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Liseberg and Entertainment Booking Concepts Embark on Pay-as-You-Go Virtual Planning
 Like countless other businesses, the attractions industry has been profoundly affected by the rapid proliferation of the Internet over the past few years and has embraced this technological revolution. Now, Liseberg Park in Gothenburg, Sweden (www.liseberg.com), hopes it has taken the next step forward by making the Internet an integral part of its guests’ pay-as-you-go park experience.
Working with Entertainment Booking Concepts (EBC) of Vedbaek, Denmark (www.ebookingconcepts.net), and the company’s Adventure Resource Planner, Liseberg will allow its guests to virtually plan their park visits this season, including making specific ride time reservations, by purchasing a ride ticket online.
According to Peter Rødbro, co- CEO of EBC: “It’s the only line management system that totally relies on the Internet as the source of communication, and therefore, you pre-book online; you don’t do it when you’re physically inside the park. This has a number of benefits for the guests—they can buy their tickets, plan their day, and know ahead of time what they’re going to be doing and when.”
For the park, Rødbro says the system allows it to receive revenue from guests prior to their visit and gives it a much better idea of how many guests will be coming on certain days. He says it also gives the park a database of information about guests, like the number of people in their party, their ages, what attractions they prefer, where they live, how often they visit, when they last visited, etc.
“The park has the unique opportunity to collect information about the guest ahead of time, whereas it’s much more difficult to do it at the park when you’re taking the guests’ time,” Rødbro asserts. “When you do it by e-mail, it’s too passive because [recipients] may not have visited your park recently, or ever. But all of this is a by-product, with the main benefit being the booking and planning convenience for the guest.”
Mats Wedin, CEO of Liseberg, explains why his park was attracted to this system: “In the past, we looked at these systems but never thought it was the right thing for us because we’re a pay-as-you-go park and felt that the way people approach rides is different than a pay-one-price park. But we decided to do it now because we wanted this to be a driver for web sales—we needed an incentive to buy tickets over the web.”
Wedin also sees the system possibly helping to move guests away from busy peak days because once slots on those days become full, guests will book on other days. Finally, he says it eliminates the need for ride-pass kiosks in the park, where long lines can form, because the guests do all of the planning and purchasing at home.
Liseberg will initially make the planning system available for its top five most popular rides—three roller coasters and two water rides. To prepare for the new system, the park created dual queue lines to accommodate guests who are taking advantage of the online planner.
Wedin stresses there is no additional charge for guests to use the online planner. When guests go to the park’s web site, they simply indicate they want to purchase a ride pass and then they’re asked if they want to do prebooking. If so, the system provides available time slots and guests schedule their rides however they choose. They then print a bar-coded voucher they exchange for a wristband at the park.
“The web site and the park are two sides of the same coin,” says Rødbro. “Web sites need to be an attraction, just like the parks, and web sites need to be more than advertisements—they have to be dynamic and create interactivity so they excite guests and thus their park experience actually begins on the web sites. If our industry doesn’t continue to advance and take advantage of the Internet, we could be in the same trouble as some of the media, like newspapers. We must adapt new technology and not be afraid of it.”
Cool-de-sac Investigating Overseas Expansion
As unusual as it may be for a family entertainment center to expand internationally, it’s not stopping Cool-de-sac of Miami, Florida (www.cool-desac.com), from embarking on a growth plan that will carry the unusual FEC to Mexico, Colombia, Spain, and Brazil in the near future.
 Cool-de-sac was started a few years ago by founder Jose Luis Bueno after he noticed a Miami shopping mall he visited with his wife and two children lacked appropriate entertainment activities for families. He saw an opportunity, and after four years of conducting research and focus groups, he opened Cool-de-sac.
There were two things Bueno wanted Cool-de-sac to have that he didn’t see in most other FECs—educational activities and excellent nutritional food. So, Cool-de-sac includes a computer center and an arts and crafts room among its activity stations, and Bueno brought in a professional chef to take charge of the cuisine.
“We’ve gotten to speak with 300 moms from Spain, France, Argentina, and Mexico because Miami is a very international city, and there is not a high quality of food and entertainment at FECs in the United States, according to them,” he says. “The common phrase from moms is that whenever they want to dine, their kids don’t have fun, and whenever the kids have fun, the family doesn’t eat well. So I wanted to solve the problem of the quality of time and the quality of food.”
After 18 months in business, Coolde- sac had welcomed more than 100,000 visitors, and Bueno says he began to get questions about why he didn’t open FECs in other locations. So he retained Francorp, the international franchising company headquartered in Olympia Fields, Illinois.
“Francorp started with us in January 2009 and said this would be a 14- month project,” he says. “We have already signed letters for Mexico and we have a soft commitment with a restaurant group in Colombia and one in Spain. Market research will be conducted in every country we go to. We’ll finalize our franchising program in March.”
Despite this, Bueno says he wants to continue to open company-owned locations as well. Cool-de-sac recently started construction on a second location in Miami scheduled to open this summer at the Dolphin Mall, and he wants to open another in Miami’s Adventura Mall. Also, Bueno states he’s targeting company-owned locations for Washington, D.C., and New York City: “I want to concentrate franchising internationally and on the [U.S.] West Coast and Midwest, and company-owned locations in the east.”
 He says each company-owned center represents an investment of about $2 million. Each location has $300,000 in theming done by Environs, and Bueno asserts this distinguishes him from the “mom-and-pops,” saying Cool-de-sac’s theming is on par with PF Chang’s or the Cheesecake Factory.
