by John Morell
It’s a natural sight during winter: parents pushing their kids down a snowy slope or holding their hands as they try ice skating for the first time. Or snowballs being packed, as well as snowmen and snow angels getting their finishing touches.
However, in many areas it rarely, if ever, snows, and the only time ice skating can happen is when you travel to a cold and damp indoor rink. Many warm-weather attractions have picked up on the demand for cold-weather fun by adding temporary attractions like snow play areas and outdoor ice rinks during the winter holidays.
“We definitely see an impact on our winter attendance with ‘Snow Mountain,’” says Jeanine Jones, communications director for Stone Mountain Park near Atlanta, Georgia (www.stonemountainpark.com). “In the period after Christmas to early March of last year, we had more than 100,000 visitors at a time when we‘re usually closed.”
Let It Snow
While some in northern climes might shake their heads in amazement that people would pay to get cold and wet, it’s a fact that snow and ice attractions are a novelty. “We’re in our third year of doing this, and we see families coming here from all over the southeast to enjoy it,” says Jones. “Before doing it we found that 70 percent of Atlanta residents had never seen snow, and 40 percent had never experienced it as a family group. It seemed like an obvious business opportunity.”
The park didn’t want “Snow Mountain” to look like an amateur production, so it brought in two major league snow-making machines that are able to pump out 240 tons of the white stuff per day. The facility also hired a professional groomer with experience on the ski slopes of Oregon to manicure its 12 snow lanes, which cut across a gentle slope the size of three American football fields.
“Snow Mountain” admission is $25, which includes a two-hour session of inner-tube riding down the slope and unlimited time in the snow play area. The park also limits the number of guests per day to prevent overcrowding, and most are able to reserve their times and purchase tickets online.
“There’s a ‘Little Angels’ area for kids under 48 inches—who can’t ride on the long slopes—where they can build snowmen, and we also have brick makers to create walls and igloos,” says Jones. To discourage the everpopular snowball fights, the park sets up a “Snowball Shooting Gallery,” which challenges kids to hit targets instead of each other.
Mindful of the area’s emphasis on water conservation, the park publicizes its use of recycled water for the snow from a lake on the grounds. “The water returns back to the lake after melting so we just reuse it each year,” says Jones.
Hot as Ice
As the first kids are sliding down “Snow Mountain,” on the other side of the U.S., children and adults are getting their first experiences of ice skating under the palms. Sea- World San Diego’s Holiday Celebration runs between Thanksgiving and New Year’s and features a 5,000-square-foot outdoor ice rink for older kids and adults and an adjacent, smaller rink for young children.
Adrian Fischer, vice president of entertainment for the park (www.seaworld.com/sandiego), wanted to provide a wintry experience despite the challenges of an often-balmy climate in Southern California. “There’s an artificial ice that is sometimes used in warm weather areas to create ‘ice’ rinks, but we wanted the real thing,” he says.
Management looked at several designs and considered tenting the rink to keep the ice solid and other ideas to provide shade, but ultimately the park decided to go without. A temporary deck was built to help create the rink near the park’s entrance, and clear Plexiglas “dashers”—or miniwalls— were set up around the ice. “We wanted to keep the area visually open, which is why we opted for the Plexiglas, but we were concerned that the sun shining through the plastic would cause the ice to melt,” says Fischer.
This didn’t occur and the park’s rink survived several 70-plus Fahrenheit afternoons. “Between noon and 3 p.m. you’d notice some melting, and people would get wet when they fell,“ says Fischer. “However, we’re an attraction where guests know they’re going to get wet in certain areas and this made it part of the fun.”
Maintenance and refreezing took place each night after the park closed, and despite concerns over sunlight, it turned out to be something else that affected the ice. “Apparently wind is a big factor for outdoor rinks. It piles the ice in certain areas, and it would have to be smoothed out after hours,” says Fischer.
