By any measure, the Utah Fun Dome in Murray, Utah, is a super-sized family entertainment center. Here, guests can play miniature golf or laser tag. They can knock down some pins at the 30-lane bowling alley. They can ride the bumper cars, the indoor roller coaster, or any of the 11 other rides. Patrons can even walk through the funhouse or the catch a flick at the 3D Effects Theater. With all that, they’ve barely scratched the surface—Utah Fun Dome has bonafide thrill rides, an outdoor bungee, a slingshot, and swing-ride towers. In all, the facility comprises 250,000 square feet, making it the epitome of what Charlie Smith, chairman of the design firm of Bullock, Smith & Partners, calls the hybrid FEC. “It’s the next step up from the FEC, which is the next step down from the theme park.” This step can be made in several directions. Full Blast in Michigan recently invested in a waterpark; Swings-N-Things Family Fun Park in Ohio is in the process of adding extreme sports. And a new FEC planned for Kansas is including educational elements in the mix. Whatever the offerings, they all share the same goal: to attract more business by going beyond what guests have come to expect from an FEC. Each entertainment center has all the traditional elements—video games and redemption counters; food and party packages; miniature golf or go-karts or laser tag—but owners of this new breed of FECs recognize that the traditional formula is not enough to stay afloat in an increasingly competitive market. The Wal-Mart Approach The necessary element that these FECs can provide is critical mass, says Chip Linville, an IAAPA board member and former owner of the Adventure Landing FEC chain, which now has seven locations across the U.S. “The more elements there are and the better it is themed, the more exciting it is for the entire family. The more sensory overload you can create—whether you can smell it, taste it, feel it, walk through it—the more success it can have. “I’m talking about having the pizza cooking and the smell of that, or hearing the go-karts or hearing a kid’s birthday party and the bright colors and the fun that people around you are having—that’s what sensory overload is all about. And it’s hard to do with just a go-kart track or a game room and a miniature golf course.” For Richard Sanfilippo, owner of Sam’s Fun City in Pensacola, Fla., critical mass is part of the business plan. When Sanfilippo began planning Sam’s Fun City, he envisioned a small indoor facility, but he learned through research that his market was underserved. “Instead of a 60,000-square-foot indoor facility, the study indicated that the market would support a larger FEC or small amusement facility. So we changed gears.” Now in its third season, Sam’s Fun City takes advantage of the Florida climate to offer 13 outdoor rides in age-appropriate pods. There are also four go-kart tracks—two for young children and two for older kids—interactive miniature golf, bumper boats, and an 8,500-square-foot arcade with electronic games, redemption games, and laser tag. Next on the business plan is a waterpark, which is currently in the planning stage. After that project is completed, Sanfilippo plans to double the indoor arcade and add more rides. “We’re trying to create a family synergy,” Sanfilippo says. “Our market is not big enough to be a boutique. Ours basically has to take the Wal-Mart approach. We have to have something for everybody so we can keep them attracted. In our case it’s tourists who are looking for an amusement park and locals who want the FEC experience.” Brain Boosters Another way FECs are expanding their horizons is through the addition of educational components. Ron Shook, the director of planning for Leisure & Recreation Concepts, is currently working on an FEC project in Lawrence, Kans., that plans to include these kinds of elements. The project is as yet unnamed and is scheduled to open in 2004. “There are a lot of people interested in incorporating some educational aspects to the fun.” The project Shook is working on will include traditional FEC games and redemption, but it will also have an area dedicated to educational and hands-on elements. “They can operate levers and move things around and touch things and see cause-and-effect,” Shook says. “We’re talking about incorporating a walk-around character, a nutty professor who teaches the kids. A lot of parents are concerned about the video games their kids are playing and they want to eliminate the violence. Nonviolent entertainment is becoming a lot more important than before.” Properly structured, there are ways to make educational content pay the bills, Shook says. For example, educational activities can be tied to the redemption counter. And there are all the other ways FECs make money when people come through the door. “You can have memberships; they come in and they buy drinks and purchase items at the gift shop. So once you get them in the door there are things that happen inside that bring in money.” The other economic advantage, says Smith, is that FECs offering edutainment can get great business with school groups. “On Thursday morning at 10 a.m. you may have four school buses pull up for a class outing. So it helps the FEC operator by bringing people to their facility, and be exposed to their facility, on what is normally thought of as the off-hours.” But FECs don’t have to offer educational content to become attractive group options, Linville says, as long as they offer enough activities. “The larger facilities bring in group activity, and you need that to survive. “A