With such an emphasis on food, FUNWORLD asks Bueno if Cool-de-sac is an FEC with a restaurant or a restaurant with an FEC: “I’d be skewed to saying we’re a restaurant with children’s entertainment stations. First, the F&B has been very lucrative. Second, focus groups have shown the restaurant is what brings people.”
Bueno says much of his company’s success can be traced to the extensive customer service training given to his employees. “Every employee understands we have a process map, just like in a factory,” he says. “We teach GIST—Greet, Identify, Suggest, and Thank. We have hostesses at each station and we welcome guests, identify what they want to do, and then make it an enjoyable two-, three-, or four-hour experience for them.”
Merlin to Incorporate Some Cypress Rides into New Legoland
It looks as if the hard-luck story of Cypress Gardens the past few years may have a happy ending. Merlin Entertainments Group (www.merlinentertainments.biz), headquartered in Poole, Dorsett, England, recently purchased the park from Land South Holdings for $22.3 million. Merlin will transform the Gardens into the largest Legoland in the world on the 145-acre site.
The deal includes the Cypress Gardens theme park and waterpark and an operating lease from Polk County, Florida, on the famous 30-acre botanical gardens. Merlin will reportedly spend more than $100 million on the retheming project, with a planned opening in late 2011.
At the press conference in January announcing the new park, Nick Varney, CEO of Merlin Entertainments, said, “The development of a Legoland park in Florida is a perfect opportunity for us here in the heart of what is the biggest family tourist center in the world, and I believe it will bring a unique new experience to Florida.” Varney later told the Orlando Sentinel newspaper there is “a very good chance” other Merlin properties would open in the Orlando area and suggested Madame Tussauds as a brand that would perform well in the market.
The park will be the fifth Legoland in the world and the only one on the U.S. East Coast, with the others in California, England, Germany, and Denmark. It will have a mix of 50 rides, shows, and other attractions and feature the remarkable giant Lego models the parks are famous for.
Tens of millions of dollars were spent the past few years on upgrading Cypress Gardens’ infrastructure and bringing in new attractions. But Julie Estrada, Merlin’s U.S. media spokesperson, tells FUNWORLD some of those attractions can’t be kept. “Obviously, being geared toward 2- to 12-year-old children and their families, some of the previous attractions will not fit in with our demographic and will need to be replaced,” she says. “Others, however, will be a great fit and would just be rethemed to match the interactive Lego experience Legoland parks offer.”
Cypress Gardens enjoyed a substantial and loyal following of elderly guests, and that’s one reason why the park is leasing the 30-acre botanical gardens from Polk County, because they were very popular with that demographic. Though Legoland is targeted at kids, Estrada asserts it has much to offer seniors, as well: “There are very few rides at Legoland a child cannot enjoy with a favorite elder companion.” Estrada notes Legoland Florida will have special pricing options for seniors, and wheelchairs will be available.
The announcement of the new park is good news for the local hotels, restaurant, and other businesses that were bemoaning the closing of Cypress Gardens. Mark Jackson, director of Polk County Tourism and Sports Marketing, says the deal is a huge success for his county: “We were very involved in the negotiations [for the park], and the deal closer was a marketing partnership we put together.”
Jackson was a part-time water skier at Cypress Gardens for 22 years. Of note, he says the historic “Starliner” wooden roller coaster, which was moved to the park from Miracle Beach Amusement Park in Panama City Beach, Florida, following that park’s closure in 2004, will remain in operation at Legoland Florida.
Bowling on a Grand Scale
 A massive 86,000-square-foot bowling center, the largest in all of Europe, recently opened in Munich, Germany. Appropriately dubbed Dream-Bowl Palace (www.dreambowl.de), the facility was operational just six months after breaking ground.
The state-of-the-art facility has a striking exterior that features a glass front spanning all three floors of the center, which has a capacity of 1,000 persons. It boasts no fewer than 52 lanes featuring advanced Brunswick equipment, including Vector Plus scoring and management systems, GS-X pinsetters, Frameworx and Striking Line furniture, and Pro Lane synthetic lanes.
The project was handled by the official Brunswick Capital Equipment distributor in Germany, Hoops the Bowling Company. Brent Perrier, president of Brunswick Bowling Products, said in a statement, “Brunswick Bowling Products is honored and proud to have completed Dream-Bowl Palace with Hoops. We are thrilled to be an integral part of providing a top-of-the line entertainment facility to the people of Germany.”
Visitors to the Asian-themed family entertainment center park in a 220- vehicle garage, then enter the building through the glass entryway. On the first floor, in addition to the bowling lanes, there are a bar, bistro, and lounge area. The second floor features a restaurant, billiards tables, conference rooms, and a great view of the bowling lanes. On the third floor, guests discover a miniature golf course and a bowling pro shop.
Of the miniature golf course’s theming, Knoebl Werner, owner of Dream- Bowl Palace, tells FUNWORLD: “It has airbrushed walls that make it look like you’re playing in a meadow.” Accompanying the miniature golf course are video games and a darts area. This strategy of combining bowling with other family entertainment activities and meeting facilities is new to the German market.
Werner notes the €18 million (US$24.6 million) bowling center has a unique feature. “We have an eight lane VIP area that can be closed off with a movable wall,” he says. “It will offer privacy—no one can see you playing in there.” He is also quick to point out the restaurant will not serve just typical bowling-center food, but a varied cuisine to serve many tastes. “If you want to order a good steak, you’ll be able to get a good steak,” Werner says.
Werner says Dream-Bowl Palace will host the 2010 Men’s World Championships as well as many other high profile events in the next few years.
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