Not many can say they’ve impacted the likes of Kellogg’s Cereal, Cirque du Soleil, and the Atlanta Braves all in one career. For more than 30 years, Jack Rouse has brought audiences to their feet in performance halls, theme parks, trade shows, museums, zoos, sports venues, and corporate brand lands. From a Broadway revue at Kings Island to an interactive multimedia theater at the Fort Worth Zoo, Rouse has an impressive track record of creating memorable and entertaining experiences for guests.

He’s produced shows with everyone from Dolly Parton to Captain Kangaroo and brainstormed with creative geniuses from all walks of the entertainment world, including cartoon mogul Bill Hanna and Volkswagen’s Ferdinand Piech.

His company provides the concepts behind some of the most diverse venues in the world and then makes them reality. Bob Rogers, whose BRC Imagination Arts regularly vies with Jack Rouse Associates for business, says Rouse’s track record of accomplishments is tough to compete against. In just the past 15 years, his design and production firm has built an impressive list of clients and projects including Legoland Windsor, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and the Green Bay Packers.

However, Jack’s impressive 15 years at the helm of Jack Rouse Associates does not make a legend. As one of his closest friends and his business partner says, Jack also deserves credit as a legend because he’s been around a long time.

Keith James, president of Jack Rouse Associates and an industry veteran, says Rouse has been around to see the industry transform into what it has become today. He watched Rouse make the jump from academia to theme parks firsthand. “My mom was Jack’s secretary, and I was a guinea pig student being trained as a producer.”

Theatrical Beginnings

In 1971, Rouse was a professor and chair of the renowned musical theater and opera department at the College Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. He was teaching courses such as Theatrical Forms 101, Film History 201, and Performance Interpretation of Late Baroque Operas 410.

Rouse moved to Cincinnati after growing up in Montana and spending his college years in Virginia at Washington & Lee University, and then venturing to Michigan to get a PhD in American Studies and Film History at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

But to avoid teaching summer school, Rouse accepted an offer that drove him far from his teaching career. In the summer of 1971, Taft Broadcasting, owners of Coney Island amusement park at the time, offered him a chance to work on a new theme park 30 miles north of Cincinnati. While not necessarily well remembered in the industry today, Taft Broadcasting was a pioneer in bringing theme parks to new regional markets in the 1970s and 1980s. Along with another professor, Rouse signed up to produce the live shows for Kings Island. “We thought it would be a two-month gig,” he says.

Since Rouse was too busy “with Puccini” to even know what a theme park show was, Taft shipped him off to Six Flags Over Texas. “Their shows were unabashedly patriotic and corny, even for the 1970s,” Rouse recalls. “They were the typical blonde hair, blue-eyed performers.”

Yet, in one of the moments that changed his life, Rouse realized what entertainment is all about when he talked with the late David Blackburn about the shows at Six Flags. “These shows were certainly not what I was doing, which is when I learned my lesson that it wasn’t about me.”

Charlie Mechem, the chairman and CEO of Taft Broadcasting when Kings Island was built, saw the results of this lesson in his new theme park. “I think it’s obvious from the shows Rouse did that they were for the people. There was no ego.”

Bob Harness, who worked with Rouse in the 1970s and currently serves as his creative vice president, says he has a “down in the bones” understanding that entertainment is all about the audience. “He’s maintained that belief through a beginning in live shows and has extended it to the mechanized and digitized theme park world of today.”

One of Rouse’s early performers says he put together shows that were all about the people. Alyson Bristol, seen in 1972 on the stages of Kings Island in white hot pants and sequins, is now director of corporate sponsorships for Boston Symphony Orchestra Inc. She says one of the early Kings Island shows, including one she starred in called Make Your Own Kind of Music, reflected culture at the time. “It was a revue based on the popular standards and what people wanted to experience. The shows weren’t about what he wanted.”

Even with the outlandish numbers and sequined costumes, Rouse loved it. While his fellow professor returned to academia and became the maestro of the Cincinnati Ballet, Rouse had caught the theme park bug. “The business gets in your blood,” he says.

By 1973 he had left the University of Cincinnati and was working full-time for Taft. Kings Island opened on April 29, 1972, and based on the park’s success, Taft opened Virginia’s Kings Dominion in 1975. The company also purchased North Carolina’s Carowinds in Charlotte in 1975.

The Drama King
With three parks and plans for others on the drawing board, Rouse was asked to head what became Taft’s Kings Productions. He was responsible for live entertainment at all the parks and expanded the department to handle everything from attraction design to concept planning. “In the early days, we got into everything from employee uniforms and employee training manuals and taking the shows on the road to wooing travel writers,” Rouse says.

