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A Yeti That’s Anything But Abominable
 AS THE SCIENCE AND ART OF ANIMATRONICS CONTINUE TO ADVANCE, some of the cutting-edge creations being developed by attractions industry designers are so lifelike, they inspire feelings of absolute wonder and astonishment. Such is the case with a new character Garner Holt Productions of San Bernardino, California, has created.
The company is renowned for crafting advanced animatronics for a variety of clients, from museums to casinos to Disney theme parks, and its new Yeti character is the culmination of 30 years of work in the animatronics field, according to Garner Holt, the company’s founder and president. “He really is as physiologically close to a real creature as you can get, muscle for muscle,” Holt said, “and he takes the art of creating a lifelike robotic figure well beyond the next-best thing.”
The Yeti is one of the largest animated characters ever built at nine feet tall and weighs 1,700 pounds. But it’s what he can do that is so amazing. “He has 164 individual functions,” said Holt. “He is really capable of most any gesture a human can create. The Yeti has more than 50 functions in the face alone. He can accurately replicate all of the thousands of subtle facial movements humans can make—on a larger, more readable face.” This astonishing array of facial gestures includes the ability to flare its nostrils and stick out and wiggle its tongue.
Perhaps most remarkably, the Yeti will be able to communicate through American Sign Language. Each of his hands features more than 30 movements and is capable of performing any gesture possible by the human hand. His eyes will contain tiny cameras linked to a photo-recognition library, allowing him to pick out words and phrases in sign language and to even recognize faces stored in his database.
Another breakthrough is the Yeti’s reliance on electric actuators, because animatronics typically use pneumatic or hydraulic cylinders to power their movements. “Going electric was a major breakthrough,” Holt asserted. “We’ve built more than 1,700 figures using pneumatics and hydraulics, but the Yeti is breaking new ground in electrics.” One benefit of this, according to Holt, is these creatures are “green” because they eliminate the need for parks to have hydraulic-fluid-based control systems in attractions containing animatronics, greatly improving their cleanliness.
For additional details on the animatronic Yeti, visit www.garnerholt.com.
Cedar Fair to Invest $62 Million in Parks This Year
CEDAR FAIR ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY IN SANDUSKY, OHIO, will spend $62 million on roller coasters, family rides, and other new attractions in 2009.
 The single most significant investment will be the $22 million “Diamondback” roller coaster, scheduled to open in April at Kings Island near Cincinnati, Ohio. Designed by Bolliger and Mabillard of Monthey, Switzerland, the 230-foot-tall ride is almost a mile long and reaches a speed of 80 miles per hour.
Worlds of Fun in Kansas City, Missouri, will get a share of Cedar Fair’s expenditures in the form of a 3,074- foot-long wooden coaster called “Prowler.” Costing $8 million and built by Great Coasters International of Sunbury, Pennsylvania, the ride winds through the park’s Africa section.
The third and final coaster to be built by Cedar Fair this year is the “Carolina Cobra,” a steel boomerang-style coaster that will open at Carowinds in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Vekoma coaster is being relocated from Geauga Lake in Cleveland, Ohio.
In addition to the new coasters, two new family rides—the “Americana Ferris Wheel” and the “El Dorado” rotating car ride—will debut at Kings Dominion in Doswell, Virginia. A new waterpark attraction will get in on the act in the form of “Breakers Bay,” a 350,000-gallon wave pool opening at Valleyfair’s Soak City Water Park in Shakopee, Minnesota.
As to whether the slowdown in the economy affected Cedar Fair’s expenditures for 2009, the company’s director of investor relations, Stacy Frole, told FUNWORLD, “No, not really. We really work on a three- to five-year strategy, so trying to play the market is difficult to do.” Frole said a roller coaster planned for Great America park in Santa Clara, California, was put off, but the delay was due to zoning approvals, not economic conditions.