corporate group may come out and play miniature golf, but if you give them the choices of all the different elements, then instead of having a group of 30, you can have 300. Then you can spread things out—some on the miniature golf, some at the go-karts, and some in the laser tag. From a company perspective, it’s a lot more fun to organize events where you can tell folks they will have lots of things to do rather than just go to a game room or play miniature golf.” Be a Sport Sports-related activities, such as batting cages and driving ranges, have always been fruitful for FECs. The super-sized venues are taking this concept to the next level. When planners were creating Full Blast in Battle Creek, Mich., in the mid-1990s, the designers conducted numerous focus groups with kids, says Sue McBride, the marketing manager. “We wanted to know what would be the most fun for people,” she says. For Full Blast the result is an FEC that has not only a game room and soft-play area, but outdoor and indoor waterparks, a computerized rock wall, a Cyberspin human gyroscope, a trampoline, an inflatable obstacle course, a Water Wars water balloon fight, and three basketball courts. “Because we have all this, it makes for a complete package,” McBride says. “A lot of FECs don’t have basketball courts. You can look out there and see dads playing basketball with their kids. You’re not sitting there watching; you’re participating together.” Extreme sports is also starting to attract interest and play a major role in FECs, Smith says. Relatively new concepts for adventure sports like indoor surfing, indoor skydiving, paintball, rollerblading, and skateboarding, all present additional opportunities for FECs to broaden their offerings and their clientele. Tim Sorge, the owner of Swings-N-Things Family Fun Park in Olmstead Township, Ohio, is replacing part of his outdoor picnic area with a paintball arena. Although superficially similar to laser tag, paintball is much more intense, he says, which is part of the reason it’s so popular. “Playing in one of these arenas is like being in the middle of a video game. I’m 55 and it’s a rush. The first question people ask me is, ‘Does it hurt?’ The answer I give them is it hurts enough that you don’t want to get hit, but not enough that it will stop you from playing.” Extreme sports are good for FECs for two reasons, Smith says. One benefit is that extreme sports and adventure games raise kids’ activity levels so that they’re not sitting in a booth playing a video game, which is a concern for many parents. “The other thing is that these components are compatible with the traditional FEC, but up to this point have struggled on their own as independent operations. A skatepark on its own struggles. You don’t have enough property, you don’t have the food, you don’t have the video games. When you put a skatepark into an FEC you have all these other components that are compatible and revenue-producing. So the venue combines many components that work better together than independently.” However, parents often raise concerns about the dangers associated with these activities, and FEC owners worry about the cost of insurance. While extreme sports do bring liability issues, pioneers like creators of ESPN’s X Games skateparks have thoroughly researched the laws and now have forms for kids to sign that generally cover this issue. Parents’ worries are often assuaged by the almost impeccable safety records at FECs around the country. Balancing the Books Shook notes that part of the drive to super-size FECs is a desire to balance the cash flow. “You want to have some elements in addition to the game room that will be open all year long, so you want to capture as much revenue as you can,” he says. This was part of the reason that Full Blast built an indoor waterpark, even though it already had an outdoor waterpark. “It doesn’t matter what the weather is,” McBride says. “If the weather is poor outside, even if it’s summer, they can spend the whole day in the building and not be bored.” Having a greater diversity of attractions also encourages repeat business, Linville says. “The argument can be made that people come with a $20 bill in their pockets and they’re only going to spend that much. The truth is, all those different elements give them a variety of things they might enjoy, so they will visit more often, and spend more money.” While all this is true, any FEC expansion still must make economic sense, says Bob Rippy, the owner of Jungle Rapids in Wilmington, N.C. “The landscape is littered with people who spent $10 million on an FEC with laser tag and go-karts and golf and batting cages and everything else. There may be places where it can work, but it’s not just anywhere.” Adds Smith, “I always tell my clients, ‘Don’t fall in love with your project.’ Make sure you understand the finances. Be sure you can get the return on investment for the component that you are adding.” As Sorge sees it, the move toward larger FECs—especially by those FECs that have been in business for more than 10 or 15 years—is a question of survival. “We went through the stage with FECs popping up all over the country and everything was new and exciting,” he says. “Now, in many parts of the country FECs are nothing new, and people want to know what’s new and exciting. “There are a number of us who are going into the second wave with the industry. We have been doing it long enough that we have figured out that we can’t sit back and do the same things we have always done.”
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