s legs had been severed in a lawn mower accident or an ATV accident, the Consumer Product Safety Commission would have investigated. If she were an employee of Six Flags instead of a paying customer, OSHA would have investigated.

“What is so special about amusement park companies that they should be exempted from such basic public safety policies?”

Kaitlyn’s mother, Monique, said in a shaking voice yesterday that she believes her daughter’s accident “is not going to go in vain, that we have a mission here to change this.”

“We’ve been through a really hard struggle in our house,” she said. “I wouldn’t want it to happen to anyone else.”

Kaitlyn’s father, Randy, said he has been dismayed to discover how little regulatory control there is over rides such as the one that injured his daughter.

“We just assumed the amusement parks we went to were well-regulated,” he said.

Kaitlyn, who was injured on Kentucky Kingdom’s Superman Tower of Power ride, which has since been dismantled, had not been scheduled to speak at yesterday’s news conference. But when a reporter asked for her thoughts, she stood up and went to the microphones. She was poised and didn’t sound nervous.

“What the congressman is trying to do is a very great thing,” she said. “… It took my legs being taken from me, which people take for granted every day, to have something changed. That’s sad.”

The accident has changed her “in every way possible,” she said.

“I won’t be the person I was before. Because now, I’m scared of stuff. I fear for my life when I get in a car, fear for my life when I get on an elevator. … In my mind, I’m not as carefree as a 14-year-old child should be. … I got that taken away from me.”

Kaitlyn, who is being home-schooled this year, said her legs still hurt.

“I still have trouble sleeping at night and I still toss and turn constantly. We’ll be out somewhere having fun and I’ll say, ‘Maybe, one day I won’t go and have pain.’ … I get frequent headaches constantly, I get nauseous. … I know eventually I’ll get better and stuff, but I don’t want to wait for eventually.”

Carolyn McLean, a spokeswoman for Kentucky Kingdom, said in a statement that “our hearts go out to the Lasitters and we are working with the family to ensure that Kaitlyn is taken care of for the rest of her life. We deeply regret last year’s tragedy and have improved our already-stringent safety procedures to make sure nothing like it can happen again.”

The Lasitters have filed suit against Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom in Jefferson Circuit Court. In a deposition, the park’s ride maintenance manager said technicians never performed a hands-on inspection of the cables that the ride’s manufacturer called for, in addition to visual inspections.

While the Consumer Product Safety Commission currently has jurisdiction over the safety of mobile rides, such as those at carnivals, fairs and festivals, it rarely orders operators to do anything. It typically notifies them when a manufacturer issues a notice regarding a problem with a ride.

The Kentucky Department of Agriculture, the state agency charged with inspecting amusement rides and investigating accidents, said after the Kentucky Kingdom accident that it does not have enough funding or manpower to perform necessary follow-up inspections on rides around the state.

Department spokesman Bill Clary noted yesterday that the 2008 General Assembly earmarked $250,000 a year in the new state budget to hire more inspectors.

“We haven’t been able to hire anyone because we don’t yet know the fiscal condition of the department,” Clary said. “By the time the fiscal year starts in July, we’ll have a much better picture.”

This year’s legislature also approved a law to strengthen the state’s regulation of amusement park rides. Among other things, it would raise the maximum fine that could be levied against a park to $10,000, from the current $1,000, and requires operators of amusement rides be at least 18 years old.

Kentucky now has eight inspectors conducting between 4,000 and 5,000 inspections of theme park rides, carnival rides and public play areas.

The Southeast’s first new amusement park in nine years sits partly on Myrtle Beach’s long-dormant Fantasy Harbor entertainment complex and partly on the rubble of the failed Waccamaw Factory Shoppes.

Hard Rock Park has 55 acres of rides, eateries and shops on a 140-acre site south of U.S. 501. It is about half the size of Charlotte’s Carowinds, eastern Tennessee’s Dollywood, or Islands of Adventure, which opened in Orlando, Fla., in 1999.

Closed only in January and February, it will be the northernmost four-season amusement park in eastern North America, and the first anywhere associated with the Hard Rock Cafe brand, which boasts about 125 bar/grill locations from Amsterdam to Yokohama. And it is the first theme park in the world hard-wired to the enduring appeal of rock ‘n’ roll.