Qatar to Get New Six Flags Theme Park
 QATAR, LOCATED ON A PENINSULA BORDERING SAUDI ARABIA AND THE PERSIAN GULF, will get its first theme park by the middle of 2012. Located within Qatar Entertainment City (QEC), the park is a joint effort between QEC, Qatar-based Oryx Holdings, and Six Flags Theme Parks. The agreement between the three parties first calls for Six Flags to provide concept development and planning services to Oryx Holdings. When this phase is complete, Six Flags and Oryx Holdings will collaborate on the detailed design, development, construction, and management of the branded park. “Extending the Six Flags footprint beyond Dubai represents another strategic step in our international expansion and further solidifies our reputation as a worldwide leader in family entertainment,” said Mark Shapiro, president and CEO of Six Flags. “We are thrilled to be on the ground floor of what will surely be a treasured destination.”
The theme park will feature roller coasters and other dry rides, water rides, canals, spas, and a high-end retail area.
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Presidential Makeover at Disney World
 ONE OF THE MOST HIGHLY REGARDED HISTORIC ATTRACTIONS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD is closed for eight months while it undergoes an extensive refurbishment. The “Hall of Presidents,” located in Liberty Square in the Magic Kingdom, will re-open appropriately on July 4, sporting updated visual, audio, and mechanical show systems, as well as some new props.
“This is also a refurbishment of the entire attraction,” Marilyn Waters, director of media relations for Disney Imagineering, told FUNWORLD. “All of the figures will have their costumes refreshed. Also, I can tell you the George Washington figure will have a speaking part for the first time.” Disney has released no cost figure on the attraction upgrade, but Waters said it would involve teams from Disney Imagineering as well as the “facilities team” based at the park. She said Disney routinely engages in such attraction refurbishments every few years.
Waters also noted an animatronic figure representing the newly elected 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama, will be added to the attraction during the renovation. “Because of the historic nature of the election, and the fact that [the attraction] will re-open on July 4, I think there will be great interest in it,” she said.
Lucid Dreams Converting Ripley’s Film Library to 3-D
IF YOU’VE EVER SEEN ANY OF RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT!’S film footage showcasing the bizarre oddities the company is famous for, try to imagine what they would look like in 3-D. Well, you won’t have to imagine too much longer because some of those films are about to add an extra dimension.
Ripley’s has contracted with Lucid Dreams 3D and PassmoreLab of San Diego, California, to begin converting its extensive film library—some of it shot by Robert Ripley himself in the 1920s and 1930s—into digital 3-D.
“We’re quite excited as our company starts to embrace 3-D digital content,” said Steve Glum, vice president of marketing and branding for Ripley Entertainment Inc., in a statement about the agreement. “As we convert more and more of our extensive 2-D film library into digital 3-D, we will be rolling it out into new 3-D theaters in our Believe It or Not! Odditoriums worldwide.”
James Humann, founder and director of Lucid Dreams 3D, said the company completed its initial conversion for Ripley’s in December. “They took about 70 one-minute pieces, gave them to us, and we picked the five pieces that would look best converted,”
Humann told FUNWORLD. “In their auditorium in St. Augustine, they’re looping about a five-minute highlight of the TV show, and the same will be done with the five that we’ve chosen.” Humann said this is only the beginning of great things to come for the conversion process of Ripley’s film collection, and noted, “They have tons of bizarre and strange archival footage!”
Additional information on the conversion can be found at www.luciddreams3d.com.
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Merlin Entertainments Refurbishing London Aquarium
JUST A FEW MONTHS AFTER ACQUIRING THE LONDON AQUARIUM LAST MAY, Merlin Entertainments Group has begun a GBP5 million (US$7.5 million) refurbishment of the facility. Vowing to create a world-class aquarium and visitor attraction in the heart of London, Merlin will develop new exhibits, create better walkthrough viewing tunnels, and increase the number of species at the aquarium 25 percent.
