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Hawaiian Museum Draws Tens of Thousands with Extravagant ‘Haunted Lagoon’
 As soon as the economic downturn began in early 2008, one Hawaiian attraction decided it wasn’t going to sit idly by and suffer, so it embarked on an adventure that’s a dramatic departure from its usual offerings.
The 42-acre Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC) in Laie, Oahu, normally takes guests on tours of its “living museum” to see and experience the sights, sounds, and culture of historic Polynesian islands. But during the October nights of 2008, that all changed with the introduction of the “Haunted Lagoon” (www.hauntedlagoon.com).
In an effort to attract Hawaiian islanders, the PCC created an extravagant Halloween fright fest. Guests board 35-person canoes guided by a “pusher” to experience a 30-minute ride through seven island villages, each featuring different themes, special effects, thrills, and scares.
The backstory of the “Haunted Lagoon” involves the Laie Lady, a ghostly figure dressed in white who supposedly wanders through the seven villages searching for her missing child. Each year, she returns from the underworld accompanied by scary ghouls and creatures.
“At night, the appearance of it is very scary—the jungle, the palm trees,” says William Mahoni, the PCC’s product development specialist. “Last year, we added three animatronics, including a body snatcher who climbs down from a coconut tree when he sees you coming.” Two of the animatronic figures were purchased from Dark Raven and one from the Scarefactory.
Mahoni says the show started in 2008 with a staff of 100, but this year, with new scares in place, he expects that number to be 500, many of them volunteers: “We have 15 scare [events], and each one takes 25 to 50 people to run it. By the end of October, we’re running every night from 5 p.m. to midnight.”
 All the work has paid off, as the “Haunted Lagoon” has been a huge hit for the PCC, attracting locals as hoped. In 2009, it brought in 46,027 visitors in just 20 days, or an average of 2,301 per night, a huge increase over 2008, when it rained for eight days and averaged 1,500 per night. The PCC calculated it needed to get 400 visitors each night to make the attraction profitable. “Our lines run for about four hours or more—we didn’t expect those numbers,” says Mahoni.
Raymond Magalei, the PCC’s director of marketing, says the center has done extensive marketing and advertising to get the word out about the new attraction. In addition to paid media, they’ve utilized social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to publicize it, and they do features on local TV news morning shows.
“We also utilize geo-targeting,” Magalei tells FUNWORLD, “which is when someone visits a certain website, like CNN, [if] they have a Hawaii IP address, our ad will pop up. This really helps us target our audience online.”
“Haunted Lagoon” runs the entire month of October. Adult tickets are $25 for nonlocals and $19.50 for locals; children’s tickets are $19.50 and $14.50, respectively. There is also a keiki (child) version of the attraction with less intense frights and special effects.
Dinosaurs Continue to Deliver Big for Attractions
Ever since themid-1800s, when giant fossilized remains were first identified as animals called “dinosaurs,” the public has been fascinated with these remarkable creatures. Dinosaurs captured the interest of adults and kids alike in books, museums, TV shows, movies, and merchandise.
 But with the release of the motion picture “Jurassic Park” in 1993, that fascination reached a fever pitch, and dinosaurs became a pop culture phenomenon. Countless movies and TV shows featuring dinosaurs followed, and everything from motorcycles to sports teams to, yes, amusement park rides, were named after dinosaur species. Entire amusement park sections were themed on dinosaurs, as were restaurants and hotels, and a live stage show featuring animatronic dinosaurs traveled the world. Museums and zoos saw dinosaur displays bring in huge crowds.
Now, 17 years after the release of “Jurassic Park,” does the dino-draw remain strong? “Absolutely it does,” replies Greg Suess, general manager of Jurassic Forest (www.jurassicforest.com), a dinosaur park that opened July 30 in Gibbons, Alberta, Canada. “I think there is as much interest in dinosaurs today as there’s ever been.”