Skating and Sipping
To go along with a frosty attraction, most parks try for complementary sales through food and beverage and/or souvenir purchases. At Cedar Fair-managed Gilroy Gardens in Gilroy, California (www.gilroygardens.org), there’s a production of Peanuts characters in the theater, and outside in the park’s “Holiday of Lights” area one can purchase a Linus blanket and coffee or hot chocolate to watch outdoor ice skating or participate. “Because skating is a unique activity here, and since it’s so closely associated with the holidays, it works,” says Jim Stellmack, director of marketing. “People want to get into the mood, so we do very well with those types of sales.”
Sponsorships
Sponsorships of holiday attractions provide another potential revenue source. In the past, Stone Mountain’s “Snow Mountain” has been sponsored by Coca-Cola; at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, California (www.sixflags.com/discoverykingdom), the popular “Blitzen’s Wonderland Snow Hill” play area was presented last year by Diamond Peak Ski Resort. “They’re about three hours away so they thought this was a natural to attract people looking for more of a snow experience,” says Six Flags spokesperson Nancy Chan. “They had prominent signage in the ‘Snow Hill’ area, and we gave out Diamond Peak coupons to our guests.”
The Discovery Kingdom attraction just finished its third year. Relatively small, about 30 feet by 60 feet, it was nonetheless popular. “In the fall we had many people, especially annual pass holders, ask about when the ‘Snow Hill’ would be back,” says Chan. “You’d see many of these pass holders come back again and again with their kids.”
A play area is fenced off from the slope of “Snow Hill,” where younger children can build snowmen, and older kids throw snowballs at each other. “We market this as the only snow area in coastal Northern California, so for many of our younger guests this is the first time they’ve been able to play in snow,” says Chan.
Legal Considerations
Temporary attractions like ice rinks and snow sledding are shown to attract customers in warm weather areas, but there are issues—like liability—that can present a problem. “In our case, this fits under our general liability policy,” says Gilroy’s Stellmack. “We’re a theme park, and the risk of ice skating, if you choose to do it, is covered. It might be different if we were a shopping mall or some other type of facility that just added an ice rink for the holidays. Then there might have to be some insurance questions.”
SeaWorld had guests sign waivers before taking the ice. “We just used our standard waivers, the same that we basically use for our dolphin interaction attractions,” says Fischer. “Our guests understood that, and we had no problems.”
Maintenance Issues
Maintaining a snow/ice attraction in warmer climes can require a feel for meteorology. For instance, how much snow will melt on a sunny day? To counter this, some facilities plan only a short-term attraction. “We have our snow hill on the first weekend in December,” says Julia McHugh, spokesperson for California’s Santa Barbara Zoo (www.santabarbarazoo.org), which ties its attraction in with a snow leopard exhibit. “The weather here is generally fairly cool for California at that time (65 degrees during the day), and it’s before the rainy season. We have about 70 tons of snow made to cover a small hill, and it hangs around all weekend.”
At “Snow Mountain,” the snow pack is between five and 14 feet deep, with fresh snow applied nightly. “We can maintain the snow in weather up to 120 degrees because of that thick base,” says Jones. “Unfortunately, what hurts it is rain, which causes the snow to quickly melt away.” Stone Mountain thought this year’s cold winter in Georgia would bring more business for the snow attraction. “People were getting a taste of a ‘real’ winter in their backyards, and we wondered if they’d be coming here for the full snow experience,” says Jones. However, the park’s best days were the warmest. “I think people saw it was going to be a great day and thought it would be fun to go down the slopes in a T-shirt and shorts,” she says.
Staffing
The novelty of such out-of-place attractions could be why there’s often no problem finding employees to staff them. “For our employees this is a fun assignment. They help the kids, take pictures for people, just have a good time when they’re working ‘Snow Hill,’” says Chan.
Stone Mountain’s attraction, which requires a staff of about 100 because of its size, also creates some happy employees. “It’s hard, physical labor trudging up the snow and shoveling, but we have lots of volunteers,” says Jones. “I think they also appreciate that the attraction has created these jobs, so they’re sold on snow.”
John Morell is a freelance business writer based in Los Angeles whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. He can be reached at john@jcmorell.com.
|