Mechem says Rouse was well-equipped to lead. “As we expanded and built more parks, he was able to help because of his broad and creative mind. He has great capacity.”

Rouse’s department ramped up quickly as Taft continued to expand. The next big project was Canada’s Wonderland. Construction on the 300-acre site outside Toronto began in 1979 with a grand opening on May 23, 1981. Rouse served as the executive producer for the park and expanded the live entertainment to include a pirate stunt show and sky diving show. “At that time, there were no companies that produced shows. So, we went out and recruited gymnasts.”
As with all of Taft’s theme parks, live entertainment was a key ingredient of the programming. International Theme Park Services’ Dennis Spiegel, who was the general manager of Kings Dominion in the 1970s, says the entertainment helped define the visitor experience. “Shows—and ours were the best—were a big part in making us a theme park.”

Paramount Parks’ CEO Al Webber, the assistant ride manager at Kings Island when it opened in 1972, agrees that the live shows were important in giving people a reason to visit Kings Island over Coney Island or even Cedar Point. “It was an important way to differentiate a theme park from an amusement park.”

The Learning Curve
In 1984, Taft opened Houston’s Hanna Barbera Land, a theme park exclusively dedicated to children. At the time Taft Broadcasting owned the Hanna Barbera Studios and was able to bring Yogi Bear and other farmiliar cartoon characters into the park. Rouse, who helped oversee the design of the park, says the project was an experiment. “It failed,” he says with his usual candor. “The target demographic was too narrow. The budget didn’t allow an execution at a level that would create a length of stay. Location was a problem. I mean, who wants to go outside in August in Houston?”

However, he does feel the park was a pioneer of sorts. “Oddly enough, that basic concept has succeeded for Lego.”

In 1986, Taft opened Australia’s Wonderland theme park outside Sydney and a few years later they bought Great America in Santa Clara, Calif.

By 1987 Rouse was overseeing the company’s Kings Productions, producing shows, and designing new attractions for six theme parks. With a parent company involved in everything from Black Entertainment Television to original cartoon animation and a business climate favorable to leveraged buyouts, a decision was made at the corporate level to allow a number of executives to buy Taft’s theme parks. Rouse was one of the partners and, despite the company’s success, considered this career move a major risk. “It makes buying a house feel like going to the corner store for milk.”

Kings Entertainment was born as Taft shed its theme parks. A few years later the partners sold Kings Entertainment to financier Carl Lindner and he turned around and sold the theme parks to Viacom’s Paramount Studios in 1992. It was in the middle of all these changes that Rouse decided to leave and start his own firm.

In addition to Jack Rouse, other individuals who worked for Taft went on to make a major impact on the industry including Al Webber, Keith James, Bob Harness, and Dennis Spiegel. Taft alums include Larry Wyatt, Bruce Robinson, Jane Cooper, Dick Fussner, Tom Kempton, Mike Bartlett, Dan Aylward, Jeff McNair, and Peter FitzGibbon, among others. These are the people who designed Fiesta Texas, pioneered industry safety and security standards, transformed the Las Vegas Hilton into the Star Trek Experience, opened Universal Studios Florida, and planned and/or operated hundreds of attractions thrilling millions around the world today.

But it’s Rouse’s creativity and fortitude, rather than mere fortune, that spawned his successful business, says Webber. “I think a lot of Rouse’s work is legendary. It’s the embodiment of the work.”

Mechem says Rouse has not just raised, but has reinvented, the bar. “If legend means anything, it means someone has created a standard to which others aspire,” says Mechem. “It means accomplishments that are many and high quality. It means charting new courses. Rouse qualifies on all accounts.”

While Rouse doesn’t enjoy talking about his past as legendary, he will candidly talk about the future. Despite the temptation to never return from his long Harley trips out west or the two weeks he spends skiing every December, Rouse is quick to rebuff the very mention of slowing down. “Why the hell would I retire? There is too much fun figuring out where it’s going to go next.”

He sees even bigger changes to come to the nonprofit world and a continued commitment to demographics in the theme park business. However, he believes the direction it takes will always be determined primarily by the audience.

A few years ago, Rouse spoke at an industry event about how egos can often hamper successful projects. “For the sake of your audience, the people who will ultimately determine if you succeed or fail, it is essential that you keep everyone focused on the objective.

“Remember,” he pleaded, “you aren’t doing this for you; you are doing this for an audience!”