Jurassic Forest features 40 advanced, life-sized animatronic dinosaurs set on a 40-acre woodland tract about 15 minutes from Edmonton. Guests walk the park trails and experience the dinosaurs in their “natural” habitat. Then they go to an interactive “interpretive center” where they can learn about the creatures and place their hands on replica fossils. There is a paleontology site where visitors can dig for dinosaur bones, and an area featuring rock-climbing walls and a ropes wall.
Admission to the park is $13 for adults, $8 for kids, and Suess expects the attraction to be a popular place for group outings like birthday parties, and holiday events.
Suess knows the public’s fascination with dinosaurs has been generated by their value as entertainment, but he says Jurassic Forest is much more. “It’s a tough balance sometimes between entertainment and education,” he says, “but we think we have a solid mix of both. The interpretive center is a learning center, and we have archaeological expertise on our staff.”
He says the park is owned by a group of Alberta business people who invested “millions” in the facility. The majority owner wishes to remain silent until after the park has been open awhile, but he was the force behind the park’s conception. Says Suess, “He’s always had a personal passion for dinosaurs and wanted to bring a new attraction to the Edmonton area.”
Like any park, Jurassic Forest will have to keep updating itself to stay fresh with visitors, and Suess affirms they have a plan for that: “We’ve already talked about how we can customize the computerized coding and change the movements of the dinosaurs. We also have the space to add a third walking trail with more dinosaurs.” Though Suess didn’t name the manufacturer of the animatronic dinos, he did say they were custom built to specifications.
FUNWORLD asks Suess to speculate as to why dinosaurs have generated such unrelenting public interest over many years, a seemingly unquenchable thirst that continues to serve parks and attractions well. “I remember as a kid having a fascination with them because they were so big, and it was just hard to believe they actually walked the same ground we’re walking right now,” he recalls. “For both [adults and kids], it’s just hard to comprehend that for millions of years, these incredible animals actually did live here—they were real.”
Oil Spill Bogs Down Gulf Attractions
Once the ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was contained in mid- July, attractions in the area began to assess the impact the spill and its heavy media coverage had on their summer numbers. FUNWORLD asks a few of them how their businesses were affected and what their prospects are for recovery.
Waterville USA (www.watervilleusa.com), a combination dry-ride amusement park and waterpark in Gulf Shores, Alabama, was hit hard by the spill’s effect on tourism. “We’re a tourist market almost completely and so we’re down substantially, about 20 percent,” says John Turberville, the park’s general manager. “Our group business has been good and our weekends have been decent, but that can’t make up for the loss of weekday tourists.”
Brandon Woodridge, the owner/ operator of Big Play Family Fun Center in Biloxi, Mississippi (www.bigplayfamilyfuncenter.com), just opened his new FEC this year and says, “It’s definitely affected us.Hotels here are off 30 percent, and the difference is actually visible. Our business has been about 50/50 tourists and locals, and we thought it would be 70/30.”
 With the spill contained, one would hope tourism would begin to return to normal levels, but attractions say that’s not been the case. “It’s a little strange,” says Buddy Wilkes, general manager of Shipwreck Island waterpark in Panama City Beach (www.shipwreckisland.com), located on the Florida panhandle. “Many businesses really saw things fall off in mid-July, and it was a surprise because July is our busiest time. People who usually come in July and August came in May and June instead to try to ‘beat’ the oil, and that’s having an impact on the latter part of the season.”
Though these attractions report varying degrees of impact on their businesses from the spill, one thing with which they all agree is that the effects of the spill have been misreported in the news media, and that’s had a detrimental effect on business.
“The misconception that we were hit by oil and damaged drives me crazy because we weren’t,” says Wilkes. “I’ll bet we didn’t have 10 tarballs float up along the entire stretch of beach. If our numbers are off, it’s because of the media perception.”