The park’s five themed sections are arranged around a lagoon. Here’s a preview of what you will find:

• Born in the USA includes a midway-style games area; climbing structures for kids; an all-ages Shake Rattle & Roller coaster; plus the Slippery When Wet suspended coaster that’s an easy target for folks on the ground, who can blast riders with water cannons.

An amphitheater can seat 2,000 visitors — plus 10,000 standing and 8,000 on the lawn —for local and regional bands that will play throughout the day, plus occasional major groups.

• British Invasion is the park’s largest themed area. Its thriller is the Maximum RPM coaster: Board your “sports car” and a ride-in Ferris wheel rotates you to the track above.

Nights in White Satin: The Trip — also pegged as a major draw — is an indoor “dark” ride synchronized to the 1967 Moody Blues standard; cars glide over 720 feet of track in 4.5 minutes (speed: 1.82 mph), passing 14 scenes.

The Roadies Stunt Show will have live-action stunts and comedy. Punk Pit is a musical cousin to the Moonwalk, with separate areas for small fry and for large-size moshers.

• Lost in the ’70s is an indoor amusement arcade that mixes new games with classics such as Pong, Donkey Kong and Pac-Man.

• Rock & Roll Heaven has Led Zeppelin — the Ride. It’s the park’s signature coaster, and is synchronized to the band’s 1969 hit “Whole Lotta Love.” The track is close to three-fourths of a mile long, has six inversions and a 120-foot loop. Maximum speed: 65 mph.

• Cool Country attractions include Midnight Rider, a coaster where you hear Southern rock; a giant swing ride; and Muddin’ Monster Race, a round-ride. Country on the Rocks is an 860-seat indoor venue with — rather improbably — a souped-up ice-skating show.

THEN AND NOW

Longtime visitors to Myrtle Beach may see ghosts of previous attractions at Hard Rock park:

• The exterior of Country on the Rocks originally was a Fantasy Harbor attraction called Magic on Ice, then Snoopy’s Magic on Ice. It was retooled as The Savoy, a big-band music venue, then Florida businessman Jon Binkowski bought it in 1999.

Binkowski turned it back to a skating show, but his Ice Castle closed the following year just as the outlet-plus-attraction site slid into financial troubles. While Medieval Times survived — it’s still in business, with a new show this year jousting, swordplay, horsemanship and falconry — the other theaters hit hard times.

• Mall 3 of Waccamaw Factory Shoppes has been repurposed. It holds Hard Rock Park’s headquarters (in the onetime Belk outlet); the Nights in White Satin indoor ride; and the Lost in the ’70s game arcade.

• Fantasy Harbor included a large artificial lagoon that at one point was a Jet-Ski concession. Hard Rock Park was seamlessly designed around it. The new Gibson guitar mega-statue on its shore is fitted with lasers that throw beams across the water after dusk; nightly fireworks explode over the lagoon.

The two swans that have lived there for the past eight years are now named Rock and Roll, and they’re quite used to noise: The entire park is directly under a major Myrtle Beach International flight path. The top of the Led Zeppelin coaster is just 13 inches shy of the FAA’s maximum-height limit.

• The frontage road still holds a derelict chunk of the Waccamaw Factory Shoppes. Investors hope to raze and redevelop the site as a retail-residential complex to be called Paradise City. The theme park is behind it.

A HIT OR A MISS?

Hard Rock hopes to attract 30,000 visitors a day and about 3 million a year.

But industry consultant Dennis Speigel wonders if Hard Rock can make those numbers in a troubled economy and when the industry is saturated with attractions.

“It’s a very hefty price at $400 million and the projections they have published are very ambitious,” he said. “Very few theme parks, with the exception of a handful, and primarily the Disney and the Universal Parks, have ever opened exceeding 2 million people in the first year.”

Jon Binkowski, the park’s chief creative officer, countered that there will be plenty of potential guests.

“There are 14 million visitors who come to Myrtle Beach and 13 million of them are families,” he said. After the family goes to the beach and eats out and plays miniature golf, they will want to spend the day at a theme park, he predicted. “We built this for the family.”

Steven Goodwin, the park’s chief executive officer, believes that Hard Rock may be more attractive to visitors than Florida’s theme parks.

“We’re 500 miles closer to the major population centers of the Northeast,” he said. “At $3.50 a gallon, that’s a big amount of money when you add it up. Plus there are a lot more affordable motels in Myrtle Beach.”