Strolling through most amusement parks on any given day, one hears more than just screams from plummeting roller coasters, corn kernels popping, and children begging for just one more ride.

For some parks, live entertainment—more than the massive roller coasters or the pizza and snow cones—is what keeps visitors coming back for more. Other parks just use live shows as a means of boosting their numbers and extending visitors’ time at the park.
With acres of space to cover and a wide array of visitors to please, the trick is figuring out what works for each park and pulling from a variety of resources to make it all come together.

Old-fashioned Charm

Kennywood in Pittsburgh, Pa., markets itself as “America’s finest traditional amusement park” and sticks to traditional park entertainment with acts like the park’s roving band, the Kennywood Hepcats. In addition to offering two free live shows on two stages, the talent offered throughout the park is aimed to please visitors of all ages—stilt walkers, jugglers, mimes, and roving musicians are conventional crowd pleasers, utilized throughout the season.

Entertainment director Jeff Checcio fills Kennywood with a vast array of talent by using a variety of means to scout. He uses an outside production company for larger jobs, goes through talent agents, and also contacts the acts directly, depending on what kind of act the park is looking to fill. The process can involve a hands-on approach of looking through tapes and brochures, or with some of the bigger productions, it means hiring a producer to put together acts. The park holds a major summer event, the Grand Victorian Festivals (June 30-July 6), that features a special parade with fireworks and live music, but otherwise Kennywood doesn’t advertise its entertainment. Checcio sees entertainment as part of the general admission package; giving visitors all-day access to anything in the park versus a ride-all-day pass draws crowds to the shows. “Although we don’t advertise and promote live entertainment as a separate area, if we didn’t have it I think it would take away from a lot of the park and a lot of people would be unhappy,” Checcio says.

Meeting Great Expectations

While some parks use entertainment as an added draw, others use it as a selling point. Beyond a mere addition to amusement fare, patrons at Dolly Parton’s theme park expect to be surrounded by country and gospel talents. At Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., crowds pile in for big festivals, while season pass holders enjoy the added benefit of deals on renowned country acts.


The summer’s “Showcase of Stars” features the biggest acts in country, bluegrass, and gospel music. According to public relations manager Peter Owens, they’ve had no problem selling out two evenings with Toby Keith, and have had similarly great turnouts for country chart toppers Brad Paisley, Keith Urban, and Diamond Rio. They also make some shows into promotions—last season they gave away a pair of general admission tickets and a pair of season passes every hour on the radio for about four weeks preceding a free Jessica Andrews concert.

In the spring, the six-week long “Festival of Nations” features about 400 performers from different countries. Acts like the Cooee Australia Show and the Svejk Band from the Czech Republic expose visitors to a wide range of musical and performance styles from polka to Kenyan acrobats. In late summer the park organizes a bluegrass festival, Bluegrass Blast, that runs August 30-31. Owens says he found that for at least the past couple of years, the festivals and events are more of an actual draw than the big name concerts. But the task of finding and booking the talent for a show-based theme park like Dollywood entails several booking companies and agents auditioning and scouting talent from around the world regularly. The competition is tight at Dollywood, although knowing the music diva doesn’t hurt.

On the Brink

Booked just on the cusp of success, artists like B2K and 98 Degrees please teenage audiences at Six Flag’s Great America in Gurnee, Ill. Entertainment manager Todd Stickney says deals for bigger name acts that fill the 3,500-capacity Hometown Square are often made at the corporate level for the eight different parks, while festival acts are booked individually or through radio station partnerships.

But Stickney says even their big name concerts are planned with little intention to drive business. “We’re not looking to bring in a Garth Brooks to help pull people in,” he says. “We do concerts as an added entertainment value to our guests.”

But with several large concert venues within the town, Hershey Park in Hershey, Pa., does benefit from big name touring acts stopping by as well as from creating productions geared specifically for the park and its venues. Besides the parks—Hershey Park, ZooAmerica, and Dutch Wonderland—there is a separate sports and entertainment group, which includes the Hershey Park Arena, Giant Center, Hershey Park Stadium, and Hershey Park Star Pavilion. Both Hershey Park Stadium and the smaller Star Pavilion are stops on the Clear Channel Entertainment tour circuit—the world’s leading producer and marketer of live entertainment—enabling Hershey to book the top-selling pop artists in the country. Hershey Park’s public relations manager, Kathy Burrows, says shows by popular bands like ’NSync have sold out to 64,000 people over two performances—a guaranteed way to bring volume to the park. Hershey also benefits from its location between two A-markets, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Though the area is considered a B-market, it is one of the only facilities in the state that can seat more than 30,000 people for a stadium show.