Waterville is located farther west, closer to the spill, but Turberville gives a similar report: “The spill has not always been properly reported. We have 40 miles of beach and even in June, we’d have only a mile or so of beach that was impacted. The shots you saw on TV of oil-covered beaches were very infrequent.”
But even if their local beaches have been unaffected, attractions have had a tough time knowing what to tell tourists. Ron Hardy, co-owner of Gulf World Marine Park in Panama City Beach (www.gulfworldmarinepark.com), which was hurt greatly by a drop in tourism, says, “When [guests] call, we say there’s no oil on the beach and that it’s clean and pristine. When they ask if it’s coming, we say we honestly don’t know because even though our beaches are clean, we’re sometimes told oil is only 10 miles off the beaches.”
Wilkes says the tourism development council in Panama City Beach took a proactive approach to the spill: “The council saw what was happening in some of the other communities and said you can either give up and file a claim with BP, or stand up and fight this thing and keep our beaches clean, which we’ve done. We’ve done digital billboards with a beach photo everyday, and online, we’ve worked the social media and have live webcams of the beach.”
As for whether next season will be affected by the spill, Turberville responds, “Oh yeah, I think there will be a lot of carryover. People are creatures of habit, and once they’ve gone somewhere else, some are lost forever.”
Woodridge agrees, but like all of these attraction operators, he’s not hanging his head: “I do think it’s going to be slow for quite a while, but at the same time, we’re making money and we’re going to the [upcoming] IAAPA show in Orlando looking to do business!”
Popular Pampering Prompts Spa Expansion—for Kids
 A new spa opened in August at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, where customers indulge in the usual pampering services one expects at such places—manicures, pedicures, facials, and hair treatments. But what makes this spa different is its clientele— it serves kids 4 to 14 years old.
Called Scooops Kids Spa, it is owned by Great Wolf Resorts of Madison, Wisconsin (www.greatwolf.com). Scooops spas have operated for several years at the 11 Great Wolf Lodge resorts in the United States and Canada, but this is the first one to be opened outside of the resort properties.
“We saw such a great success at the resort property level that it prompted us to take it to Mall of America,” says Amanda Sawyer, public relations manager for GreatWolf Resorts. “It’s about 2,000 square feet, and it’s owned by GreatWolf Resorts—we’re just leasing the space.”
 The name Scooops comes from the fact that the lotions and scrubs offered at the spa are ice-cream themed, as are the services, like the Chocolate Covered Strawberry pedicures and Peaches and Cream manicures. The kids even sit on a “banana split pedestal” when receiving their pedicures.
Sawyer says the Scooops staff is specially trained to work with kids, and this is something the resort company makes clear to parents. “Children’s hands, feet, and hair is different from adults,” says Sawyer, “and our staff is especially trained in dealing with that.”
At the resorts’ Scooops, facials run about $40 and pedicures and manicures $50. As for whether the spending habits of resort guests on vacation will transfer to day shoppers at a mall, Sawyer says Great Wolf has taken steps to address this. “The Scooops at Mall of America will be the only one to offer haircuts—none of the Scooops on the [resort] properties do this,” she says. “Also, a lot of what we’re doing at this Scooops is incorporating the birthday and celebration packages catering to groups of 4 to 24 kids. We think those are going to be important.”
Although the majority of the Scooops clientele is girls, Great Wolf is hoping that some boys will take advantage of the services, so they’re offering a boy’s haircut at the spa. Great Wolf is marketing the new Scooops through Radio Disney and other advertising outlets that access 4- to 14-year-olds. It’s quite a coup for Great Wolf Resorts to have a concept that started as an on-property service expanded to a standalone location. But Sawyer won’t comment on whether Great Wolf has plans to open other Scooops locations separate from resort properties, only saying the company wants to monitor the success of this Mall of America location first before making any other commitments. As to why these spa treatments are so popular with kids, Sawyer suggests, “I think the kids, just like adults, like to feel special and feel pampered sometimes. This is something really unique and it’s geared toward them.”
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