 The work, scheduled to finish by Easter of this year, will be done in phases to avoid having to close the facility, which draws about 1 million visitors per year. Merlin said the facility is destined to become the flagship of its aquarium brand, Sea Life, which comprises some 28 marine life attractions around the world.
David Sharpe, divisional director of Merlin’s London Midway Attractions, which operates the aquarium, said in a statement, “In the current gloomy economic climate, our investment in the London Aquarium reflects the increased visitor numbers we have achieved since May and our absolute belief in the attraction’s potential. It is a wonderful space in a great location on the Thames, and we have a superb and very expert team whose talents will be showcased by our new plans.”
For more information on the aquarium, visit www.londonaquarium.co.uk.
Cypress Gardens to Re-Open as Expanded Waterpark
THE ANNOUNCEMENT LAST NOVEMBER BY CYPRESS GARDENS IN WINTER HAVEN, FLORIDA, the park was closing for four months and would re-open in March with an expanded waterpark raised a few questions, some of which have been answered—and some not.
 The expansion will involve Splash Island waterpark, but park spokesperson Jennifer Mansfield told FUNWORLD, “At this time, we do not have specific information regarding what the final expansion looks like for Splash Island— those plans are still being finalized.” While there has been speculation that only the waterpark portion of the park will re-open, Mansfield said differently: “While the waterpark will be a large part of the remodel, the botanical gardens will remain a part of the experience as well.”
Mansfield noted Cypress Gardens’ “dry rides” would be sold, but the final disposition of individual rides, including the historic “Starliner” wooden roller coaster the park acquired a few years ago from Miracle Strip Amusement Park in Panama City Beach, Florida, was not yet known.
Meanwhile, the park announced in early December it struck a deal with Silver Springs in Ocala, Florida, to allow season pass holders to attend that park for free while Cypress Gardens is closed for expansion. Visit www.cypressgardens.com for more information.
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Extreme Group and DDG Team Up to Create ‘Extreme’ Theme Parks
DEVELOPMENT DESIGN GROUP (DDG) OF BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, and London-based Extreme Group, announced a partnership that will create, among other things, mixed-use “extreme parks” and attractions around the world.
 The Extreme Group is one of the world’s most recognized sports lifestyle brands, and its Extreme Sports Channel reaches more than 40 million TV viewers. DDG is a leading leisure design firm, and its CEO, Roy Higgs, said in an interview with FUNWORLD the company would bring a creative team of 150 architects, planners, designers, graphic specialists, and model builders to the effort.
“Sports recreation and leisure is a growing component of mixed-use retail developments,” he noted. “Take boarding sports, climbing—we have the latest freestanding climbing rock—and the other extreme sports, and before you know it, you have potential. We branded Expo-Xplore and planned and designed a concept of bringing all the extreme sports and leisure brands together with food and beverage and fairly hip stores. We leveraged the retail sales as an extreme theme park, and the money made that pays for it all is on the retail side.”
Higgs said X-Parks are being designed for Miami, Dallas, Istanbul, Shanghai, and Johannesburg. “An XPark would be a theme park in a traditional sense and you scale it down,” Higgs explained. “The interest shown in X-Parks is unbelievably strong. We’re just seeing this opportunity, and it’s evolving very rapidly.” www.ddg-usa.com
New $16.5 Million Waterpark Coming to Australia
 A NEW AU$25 MILLION (US$16.5 MILLION) WATERPARK IS SLATED TO BE BUILT IN CAIRNS, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA. The 17-acre facility, to be called Adventure Mountain, will feature waterslides, a wave pool, river tube rides, and a children’s play area.
Paul Freebody of the Freebody Group, which is developing the park, said the park’s location is very favorable: “The park will [be open] 363 days a year due to the climate in Cairns.” He noted the international city’s visitors expect it to have this kind of recreational facility. He said he has been in contact with ProSlide, Whitewater West, SCS, and others about securing slides and other attractions for the park.
Construction on Adventure Mountain is expected to begin this spring. When the park opens, it will employ a staff of around 80.
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