The outdoor Hershey Stadium books shows during the park’s regular May to September season, but the Giant Center allows for entertainment all year long. Sell-out holiday shows, such as Royal Christmas with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, are added draws to the park during winter season. Hershey Park’s amphitheater shows, such as Weird Al Yankovic, America, and Chubby Checker, also have drawn sizable audiences to the park.

Burrows says all the shows at the various venues are marketed along with the park as part of a whole destination.

“We try to keep our hands in everything so that if you like Dave Matthews but somebody else likes Royal Christmas, everybody can find something they like here in Hershey,” she says.

Ideal Family Entertainment

Paramount’s Kings Island in Ohio has found two very different genres to be the favorites at its theme park—teen pop and contemporary Christian. Bill Balfour, manager of entertainment and special events, says teenage pop sensations like Aaron Carter are a shoe-in to pack the stands with young fans who spend the early part of the day riding coasters.

But Balfour says it’s the three-day “Spirit Song Festival” that has sold out every show in the 10,000-seat venue with artists like Steven Curtis Chapman, Audio Adrenaline, and Point of Grace.

It’s the contemporary Christian event “Days of Praise” that draws the biggest crowd into Dollywood. With one admission price for all stages, patrons take in all that the park has to offer along with an array of spiritually uplifting entertainment.

Great America has noticed the trend as well. Stickney says that while pop has always garnered a positive response from younger audiences, the big following of gospel music and Christian rock has filled the park’s shows. He says with the genre growing in popularity for the past 10 years, popular Christian artists help boost the park’s attendance.

“Family entertainment is the best fit for amusement parks, and nothing fits that bill better than Christian music,” he says. “There are not the same worries over inappropriate or ‘edgy’ performances that parks may have with mainstream performers. Plus, Christian acts like to play parks—they enjoy the smaller venues.”

Stickney also notes benefits from a group sales standpoint. “There is no better place to look than church youth groups for an audience that also matches the park’s key audience. There are 200,000 churches in this country, and nearly every one of them has some kind of youth group and plans summer outings. A Celebrate the Joy event caters especially to them.”

Creating Their Own Celebrity

Besides bringing in renowned artists to entertain spectators, many parks offer elaborate staged productions of their own creation.

From Irish step dancing to “Polka Mania,” music and dancing fill the nation-themed regions of Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Va. Strolling entertainment like the comedic Boogie Band are part of the package at Busch Gardens, which boasts eight main stage shows.


“The entertainment package is very important to the family value,” says Emil Trimble, theater director for the entertainment department. “We have about 19 to 20 hours of continuous entertainment all included in the price of admission.”

According to Balfour, Kings Island also views its main stage long-term entertainment as a value-added asset. Balfour says the venue markets the shows as part of the mix, just as they do for the swerving roller coasters and towering Ferris wheels. The park offers only all-access tickets to concert attendees, requiring park admission to get into concerts.

Balfour says branded events with shorter runs including Nickelodeon children’s shows target specific demographics for a brief period of time. The park has encouraged families with small children by promoting events like “Slime Time: The Live Show,” “Meet Joe from Blue’s Clues,” and the park’s own large-scale pop show, “Graveyard Shift.”

At Hershey Park, senior citizens and even some loyal fans fill the stands for performance groups like the environmentally themed Green Team and large-scale productions like the “Stomp”-inspired “Trash Time,” as well as the annual “Music Box Christmas.” “If you go to the shows, you can see the same faces,” Burrows says.

Stickney says Great America has approximately 12 different show productions presented throughout their various venues. International circus acts perform in the 3,500-seat amphitheater while the 1,500-seat indoor Grand Music Hall is reserved for musical reviews and ice shows. Children’s theater is the primary use for the 1,100-seat Theatre Royale, and the IMAX theater holds about 1,000 spectators.

With events in 2002 including the music- and dance-filled festivals, “Fiesta Del Sol” and “Mardi Gras—Six Flags Style,” Stickney says the productions are a necessary part of the Great America experience. “It’s all part of the package you get when you come into the park.”